Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill

I move, That the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

I thank the members opposite and, indeed, the National Party for supporting the bill at its first reading. I’m impressed by the worker heroism that has emerged from the National Party! I’ve never known so many champions for the working class in the National Party. We’ve never had it before and that’s historic, but I think we should just look under the bonnet a little bit more closely and let’s just see what happened.

What happened was when this group of workers, through their unions, went to court to test the boundaries of the Equal Pay Act, the Government of the day sat aside and said, “Yep, you want it; you go for it.” And then, when they won there, the Government of the day said, “Whoa, this is not what we wanted.” and instructed their Government department to appeal. And so there was an appeal and then the unions won that one. Then the Government of the day said, “Whoa, we don’t want this. Appeal again.” And the workers, through their unions, appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, at which point the Government of the day thought, “Whoa, we’d better talk to the workers.” The one thing they were determined to do was not to let them have a pay equity claim. That’s what it was about. That’s what the heroes of the working class opposite actually did to this group of workers. They denied them their right under the Equal Pay Act 1972 to get a pay equity claim. Sure, they did a deal, but they were very clear that that deal had to include the removal, the expungement, the denial of pursuit of a pay equity claim for another five years. They set rates for five years. And when the member Penny Simmonds complains “No voice for workers.”; the National Party legislation denied these workers a voice for five years. There was no negotiation, not for five years. They denied it, denied them negotiation, denied them a pay equity claim, denied them their rights under the Equal Pay Act.

It gets worse, because then, when the union movement and the Opposition of the day, the Labour Party, said, “We need to improve the Equal Pay Act.”, what did the National Government do? They came out with a clause that would have denied pay equity. It said, “You’re not going to have women-dominated roles compared to equivalent male-dominated roles regardless; you compare women in the workplace with the men in the workplace.” It was no comparator at all. It was no real pay equity at all.

So having said to these workers, “We don’t want you to get pay equity,”—while legislating against it—“We’ll legislate your pay rates for five years, and also, we’re going to make sure that the pay equity machinery means that nobody ever gets pay equity again”. Well, we had to clean all that up. But here’s the real test. If this was an Opposition party, a National Party really concerned about the low-paid workers, why have they opposed every increase in the minimum pay that we put in place? Why, if you’re so pro-worker, would you oppose increases in the minimum wage? Every year we’ve put it up—well, they did. They did. They are not the heroes of the working class. They are not the heroes.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: None over there.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Sad to say, and I know Michael Woodhouse—I know the Hon Michael Woodhouse fancies himself, because he comes from Dunedin and there’s a good tradition down there, a good, strong tradition of unionism, maritime workers and others. But I’m sorry, the Hon Michael Woodhouse is not the hero of these workers. The one thing these workers wanted, the reason they went to court, went all the way to the Supreme Court, is because they want pay equity. That’s what they wanted.

The other thing, of course, that the National Party opposes is the one thing that these workers would benefit from, and that is a fair pay agreement. Now, we’ve been working very hard. The great Hon Michael Wood has been trying to get the fair pay agreement stuff through. We’ve got it in the House now; they oppose it. They don’t want workers to get fair pay rates. That’s the reality—that’s the reality. You’ve only got to have a look at the legislation that we’re amending to know that’s the case. But then you look at their conduct while they’ve been in Opposition and they’ve opposed every progressive measure possible.

This is about restoring the opportunity for these workers. We’ve made the commitment and we’re going to resource it and I’ve been engaging with them and they’re very positive about it. Both the workers and the providers are very positive about pursuing pay equity, because that’s actually what they want. And the employers know that that’s what we need to do, what they need to see, what the workers need if they want real recruitment and retention into those roles.

We are doing something that could have happened five years ago. We’re doing something that the previous National Government could have allowed to happen. But we’re doing it this way too because, remember, it’s not only that not all of the workers in this workforce are represented by unions but there’s a thousand employers and not all those employers are easy to reach and to sign up to. It is easier to legislate for, so we’re going to do that. We’re going to continue to provide the protection, we’re giving them a 4.6 percent pay increase, and we’re going to do what they most want, which is to get on with pay equity.

Then, in the meantime, parallel to that, the Hon Michael Wood is going to continue with his fair pay agreement legislation. This House will deal with that, and the “champions of the workers” across there have now obviously seen the light so we can guarantee on their votes for that. But right now we need to look after these workers, get them their pay increase, continue their protections, and get on with the pay equity deal. On that note, I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, that’s the Andrew Little we’ve come to know and love in this House—just wind him up and let him go! Boy, did he go! I think Mr Little was born about the same year I was, about 1965, something like that—practically twins, as I’ve said in the House before—but he was born in the wrong generation. Couldn’t you see Mr Little on the waterfront in 1951 with his cloth cap and his bell and his whistle, leading the troops into the battle with New Zealand Police and the Defence Force. That’s back to the future, to me. I think we should find a DeLorean and send him back, because that’s what he’s suited to—not a modern workplace; not a modern economy; not a flexible, fair, and safe relationship; but a tub-thumping, union-focused, angry Minister.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: And why no action? Because he couldn’t find them.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: That’s quite right; he probably couldn’t.

He said an extraordinary thing right at the end of his intervention here. He said, “We’re doing something that the Government should have done five years ago.” Well, I say to the Minister, we did do it five years ago, and the clue is in the Act that the Government is amending; it’s called the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Act—pay equity settlements. He’s criticising the previous Government for somehow imposing this on the workers and the unions, at the same time as he passes, under urgency, an amendment to that Act, that imposes worse than that on those workers.

