Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Health: Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak on the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Would you like to move?

I move that the bill be introduced into the House.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think what you’re—

I move that the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill be tabled in the House.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, “be now read a second time”.

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

💬 Hon Member: Read the bill, mate.

Sorry, I’m trying to chew my Jet Plane! The Government responded to COVID-19, and it is now time that we rebuild our economy. One of the important things that we should do in introducing this bill is, firstly, make an important amendment to the Care and Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlement Act 2017 by rightly including mental health and addiction support workers. The bill also corrects a formula within the existing Act and formalises the ongoing payment of care and support worker rates to vocational disability workers employed by Oranga Tamariki and the Ministry of Social Development. The bill also reinforces the Government’s firm commitment to pay equity and lifting wages for this valuable workforce. Improving mental health and addiction outcomes for people living in Aotearoa New Zealand is a top priority for the Government. Paying a fair wage to those who support and help New Zealanders when they are most vulnerable is an important step along the way. We believe all people deserve a fair go, which is why we have committed to supporting the historically undervalued workers in this sector.

I thank the Health Committee for its consideration of the bill and appreciate the hard work of the members in considering the submissions. Submitters were almost unanimously supportive of the bill. The Health Committee has examined the bill and recommended that it progress mostly unamended, but with some minor changes to extend the amendments to mental health and addiction support workers employed by clients who may directly receive their own individualised funding, primarily from the Ministry of Health. The committee noted that although these workers and their employers are included in the settlement agreement, the definition of “employer” in the principal Act does not currently cover individually funded clients, this meaning that under the bill as introduced, care workers employed directly by individually funded clients may not consistently receive the pay and conditions they are entitled to under the relevant settlement agreement.

To that end, the bill as reported back contains two changes, which I support. These are, firstly, the addition of clause 11A to insert new section 9A into the principal Act—this would apply to any client who receives individual funding for mental health or addiction services and who directly employs a care worker to provide these services; it would require them to pay the worker at least the minimum rates mandated in the relevant settlement agreement and the principal Act—and, second, to amend the Schedule to insert a new clause 2A into Schedule 1 of the principal Act. This would require individually funded clients to provide back-pay to their directly employed workers if they had been paid less than the minimum rates between 1 July 2017 and the date on which this bill is enacted. Both these changes ensure that protections are available for directly employed workers through individualised funding arrangements.

I acknowledge the comments of the committee regarding the coverage of the Act for care and support workers engaged through individual funding arrangements. Those workers are not covered in the original settlement agreement. In practice, as noted by the committee, this is currently managed by the Ministry of Health operationally through funding contracts to ensure that those workers are treated fairly and their conditions are not less than those covered by employers under the Act. Agencies will continue to look at how this can be improved where individualised funding models are used in the delivery of care.

In conclusion, this bill better recognises the importance of the mental health and addiction support workforce and the value of a highly trained and capable workforce. Those people needing their care and support will benefit. Likewise, employers who receive funding to offset the cost of higher wages will have a more stable and capable workforce with increased opportunities to support higher quality care. I commend this bill to the House.

It’s a pleasure to rise and kick off the debate today for the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill. We are in the second reading, not the first reading as the first speaker, the Hon Damien O’Connor, mentioned, but that’s OK; everybody is entitled to their own views of the world. But we are, in fact, in the second reading. This has been in the House before. It has then been referred to the Health Committee, and, as was noted, there were a number of changes that were made in the select committee for us to consider today. I would like to acknowledge the Health Committee and the work that they did hearing submissions over this bill.

Just to, again, reflect the kaupapa, or the purpose, of this bill, the purpose of this bill, really, is to give effect to the settlements that have been created. Those settlements go back to—let’s not forget the landmark settlement, from Kristine Bartlett—the Terranova settlement that was lodged in 2012 and then passed five years later, in 2017.

This, essentially, gives effect to an agreement and makes some changes around the agreement for support care workers and mental health support care workers. As was noted in the select committee, there were a number of recommendations that were made around clarifying the duties of individually funded clients with the Ministry of Social Development, and there were also a number of other changes that were proposed around the minimum hourly wage rates, back-pay, and coverage of the amendment to include mental health and the support workers that are in the space. They weren’t included in the coverage of the original agreement.

