Belich CamillaEMPLOYMENT RELATIONS (TRIAL PERIODS) AMENDMENT BILLThird ReadingDebate resumed.CAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker. Well here we are at 20 to 12 on the same day that this bill was brought to the House under urgency removing again—the second week in a row—fundamental rights of working people. Hon Members: Shameful!CAMILLA BELICH: It's absolutely shameful of this Government to prioritise taking away rights to natural justice for the majority of New Zealand employees through this piece of legislation.There's been quite a few comments on where this new Government is going. One of the common themes has been backwards and there isn't a clearer example than in this particular bill. This particular bill that the Government intends to pass tonight but maybe they won't quite get there is exactly the same as a bill that was passed in 2011—exactly the same. Where's the vision? Where's the learning? Where's the looking at evidence to see if this policy actually works? Where's the consideration of how New Zealand has changed in 2023? It's absolutely nowhere to be found in this piece of legislation. There is no vision about how a 2023 labour market is different from the labour market in 2011. If you just think about the technological changes if you just think about how the world has moved on you will realise how ridiculous that is.We talked a lot in this debate about red tape. That's what we heard from the other side. The Minister just said in her short contribution—I note all of her contributions have been extremely short because she has nothing good to say about this bill because there isn't anything good to say. She calls the natural justice rights of employees to ask their employer why they were dismissed to ask to be treated fairly to ask for natural justice—she calls that red tape. I think that's shameful. The right and access to justice is not red tape; it is a human right and a lot of these things which are repealed through trial periods are actually human rights as well.She didn't have a lot of answers to our questions. We asked a lot of questions in the committee of the whole House stage and we were left with nothing. I asked about the contradiction which I wonder if her colleagues are aware of where people on accredited employer work visas are not covered by trial periods but New Zealanders working here already are covered by trial periods effectively giving people on those visas more access to rights than people here. I wonder if she has explained those differentiations to her colleagues and I wonder whether they in fact support that.We also asked her questions about the benefits system. Would people who are dismissed—and there will be make no mistake more people dismissed because of the law that this coalition Government is passing; more people dismissed and not told why. So would they be entitled to some kind of support? What do we expect to happen to these people? All employees in the whole country are now covered by trial periods. What do we expect when they lose their jobs? We were not given any answers. We were told she's not responsible for that so she doesn't know. Is that good enough? I don't personally think that's good enough.There is no evidence for this particular piece of legislation. The world has moved on. Just like the fair pay agreements legislation that we were discussing only last week there seems to be no recognition from this coalition Government of actual studies and evidence about workplace legislation and how effective it is or not. And in this case it's not effective.I want to take a moment just to thank the officials who have worked here who have been here until 11.30 at night; the staff in Parliament who have been here through to 11.30 at night—quarter to 12 now—helping Parliament to debate this under urgency for no reason. The Minister has not given us a reason as to why this needs to go through urgency why it's so important that it has to happen under urgency and with no select committee process.I have read in the previous readings points that people have wanted to raise if there was a select committee process but they've been unable to do that and I just say again that an electoral mandate does not justify bad lawmaking—an electoral mandate does not justify bad lawmaking. I have not heard a single argument on the other side to justify why you couldn't have a select—Christopher Bishop said you were going to have one and now we're not having one. Why? Where are the answers to these important questions? We certainly didn't get them from the Minister.I thanked the officials but I also want to thank them for their sage advice that has been included on the regulatory impact statement. I want to take a moment to read this important clause. This is the conclusion in the regulatory impact statement: We therefore consider that there are diminishing benefits from increasing the availability of trial periods to larger employers (from 89 percent of employers under the status quo to 100 percent of employers) and that this would not outweigh the costs of insecurity to a greater number of employees." That is right—that is 100 percent correct. This is not radical thinking; this is sage thinking based on evidence and there is no evidence that extending these trial periods works. It's a step backward and it will simply make people more insecure in their work.I also want to mention something else that has been mentioned a lot in this debate but perhaps hasn't been given the exact attention it deserves so far and that's the study that Motu Research did after they were commissioned by Treasury. They found that 90-day trial periods in terms of their objectives have little effect. So it's not helping anyone to do this. In terms of the macro scale in New Zealand there is no impact of 90-day trial periods. We need to look at this research and we need to see what the research has found. The main researcher Isabelle Sin who's done a huge amount of research into employer—Arena Williams: She's awesome.CAMILLA BELICH: Yeah she is awesome. She said "My research shows that the 90-day trial period isn't helping people get jobs." It isn't helping people get jobs. This is the justification we have been given for this bill and the researcher who did an actual study into it says it doesn't help people get jobs. So why are we extending it? Why? Why does this coalition Government hate working people? Why does the Government hate them? I don't understand why you would extend a policy that doesn't work. It doesn't give more people jobs. That is what the research shows. I'll tell you what it does do. This particular bill for individual people will be devastating. And I want to spend a moment just talking about that because a lot of people especially on this side of the House—and I'm sure maybe on the other side of the House too; I don't know—they come to this place to make a difference and one of the main reasons that we want to do that is we want to make a difference to people who face injustice. My colleague Jan Tinetti gave the most convincing reason for that when she made a contribution in the committee of the whole House stage. She had had someone that she knew in her life who had been dismissed under a trial period and they had tragically taken their own life. It's not a joke. It's a real story. It's tragic. Everyone in this House agrees with that and I don't pretend to think that anyone else would say anything else about that situation. The reason that we have to take these decisions so seriously is these are the type of impacts that can occur when we take away rights from people.I have a previous career as an employment lawyer and I saw how important jobs were to people. Jobs are part of self-esteem. They're part of how you identify yourself how you find your place in the world who you are. For many people their identity as a human being is tied to the work that they do. To make it possible and to extend a policy that just doesn't work for the objectives that this Government wants it to achieve so that more people are in the situation where they may lose their job for no good reason and have no recourse—it is just a terrible policy to be putting on New Zealanders. Let me tell you every member of this House should be aware that you will soon get stories about trial periods. More and more people will be using them and more and more New Zealanders will be coming to your office and saying "I was treated unfairly and for some reason I'm told that there's nothing I can do." That is an absolute travesty and it's an absolute tragedy and we're all going to have to look hard at the Parliament that we're in at the moment that is passing this regressive law and justify to them why they don't have any recourse to challenge unfairness. That is going to be something that everyone in this House is going to have to address. I don't look forward to it. I think it's going to be a sad day. So I think this is a terrible bill. I think it takes New Zealand backwards and I do not commend it to the House."