van de Molen TimTIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's an absolute privilege to take an unexpected call on the Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill.Now I can kind of understand the rationale for this. The Government wants to improve the sick leave approach and give people an extra five days doubling it—yeah OK I understand that. But it's really easy to pass a piece of legislation imposing cost on someone else and this is one of the biggest issues I have with the Government with their raft of legislation they've been putting through. It is the unintended consequences and when you have a business community that are having to step up to the plate here because quite frankly it is only businesses who will be picking up this cost—$1 billion a year of increased costs on businesses. We've been through an incredibly challenging period over the last 12 or so months with COVID and there have been businesses that have really struggled through that period. Some haven't made it. Others have done really well but actually it has been an incredibly challenging time for business owners. Regardless of their particular industry or whether they've done well or not the uncertainty created by COVID has been incredibly stressful. Alongside that we've seen firstly last year an increase in the minimum wage and then again this year a further increase in the minimum wage—Hon Members: Whoo!TIM VAN DE MOLEN: —and the other side are saying Great fantastic!" Well yes but who's picking up that cost? It's not the Government covering that actually; it's businesses having to pick up that cost.This is the fundamental point the Government just don't seem to understand—that businesses do not just have an endless bank account. There are hard-working business owners all around the country struggling every day to make a real go of their passion of their interest in whatever industry it is. They've had the innovation the entrepreneurship the drive to go out and create their own piece of paradise in New Zealand and good on them for doing that because we are incredibly lucky to have such a strong business community in New Zealand. I think they'd really appreciate a bit more support from this Government. This sort of legislation bringing in an extra five days' sick leave is just a step too far on top of all those other measures that I've just mentioned including now we're hearing about another public holiday as well and that's a direct cost straight to business owners as well. It'd just be great if we could see from this Government a bit more consideration for the impact their legislation has on business.The consultation period as well through this bill was very poor. Like we've seen on a number of pieces of legislation the select committee process hasn't been adequate. There hasn't been sufficient opportunity for New Zealanders to actually have their say to engage in the democratic process and share their views because quite frankly we don't have all the answers here in Wellington. We rely on the likes of those business owners to share their views on what the impact is for this sort of legislation and when the other side of the House arrogantly says "No we know best. We're not even going to have a select committee." or "We're going to have a truncated select committee process"—and we've seen that many times already over this parliamentary term—it's simply not good enough.So my concern is that there are going to be unintended consequences from this and look I have absolute confidence that there are by and large across most businesses fantastic relationships between the employer and the employees. That leads to a successful business and as a previous business owner I can understand that. We have those solid relationships. That is the foundation of a good business. But there are times when those relationships get exploited and the risk here is that that is pushing additional cost directly on to business owners and quite frankly it's disappointing to see that from the Government.So we are not supporting this. We would have liked to have seen a very different approach to it but unfortunately the Government has the numbers. They'll push it through as they see fit and my concern is how many businesses are going to look at this along with the other minimum wage increases the additional public holidays coming the extra cost of compliance and regulatory changes and just say "Actually this is all too hard. It's too hard to be a business owner in New Zealand." and that for me would be the real tragedy. So I'd really encourage the Government to consider that with their subsequent pieces of legislation and see if they can actually give business owners in New Zealand a better deal. Thank you."