So this bill is something that we are supportive of. I note that the Minister in charge of this bill, the Hon Chris Hipkins, has dropped a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) just this afternoon. We have had some time to consider but not enough to indicate our support at this stage. But we will review that SOP and indicate in the latter stages of this bill how we’ll be voting. But, look, it is a really important piece of legislation, of course, addressing a key issue, which is pay inequities for workers that are in industries that are predominantly performed by women. I think that this is a reflection, certainly, of the great work of Kristine Bartlett and the movement that she has been a part of and, certainly, continuing down this path into other sectors and addressing inequities in that respect.

Without taking too much more time in the House, I just want to say that National will be supporting this in the second reading, and we look forward to further discussion about the Supplementary Order Paper in the latter stages of the parliamentary process. Thank you.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare, tēnā koutou katoa. As the chair of the Health Committee, can I acknowledge firstly the 13 submitters who provided us with, actually, scope to amend this piece of legislation, which, on the face of it, is actually incredibly simple. Essentially, it adds two cohorts of support workers to this pay equity settlement between the Government and care and support workers. It adds mental health and addiction support workers and it also adds vocational disability workers engaged by Oranga Tamariki in the Ministry of Social Development. The principal Act supported care and support workers who are funded by the Ministry of Health, DHBs, and ACC. So that was the premise of this piece of legislation, to expand the scope to those two cohorts of care and support workers so that they could receive pay equity, which was received, as Dan Bidois said, through the Kristine Bartlett case.

But what it also did was correct the formula used for calculating future minimum pay rates for support workers covered by the principal Act. So, in fact, what we are doing through this amendment bill is also amending the principal Act. And it was good for us to have done that because what it also meant we could do through this piece of legislation was look at the funding for those who receive pay or who are employed by individually funded clients. Individually funded clients previously had not been encapsulated within this piece of legislation, and it was incredibly important for us to set those minimum pay rates, because by default now people who are employed by individually funded clients will receive at least the minimum pay rates mandated in the relevant agreement.

That is incredibly important to note, because the other thing that we determined as a committee was that these individual clients should not be seen as employers. And we noted, because, obviously, there is a relationship between those individually funded clients and the Ministry of Health who have what they term “hosts”, who help individual clients to manage their funding, highlighting the issue through our process of making sure that those care workers who choose to be supporting people in that circumstance also have access to education and qualification opportunities as care workers.

The only other point I wanted to highlight in my contribution was that we also had submissions from union representatives that made a point that we shouldn’t go against the spirit of these settlements by reducing support and care workers’ hours, that there shouldn’t be a trade-off between paying someone adequately and then cutting their hours of work because, in fact, what that would lead to was the same amount of pay. Obviously, from their perspective, it wasn’t seen to be fair, because they were still required to do a certain amount of work but be paid for less hours. Other than that point, I will commend the bill to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak to this bill tonight, the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill, which, as has been described by others in the House, fundamentally brings the mental health and addiction support workers and the vocational disability workers into the principal Act. Now, I had the privilege—I’d like to acknowledge the chair, Louisa Wall, who has just sat down—to work on the Terranova legislation in the previous Parliament, led by Simon O’Connor, as I recall. That was a really important piece of work that we did in quite a short time frame. I recall Jan Logie from the Greens had a significant contribution and helped us shepherd that legislation through.

I’ll come back to some of the learnings now two or three years later from that settlement, but if we just talk here in the second reading, I’ve already described the purpose of the bill. As the previous speaker said, we had 12 submissions—one was joint, so 13 submissions, if we like. They were useful. I found one that was particularly useful. We need to remember here that the departmental report was done on 9 September 2019. That’s a long time between drinks from here to now. If we look at that departmental report and to the submission from Alicia Scroggins Meek, it’s interesting that officials respond to her concerns around peer support workers and training by saying that the industry training organisation (ITO) Careerforce specifically includes peer support workers on the list. Well, what’s kind of interesting is here now, nearly nine months later, it’s an ITO. ITOs are gone. That is no longer a departmental option on that list. They have now been dissolved as transitional and will disappear into the great mega-polytechnic in the sky. So it’s kind of interesting that this far afterwards, if you like, it’s no longer valid advice. It seemed to be then; I contend it still should be, but that’s a different bill, a different piece of work.

