Equal Pay Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Equal Pay Amendment Bill.

SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: I move, That the Equal Pay Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

The Equal Pay Amendment Bill improves the process for raising and resolving a pay equity claim. It provides a better framework for assessing whether there is sex-based undervaluation in remuneration in female-dominated occupations.

In 2014, the Court of Appeal confirmed that the Equal Pay Act did not only require the same pay for the same work, but also equal pay for work that is different but of equal value. A bill providing a framework for raising and resolving pay equity claims was introduced into Parliament in 2017, and a substantially reworked bill was passed into law by the previous Government in 2020.

The previous Government’s bill significantly lowered the entry threshold for pay equity claims, provided limited tools for employers to contest broadly scoped claims, and enabled parties to choose from a wide variety of comparators to support their claim. The settings the previous Government introduced have led to claims being progressed through the entry threshold without strong evidence of undervaluation. There have been broadly scoped claims where it is difficult to determine whether the differences in remuneration are due to sex-based undervaluation. For example, the DHB, Allied, and Technical health pay equity settlement covers 90 occupations including hospital dental assistants, physiotherapists, wheelchair technicians, and cultural advisers.

The current Act provides the flexibility to choose from a wide range of comparators, which has led to comparators being chosen even where the comparator’s work and skills are very different to the claimant’s. Health New Zealand admin and clerical staff, as an example, have been compared to mechanical engineers, Health New Zealand librarians have been compared to transport engineers, and Oranga Tamariki’s social workers have been compared to air traffic controllers.

The same comparators have been used repeatedly across several claims, despite several differences with the work of the claimants. Corrections officers, for example, have been used as comparators for nurses, admin support staff, and teacher aides. And review clauses that are required to be included in settlement agreements have considered factors that may not have been connected to sex-based undervaluation. In some settlements, review clauses have included factors to consider—such as the Consumers Price Index—that may not have been connected to a return of sex-based undervaluation.

This Government is committed to maintaining a process to raise and resolve pay equity claims, but we need the system to be robust, workable, and sustainable. Whether it is a public or a private sector employer, implementing a pay equity settlement means that employers will need to determine how to factor in additional costs. Parties, therefore, need to be able to have the confidence that the process to assess a pay equity claim is robust.

In order to provide a better framework for raising and resolving pay equity claims, this bill introduces a suite of changes, which includes a more robust process for raising a claim where claims need to have merit to progress; further tools for employers to ensure that claims are appropriately scoped; additional clarity and guidance on how to choose an appropriate comparator and on comparison methodology; changes to enable employers to meet their pay equity obligations in a manner that is sustainable; and changes to ensure that the parameters for the Employment Relations Authority relating to fixing remuneration provide the right incentives to resolve pay equity claims.

The bill will apply to existing unresolved claims and to review clauses in existing settlements. Existing pay equity claims will be discontinued, and they will need to be raised under the amended legislation, whether they have been raised with the employer or filed at the authority and are not yet determined. The Government is doing this because we consider it’s important that everyone is on the same playing field from the start, rather than allowing for two systems to operate at the same time for a period of time. The review clauses in existing settlements will also become unenforceable. The short time frame of the review cycle in the Act has made it difficult to determine whether any differences in pay were due to pay equity issues having reemerged or to short-term labour market dynamics. These transitional provisions are necessary and justified to meet the policy objective of maintaining a process to raise and resolve pay equity claims while providing a better framework that is workable and sustainable. They will provide certainty for people involved in pay equity claims.

We are progressing this bill under urgency because we have to move quickly to make the changes to the Act to ensure that the system is workable and sustainable.

Overall, the bill will provide greater confidence that pay equity claim assessments will focus on any sex-based undervaluation and remuneration, and that any non-sex-based factors are appropriately accounted for. These changes will provide greater confidence that genuine pay equity issues will be correctly identified and addressed. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I found that incredibly insulting towards women, that speech. How dare anybody pour shade on the work that has happened since 2020 that had 13—13—pay equity claims be successful in this country, when prior to that we had very few successful pay equity claims. How dare anyone pour shade on a process—and here we are, in urgency, going through all stages of a bill and totally, totally taking away the democratic rights of women in this country to have their say on something that is incredibly important to them. How absolutely shameful. And why is not every woman on that side of the House hanging their head in shame and standing up and saying that this is not good enough?

This is absolutely disgraceful that we are here today, when nobody—nobody—other than the executive knew anything about this bill until a few hours beforehand. The fact that this would come through and cause many, many people to come at short notice to stand outside and protest against this bill says it all. What an absolute disgrace.

