Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill

New Part 3 to the Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill, proposed in Supplementary Order Paper 13, is about political commitment, and it seeks to make clear whether parties are committed to a minimum wage for all New Zealand workers. The reason for this new part is that, as I think we have heard in the debate tonight, the minimum wage has been somewhat of a political football, similar to the way political parties have dealt with superannuation in the past. That is why I have taken the idea for this proposed new part from the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Act, and have included a schedule that would list the political parties that support the provision of a minimum wage.

I will talk about political commitment. As I said, we have had a very interesting and rollicking debate, and it has been very frustrating at times to sit here and not be able to respond from the chair as I would like to. But I will relay one story. As I have sat here and listened to the debate I have been thinking about a truckdriver whom I met in Papakura. In fact, he came to see me to tell me his story. I think the National members should listen. He is employed as an independent contractor. He was promised $1,000 a week’s worth of driving work, and he thought that would be the perfect job for him and would deliver a decent income for him and his family. He signed up, but for 2 months he received no work. Then he received a call to come in for training. Off he went, and watched an hour long video on how to drive a truck. Again, he heard nothing for weeks. He was very frustrated and worried by then; he was worrying about feeding his family. He made repeated phone calls to the principal contractor, and finally got a job driving every Saturday, on a contract worth less than $100 a week. He eventually got two more contracts, but the three jobs altogether paid only $450 a week, which is less than half of the amount he had been promised, and he had to work long and sometimes dangerous hours. I know for a fact that he was also breaching his logbook rules, but that was the only way he could keep this work. Finally, the driver approached the principal contractor and was told that every driver who is employed in that arrangement runs an independent business, and that the principal contractor had no responsibility to the workers. He told the drivers that it was up to them to do their own thing and that he had nothing to do with it. His advice was that if they did not like it, they should go the disputes tribunal.

I have sat here listening to the debate and I have been thinking about political commitment and about this truckdriver as we have gone through the evening. I have also heard some ridiculous comments in relation to McDonald’s. We heard today in question time from the Minister for Social Development and Employment something about McDonald’s. Here we are actually talking about what we call McJobs. They are not real jobs; they are McJobs. They are jobs that do not deliver fairness, do not deliver a decent income, and do not deliver respect. They are undignified, but some people have to do them.

Talking about political commitment, I say that I have listened to the National members going on and on about why Labour did not make this change in the last 9 years. I think there has been plenty of discussion and contributions to the debate from Labour members. I put on the record and make it very clear that my Labour colleagues have strongly supported this bill all the way through. In fact, the former Ministers of Labour—including the Hon Ruth Dyson, who was a Minister at the time—worked very hard with me, the Council of Trade Unions, and Business New Zealand to find a way to make this bill work, and that is what was proposed to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and voted against by National. My answer to National is not to go on and on about what Labour did not do. If those members think it is a good idea or if they want to criticise us, they should do something about it and vote for the bill. I say to National members, and to the people listening tonight, that National has just voted against increasing the minimum wage to $13 an hour on 1 July this year, $14 an hour on 1 July next year, and $15 an hour on 1 July 2011.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Don’t believe it.

National members have just voted against that. That was one of the amendments in Supplementary Order Paper 4. The people of New Zealand now know that the National Government has no commitment to increasing the minimum wage.

Again talking about political commitment, I say that Labour was a very busy Government in its 9 years in office. It had a lot to do—it had an awful lot to do. Labour had to decide on some priorities. Our political commitments were things like the Employment Relations Act. I was not in Parliament then, but I understand that that legislation was a huge fight. The National Party put up a huge fight against the Employment Relations Act. In fact, it was going to be the end of the world as we knew it! As I understand it, National put up a special select committee. Are we not seeing history repeating itself with the behaviour of those members at the moment? I was very involved—both before I came into Parliament, and once I was here—in Part 6 of Employment Relations Amendment Act 2006, which covers vulnerable workers. That part covered the particular situation of contracted-out workers and their job security when their contract changes hands. Labour brought that legislation in, and once again National fought it tooth and nail, both in its original form and when it came back to the House after the courts decided that the original legislation had some holes in it.