Also what officials pointed out to us was the cost of this—$173.5 million allocated to support the mental health and addiction settlement through an increase in Vote Health. Now, after the Terranova bill passed, I think others noticed the same as well, but within about a year or two—and it had been brought up at select committee; it’ll be interesting to see if we see the same here and if there’s anything different we can do—there were two things that stood out. The first was relativity. We were told that if we did this for care and support workers, because their pay would be elevated so high, we would get a movement of people from one service industry to another to a better pay bracket. There was some movement of workers across the health spectrum.

We’re also told that we could have the difficult situation of a relatively junior worker now being paid at a higher level than maybe a supervising worker, and that would be complex also. I haven’t seen so much of that. I did see some movement. I think what also stuck out was we were reassured that there would be passed through to the employer the funding to take this pay equity settlement into account, to take Terranova into account. Well, we needed to watch really closely to make sure that happened. We had multiple explanations that “Don’t worry, employer. This will be covered by Government. The pass through will happen.” And certainly, on a number of accounts, that did not happen and it created other holes in the system.

So we’re happy to support this bill. I think that’s part of what we can learn from the Terranova settlement. It was a good piece of work from the select committee. I remember in the previous select committee when we excluded mental health and addiction workers, that almost became a fall over point. I think for expediency and just the urgency to get that settlement under way, we reluctantly agreed to exclude them on the basis that this legislation would be following close behind, and here it is. So we’re happy to see this continue to progress through the House, and it has our support.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s my pleasure to rise to support this Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill on behalf of New Zealand First during this second reading. We do note that it formalises the pay equity that expands upon or broadens the scope from the Terranova settlement bill that was before the House in 2017 and brings mental health and addiction services staff—and we know that this is an area that’s getting increasing help and assistance and awareness, I think, of the absolute need out there for these services. So it is pleasing to see that those workers will, indeed, be included within this pay equity settlement, and, of course, the vocational disability workers at the Ministry of Social Development and Oranga Tamariki. As I said previously, it means the principal Act—the Care and Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlement Act of 2017—has already seen, I understand, 5,000 workers from 1 August last year get a backdated pay, but also, on average, about $3 an hour and up to $5 an hour or $200 a week for some workers that had been more grossly undervalued in terms of their pay rates.

So I must say, the Terranova case is the famous one that has sort of brought this whole previous piece of legislation, the work by Kristine Bartlett, and now this amended legislation for it as well. Going through this Parliament, that case has been referenced often in various pieces of legislation as, I guess, a marker for industrial relations, and a significant marker. Kristine Bartlett is to be congratulated for her work there.

It wasn’t until about, I guess, six months ago that I actually discovered that the people that run TerraNova—who have been incredibly vilified, I might say, through this—is actually my cousin. So I stand here by association to defend, actually, what was a business that was built up over time and probably has had a little bit of a rough ride through this House in terms of being singled out as the exemplar for industrial relations. Nevertheless, the broader principle applies, and certainly New Zealand First and all parties in Parliament appear to be support this, which, I think, is the right and proper thing to do. But also there is the other side of it, which is the employers and the adjustments they’re going to have to make to take on board these higher pay rates. And, of course, in this part, it’s primarily the Government.

So without further ado, we look forward to the committee stage of the House. I understand there’s some Supplementary Order Papers which we will be looking at in due course, but New Zealand First continues to support this bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak at the second reading of the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill. It is a bill that’s taken a long time to get to where it needed to go. As the previous speaker, Mark Patterson, has already named her—and others have mentioned her as well—Kristine Bartlett CNZM: every now and again in this House we come across legislation that has been advanced enormously through the experience and the dedication of one individual. So I would begin my short call by commending her on her tenacity.

Five years, three court cases, two appeals, and one landmark pay settlement is what that individual went through to get to the place where it was acknowledged that 55,000 workers who work in an industry that Kristine Bartlett knew very well—she had been, I think, nearly a quarter of a century as a rest home carer. So she knew exactly the importance of legislation like this, which has advanced the professionalism of the profession of aged-care workers, in my view. They are not necessarily valued in a way that this society should value them, and one way of doing that is to make sure the remuneration is good.