For the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety to stand up and say that claims have been able to progress without strong evidence of undervaluation, does she even know what the process looks like? Did she listen to Tessa today, who stood outside there as a librarian who has been through four years so far progressing their claim—four years of robust discussion, four years of working through those comparators, four years of making sure that their claim was going to stand up so that they were going to be valued how they have always desired to be valued? All she said is that “We want to be paid for our work—the value of our work.” Four years she has been working through that, and for the Minister to stand there and say that there is no strong evidence of undervaluation is absolutely shameful—absolutely shameful.

This is a disgraceful affront to women’s and workers’ rights, and I am absolutely disgusted that this House is even having this conversation. We should be moving forward, and this is taking us backwards. It is taking us backwards to a time when women were undervalued for their work, and now we are starting—I thought this was something that we agreed upon across the House. I thought that this was something that we would not have arguments about, that we would stand here together and say, “Women need to be valued.” But what this smacks of is that we have a Government that cannot make their Budget balance, and so this is a way that they are actually having to go desperately, to grasp desperately, to make their Budget balance.

So what are they doing? They are throwing women under the bus. Women are the people who are absolutely paying for their inability to make their Budget work. Women once again in this country are being put in a position where they are having to pay for other people’s work, for other people’s inability to make their Budgets work. Women are paying for tax cuts. That is the bottom line here: women are paying for tax cuts. It is a shameful, shameful day. It is outrageous, dishonest, and an absolute backward step—absolute backward step.

This Government is simply extinguishing what are very legitimate pay equity claims for tens, if not hundreds, of thousands. When you think that the teacher pay equity claim is covering 94,000 teachers alone, and there are 33 claims in progress at this current point in time, we are talking about hundreds of thousands of women who this is impacting upon. And it’s the claims to come. But not only that; it’s the claims that have been, because what the Minister is taking away in this shameful piece of legislation is that she is taking away the review rights. So she is condemning women to be at lower levels of pay for a long, long, long time. It is shameful.

The Government getting back into surplus should not be at the expense of women. Women are being asked to once again pay the price. This is an absolutely shameful day in the history of this Parliament. I have never felt so disgusted in what I am seeing right now.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I am disappointed, I am absolutely disgusted, but I am not surprised that this is the action this Government takes. Now, the first person I want to mention in my speech is Kristine Bartlett, who won New Zealander of the Year, who has been recognised for outstanding contributions to our country, who took the first claim under the Equal Pay Act about the discriminatory pay that she and so many other people received as aged-care workers.

The reality is that the hardest and most important caring work that holds together our society is underpaid and undervalued, and it has been for decades, and that was recognised by the National Party in 2020 when we passed the amendment to the Equal Pay Act. On 22 July 2020, the National Party stood up, and Nicola Willis said she was proud to stand in the House that night and say that National would support the final reading of the Equal Pay Amendment Bill—“I’m proud [of what the National Party] … contributed to crafting this legislation and bringing it to the House.” Erica Stanford said that she was pleased to take a very short call. She spoke of the dreams she had for her daughter and her grandchildren, that they would grow up in a country where the work that they do is equally valued and compensated equally to that of their male counterparts, and that bill set up the framework that we need to achieve that outcome.

Now, I, as Minister for Women, oversaw this in conjunction with our Labour colleagues, but we had the support of the National Party. We had the support of Business New Zealand and the unions. There was a tripart working group that went through and developed the process, and the whole point of it was to make it easier for pay equity to be achieve. That means that people, whether they’re male or female or gender diverse, working in historically female-dominated industries, whether they’re teachers, midwives, nurses, admin and clerical workers, cleaners, aged-care workers, care and support workers—they don’t get paid enough, and that’s because of gender-based discrimination.

What the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety has said and made very, very clear in her public media today is that this is about saving money for Government. Who pays the price of that? Our essential workers, who are predominantly female and who are struggling to make ends meet, going out there and doing the hardest work that actually holds together society, all right?

Like, the highest-paid people in our society right now are not the ones doing the hardest work. Let’s just be honest about that. We have a broken economic system that rewards people who go out and make money by ripping people off or by playing the shocks and the training system, and not the people who actually look after our tamariki, who look after our aged people, who look after our disabled people—and that’s predominantly women, and they’re predominantly employed by Government because the work they do is for public good, and that needs to be recognised.

The whole point of this very long process that we went through to ensure that pay equity was acknowledged and had a process that everybody could agree to under the Equal Pay Act was so that we could rectify that historic discrimination, which means that single mothers who are doing some of the hardest work out there are able to be properly paid and recognised for their contribution and their mahi, as they deserve to be.

There are so many women that I’ve heard from, or people just working in these sectors, for whom the pay equity cases have made a life-changing difference. It is the difference between being able to put food on the table—healthy kai. It’s the difference that they might be able to save up a little extra and be able to have a proper holiday, for example, or be able to take some well-deserved time off; to be able to live in a warmer, drier house, which may have higher rent.