But I would also point out to him, because he clearly hasn’t read the Act that he’s amending, that the purpose of that Act in 2017 was to give effect to settlement agreements—settlement agreements with E tū, the New Zealand Public Service Association Inc., the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, and the NZNO—the New Zealand Nurses Organisation. They agreed to those terms, and they did so, and that window of no pay equity claims, because that eye-watering amount of money was designed to buy the time that was needed to normalise bargaining and reset and put pay equity behind them and get on with the normal negotiation process. And then the Labour Government went to sleep. And then they woke up.

There was a lot of yelling back and forth in the first reading, particularly when I was on my feet. But the one thing that they were quiet as a mouse about was the departmental disclosure statement description that said they had a two-week negotiation process with the unions and the employers, couldn’t agree, so they’re coming down to this House to impose a settlement, under urgency, by legislation.

I want to reflect a little bit on what Mr Seymour said. I accept the criticisms that there may be a revisionist approach to what I said when I said, “We got the popcorn out.” But then he went on to, effectively, agree with me by saying that the previous Government could have done nothing. That was the point I was trying to make. I accept the point that he said, that they probably should have done nothing, because the best place for the Government to be in an employment relationship is out of it, is to leave bargaining to the employers and the employees and their agents, and that it did, I’m sure, offend his principle, on that basis, when it was being discussed by the social policy Cabinet committee. But the previous Government did have a reputation for pragmatism, and it was a pragmatic response, and it was a response designed, as the label says, to achieve pay equity, and, at that time, it did.

The Minister can bang on all he likes about minimum wage increases. I was the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety that increased minimum wages at twice the rate of inflation—in fact, public sector wages and general Labour Cost Index under the previous National Government rose at twice the rate of inflation. He can crow all he likes about increases in the minimum wage; labour costs in this country are currently going up at half the rate of inflation. So they’re pouring money into, firstly, the public sector and then taking it out of the pockets of private business to put it into the hands of workers, and workers are worse off—and certainly these workers are worse off.

Now, I want to acknowledge the Green Party and Teanau Tuiono, who, I thought, gave a very good first reading speech. Now, I’ve been critical of the Green Party in past—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: What!

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: —pieces of legislation when they abstain—I know; it’s a character flaw of mine, Mr Brownlee—but when they sit on the fence and get splinters up their butt because they will not oppose things that they know they should. But today, they’ve made a line-ball call and they have said, “No; we can’t support this process and we can’t support this legislation.”, and I commend them for that, because it is a line-ball call. The National Party has considered whether or not it should oppose it and we’ve come down on the side of “OK; let’s hold our noses and support it.”, because the workers will be better off. I think what Mr Tuiono did was very clearly articulate that their opposition to this bill was not opposition to the workers getting more money. I commend the Green Party for their position on that basis.

But I think the most telling comment of the first reading was Penny Simmonds, because she asked a simple question, and that question was this: imagine what we would be debating if a National-led Government was doing this. These guys would be going to war with a centre-right Government that treated workers so disgracefully as they are treating workers today.

I don’t want to sound like I’m being critical of the unions or of Kristine Bartlett, because I think she does represent the face of a very, very important workforce who worked incredibly hard to get the settlement they got five years ago. But where are they in this discussion? Why aren’t they singing from the rafters against this Government? The simple reason is: they haven’t had a chance. They probably didn’t even know this bill was coming to the House, because we didn’t, until yesterday or this morning. So I’d like to hear from Kristine Bartlett. I’d like to hear from E tū. I’d like to hear from the NZNO, but we won’t—not today, at least, because they’ve been marginalised from the process.

In the committee of the whole House, there are a number of very important questions that we need to be asking on behalf of workers and also their employers, who, as Penny Simmonds and I have pointed out in the first reading speeches, are under crushing pressure. This Government thinks that because they’re not public sector organisations, and that some of them are allied to retirement villages that do pretty well out of property, that they don’t deserve the fairness of having their costs recovered. Most of them—many of them, at least—are not-for-profits; well, they’re not-for-loss either. Zero is a very small number, but they’ve fallen below that because of the neglect and the disgraceful treatment by this Government of those organisations. I think they deserve better.

So in the committee of the whole House, we really need to examine the funding elements of this. We have no idea how much this is costing, whether the employers have been engaged on the degree to which it was sufficient. Remember when we did this in 2017, there were about four or five issues that the committee had to deal with—and the Ministry of Health and the Government, to its credit, actually adjusted the funding formula to acknowledge equity sufficiency and the issue of relativity with supervisors. Why would one want to be a supervisor in an aged-care facility, of those care and support workers, if the benefit of that was only cents in an hour—and, in fact, that was a problem that needed to be addressed. The leave liability issues: remember there was a lot of built-up leave that the ministry hadn’t originally acknowledged and put into the funding envelope. And then general funding provisions, generally.

We need to reconcile the offer made by Health New Zealand to the Aged Care Association and members of 1.9 percent with this. Is that 1.9 percent over and above this offer? Is it meant to be paid out of that offer? There is a very murky kind of a world here and we don’t have the opportunity to examine that through the select committee.

