Roy Heather: Holidays Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Roy Heather: Holidays Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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HEATHER ROY (ACT) 
: 
 I do have to worry about the naming of this bill. Part 2 deals with the sick leave provisions. Half of the bill is about sickies. This bill rather than being called the Holidays Amendment Bill could be called the “Sick Leave Bill” because it seems clear to me that this Government considers sick leave and holidays to be exactly the same thing. Therefore the “Sick Leave Bill” may well be a more appropriate title. 
I want to spend a short amount of time speaking about the effects this bill will have on the health sector. I would like to have spoken about sickness and injury in the Part 2 debate but I will address it briefly now. In the 2003-04 financial year district health boards had four public holidays under the new Holidays Act that they were not funded for under the Budget at the start of the year. At the end of the year they were still not funded for them. District health boards are big employers. In small towns and particularly in the provinces—the Timarus the Invercargills and the New Plymouths—the district health boards are the biggest employers in town. As a result of having the Holidays Act imposed on them they have had significant increases in their costs with absolutely no recognition of this from the Government. 
One might say that the district health boards are in fact the Government and that along the line they will probably get some more money. I do not think they will certainly not for the 2003-04 year and in the 2004-05 year which we are already well into that seems to be in question as well. Let us cast our minds further afield to the private hospitals. I am not talking about the surgical hospitals like Southern Cross hospitals although obviously they are also affected; I am referring to the aged-care hospitals the private rest homes and the private aged-care hospitals. They have absolutely no power over reimbursements of costs for these holidays. They are dependent on the district health boards for receiving their funding. Their funding used to come directly from the Ministry of Health but has been devolved now to the district health boards. So these private hospitals—the rest homes and the aged-care hospitals—and the district health boards suddenly find themselves between a rock and a hard place because they do not have adequate funding to pay the increased costs that the Holidays Act has imposed on them. They really have no redress at all. 
I have visited several of them recently. I spend a lot of my time going around the country visiting both the district health board hospitals and some of the private hospitals and I have found that this is one of their major concerns. Their biggest concern is the lack of funding they are getting and the impact that the Holidays Act has had on them. They know where to go. They have talked to both Minister Dyson and Minister King about this. They get words saying that things will be addressed that they are looking at the problem but they get absolutely no redress for the 2003-04 year when this Act was imposed on them. 
I think that the Government is telling the health sector the district health boards the private hospitals the employers of this country the hospitality sector other sectors that are involved and the people on this side of the Chamber that we should be grateful that the Government has looked at this. It has amended the Holidays Act with Part 1 and has addressed some of the sickness problems that have arisen—things they were told at the select committee would happen the moment this legislation was put in place and they did. 
 We are supposed to stand here and be grateful for this amendment bill—this misnamed amendment bill. I ask the Minister exactly what we are supposed to be grateful for. Why does the Minister not stand take a call and tell members why we are supposed to be grateful that he is addressing these things? This amendment bill goes absolutely nowhere towards addressing the problems that have been imposed upon the employers of this country including those that the Government pays: the district health boards the teachers and whoever else. We are all supposed to stand here and be grateful for this legislation. I have to say that I too am very surprised by the stand that United Future has taken on this. I stood in the Ohariu-Belmont electorate last election and I will be standing there again.