As my colleagues have said, we increased the minimum wage again and again. National members have been trying to make a virtue out of the fact that the previous National Government increased the minimum wage by 50c. If Labour had not been in Government for the last 9 years, we would have a minimum wage of $7.50. For those under 20, it would be $4.20 or $4.45. That is what it was when Labour came into Government in 1999. That is what National did. For someone who was under 20 the minimum wage was $4.20 an hour, until Labour became the Government.

We also had to change the Holidays Act to make sure that workers not only got paid holidays—that they were paid for 4 weeks’ holiday—but also could get time and a half for working on a public holiday. That provision had been stripped away, thanks to the National Government in the 1990s. We had to bring in statutory sick leave and bereavement leave. We had to make sure that people had some rights, unlike the workers we are trying to protect tonight. We had to do something about health and safety. We had to bring in new laws to increase the rights of workers—

💬 Hon Members: Oh!

Everyone groans. This Government does not believe that the health and safety of workers should be protected. We brought in KiwiSaver, and so on. The list goes on and on.

As I have said often, the other thing Labour did that I am very proud of is that we increased the pay of low-paid workers, particularly those who work for the State in hospitals—the cleaners, the kitchen workers, the orderlies—and those who work as cleaners in schools, aged-care workers, and so on. Did National do any of that in its 9 years in Government? No, it did not. This new part is an opportunity for the National Government to vote in favour of the minimum wage and show that it has a political commitment to it, so that workers in the country do not have to worry that if this Government stays in power—well, it will for the next 2 years, anyway—the Minimum Wage Act will be abolished and we will start to see the minimum wage go backwards, as, indeed, it did during National’s last term in Government.

I was not going to take a call on new Part 3 of the Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill. I was quite keen to sit and watch this bill be consigned to the dustbin, as it deserves to be, and as even the members on the other side of the Chamber think it should be. However, I did feel compelled to haul my lanky frame out of the chair once I had read new Part 3. I thought that a couple of weeks ago there was a real affront to the parliamentary process, when members on the Opposition side introduced something in the region of 8,000 separate amendments to legislation. I thought some of them were real doozies. But, frankly, this new Part 3 absolutely takes the cake. I cannot believe what I am reading.

According to new section 15, inserted by clause 12 on Supplementary Order Paper 13 in the name of Darien Fenton, a leader of a political party that is represented in Parliament is required to notify the Minister in writing of his or her party’s agreement with this legislation. I find that to be extraordinary. If the member seriously thinks that any party in this Chamber would conscientiously object to any Act, even though he or she did not support it, frankly I am in despair at that member’s attitude to this Parliament. The dodgy democracy that she thinks is going on here is more akin to the situation in a place like Kazakhstan or Burma. Frankly, she insults those places by tabling this sort of Supplementary Order Paper. It absolutely is of such a woeful quality that I am under no illusions about why the people of this country exercised the freedom of choice that Mr Lees-Galloway talked about when he took a call on Part 2 and threw the Labour Party out of power.

The simple fact is that the highest minimum wage in this country’s history was passed by a National Government. The discussion about whether National supports a minimum wage has been had. The argument is over. The question is whether that member has such a lack of trust, such a lack of faith, in our parliamentary democracy that we need this kind of nonsense to be introduced, even in this bill. Frankly, I despair at that. I make no apology for what I and my colleagues on the Government side of the Chamber firmly believe in and have stated in this debate. It is a commitment to fairness and equity in employment, a commitment to aspiration, a commitment to productivity, and a commitment to unwind the red tape that was progressively wrapped around the employers of this country after the 9 years of the previous Labour Government. This bill will do none of those things for the most vulnerable workers whom this member is trying to help. It will do none of those things. It is well intentioned, but ideologically and fundamentally flawed.

The member for Dunedin North, in attempting to answer the question about why his party did not introduce this legislation, after having had 9 years of opportunity to do so, hit the nail on the head. He said this issue is about a couple of unscrupulous pamphlet-delivering employers and Mr Hipkins’ pizza delivery man. The fact that we have spent so much time on debating a bill to save those vulnerable workers, when we have perfectly good employment relations legislation in place and a minimum wage, underscores the reasons why the previous Labour Government did not introduce this bill when it had the opportunity to do so. Labour members do not believe in this bill, and I hope they do not believe in the nonsense on Supplementary Order Paper 13. I look forward to being able to vote down this bill and throw it out.

