Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Madam Chair. I have to say that I've noted in earlier parts of this committee that sometimes it's the questions that the Minister doesn't answer that are the most revealing. You haven't answered any of the questions I've asked yet about the definition of testing which is absent from the bill; haven't answered any questions about what the public policy basis for making employers pay for people to go and get vaccinated when it's a public interest; haven't answered any of the questions that I've asked about why they're putting this rigmarole of negotiating a specific time to get off when most people in most circumstances would just say Yeah take half an hour go do it." when actually the Government makes much of the fact that 91 92 percent of New Zealanders who are eligible are vaccinated anyway; haven't answered any of those questions. I just put that as a reminder. I know that the two Ministers have been swapping in and out so if Michael Wood the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety does want to get up and answer any of those questions he'll have an opportunity shortly—and also one more.There's a question about what is going to happen with this dismissal order. Because what it sounds like is that basically you can say that you don't want to get vaccinated take four weeks' pay do what you like. Somebody said it's effectively gardening leave and I thought about that. I thought: what if they put on a vaccine mandate at Palmers Garden Centre? Then you wouldn't be able to go and it could ruin that concept! But none the less you'd get four weeks off. The problem that you're going to have is that people are going to take advantage of it. You have no doubt that there will be people who are organised and will take advantage of this. They'll take their four weeks and say "Oh you know what? I've read some new stuff I've decided to go back." Then there's the question of how the employer decides if that person is going to unreasonably disrupt their business. It seems to me that if the over-arching goal of this legislation is to provide businesses with clarity which is what the Government said might it have just been a bit easier to say "Here is the date by which mandates come into place if people choose to make them" and your employment is terminated on that date? Because instead the Minister said the clock starts ticking. Well you basically get four weeks off. That's the issue that I think people might ask "Well how is this not gameable?".There's also a couple of other issues around how a person is supposed to get a new employee in an incredibly tight labour market. That's not strictly just a problem with this legislation but it is going to be exceedingly challenging for a lot of businesses. And then here's the other question. You might say OK well how is a business going to pay for that? Because I think part of the issue with the Prime Minister not having visited Auckland in any meaningful way more in an Instagram way than anything else is that she doesn't appreciate the kind of pressure that businesses are under. I talk to people up there in Auckland and I visited a whole lot of them—people are under enormous pressure. Dr Duncan Webb: Back to the bill!DAVID SEYMOUR: You can tell when Labour are getting a bit antsy they say "Talk to the bill talk to the bill." I don't think they understand the effects of their bill on real people. They don't like being reminded of it but here we go. You're effectively saying that you're going to lose an employee and you've got to pay for an extra four weeks when your business is already broke. I was given one example from the real world. An accountant I was talking to last week he's got a hairdresser on their books that hairdresser went into the lockdown on 18 August with $100000 cash reserves—very very hard-fought and hard-won built up since the last lockdown decimated them—and they've now got nothing and they're now potentially going to have to pay out a worker for a month even though they're not going to do any work.Now interestingly I was discussing this with a backbench Labour MP—I talk to all sorts of people—and they were under the impression that actually a worker would just continue to work and serve out the four weeks so there wouldn't be any real loss. The Minister's got up and said "Yes the clock is ticking. So I think it would be really helpful for the Minister to get up and say—does he envisage that when someone gets their four weeks to be vaccinated do they actually keep reporting for duty and doing their work unvaccinated during that period then leave or do they effectively take gardening leave? It might not be such an idle joke that they will find Palmers has a vaccine mandate and they can't take gardening leave. Are they going to be at work or not for that four weeks?"