So the Minister better lock himself in, because I think there are a variety of questions that we need to ask on behalf of both those workers and the aged-care sector, to make sure that that crushing pressure that they’re under doesn’t get worse and lead them to go to the wall because this Government was too lazy to negotiate sooner.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Fa‘afetai lava, Madam Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to rise again in support of the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill, second reading. What I’ve been hearing from the Opposition is some of the history lessons leading up to this bill, but I really enjoyed Minister Little’s contribution—very passionate contribution—the history lesson that he gave, in terms of what the Opposition did, in their time, for the support workers. It was really interesting because I didn’t get to know what they did when they were in term. So it’s really good to hear a bit of that.

I stand by my comments in the first reading about the value in honouring our support workers. My mother was a support worker for 20-plus years in South Auckland, worked for Spectrum Care. I was a young kid running around in the homes, raiding the fridge, but also helping out my mum, and saw the hard work that she did, and all the Spectrum Care colleagues that she worked with. I became a GP and also started looking after Spectrum Care clients, and that was all because of my mother and the work that she’s done. So, again, I support this bill to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, here we are again. It’s a bit of a quick turnaround, isn’t it? I neglected to welcome Dr Anae Leavasa back from his paternity time, and I hope he’s had an enjoyable time with the new baby.

The National Government, back in 2017, took a very pragmatic response, and we see the hand of the Rt Hon Bill English in this. He was a very pragmatic man, a good friend of mine, and he clearly knew that something had to be done and negotiations had to occur. So a very pragmatic approach was taken, which ended up in $2 billion being spent on seeking and getting equity—pay equity—for these workers. Now, I suspect his good wife, a GP, might well have been in his ear a bit over this, helping with his pragmatism on it. But it was good to see that approach being taken, and that was a huge amount of money that was put up for this pay equity legislation. But it was there for five years to give time for normalised bargaining to occur. And that is what is so astonishing, that those five years have been when there has been a Labour Government. Now, they could have blamed the first three years on a handbrake from New Zealand First, but they have nothing to blame for the last few years, when they are a Labour Government—so closely aligned to the unions—and here they did not normalise bargaining with these unions and these workers. Minister Little said that what they’ve done is given a 4.6 percent increase. Well, what they’ve actually done is imposed, not given. They’ve imposed a settlement—a 4.6 percent settlement. They might as well have given these women a wee pat on the head and said, “There you are, dear; you be grateful for that”.

Nicola Grigg: How patronising.

PENNY SIMMONDS: Terribly patronising, and, by golly, the Minister might have done some desk thumping and some yelling and some righteous indignation in his speech before, but I spent 23 years negotiating with the unions, and I bet there’s a back room where there’s a bit of table thumping and voices being raised and a Minister having his pedigree read to him by these unions on what hasn’t been done in the last five years. And those unions have got every right to be doing this—absolutely every right—because they are the unions that represent some of the lowest paid, some of the most vulnerable workers, looking after some of the most vulnerable people in our society. So I hope that that back room is getting a fair airing with the Minister, if not now, very shortly.

So let’s have a look at some examples of workplaces of these workers that are being given—being given. Isn’t that good of them? “Being given”. I’m reminded of one of the Government’s spokespersons the other day who said, “We’re here for the little people.” That’s what she said. “We’re here for the little people, and we give settlements.”—isn’t that lovely?

Hon Scott Simpson: Arrogant and condescending.

PENNY SIMMONDS: Arrogant and condescending—exactly—my colleagues are saying. So an example of an employer: the Presbyterian Support down in Otago and Southland are an employer of a number of aged-care facilities, and they provide a number of social services programmes. They are one of the aged-care facilities that has been to visit me on numerous occasions. They are absolutely screaming out for what’s happening to their sector at the moment. So they’ve been given—I think it is—a 1.2 percent increase in their funding for this year. And they are supposed to somehow be recruiting and maintaining their registered nurses to allow them to continue. They are relying on these workers, these care and support workers, that are being treated so badly by this Labour Government. As my colleague the Hon Michael Woodhouse has said, we’re going to need to tease out how this 4.6 percent increase to these workers is going to be funded. Because my fear is that this Government’s just saying, “Oh well, sort it out—you employers—even though we’ve only given you a 1.2 percent increase, nowhere near the inflation rate, the extra spending you’re having to do on the power and food and everything else associated with running an aged-care facility. Now you’ll look after this 4.6 percent increase with no additional funding.” Well, I can tell you that this extremely well-run Presbyterian Support, that has been operating for over 100 years, is going to run a million dollar deficit this year.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: How much?

PENNY SIMMONDS: A million dollar deficit this year. So when I asked them, “Well, what are you going to do? You can’t do this for ever.”, they’re going to do it for this year—to try and get the Government to see sense—because they have some reserves. But they can’t do it for ever. So what they have said is they’ll have to look at cuts to the areas that are most resource hungry. Now, where does this Government think the most resource-hungry areas might be in an aged-care facility? I’m sure my colleague Dr Anae knows. It’ll be the hospital care residents. It will be those with high-needs dementia care. They will be the highest-resourced areas. They will be the areas that will have to be looked at if an organisation such as Presbyterian Support continues to run a deficit of a million dollars a year.

I said it in my first speech: a society is judged by how well we look after the most vulnerable. And this Government will be judged. You will be judged in 14 months’ time. My apologies, Madam Speaker, I didn’t mean you would be judged; I meant this Government will be judged. In 14 months’ time, when the unions and the workers look back and think, “How well did this Labour Government look after us? How well did this Labour Government—that relies on us for so much support—look after us?”, they’ll be thinking, “Well, actually, not all that well. Not all that well at all”. And the employers will be thinking, “How well did this Government look after us?” And they won’t take quite as long to think about it; they’ll say straight away, “Not very well at all”.

