Henare Tau: Employment Relations (Probationary Period Repeal) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Henare Tau: Employment Relations (Probationary Period Repeal) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:665;Page:13033] 
Hon TAU HENARE (National) 
: 
 I say to my colleague Mr Trevor Mallard that somebody had to help the Europeans out to add a bit of colour to the race. Instead of being colonised we did the colonising. 
I am happy to join the debate. Forty-five smoke-free days ago I had what they call a cardiac event. While I was having this cardiac event I was wondering to myself whether if I was looking for a job under the Labour regime and I had had a heart attack—or a cardiac event as they are wont to call it these days—I would have been successful. No. Under the Labour regime not one employer would have given me a trial. Not one employer would have given me a go. Do members know why? It is not because I could not do the job because I could not learn the job because I would be a health risk or because I might fall down dead. It would have been because of the risk to the employer of something going wrong—one of the things I have just mentioned—or something happening. The employer would have worn it. 
It is not the job of the employer to make workers drink after leading them to the pond; it is for the employer to make sure that the risks are spread evenly and actually giving the person an opportunity to show his or her wares is the best thing. It is not up to the employer to pay for the worker’s health risks after the worker has had a cardiac event. It is certainly not the employer’s job to risk the consequences of having the worker drop dead on the job after he or she has had a cardiac event away from the employment. 
Trial periods have been around for donkey’s years. Even in my time there was the national awards system. Most of those members across the way would have had their union experience under the national awards system. They had trial periods some of 2 months some of 3 months and some in the national awards system had a 6-month trial system where the employer could trial a person and that person was given 6 months to learn the ropes of the job. The employee could bail out at any time that he or she wanted to. 
Trial periods are good things. Trial periods spread the risk right across the board. If I think about the cardiac event— 
Dr Rajen Prasad 
: Probation’s not the problem. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Well what is the problem? Oh I know what the problem really is. It is that the Labour Party does not have a single thing to go to war on. 
Darien Fenton 
: We have now. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Who gives a hoot about what those members have now? It is just like what I said in the House yesterday to the Hon Maryan Street—two words—“Who cares?”. I tell members what the worker who is looking for a job and who wants the opportunity to show his or her wares does not care what the Labour Party is on about. Those workers care about having the opportunity. Once Carmel Sepuloni finds her way around the new metropolis of Waitakere she will understand that the young workers out there—the workers whom she thinks she represents; Maori Pasifika and all the other people—will love this because they will be able to have the opportunity to show their wares.