So for those 55,000 workers, they received an advance in the first tranche of the Terranova case, as it was known, when the pay equity settlement bill was passed in June 2017 by the National-led Government. This is the next part of the legislation, which needs to—we did give way, as others have indicated, and I remember those discussions very well, and with my colleague and friend Matt Doocey, also, who said, “These are important issues for people who work in the mental health area and they need to be acknowledged in the same way. Where are the differences? Where are the distinctions?”

So, true to the undertaking, and in keeping with our support of the earlier legislation that we had put through, was the understanding this would come at some point. Its time has come tonight. I think that all of the parties made settlement agreements. In respect of the various work that the Health Committee did, I commend the chair of the Health Committee, Louisa Wall, who has spoken on this and done a lot of work on it. I wasn’t so much in the Health Committee at the time that this was put through, but I know how much of an impact it made on the final legislation, because the duties of the individually funded clients did need to be clarified. There were a lot of issues that were not properly addressed that this piece of legislation tidies up well, around minimum hourly wage rates also—that’s the addition of clause 11A inserting a new section 9A into the principal Act.

This needs to apply widely, and it will apply to any client who receives that individual funding, whether it is for mental health, or addiction, or in the aged-care sector. So the equality, if you like, has been addressed by this legislation. The definition of “employer” is also something that the Health Committee refined and made into the good piece of this legislation; it has worked very well. I mean, our preference would have been that the right to prescribed minimum pay was enshrined in legislation, but this is what it is, and it is a piece of legislation that needs to pass. I won’t hold up the time of the House any further, but I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I rise to support this bill on behalf of the Green Party, and as Minister for Women I’m really thrilled to see this progress being made. The previous speaker referred to Kristine Bartlett, and she absolutely deserves our constant recognition for her leadership in this area of pay equity and the landmark impact it had on tens of thousands of care and support workers who were being underpaid due to that profession being historically female-dominated. I also have to acknowledge Kristine Bartlett’s union, E tū, which played a huge role in supporting her taking that case, and the unions generally, who have been at the forefront calling for greater action on pay equity.

So, of course, this legislation progressing to second reading hasn’t stopped us from extending the pay increase. In August last year, 5,000 mental health and addiction support workers received a pay increase backdated to 1 July 2017. Nearly half received an increase of more than $3 an hour, which meant full-time workers were paid an extra $120 a week before tax. If you’re on a very low income, or earning near the minimum wage, that makes a substantial difference. One in five workers received an increase of more than $5 per hour, around an extra $200 for a 40-hour week.

Previous speakers, including the chair of the Health Committee, mentioned some of the important changes that were made at the select committee, and I think that it was clear that in addition to extending that settlement to addiction and support workers, there was also work to be done on ensuring that people weren’t missing out on hours and simply receiving a higher rate, but, of course, that rate only results in an increase of remuneration if your hours aren’t cut. So minimum hourly wage rates are incredibly important.

This is just, I think, one more example of this Government following through on the promises that we made in the run-up to the last election. One of the first decisions that was made was to extend the settlement to mental health and addiction workers. I think in that moment, during COVID-19, when we were all in lockdown level 4, it became very clear that there are a number of essential workers who do the mahi that enables the very basics of our society to survive and thrive, and many of them are not highly paid. If we want—and I think most of us do—to live in a world where people are supported to do the work that we really need, the important caring work, then it’s vitally important that we work together to correct structural imbalances and discrimination that has meant that caring work has been undervalued for far too long. We will continue making progress on that later in this week, so I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to stand and give my voice and support to this second reading of the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill. I’d also like to acknowledge the chair Louisa Wall and the members of the Health Committee, who examined this bill. I was not a member of Parliament at the time, but I do recall quite vividly the announcement of the historic $2 billion pay equity settlement, which was passed in June 2017 by the then National-led Government, so I feel very fortunate to be able to be here at this time to speak in the second reading of this part of the bill.