So there’s going to be an awful lot of people assessing and reviewing the actions of this Government to the people that are most vulnerable in our society. I look—even as recently as during COVID—and it’s been well documented in the media how badly our disabled community were treated in COVID: how little money, how little time, and how little interest this Government showed in our disabled community during COVID. And now we’re getting to look at this amendment and we are saying, again, how little this Government has cared about the most vulnerable workers, how little this Government has cared about the most vulnerable people in our society. So I believe this Government will be judged very, very harshly in 14 months’ time. Madam Speaker, thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak again on this bill. And I’m a little bit baffled. I’m experiencing a sense of complete confusion about the revisionist version of history that we’ve been subjected to over the past wee while from the National Party. The National Party is not the party whose only policy is to give tax cuts to the very wealthiest but they are the heroes of the working people. But let me remind you that the National Party in Government prevented workers from bringing pay equity claims until 30 June 2022. Under the original Act in 2017, section 8—please refer to it—“Existing claims extinguished and potential claims barred” is its title, which is a bit of a clue. The National Party, when in Government, dragged Kristine Bartlett, supported by E tū who brought the claim to court, all the way to the Supreme Court. They are not the heroes of the working people; although, if they are going to revise history and become so, I really anticipate eagerly their support of our fair pay agreement and increasing the minimum wage. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak on the second reading of the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill.

I want to begin by giving the absolute biggest shout-out to support workers around the country who have long fought for liveable wages and safe working conditions. You guys do essential work to support countless people in our communities and help them lead fulfilling and independent lives, and your pay needs to reflect this. You work long hours, often without breaks, and you do some of the hardest work there is dealing with complex needs, complex behavioural issues, hazardous waste, always on your feet, caring for some of our most vulnerable members of our communities.

As many speakers have noted, there is a history of this bill, and it’s a history that, I think, resembles a really long and hard-earned win by workers and, particularly, Kristine Bartlett, who secured a really important win via the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Act in 2017. She ended up lodging an application with the Employment Relations Authority against the National-led Government when she wasn’t receiving equal pay per the Equal Pay Act of 1972. And this was a long fight. Basically, after a lot of back and forth, and court action, and it did end up delivering $2 billion worth of wage rises. I think it’s been interesting watching and hearing the National Party members trash the Labour Party for not reflecting their working-class values. I want to just remind the National Party members that they themselves put up many hurdles at the time for the workers fighting for these livable wages.

I also want to remind the Labour members that via this bill they have missed an opportunity to ensure that the wage increases of support workers reflected the work that they do and the cost of living pressures that people are facing right now. The Government had the opportunity as the 2017 bill was coming to expire, to ensure that workers had their pay increases reflected properly. There were five years for the Labour Government to take action on this, and at the 11th hour, effectively, what we are seeing is a bill that will effectively be giving support workers a 70c an hour increase, which, as my previous Green Party speaker Teanau Tuiono noted, is effectively a Chupa Chup. I think when we know that so many support workers are getting burnt out, when people are leaving the profession shortly after entering it just because they cannot make ends meet and they’re so short staffed that the pressure is too high, I think we need to do far more.

I’ve also noted that today in the House, and actually over the past few weeks, Labour and National have had a bit of a back and forth about migrant workers and particularly about pathways to residence. I want to note that migrant workers make a pretty substantive proportion of support workers, particularly in the aged-care sector. And it was interesting that on the one hand, National was advocating for quicker pathways to residency for migrant workers and particularly nurses, and Labour was pushing back against it because they were arguing that if we gave them pathways to residency, they would leave the profession, and neither of those parties were acknowledging that the reason many workers, whether it’s nurses or in this case support workers, end up leaving the profession is the low pay and poor working conditions and the massive pressure they are facing. I think this bill is, again, not acknowledging that the reason why we continue having such a shortfall of support workers around the country is because of that poor pay and those poor working conditions. So if we’re going to be bringing migrant workers with the hope of staying in the profession—and in this case, not so much the hope but the fact that we’re putting them on employer-bound visas because they have no other option but to work for the employer that they came in with, effectively—I think we need to acknowledge that there’s a better solution, which is to give these workers liveable wages, and to actually then give them the freedom to move around. Because support workers who enter this profession, they do it out of the love and care they have for the communities that they serve. But when we put them into the impossible situation of not being able to make ends meet, we’re doing a disservice to the many people that we’ve talked about being essential during the pandemic.

I want to just briefly mention that this is why for us, we can’t support the bill in its current state. This is also why we’ve put an amendment, which we’re looking forward to discussing in the committee of the whole House, to, basically, lift the wages of these workers to much more substantive levels and to also reflect, for example, some of the pay levels that support workers see in Australia where they have far higher wages. Compared to New Zealand, they just start at a rate that would be the equivalent of the New Zealand living wage. I think it’s a disservice that we can’t even guarantee these workers a starting living wage, which should be the barest, absolute minimum.

