Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you Mr Speaker. I've listened carefully to the Minister's contributions at several stages of this legislation now and as I did the first time I heard him I remain utterly unconvinced of his argument. This is a bill that he has correctly identified as being an election commitment made by the parliamentary Labour Party deeply connected to the trade union movement and their influencers. He speaks about the future and a bright and rosy nirvana for industrial relations in this country but the unions want to take us back—back to a time when there was conflict and when there was disharmony and when there was even lower productivity than we have now. What the Minister didn't speak about at all was the cost and who pays. So the cost has been estimated by his own officials at the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment to be a billion dollars a year.Christopher Luxon: How much?Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: A billion dollars a year Mr Luxon. So that's a billion dollars a year or nearly 1 percent of the nation's total payroll that this Government is foisting upon business in a way that produces nothing more. So the Minister talks blithely about a view of the world that is rosy and bright but doesn't match reality.Last night we heard him in the committee of the whole House speaking about the world that he saw. Well he clearly has no understanding of how business operates or how some people and some employees operate. I don't think there are many—in fact they usually roll out one the only member of the Labour Party caucus who is a business person. It's a small business somewhere in the South Island. They roll this person out very regularly and then the rest of the time it's the trade union delegates that get up and speak. So what happens is that you have a Government party that is utterly and totally disconnected from the reality of the commercial world and totally disconnected from the reality of day-to-day pressures particularly on small businesses trying to cope already with the challenges that the last 12 months and COVID have provided.That brings me to another point. The rationale for this legislation has actually been COVID. This is a bill that's been brought in under the cover of COVID. Actually if it was supposedly the cover of COVID that this bill was set to achieve its objectives then surely it would have made sense for this bill to have a finite and limited time frame. But no this is the Government using COVID to introduce long-held views about employees and trade union objectives long held and long sought by their influencers. Now I don't think that that's going to deliver for New Zealand employees it's certainly not going to deliver for New Zealand employers and it's going to be ultimately bad for productivity and we already have a huge problem with this.Greg Harford is the chief executive of the Retail New Zealand organisation and they represent thousands of businesses and literally tens of thousands of people work in those retail businesses. Greg Harford came on behalf of his organisation to select committee and said that up to 20 percent of people working in retail are actually part-timers. That whole issue about part-timers has been a crucial element of debate and discussion and an unresolved issue in relation to this bill and it relates to what's referred to as prorating. So this bill seeks to give people who are employed an extra five days a year of sick leave. Now that may be well and good for people who are employed on the old-fashioned 40 hours a week five days a week kind of concept that the Labour Party's rose-tinted glasses seem to think that most New Zealanders are still employed by. The reality is of course that employment and economic circumstances have changed and the way people are employed has changed as well.Greg Harford from Retail New Zealand points out that a lot of the people who work part time do so because they want to because it suits them or because it fits in with their lifestyle and what they want to achieve. So for an employer now who employs somebody one day a week they're going to have to give that one-day-a-week person 10 days' annual sick leave—10 days. So if a person works one day a week—arguably about 50 days a year—10 of those days can be taken as sick leave. But here's the rub: if that person then has another job for a second day of that week with a second employer they get another 10 days of annual sick leave—another 10 days of sick leave. If heaven forbid they work for five different entities over five different days then you do the maths.So the reality of this has yet to sink into the Government. They just don't get it and they don't get it because they're not connected with the reality of day-to-day business particularly small businesses. They simply don't have any understanding of it. So this lack of ability to prorate is already a problem but it's exacerbated massively by extending this to 10 days a year.So we come back to the issue of what is a prudent careful responsible employer going to do when they start to look at candidates for a new job. Last night the Minister rejected my saying this because he seems to think that everybody lives in peace and harmony and sweetness and light descends upon everything. Well the grim reality is that that is not the case. That is not the case for all employers and it's not the case for all employees and so what the Government is effectively asking business people to do is to essentially underwrite the good health of employees' children.The reason for that is simple. It's because often sick leave is taken in support of dependent children and that happens with quite frequent regularity. There's nothing particularly wrong with it but when an employer is looking at two candidates and one candidate for a new job has no children and one candidate has a number of children that employer is going to be thinking in their head What is the risk to my business and to the productivity of my business the profitability to the competitiveness of my business if I take the candidate with multiple children versus the one that doesn't?"—that assumes of course that those are candidates of the same background the same experience the same talent and the same ability to do the job.I put it to the Government that actually businesses will do what they need to do to remain competitive and to remain profitable and they will structure their business affairs in a way that achieves profitability and competitiveness. In some businesses what will happen—and this is the case that Retail New Zealand have made and other submitters made to the select committee. What they will end up doing is actually not employing part-timers as frequently or in such numbers as they used to do. That will have a negative effect on people who want and seek part-time employment but it also means that in terms of changing the way they do business there will be businesses who simply automate out of their business a whole range of jobs. They will do that and we've seen that in so many business sectors already and when what Governments like this Labour-led Government do is just foist more cost more red tape—Christopher Luxon: A billion dollars.Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: —upon businesses—Mr Luxon says a billion dollars and we shouldn't forget it. It's a billion dollars a year of added cost. They foist that upon businesses. Well the Government can't reasonably expect then businesses not to react in a way that is going to adapt and adopt their business to remain competitive and profitable and that will be the outcome. It will actually be fewer jobs—particularly for part-timers—and it will be less opportunity particularly for those employees who seek jobs if they have dependent children.So these are the practical realities and it's got nothing to do with a jaundiced view of the world as the Minister likes to characterise it. It's a simple reality of business of commerce and of human nature. So I make no apology on this side of the House for us opposing this piece of legislation. If the Government was genuine and sincere about using COVID as their cover for introducing this legislation—and remember this legislation was introduced under urgency sent to select committee for a truncated select committee process over a summer period and it has represented the very worst of process and the worst of doctrinaire ideologically driven centralised thinking from a Labour Government socialist at heart trade union in their history in their politics and in their view of the world. We on this side of the House have a fondness for business for creating jobs for creating opportunity and for creating employment for New Zealanders who want to work and be productive."