National leader Judith Collins says 90-day trials can give employers the confidence to take more chances when hiring, including hiring people from different ethnicities.
In the first of Newstalk ZB’s Leaders Breakfast series today, Collins said the trial period gave businesses confidence to "give people a go”.
“Maybe there's something with that person - maybe there's something in their background, maybe they're not quite qualified enough, maybe they're not that experienced, maybe they don't know them that well,” she said.
"Maybe they're a different ethnicity - you know, this is about actually giving people a chance."
A spokesperson for Judith Collins said she was "making the point that unconscious bias can lead to people making employment choices based on what they think they know about someone".
"Sometimes that might be based on someone having an ethnicity different from the decision maker. The 90-day trial period will give employers the confidence to take more of a chance when hiring."
The previous National Government introduced the 90-day trial scheme first in 2008 for small businesses, then extended it to all employers in 2010.
The Labour Government in 2018 limited the 90-day trial period for workers in businesses with fewer than 20 employees.
Collins was also quizzed about her visit to the chapel to pray yesterday before casting a vote.
She said she wasn’t politicising her religion, and that she’d been a Christian all her life.
Collins also said oil and gas reserves should be tapped into to boost the economy after the pandemic. She said it wouldn’t have a large impact on climate change.
"Gas is something that is part of the world. We have potential to be, basically, the North Sea in the south, with the seismic testing I have seen, when I was Minister of Energy and Resources, off the East Coast of the South Island.”
She added: "And that's how places like Norway became so rich.”
“We have fear being stoked up by the Prime Minister - 0.17 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
"Come on, we are not the problem, we are the solution."
Speaking about education, Collins said NCEA had “too much woke stuff” like photography classes and media studies.
She said NCEA worked for “some kids”, but the Cambridge system as an alternative was needed.
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