It’s about time that we start valuing care work and workers that prop up our whole healthcare system. And it’s absolutely not OK to keep their wages low and keep our support workers from achieving fair pay because it’s predominantly work that is done by women; and not just women, but migrant, Māori, and Pasifika women. Many of the groups we now have are completely overrepresented in wage gaps across the country. So if we’re, again, serious about addressing these inequities, this bill would be amended, the Government would have committed to engaging with unions at a much earlier stage so that we’re not discussing this bill in urgency at the last moment. And we look forward to continue advocating at all stages of this bill tonight for the Government to increase the pay of support workers and to actually reflect the working-class values the Labour Party, particularly, talks about. So I’ll continue campaigning on this issue and ask for my colleagues to get Labour to support this amendment across the line. Kia ora.

On behalf of ACT I’d like to support the second reading of this bill. It’s a very interesting debate. I think the facts remain that we’re here because of a novel finding in a court case that the Government of the day had a choice about. They could either legislate over the top of it and say, “Actually, that’s not what Parliament intended.”, or they could kick for touch—and they kicked for touch. They said, “You’ve got five years to figure it out. Make your settlements and then after that who knows?” Well, we’ve got to the “who knows?” One side kicked for touch and now the other side is having to kick it even further into touch and buy more time, because there’s no enduring solution. The fact is that the TerraNova case, or at least the findings in it, were unsustainable. They allowed judges to effectively set wages, and when this legislation expires—and the part of it that extinguished that right will expire despite the pay rates being extended for another year and a half—we’re going to be back to people taking cases where actually the judge can decide whether a whole group of people should be paid differently based on the judge’s view of their identity and the work they do. That’s not a good place to be. It doesn’t work. It’s interesting at the Auckland University of Technology, specifically one of the researchers there, Katherine Ravenswood, has done a lot of work on what the outcome of the pay equity legislation has been for the people who are actually affected by it.

Now, remember, fundamentally the Government decided to legislate minimum pay rates in exchange for extinguishing the right to go to court because they didn’t like the findings of the court. What occurred, according to surveys of people actually affected was that about half of them said that their job had stayed the same, half of them said they had extra responsibilities added to their job, and a quarter said that they had their workload increased. Others, meanwhile, said that they had had their hours reduced against their will. Actually, it’s all pretty understandable. Parliament stepped in and legislated what the wages should be and legislated them up, and, as a result, what happened is that they found that the managers, not having enough money to match it, found people they didn’t think were very useful and forcibly reduced their hours, and the people they did think were doing a good job were given more to do and added responsibilities to them.

You see, one of the things that happened is that Parliament may have legislated the pay rates, but that doesn’t mean that it necessarily funded those pay rates in the Budget. So the managers who were surveyed by Katherine Ravenswood were forced to make economies, like people are in every business up and down New Zealand. What they did is they said, “OK, we can’t change the pay rates—that’s been legislated by Parliament. We don’t have enough money. We still need to get the work done, so we’ll cut down people’s hours if we don’t think they’re very productive and we’ll give more work to people we think are productive.” Pretty simple and pretty predictable stuff, and it’s what happens when Parliament tries to interfere in wage setting across the rest of the economy.

Governments and Parliament cannot solve problems. They cannot avoid costs, but they can certainly shift problems and they can shift costs. That is fundamentally what’s happened. And that’s why the Government of the day should have responded not by kicking the can down the road but by actually saying, “Yes, OK. Parliament made the Equal Pay Act in 1972. Parliament, the majority at that time, no longer agrees with the way that the courts are interpreting it, and constitutionally the elected Parliament has the right to legislate again and change what the rules are.” Parliament didn’t intend in 1972 that judges would decide that whole areas of the economy were overpaid or underpaid based on their gender. It was supposed to create equality between a man and a woman doing the same job. Parliament had every right to push back at the courts, but instead it kicked for touch and said, “Well, you can’t do any appeals for five years, you can’t bring any new cases for five years, you can’t settle any that have been brought so far unless they’ve already been settled, and in five years’ time who knows what will happen.”

Well, of course, what happened is that the Government changed. The new one came in, filled with unionists, and didn’t we see a great performance from the cloth-capped leader of them, Andrew Little, just earlier—it was the Andrew that I miss as Leader of the Opposition—and what we found was that they actually weren’t able to solve the problem. And they weren’t able to solve the problem for the very simple reason that they didn’t have enough money. This is the real issue that we’re uncovering tonight. Productivity growth in New Zealand—and we hear this from the Green Party members; that we should have higher wages. Well, that’s great, if only we could judge all policies by intentions. But the question is: what has the Green Party ever been prepared to do to try and focus on raising productivity in New Zealand? That’s the debate that New Zealand really needs to have, because if we’re going to have a given number of people and they’re going to be retiring and they’re going to need extra care and support for a whole variety of reasons, then we better have the productivity in the rest of our economy so we can put aside money to pay people to do that care and support work. It’s pretty simple.

The Green member says that in Australia the starting rates for people in the care and support sector are like a living wage in New Zealand. Well, that sounds fantastic, but you need to ask the question: why is that? Most of the things the Australian economy is based upon are things the Green Party completely opposes. Most of the things that would make New Zealand more productive, making it easier to get foreign direct investment, making it easier to develop natural resources, making it easier to develop infrastructure, such as expanding ports in the middle of a supply chain crisis—all of those resource management reforms, foreign investment and trade reforms, the things that actually bring in capital and ideas and make infrastructure more productive, and actually raise productivity so we don’t have to be in this situation, are things the Green Party opposes.