Supplementary Order Paper 13 is about political commitment to the minimum wage. I was disappointed to hear Michael Woodhouse refer to it as “dodgy democracy”. He will be interested to know that the wording was drafted by a National Government in relation to superannuation. If it was dodgy democracy when it came to superannuation, why did National introduce and vote for it? Clearly, National members did not think that it was dodgy democracy when it related to superannuation, so why should it be dodgy democracy when it relates to the minimum wage? It is because National members do not have a commitment to the minimum wage. This Supplementary Order Paper is fundamentally about commitment.

The arguments that National members have put forward for not voting in favour of giving contractors the minimum wage just do not stack up. Let us take them one at a time. First of all, let us talk about the compliance costs. In an earlier speech I talked about the compliance costs that this legislation would load on to businesses—and found that there really are none. Businesses pretty much already have to take all the compliance measures they would need to adhere to under this Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill. There is a perception that the number of hours worked would increase because workers would not work efficiently if they were paid on an hourly rate rather than a fixed-sum contract and would have no incentive to work faster. But that was covered by the amendments—there was a provision that stated that people who unreasonably drag out their working hours do not need to be paid for them. That situation is covered.

Fundamentally, the issue comes back to whether the parties in Parliament believe in a minimum wage. This Supplementary Order Paper gives parties an opportunity to say to New Zealanders that they believe, or do not believe, in a minimum wage. National’s track record suggests that it does not believe in a minimum wage, because during its last 9 years in office it increased the minimum wage by 87c as opposed to the $5 increase under the 9 years of the previous Labour Government.

So much for National’s ambition for New Zealand! So much for closing the wage gap with Australia! John Key said at the Westpac Stadium that he did not want New Zealanders to work in Australia, yet people can earn significantly more money in Australia than they can in New Zealand. The minimum wage is higher in Australia. The Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill would do something about that by increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour. That is lower than the ILO recommends but National will still vote against it. National is saying to the lowest-paid workers that if they want a better, fairer deal and want to earn more, they should move to Australia. Have things not changed dramatically in the 6 months since National was elected? National has compounded the problem for low-paid workers by taking away their tax cuts and giving them to those workers on the highest incomes. National took away tax cuts from the people on the minimum wage and gave them to the people at the highest end of the income spectrum. Of course, people on very, very low wages will not get any tax cuts at all because they do not earn even the minimum wage. That is disgraceful.

Tau Henare talked earlier this evening about dignity, and he was absolutely right that this bill is about dignity. It is about the dignity of people who do not earn the minimum wage of $12.50 an hour—there is nothing dignified about that. There is nothing undignified about delivering fast-food, and we should not ridicule people because of their jobs. Delivering fast-food is a legitimate job and we should not ridicule people for it. There is nothing dignified about doing it for 5 or 6 bucks an hour. Those people are entitled to earn the minimum wage, and so are the people who work hard delivering pamphlets and newspapers. They should be entitled to earn the minimum wage, and we in this Chamber should not ridicule them. Darien Fenton talked about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of decency and fairness, and about just remuneration as an integral part of decency and fairness as required under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

One reason why this amendment bill is important is that it highlights the contrasting values on each side of the Chamber. National’s values are all about privilege; they are all about the people at the top of the economic heap. We in Labour believe that every Kiwi should get a fair go—and a fair go at $12.50 an hour is still pretty minimal. I have yet to hear an argument from any National member as to why somebody should not earn the minimum wage for doing a hard day’s work. I have yet to hear any argument from National members about that. Instead, they just rant on about Labour’s 9 years in Government and do not put forward any compelling arguments. National members have already forgotten about hard-working, ordinary Kiwis. They are interested only in those at the top of the economic heap, and I suspect that we will see more of that tomorrow in the Budget.

I speak on behalf of the privileged party. It is a privilege to be a member of the National Party and to be in Government. I start with a quote—and I apologise to the writer if I get it wrong—with words to this effect: “The high rate of unemployment among teenagers, and especially black teenagers, is both a scandal and a serious source of social unrest. Yet it is largely a result of minimum wage laws”. These have been “one of the most, if not the most, anti-black laws [ever]”. That quote was from Milton Friedman. I go back to what my colleague Mr Woodhouse said. This is not an argument about the minimum wage per se.