It was indeed a historic and momentous occasion, and it does recognise the work that is carried out by 55,000 workers in our aged care and disability residential care and home community support sector. Of course, we acknowledge that the majority of that sector are women. They are mothers, they are sisters, they are aunts, and I, in particular, also acknowledge women in my wider family that work and have worked in this sector. It’s incredibly important work, and it’s also important that we show that we are caring for the people that are caring for our loved ones, for our elderly, for our vulnerable, and for the disability sector as well.

I commend the work of the select committee and the officials in their efforts to address and to tweak some of the shortcomings in the bill, in particular around the carers who are hired by individually funded clients. It’s already been traversed from the contributions made tonight in terms of the background to this bill, and in particular was noted around the Terranova settlement, which I actually didn’t know that much about, but I was really pleased to hear the contribution from my colleague Dr Shane Reti about that. But, as has been traversed, it is really to give effect to those settlements which were in respect of the vocational and disability support workers. That was signed by the Crown and relevant parties on 17 June 2017. I’d like to acknowledge that the primary purposes were to address those historical inequities and to achieve that pay equity in a more consistent manner across the sector, and I think this goes a long way towards making that happen for the sector.

The principal Act expressly excluded the mental health services that were funded by the Department of Corrections, the Ministry of Social Development, and Oranga Tamariki, and so it’s good that this bill has corrected that now that this has now provided and made provision for mental health services—a positive move, particularly in light of recent years and the climate in our mental health services, particularly.

I would note just some of the select committee changes that were clarified in terms of the support workers that can be employed by clients who receive individualised funding for the Ministry of Health. These workers and their employers are included in the settlement agreement. Also, as was noted, the definition of employer in the principal Act did not cover the individually funded clients. The changes now would ensure that those care workers are paid by individually funded clients, so that they receive the same pay and conditions, including both minimum-wage rates and back-pay. Also, in terms of some of the key provisions in the bill around mental health and addiction support workers and vocational and disabilities support workers, these are covered by the other provisions of the of the principal Act, including the enforcement of provisions in the case of disputes or an employer’s failure to comply with the requirements of the principal Act.

I would just like to say that I support this bill to the House. Thank you.

This is a split call. I call Dr Duncan Webb.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, it is a great moment when we can pass legislation like this, which for thousands of workers will see them paid properly because, of course, fair and equitable wages are part of the dignity of work and a huge amount of work has gone into expanding the fantastic task Kristine Bartlett undertook.

I just want to say that New Zealand has an improving record on pay equity but we’ve really got to keep working on that, and it’s easy to be complacent when we pass legislation like this, which does address some issues. But this is an area which this Government will continue to work on to ensure that the gender pay gap falls progressively, and we will, of course, have an ambition to have no gender pay gap at all. This is one small step in that direction. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I do rise feeling slightly inferior to the last speaker when I reflect on his tie. I have a somewhat simple tie, and I was reflecting on Duncan Webb’s tie as to whether it was sort of a keyboard or an accordion or piano keys—

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: I think I got it from David Carter.

OK.

I’m here to talk on the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill—a very important bill—and I do want to acknowledge the former National Government. This bill follows on from the Care and Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlement Bill, which was passed in June 2017 under the former National Government. We do acknowledge Kristine Bartlett but also the Minister responsible, the Hon Michael Woodhouse, and we acknowledge his work in shepherding that bill through the House, because you would have to question what the current Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety has been doing with this bill, which has been languishing on the Order Paper. It looks like it was referred to the select committee in May 2019. We’ve heard plenty of speeches from the Government side about the importance of this bill, yet submissions closed in July 2019, and here we are, in the last few weeks of this Government and the last few weeks that this Government will have, hastily going into an extended sitting to pass legislation that they clearly should have prioritised a lot earlier if they were living up to the words that they’re stating today.