My great hope is that some of those Labour members—and I see them listening when I speak like this—are thinking, “Actually, this guy’s got a point. I wish I could speak for more than one minute at a time.”, because, unfortunately—and it’s a shame—there’s some talented members on the Labour backbench and I hope some of them get another term, but I fear some of them may not. The problem is they’ve got a lot to say, but on team orders they’re only allowed to talk for a minute, and that means, for some of them, that the best thing about their speeches is the length. I think it’s a shame. I think they should be allowed to talk longer and say what they really feel. I think you might get some activism on the backbench of the Labour Party and they might say, “Actually, we do need to ask ourselves how we are going to grow New Zealand’s productivity so that in a global labour market, where we need people such as care and support workers and nurses and doctors, just to name people in the healthcare sector who are pretty globally mobile and who can take their 350 bucks from the Labour Party”—and, boy oh boy, there’s a good story in the New Zealand Herald about that tomorrow—“and go straight to Australia.” They are part of that global mobilised workforce.

We should be asking ourselves at the end of this whole debate, “Why do we have to be here under urgency, rushing this legislation through, while, fundamentally, the Labour Party, despite its deep union roots, has not been able to settle agreements in time and they had to use the big sledgehammer and said to the unions, ‘If you guys don’t agree, then we’ll just legislate it and your pay rates will be set in statute, mate.’ ” That must be a terribly difficult conversation for them, but nevertheless that’s the conversation they’ve had to have and that’s what’s brought us here.

But in some ways I don’t blame the Labour Party for it, because the real problem that we face as a country comes back to the fact that there just ain’t enough money to meet the First World aspirations that we have, which can be as simple as that when I retire there’s actually going to be someone there to care for me, and when my parents retire, they’ll be somebody to look after them at First World standards. That’s the real problem that we’re facing tonight, and I think it’s worth taking the time to spell it out, because if our country doesn’t start to think hard about the factors of productivity and why our productivity growth is low, then we’re going to be having more dismal debates late at night like this for a very long time to come, whichever of Labour and National say they’re leading the Government.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. A lot of fear mongering from the other side, as the leader of the ACT Party talked about doctors taking $350 and running away to Australia. Well, I’ve never known a doctor who earns less than $70,000 and runs away to Australia with that. Maybe you’re talking about the other party which has been giving or promising to give tax cuts to people who are earning six-figure salaries. So you definitely don’t have that right and there’s a lot of fear mongering going on, just as is there is with this bill.

But it’s a pleasure again to rise in the House to take a call on this bill for the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill for the second time. The sections of the principal Act will be repealed on 1 July 2022, and these sections include the minimum hourly wage provisions, training support provision, and the link between qualifications and increased minimum wage rates. It is surprising that even on the Green’s side, that they will not support this bill which will make sure that the new support workers get paid the same rates as the existing support workers—which is really, really surprising. But as I said the first time, I support this bill to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m about to say something I never ever thought would come out of my mouth, and I don’t want it to be taken literally. Oh, I would love to be in the Labour caucus right now so I could listen to the conversations that are occurring within that room! I can just imagine the splits and the divisions in a caucus that’s so full of union members and union organisers and union delegates. Can you just imagine the conversations that have been occurring because of where we have got to with this bill in this House this evening?

Hon Scott Simpson: And frustrated ambition.

NICOLA GRIGG: It would be—“frustrated ambition”, says Scott Simpson. I could not agree more.

We have got to a situation where “the party of the worker”, “the party of the union”, is disallowing the voice of its members. This truncated process is disallowing their very people to come to the table and have a discussion, because that Labour Government did not like what it heard and it said, “See you later, guys. We’re taking this thing through urgency. We’re going to rush it through on a Wednesday evening and be done with it.”

Ordinarily in a second reading—as you know—we’d be discussing, generally, the submissions that we’d heard during a select committee process and we’d be speaking around those—the fors and against, and the pros and the cons. But we don’t have that opportunity.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Why is that?

NICOLA GRIGG: Indeed, Michael Woodhouse, why is that? That is because those very people that that Government purports to serve have been shut out of the conversation.

This bill that we are here rushing through under urgency seeks to increase the minimum wage rates that apply to support workers covered in the principal Act that we, the National Party, brought in in Government in 2017. Here this afternoon, under Andrew Little’s guidance, it’s looking to extend the key provisions of that Act past 1 July 2022. When’s 1 July? It’s in eight days’ time. Wow! That goes back to my original point. I would love to be a fly on the wall in that caucus room in an absolute shambles of a discussion that would have been going—

Hon Scott Simpson: You’re assuming they’re allowed to talk.

NICOLA GRIGG: I am assuming they’re allowed to talk, Scott Simpson! [Interruption] Anyway, back to the bill at hand, gentlemen. I shan’t be distracted from the comments that I’d like to make to this House this afternoon.

The pay increases that the National Party legislated for ranged between 15 and 50 percent over five years—five years, at which point brings us up to July just next week, at which the point of the legislation containing that very settlement would expire. I cannot imagine how we have got to this point. What sort of Mickey Mouse outfit is running this country? This piece of legislation has been in place for five years, and how often, everyone—how often—do we hear Andrew Little reminding us of what he’s achieved in those five years and the nine years of neglect under the National Government? Well, here we go. This is five years of neglect from this Labour Government. They have had five years, and they would have known about it for every single one of those five years. But here we are today, in a panic, in a flap, rushing through an amendment so that all those thousands—65,000—of affected workers won’t fall through the cracks after 1 July, in just a week’s time.