💬 Chris Hipkins: Yes, it is. He hasn’t read it.

I tell the member to pipe down or go back to kindergarten.

This is not about the big battle of the minimum wage. It was the National Government, under Rob Muldoon, that brought in the Minimum Wage Act in 1983. The war, the battle, has been won and lost and stored away for posterity. We have here a way of creating another set of victims in society. The Labour Party acts like a predator on those victims. That is what this is about. This debate has astounded me with the abject lack of passion shown by the Left over this issue. This bill is nothing more than an apology for not doing anything in 9 years. All that Labour members can talk about is McDonald’s. Well, no one on this side said anything about workers at McDonald’s. We said something about people who like to frequent McDonald’s, but we did not say anything about those who work at McDonald’s.

I heard Mr Bridges ask, over and over during this debate, which of the Labour members has had experience of doing a paper round. Not one! Well, obviously Mr Hipkins has—he just finished it tonight. He was out on his little Raleigh 20 doing the paper round and supplementing his parliamentary wages. It is good that Mr Hipkins has finally owned up to giving up his paper round over the last couple of months.

Seriously, Part 3 is nothing more than some sort of Draconian buy in. Labour members want to show their political buy in to their mates in the unions—to show they have political commitment to a minimum wage. I tell members that the political commitment to the minimum wage is embedded in the Minimum Wage Act 1983. It is already there, so it is nonsense to say that the National Government is against the minimum wage. It is like trying to go back to Gallipoli to fight the same battles but have a different outcome. We cannot change history. The battle about the minimum wage—in fact, the battle about class—was won and lost in another era. We cannot turn back the clock to the good old days of the 1951 strike, where everybody tattooed on their arm “I was a supporter of the ’51 strike!” and proudly wore that as some sort of badge of honour. This bill is nothing more than a sop.

I have had enough of those arguments from National speakers. I have had enough of the argument—as if it were a logical argument—that because the previous Labour Government did not pass this measure in its 9 long years, it must be bad. Is it within the bounds of possibility that the Labour Government ever felt it had finished its work in any area? Is government of our country not a continuous process? Do circumstances not change, and evolve, and come to fruition? But, somehow, because we did not do it in 9 years of Government, National thinks that that is reason to vote against it. How is that a logical proposition? Why are we told time and again by Mr Henare that somehow this legislation must go down because Labour did not do it?

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: You know it’s nonsense. It’s just a political stunt.

We have the ever-present Dr Nick Smith, who calls out while I am speaking, saying that it is a political stunt. It is not a political stunt, because in the bad old days when there was a National Government and the minimum wage was $6.12 for an adult and a fraction of that for someone younger, this legislation was not needed. The minimum wage was so low in comparison with the average wage that a pamphleteer—even a pamphleteer—would get the minimum wage for stomping around the streets. By the time the National Government fell out of office, the minimum wage had increased by 87.5c over that entire 9-year period to reach the grand sum of $7 an hour. What happened then? The Labour Government lifted it over the next 9-year period, not by 87.5c an hour but by 500c an hour—by $5. At that point it started to become an issue.

Members can argue that the Labour Government should have got on to it earlier. Members can argue that it should have been perfect. But, hey, we are not; we were not. We did not get this done, and now there is an incentive for the pamphlet-delivery business owner to make sure that the employment contract stipulates that the worker gets paid less than the minimum wage. It is much easier to pay someone less than the minimum wage when the minimum wage is $12 than when it is $7. It was the Labour Government’s action to steadily increase the minimum wage—by 50c, by 75c, and sometimes by $1 an hour, per annum—that caused this issue to be thrown into relief. Now that it is thrown into relief, why do not we, as a House of Representatives, decide to fix it? If we do not fix it, then we will have a situation where in order to pay below the minimum wage, employers will simply need to contract out. That is all they will need to do.

