Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you Mr Speaker. What a constitutional disgrace this piece of legislation is—and those aren't my words; those are the words of none other than Dr Dean Knight from Victoria University. A constitutional disgrace is how he has labelled this piece of legislation: produced under urgency the Government using its absolute majority in this House to pass it; a piece of legislation that has wide-ranging ramifications for every single citizen in this nation; passed without the scrutiny of select committee; passed without the input of stakeholders of people who have an interest of experts who would like to make a contribution to making this piece of legislation better than the shambolic piece that it is; and a piece of legislation that almost certainly will have to be sooner or later—and probably sooner—revisited by this House because of its sloppiness.This piece of legislation creates the so-called traffic light system. It's a system that very few New Zealanders understand that very few New Zealanders can get their head around and that very few New Zealanders create any kind of sense of direction on from the Government that they have elected to lead them and guide them. It was the case some months ago probably a year ago that New Zealanders did understand what the objectives of this Government were in relation to the COVID pandemic but actually this Government has lost the room. They've lost the nation and they've lost the sense of direction and focus and clarity of communication that New Zealanders are seeking and looking for as we go into the summer and Christmas period.So with them having lost the room they are now floundering about passing under urgency legislation that was presented to the Opposition parties only 48 hours ago and then debated through the House last night and then through this morning's stages at breakneck speed with Government Ministers and Government MPs taking only very short calls not effectively answering the very good and fulsome questions that were being put to them by members of the Opposition. That is a constitutional disgrace as Dr Dean Knight says.I want to focus mostly in my contribution on the impacts for business because it's been business that up and down the countryside has actually taken the biggest hit and had the biggest impact in terms of their day-to-day operations during this entire COVID pandemic episode. All through the last 18 months or so the Government has taken the view that business has an infinite capacity to pay an infinite capacity to absorb and an infinite capacity to do the Government's bidding in the hard graft and hard work at the coalface that the Government itself pretends they don't need to do.So it once again is going to fall to businesses in terms of how they manage non-vaccinated employees. It's going to be business who have to make those decisions and those decisions are tough decisions for any business to make. The vast majority of people in the country—91 percent we hear—have had at least one vaccination. By definition the number of people that are going to be impacted by the provisions in this bill that create a tool kit for a streamlined process for employers to make a decision about whether an employee should ultimately be exited from employment in their business is going to be relatively small in number but those people have had ample opportunity to get vaccinated. On this side of the House we have been encouraging them from day one to get vaccinated—we still do. We hope that those people will take the opportunity to get vaccinated and that the provisions of this bill in terms of employers being able to exit staff from businesses won't need to be put in place. But the grim reality is that some of those people have come to very firm determined views about their vaccination status and many of them are not for turning. They will simply put at jeopardy their employment. In some cases they've been employed for many many years and they're prepared to risk that and sacrifice it to stand on their principles of choice. No Government is going to prevent them from doing that.But with choice comes responsibility and consequence and one of the consequences that this bill establishes is that there is a potential—and there always has been—that a non-vaccinated employee can ultimately be terminated from the employment with their employer. So it's back to business that actually has to make that call the call about where the line is between the health and safety and wellbeing of other employees in their business versus the health and safety and wellbeing of a non-vaccinated employee in their business and how that relates to their customers their suppliers and their contracts and the people that they do business with.On this side of the House we trust business to make those decisions. We trust business to make a sensible prudent decision as difficult as it may be. But to give them such a short time to prepare themselves is absolutely unconscionable by this Government. The Government has had at least nine months to be preparing for this piece of legislation. From the minute that the vaccination programme albeit late and slow was commenced in New Zealand the Government should've been talking and thinking and doing the hard work on this. Had they been doing that? Absolutely no. Had they been doing it this piece of legislation would not have needed to be introduced under urgency without select committee scrutiny and without input from submitters. But no the Government seemed so full of itself that they were happy to rest on their laurels hoping that managed isolation and quarantine would keep Delta out of New Zealand and failing to realise that sooner or later Delta would arrive. Well it's here now and the fact is that this piece of legislation is a hallmark of their lack of preparedness their lack of foresight and their lack of work in preparing New Zealand and our legislative and regulatory regime for it.Just today we've had a situation in the Employment Court where an employer who had been stood down in fact exited from employment at Auckland international airport some months ago—well today the Employment Court has decided that that employee needs to be reinstated on paid leave for an indeterminate period of time whilst further discussions and negotiations are completed between the employee and the Auckland international airport. That goes to the very problem that this bill is failing to address and that is that this is going to be an employment lawyer's gravy train. The only people who will really benefit out of this piece of legislation will be the employment lawyers who are going to have an absolute field day. If there is a situation where Auckland international airport can't make stick the decision that they had made some months ago then what hope is there that even when this piece of legislation becomes effective and that's not going to probably be for some time yet—what will it actually mean if employers can't rely on the judgments they make and litigation is going to continue? We know that litigation's going to continue because this bill specifically provides for an option for personal grievance cases to continue to be heard.Now we've heard the Minister say Oh well that's about balancing rights." but we heard nothing about the balancing of rights of the business owner the operator or the small-business person who has already had to endure and suffer so much over the last 18 months. This is a Government that doesn't seem to care about business and doesn't seem to care about the implications for business at all.We on this side of the House have taken the view that actually if a business goes through a formal health and safety risk assessment process or if they use the tool that this piece of legislation establishes or if they use another formal process which they are entitled to and can do then once that has occurred that should be the end of it and the business should not have to suffer the further prospect of a sword of Damocles hanging above their head potentially with long drawn-out expensive draining litigation going backwards and forwards from an employee who has decided for whatever reason not to be vaccinated and is determined to see it through to the nth degree in terms of stating their case making their position well known and frankly making it as difficult and hard and complicated and expensive for an employer as is humanly possible. Those will be relatively few in case but a number of businesses will have to confront that.So on this side of the House we do trust business. We think that business should be able to make those decisions without the prospects of being further dragged through the employment courts or indeed into higher jurisdictions once they are challenged on appeal. This is bad law it's bad process and actually I think Dr Dean Knight is completely right as are other commentators when they call this a constitutional disgrace. They are exactly on the money."