Clearly, this bill is very important for pay equity, and we do know that for these sectors, they are a female-led or a female-dominated workforce. I worked in the mental health field from my early 20s. It’s fair to say I worked in this workforce, which is very much a female-dominated workforce, which I must say has helped me get a better perspective of the world, working in the mental health and addiction sector for a number of years, and I feel better for it in bringing that knowledge into Parliament. What we do know with the mental health and addiction support workers, who will be the beneficiaries—or one of the groups, because the other group is the vocational and disability support workers—is that they are a workforce that is very much needed, because specialist medical professionals are, quite bluntly, very expensive, and I would never underestimate the work our care and support workers do, especially in the mental health and addiction field, in keeping people well and keeping them out of crisis and keeping them out of specialist services. So that’s why it’s quite right today that we are acknowledging them and passing this bill in its second reading.

Our fantastic Health Committee chair, Louisa Wall, clearly outlined the very technical amendments of this bill to progress. Our colleague the Hon Maggie Barry clearly outlined some of the reasons those two groups were not included in the original bill—the mental health and addiction support workers and the vocational and disability support workers—but this bill is very much needed. I think that’s clear from across the House, and my good Cantabrian colleague Duncan Webb was talking very much about the gender pay gap and how we need to address that inequity. This bill is one step forward towards addressing that, and I do hope that this Government will be better organised to make sure this bill is passed into law before the House rises for this term. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill has a significant recognition of the importance of the mental health and addiction support workforce and goes a long way into recognising the value of such a highly trained and critical part of our workforce. Not only will those workers benefit from this bill but so too will those people who actually need their care and support. So without any further ado, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m very pleased to take a call this evening on the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill at second reading. It’s taken a long time to get here, but we are here, and we have to acknowledge Kristine Bartlett, who was the force behind the principal Act, and her incredible tenacity. The bill amends that Care and Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlement Act 2017, which, as my colleagues before me have pointed out, was the piece of legislation passed by the National-led Government to give effect to the historic $2 billion pay equity settlement for 55,000 healthcare workers. This bill amends that Act, as has been traversed, to include those two further agreements signed by the Crown—one in 2017, signed with the vocational and disability support workers, and then the other in 2018, which was signed by the mental health and addiction support workers.

We’re pleased to continue to support this bill at second reading, and I must say, as we get nearer to the heat of the campaign, it’s nice to be able to stand here in the House tonight and just speak to a bill that we all agree on—that has bipartisan agreement in the select committee and here in the House. On this side of the House, we very much appreciate the hard work of the Health Committee. I wasn’t on that committee, but I do know that it’s always very ably led by Louisa Wall, who’s an incredibly good chair and well respected by everyone, especially on this side of the House.

As I said, I wasn’t on the committee, but I understand there were 13 submissions. I’ve had a look at them, and in particular I’d like to point out the submissions from the Public Service Association and E tū proposing that the definitions of “employer” in that principal Act should be amended to account for individualised funding arrangements—so people who receive their own direct funding from the Ministry of Health to employ a mental health support worker or addiction support worker. So while people in this arrangement, mental health and addiction support workers and their clients, are covered by the settlement agreement, the committee wanted to make sure that this was reflected in the Act. The Ministry of Health’s advice in their departmental report was that the definition of an employer should not be amended in the Act. In practice, people currently receiving individualised funding for a care and support worker are required as a condition of that funding to pay the rates consistent with those in the settlement Act.

In order to ensure that directly employed care workers consistently receive the pay and conditions that, of course, they’re entitled to, the Health Committee has recommended additions to include minimum hourly wage rates and back-pay. Clients who are directly funded to employ a key worker would be required to pay their care worker at least the minimum rates mandated in the relevant settlement agreement and the principal Act. They’d be required to pay back-pay to their workers if they’d been paid less than the minimum rates between 1 July 2017 and this bill coming into force. We are pleased with the changes that have emerged from the select committee, very happy to support the bill at second reading, and I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. A real pleasure to rise tonight on the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill. I was not on the Health Committee at the time that this was discussed, and so I cannot comment at all on the 13 submissions that came through.

However, I do believe it’s really important to make the comment that pay equity is something so very important to the women of this country. We have a 9.4 percent pay equity gap in this country, but the real damning story is 21 percent for our Pacific sisters, and I think that that is something that needs to change. This bill is addressing some of that work, and I’m really happy to see that the mental health workforce and the vocational disability workforce are the next cabs off the rank, because these are some of the worst-paid people in the country.

With that, I commend the bill to the House.

Bill read a second time.