I am sure National members do not believe that the minimum wage should be lowered; indeed, they raised it by 50c an hour a few months ago. It was not generous enough, but nonetheless it was an increase. So even National members think the minimum wage should be lifted annually—and one hopes that will continue, because it did not when National was last in Government. Right at the moment, that is their form, yet they are failing, from their speeches, to plug a hole to make sure that minimum wage is paid, saying it is a gimmick. For goodness’ sake! It is now a known issue, so let us deal with it. It is simply dealt with. The member’s bill appears, in my sighting, to deal with it well. I think this legislation should receive 120 votes in favour—or 121, or however many there are of us—and not some minority vote in favour. If the majority is going to vote against this bill, it means that it thinks that leaving open a known loophole is somehow ideal. It is clearly not; it is clearly wrong. So let us see whether we can get everyone in this Parliament—even Sir Roger Douglas—to vote for this legislation. It is, after all, something that works against poverty, and Roger Douglas says every day of the week that he works against poverty. Well, let us see now whether that member will put his money where his mouth is.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Let’s just regulate it out of existence.

And now the ever-jovial Nick Smith is saying that we will regulate some businesses away. But the whole idea of a minimum wage is to say that employers cannot pay slave labour wages to make a buck in this country; they have to go to a slave labour country and do it there. Nick Smith says he is against poverty, but, given a chance, he will never vote to eliminate it.

I am happy to take a call on new Part 3 of the Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill. I was working in my office when I heard the extraordinary speech by Tau Henare. He quoted Milton Friedman as the go-to guy for minority rights when it comes to industrial relations issues. I thought that I had to get down here and speak in this debate. If Mr Henare thinks that Friedman is the go-to guy, then I quote another guy who had a little bit to do with African-American politics in America—just a little bit. I do not claim that he had more to do with it than Friedman, as that is up to the Committee to decide. This quotation is from Martin Luther King; members may have heard of him. On 18 March 1968—days before his murder—King told striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee: “it is criminal to have people working on a full-time basis and a full-time job getting part-time income … We are tired of working our hands off and labouring every day and not even making a wage adequate with daily basic necessities of life.” Two years earlier on 18 March 1966, King had called for Congress to boost the minimum wage. He said: “We know of no more crucial civil rights issue facing Congress today than the need to increase the Federal minimum wage and extend its coverage.” He said: “A living wage should be the right of all working Americans,”. I ask Mr Tau Henare whom he thinks speaks more loudly for African-American workers in America—Friedman or Martin Luther King? I think that the answer is pretty clear.

I commend Darien Fenton, the member in charge of this bill, for bringing it to the House. Despite the rhetoric of National members, who are suddenly claiming that they think the minimum wage is great, they never raised it when they were in Government, apart from the time New Zealand First forced them to as part of its confidence and supply agreement. They never raised it, but they now say they support it because they know that public sentiment is behind a minimum wage. But I say that if they really believe that, then they will support this part and this legislation. All it says is that all workers in New Zealand are entitled to a minimum level of remuneration for the jobs they do. How unfair is that? How unfair is it to expect that when workers carry out a job, they are remunerated at the minimum wage? I think that most people in New Zealand believe that that is the case already.

💬 Tim Macindoe: Why didn’t you make the pledge 2 years ago?

I tell Mr Macindoe that we were so busy passing so much legislation to benefit workers and to undo the damage that the National Government had done in the 1990s that we looked to visionary members of Parliament like Darien Fenton, who has a history in the union movement that is unequalled among National members, to bring forward legislation that can help the workers of New Zealand.

I want to know why National members think this is such terrible legislation that not only do they have to oppose it but also members like Tau Henare have to ridicule it in the Chamber. They think this is a joke. The Hon Dr Nick Smith said that Labour thinks we can just regulate poverty away. But I say to that member that a person who is going about a job, and who is expecting a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work, does not really care how they get the minimum wage. They just want to get it. He can stand in this Chamber, and I am sure he is going to jump up because he has been taking little notes, and give a speech on how Labour would regulate poverty away and make it all better by passing legislation. But the people who will benefit from this legislation and who will suddenly get the minimum wage—who now, under a loophole, do not get it—really do not care how that happens. All they care is about putting food on the table and putting a roof over their kids’ heads. If this legislation will do it, then I say to the Hon Dr Nick Smith that those people are probably quite prepared for that to happen. Any kind of argument about regulation or non-regulation does not mean a lot to those on the breadline. There are people on the breadline. There are people who are being contracted out right now. They are not getting the minimum wage because there is a loophole in our legislation—a loophole that Darien Fenton, to her credit, has picked up, has pointed out, and has brought to the Chamber.