I am trying to stick to the bill at hand. The original agreement specifies minimum hourly wage rates payable by employers to support workers for work performed during that period of 1 July 2017 through to 30 June 2022. But for this reason, some sections of this principal Act will be repealed in just eight days, leaving no mechanism to maintain the gains made in wage rates. I ask that side of the House: did this not ring any alarm bells? Did nobody set a calendar reminder for 1 July 2022? Guys, 30 June was a hard deadline. It was included in the original Act. The Government has been so slow to get to this. If it weren’t so serious, it would be laughable. Cabinet only agreed in April—just a couple of months ago—that it would provide any additional funding whatsoever to enable the minimum wage adjustment.

Kristine Bartlett—2018’s New Zealander of the Year—has said how very, very disappointed she is with this Government. Grey Power, equally, has said it is sad and it is angry, and that is just the start of it. That is before we start to talk to those members affected and the very patients affected.

Order! This debate is interrupted. I will resume the Chair after dinner at 7 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 5.57 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Members, when we broke for the dinner break, we were on the second reading of the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill, and I will call the next speaker. Dr Duncan Webb. It was a long dinner break!

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Yeah, well, never long enough, Mr Speaker. Look, it’s just a real pleasure to stand up and speak to this bill that’s really just putting in, or extending, an appropriate settlement. The National Party is now the party of the working class, I heard earlier on, and it’s fantastic to hear that. But really this is just making sure that these people who are on the lowest wages are looked after, that their wages do keep up with rises, and it’s a great piece of legislation. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. A pleasure to take a short call on this bill. As my colleague previously mentioned, it was quite surprising to hear the National Party talk about being the great defenders of the vulnerable and lower paid, the advocates for our working people. Must be why they continuously vote against minimum wage, and why they vote against doubling sick leave, and why they vote against fair pay for our workers, who have seen their pay and conditions being driven down in that race to the bottom.

But back to the bill, we are talking about a condition that was inserted by the National Party by the 2017 pay equity settlement, which prevented workers from, at the time, taking a pay equity claim until this actual Act would expire. So it’s really a very simple bill. It is making sure that our home-care and support workers have the right to take a pay equity claim, and at the same time we protect, with this bill, their current working conditions, and also delivering a pay increase.

I did want to mention that during the debate the word “patronising” was used. I think that was quite—yeah, I don’t really have a word for that. I think what is patronising is how the National MPs have, all through this debate, tried to rewrite history on the 2017 pay equity settlement, which was, of course, a settlement that the National Party, at the time, had to be dragged kicking and screaming to make when, after taking Kristine Bartlett and her unions all the way through to the Supreme Court because the National Government, at the time, just didn’t want to give those vulnerable workers what they well deserved. And so that is why we are here today. We are introducing a bill that will preserve existing terms and conditions, providing an interim pay increase, and ending that discriminatory situation that the National Party put them in. And now these workers will be able to take their pay equity claim. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Well, thank you very much, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill on its second reading. National will be supporting this bill. I must say, having listened to the many contributions on this bill—some longer than others, I must say; some have been reasonably brief, I would say—

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Very unreasonably brief.

SIMON WATTS: Very unreasonably brief, says the Hon Michael Woodhouse, and so true he is. This is an important issue. I was reflecting on it over the break, just before returning back to the House, in terms of a lot of to and fro. And just listening to the last speaker, Marja Lubeck, in terms of throwing a little bit of mud across to the previous National Government, who, I think—in listening to other contributions—made, under the circumstances, a very pragmatic decision. A pragmatic decision in order to deal with a situation that was in front of them, and a situation that was backed up with a bill that, in effect, gave five years in pay increases, in the range of 15 to 50 percent over that period, for a critical element of the workforce, and enough runway, I guess you could say, in order for the solution to be found. I think that seems reasonable. It seems pretty pragmatic. These are complex issues, and having spent my prior life sitting around the table in union-based negotiations within the healthcare sector, I understand this. I understand the challenges. But at the end of the day, no matter what side of the table you’re sitting on, you’re working for the best interests particularly of your people. And you know, that’s it.

But in this case, I guess my reflection is that we are where we are, firstly, and I think that’s important to recognise. But the challenge in what this reinforces is a Government that has squandered their opportunity and squandered five long years of Government—and I say that with an added emphasis and pausing, because it does feel like five long years. And I haven’t been in this House as long as many others, but you know, even in my short amount of time—

Melissa Lee: You haven’t missed very much.

SIMON WATTS: —it’s been a long period. Melissa Lee from behind me is saying I haven’t missed much, and I wish that wasn’t true, Melissa Lee. But she is so true. And that is a great shame, because the reality is that these important care and support workers that support our most vulnerable—and I think Penny Simmonds, close friend and colleague and classmate of 2020, so eloquently put in her prior speech on this that these staff and these people work in support of some of our absolutely most vulnerable. What the National Government did back when this bill was put into play was to acknowledge that that workforce did need the support and compensation in regards to that. Yeah, we can argue whether it was a right or wrong thing to do at the time, but we are where we are today, and the challenge is and remains that the time has not been used wisely in order to put a sustainable solution in place for this so important workforce.

That’s the reality, and people get measured by what they do, not what they say. And I think that is going to be the reality and should be the reality, because this Government should be held accountable in terms of what they’ve said and what they’ve done—and what they do do between now and when that option comes up for the people of New Zealand. And I’m sure, you know, we’ll go through that at that point in time.

