New Zealand Income Insurance Scheme
HNZ submitted on MBIE's consultation for an NZ Income Insurance Scheme. We opposed the introduction of the scheme, as we do not believe it is required in the context of New Zealand's workplace relations. The current design of this scheme is a tax on productivity, and a subsidy for non-productivity, and will be easy to manipulate. We also believe this comes at a time where every cent counts for both households and businesses.
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Prior to COVID, the hospitality sector, which includes accommodation and food service operations, consists of around 22,800 enterprises in just under 24,400 geographic locations around the country. Collectively these enterprises employ just under 173,000 people.
Hospitality NZ welcomes the opportunity to submit on ‘A New Zealand Income Insurance Scheme’.
Hospitality NZ does not support an income insurance scheme for New Zealand.
We do not believe an income insurance scheme is needed. Compared with other countries, our workers’ rights are incredibly strong, meaning the redundancy and dismissal process is much tougher. Many comparative countries that have income insurance schemes have much easier redundancy processes, meaning redundancy will come as a surprise for many workers, compared to the normal process here in New Zealand.
Our view is that an income insurance scheme may work in the wider context of employment rights, but given the current workplace relations landscape of New Zealand, such a scheme is not fit-for-purpose. The current design of this scheme is a tax on productivity, and a subsidy for non-productivity.