The National Party should support this legislation because this is about the livelihood of New Zealand workers. This is about their ability to feed their families. We have a Budget tomorrow, and it is the first real test that John Key’s Government has not been able to avoid. That is the first test, and it is set down in stone, where National has to put up its plan for jobs and for wages. That is a plan that we have not seen so far. We have seen a couple of initiatives here and there, and Labour has provided support for those initiatives where we felt it was appropriate, but it has not been enough. During the last election campaign Labour said it would do a mini-Budget before Christmas, because things had changed so much since the Budget of May last year that any responsible Government should address that situation by introducing a stimulus package before Christmas to boost our economy, boost wages, support jobs, and create jobs at a time when our country needed it most. The National Government decided not to do that, and that was absolutely its prerogative. It decided that it could ride it out until May this year. It decided that things were not so bad and it could just leave it all up until May this year, when it finally has a Budget.

The rubber hits the road tomorrow, and Labour will be watching very carefully. We will be watching on behalf of all those people whom we represent in this Chamber and those people who would benefit from this legislation, which National and ACT have the numbers to vote down tonight. We will be watching on behalf of those people who are currently not getting the minimum wage, despite the fact that we have a minimum wage law in this country. Most New Zealanders believe all workers are covered by a minimum wage, but they are not, despite the fact that their costs have increased, their income has decreased, and their job security has decreased. Labour will be judging the National Government on that basis.

I welcome the opportunity to debate Part 2 of the Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill, because it speaks volumes about the differences between the members opposite and the members on this side of the Chamber. This is really a test about the politics of slogans versus the politics of substance. If I listen to members’ speeches opposite, I hear that all we have to do is pass a law through this Parliament and we can have higher wages in New Zealand. All we need to do, fellow members, is pass a bill and we could have a wage of $20 an hour, or $30 an hour. Why not make it $50 an hour? I would love to live in a country where every New Zealander was paid $50 an hour. The idiots opposite would have us believe that all we have to do is pass a bill to make that happen. I have to say that is hollow politics; it is the politics of slogans. It is a cheap idea that if we pass a bill with a few words, we can somehow solve the problems of this nation. It is cheap, it is untrue, and it is the reason that members opposite were rejected at the election.

The truth is this: if one wants to lift wages, one has to lift productivity. What happened to productivity—the real heart of higher wages—over the 9 years of the previous Labour Government? The international records show that over the last 9 years New Zealand rates of productivity improvement were the lowest of any of the 23 members covered in the latest OECD report. What is even more worrying is that through the 1990s when we had a Government that was genuinely committed to raising wages—by lifting productivity; the real way—we saw big gains in productivity in New Zealand. That was a good thing. That is why members on this side of the Chamber who want a high-wage economy are not going to play cynical games with slogans but are prepared to do the hard yards of improving productivity, which is really at the heart of increasing wages in our country.

The members opposite had 9 years to do this; but not only did they have the time—let us look at what Labour said in its policy. If we really believe the speeches of the member opposite, why was that legislation not in Labour’s policy at the last election? Those members are not prepared to answer that question. The reason it was not in Labour’s policy at the last election is that they do not actually believe in it. They do not believe in any of this stuff. This is just a political game. I say to members opposite that the main reason why the people of New Zealand rejected them as the Government, giving Labour one of its lowest votes in 20 years, is that it stopped doing things that mattered. Labour members became solely preoccupied with their own butts and the games of politics, rather than the issues that matter to the people of New Zealand. The game of politics had become more important for Labour than the substance of the people whom we in this Chamber are meant to represent.

Members opposite have asked why in future we should not guarantee ongoing increases for the levels of the minimum wage. I will tell them why: there is an issue equally important that this Parliament should be focused on today. That is the issue of employment. Every member of this Chamber should be focused on keeping New Zealanders in jobs in one of the worst recessions and economic downturns that has occurred in more than 70 years. I say to members opposite that when the Budget is read tomorrow they will see a Government that is committed to doing everything that is humanly possible to keep New Zealanders in work. I challenge members opposite to quit the slogans, and concentrate on the substance. Productivity is the key to higher wages.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 13 in the name of Darien Fenton to add new Part 3 be agreed to.