Let’s get back, though, in this second reading, to acknowledge the fact that we are pushing this through under urgency. We are using the House’s time in regards to that process, and we’re not affording the time—which I don’t think is unreasonable, but had we started this a week ago, we could have done a week of consultation with key stakeholders. If we started maybe two weeks ago, Minister Little, we could have—maybe three? I don’t want to push the boat out too far, but, you know, we could have started—couldn’t we have started this last month? I hate to say it, but, I mean, surely, surely—and I don’t think there’s any other examples of any other reform policies where they’ve just decided to make it up on the hoof. I’m looking at my colleagues for any examples. But that is the reality, every time—

Simon Court: Banning oil and gas was on the hoof. How about announcing a discount on fuel excise duty? That was on the hoof.

SIMON WATTS: Yeah, well, I can hear Simon Court from ACT reeling off a long, long list of examples. And one only has to open up the New Zealand Herald app every hour, actually, at the moment, and read another example of that long, long, long list of aspects in terms of things being made up on the hoof.

But this bill absolutely personifies, I think, that lack of planning in regards to where this is. And let’s be fair, the Government’s had a lot on its plate, you know: COVID and dealing with all that, and I think the war in Ukraine. And what other excuses have we had that slowed them down? You know, inflation and cost of living and all those things. It seems to have, you know, blown this Government off course. But how could you miss something like this?

Nicola Grigg: They didn’t set a calendar reminder.

SIMON WATTS: My colleague Nicola Grigg—I don’t think she was being flippant when she said, “Surely, wouldn’t you have had a calendar reminder in your inbox?”

Hon Michael Woodhouse: 1,900 staff, somebody could have set the calendar.

SIMON WATTS: Nineteen hundred staff, the Hon Michael Woodhouse is reminding me about. [Interruption] Maybe the unions, because we heard a great example from David Seymour before, where he said, actually, one-third of the Government members actually have a background in terms of being union organisers, so that amount of anyone probably would have had the hotline with their prior colleagues and prior lives to say, “Hey, team, I’m sure you haven’t forgotten about it, but just in case, we’ve got this pretty reasonable piece of legislation. It’s about to be repealed, and maybe, surely, you haven’t forgotten about it?” I know they haven’t, even though we’ve got eight days before this is repealed, and here we are in urgency going through and pushing the deadline out on this by another 18 months.

I think the picture that I’m painting, and it’s not that difficult to paint, is that, you know—where was the thought and planning and consideration around such an important element for such an important group of workforce and people within our community, at a time at which that workforce is absolutely under—“crisis” sort of seems like it’s understated, at the point at which we are now. But I recall questioning and having questions of the Minister on exactly this topic, in May and June and July of last year, around the healthcare workforce crisis. We had conversations in committee, we had conversations because COVID was on our doorstep, and the questions that we discussed across the table were: have we got enough people? What are we doing about being prepared? Have we got all that? Is someone thinking about it?

The reality now is the rooster is coming home to roost on this type of legislation. The simple reality, and the sad reality, is that that was not and continues to not occur. Where’s the accountability, in terms of actually doing what is required in order to support people within this country that do so much for this country? This personifies, as I said, the reality of a Government that have basically, you know, just forgotten or left this element to the last minute, and now we’re in a process under urgency in terms of trying to tidy this up.

National are supporting this legislation for the simple fact that we believe it’s fair and reasonable to be ensuring that this workforce receives the compensation that they require. We acknowledge, and the speakers previously have noted, around the quantum, whether that’s appropriate or not. But we shouldn’t be in this position. We should have, surely, with the capability on the other side, with their relationships with the unions, been able to have negotiated and worked through this well in advance and push this through in an orderly manner. But we’re not, and that is a great shame. And, most importantly, it’s a great shame for those hard-working Kiwis that are doing these difficult roles under difficult circumstances. I support this bill.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise to take a short call, and the last, on the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill, second reading. Kristine Bartlett’s case was based on the argument that low rates of pay in the care and support sector were the direct result of systematic gender-based pay discrimination. I also want to add my voice to the Minister’s voice and thank the Opposition for supporting this bill tonight. The bill amends the repeal date of the various provisions of the support workers, and inserts new minimum wage rates for support workers from 1 July 2022.

The confusing part, however, tonight is listening to the speeches from the Opposition speaking in support of caregivers—or pretending to, at least. Kristine often spoke to me and many others of how hard it was for her to be dragged through all the courts. She is a shy woman, but she said that the Government had every intention to make her and others give up on the case. And they tried and tried and tried. But she said she had to put on a brave face for the sake of thousands of workers in the sector. My colleague Rachel Boyack tonight called it the Opposition’s attempt to rewrite history. But you don’t rewrite history by pretending to care—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Not the Speaker.

IBRAHIM OMER: I’m sorry, Madam Speaker. My apologies. You don’t rewrite history by trying to care—

Hon Member: No, no, no.

IBRAHIM OMER: The Opposition—I’m sorry. I’m not referring to you, Madam Speaker. I’m rather referring to the Opposition. The Opposition cannot rewrite history by pretending to care. My apologies. If you’re keen to support working people, let’s start tonight. The National Party—if you are keen to support the working people, let’s start tonight. How about we start with minimum wage? How about we start with fair pay? Three hundred thousand workers throughout the country are crying for fair pay agreements. Let’s start with that. However, as it always does, this Government is yet tonight cleaning up another mess the previous Government left us with. I commend this bill to the House.

This bill is set down for committee stage forthwith.

In Committee

Clause 1 Title