Billy said: “Yes, but because there is no difference between a probationary and non-probationary period, it is utterly meaningless.”

I have to agree with this. I have had discussions with an employment lawyer on this issue. There is no difference between dismissal at the end of a 90 day trial period and dismissal at any other time. Exactly the same processes must be followed.
So, as the law stands, the probationary period is absolutely meaningless. In other words, it might as well not be there.

As a small business person, I would feel much more enthusiastic about hiring people if I could let them go easily if they do not work out. The current law increases my risks in employing new people, and therefore increases my reluctance to do so.

It is not necessarilly the case that work exists so a position must be filled. In many cases, there are several options; e.g. maintaining the status quo (often a safe option) or expanding and taking on staff. If the risk side of the equation is perceived as too high then many employers are likely to maintain the status quo to avoid the employment risks.

If the new law reduces the perceived risk to employers they are more likely to expand rather than maintain the status quo thus creating more jobs.

[lprent: Looks to me like you have cached cookie problems. IP is correct.

Otherwise you can change your details when you post a comment - just above the comment space.
I've fixed header]

There seem to be three issues here:

1. Whether the legislation should go ahead at some stage. National clearly signalled this before the election, and it was a theme that the unions and Labour campaigned against. The unions lost that campaign. It was hardly a secret agenda. National clearly has the mandate to proceed with the legislation–in fact it would be a broken promise if they didn’t. It seems to me that a lot of the debate is trying to relitigate the election result. The public debate has been held.

2. Whether the legislation should form part of this urgency package. I think National is on weaker ground here, since it wasn’t one of the 27 moves that National said would be part of its first 100 days. It was clearly going to be a policy priority for National but they could have done better by indicating it as a first-100 day issue some time before now.

3. Whether National could have made a better argument to make this an urgency item. I think they clearly could have, and it doesn’t seem to have been handled well in this respect. John Key has signalled that the economy is his major priority given the international and domestic financial issues. There’s a good argument that this measure could be part of National’s kick-start of the economy. That economic package hasn’t been announced yet, so it wasn’t exactly a coordinated announcement.

I’d like to know the maori Party’s position on that little can’o'worms. I’m guessing they’re are agin it.

Remind me of Act most of the time.

Awk. Just read HS’s comment. This agreeing just has to stop. I consider that it is all a subversive plot….

generally speaking media are left of centre as that is more populist

Come again? Left = populist?

L

Unless this bill is going to suddenly elicit a mass hiring splurge (unlikely in the current environment) and certainly not usually the case prior to XMAS – I can’t see what the reason is for the hurry apart from hurrying for the pure sake of it and that tends to be a recipe for poorly drafted law (it certainly has been the case in the past).

1. things that affect life and limb
2. the ones to do with being able to run a government at the level of being able to pay people or the basic finances.

Normal bills should go through the normal process, especially select committee hearings.  as this one should.

I can think of quite a lot of older legislation that got rammed through like this one. Perhaps Key feels he is the reincarnation of Muldoon?

The two I used were just the two that came immediately to mind.

generally speaking media are left of centre as that is more populist and results in more sales of their media and thus the ability to advertise – media are sadly a medium to sell advertisements and old school journalism is dead.

But it’s a conspiracy theory – I’m new to blogs and look at the left and the right and both are full of b****ks conspiracy theories that anyone with more than 2 neurons realises are unreal – but guys, the left wingers win the stupid consiporacy race (not by a lot)

If I read it right, it basically seems to be saying that you can have a probationery period but it means nothing. Anyone else got a better understanding?

Personally I approve of a sensible scheme but a) I don’t think this is it, b) I’d much rather it went through the process properly. I don’t want the National Party to pick up the worst habits of the Labour Party!

Speaking of which, the newspaper is a private business owned and published by private individuals.

Conversely, the radio is owned by the state and its purpose is to represent the views of the presenters … oops the people of New Zealand.increasing