There is no question—the Government has made it very, very clear—that the overriding driving purpose for the changes that have been introduced and will be passed today is not justice, it is not fairness, it is not about ensuring that the Crown is a good employer; it is about saving money so we can give more money to the people who already have the most. That’s what this Government has prioritised: tax cuts for landlords, the people who already own the most wealth; tax cuts for tobacco companies. That’s what women in this House have made their work, is to look after the people who donated to the Government parties, rather than looking after the women who are underpaid and doing the most critical work. Those are the workforces in which we have shortages. We don’t have enough teachers, and we don’t have enough midwives, because we do not pay them enough.

I rise to speak on behalf of the National Party in support of the Equal Pay Amendment Bill. This will, of course, amend the Equal Pay Act 1972 and provide a better framework to assess whether there is sex-based undervaluation of workers covered by a pay equity claim.

This piece of legislation is not about collective bargaining. It is not about where wages are low. This is a piece of legislation to provide a framework that allows us to determine where there is sex-based undervaluation. And this is where things went astray with the 2020 legislation, because, all of a sudden, the Government in power wanted to wrap a whole bunch of other issues into a piece of legislation that removed it from its core purpose, which was about pay equity. So our Government is returning it to be about pay equity.

I want to remind the House that in 2017 the then National Government settled with Kristine Bartlett. I applaud her determination and her courage in taking that case, and the $2 billion settlement that resulted. The legislation that we introduced in 2017—really, we’re going back to a more pragmatic approach, which means the process is more robust. It is more transparent. It is more workable and sustainable for all parties involved.

I do want to just correct a couple of the nonsenses that the Labour and Green members talked about in dramatising this and scaremongering. The first is the blatant—blatant—inaccuracy that this is removing review rights. It’s not. It’s just putting review rights in a 10-year interval. What we do want to do—and here’s the thing: if there is a sex-based discrimination case that works the way through its process and leads to change, why is it that we think in only three years there would still be sex-based discrimination? It wouldn’t work if that was the case. So 10 years is a realistic interval in terms of that change being made.

The other thing I do want to put on the record, because I think it is important in terms of National’s support of the 2020 legislation—I just do want to remind the House that the Labour Government rammed through a massive Supplementary Order Paper that had no scrutiny by anyone, and many of the issues that we are fixing today in this piece of legislation, brought by my colleague the Hon Brooke van Velden, fix those difficulties.

This piece of legislation is about sex-based discrimination. I’m proud of the National Party record and what we have done in terms of equal pay, in terms of introducing legislation and recognising pay equity in 2017. I accept what members of the House have said about a range of New Zealanders whose pay is too low. That is why we want a growing economy that lifts wages. But that is a very different issue to sex-based discrimination. So let’s keep the debate about the issue of the day, which is pay equity. It’s not about low wages. It’s not about issues that the other side want to scaremonger. It is about pay equity, so let’s focus on that, because it’s about historical undervaluation of areas that have been traditionally dominated by women.

One of the other really important components of this legislation is when we are using comparators, and the Minister outlined some of the comparators. If I think about the concerns that have been raised with me by workers and by employers across the board, people want to understand comparators that make sense and, unfortunately, what we’ve seen with the current system is just an absolute stretching beyond of what is logical and reasonable in terms of a comparator.

So we want to see pay equity claims that are successful, that are based on merit, and we must have a system that is more robust, workable, and sustainable so that we can achieve greater pay equity.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak in support of the Equal Pay Amendment Bill.

Hon Ginny Andersen: Standing up for women’s rights!

Hon CASEY COSTELLO: This is an important piece of legislation because we are standing up for women’s rights. When we take the emotion and the noise out of this conversation, the key point that we are talking about—and the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, when introducing the bill, mentioned that this is having remain the ability to raise the sex-based undervaluations but, more importantly, resolve them through a framework that will be effective and efficient and that will have a really clear connection to the core purpose of this legislation, which is about sex-based undervaluation. We are seeking to support meritorious claims, and when members across the House can muddy the water with a whole lot of issues about pay gaps and underpaid workforces, this is blurring the line about the point of this piece of legislation, which is to raise and resolve the claims.

Members across the House talked about four years of fighting an equity claim—four years shows you that the system needs to be resolved and improved. The system needs to be made more effective, because otherwise we will spend years working through legislation because we’re too afraid to say that perhaps this isn’t achieving what we wanted it to achieve.

It is about having a workable and sustainable solution into the long term. It is about having logical and effective ways of ensuring that we can raise these sex-based undervaluations and resolve them, and that is the key point that we are doing in this piece of legislation. This is why it is important to have the confidence, the ability, the common sense, and the bravery to actually stand up and go, “Hang on, let’s take a look at this. Is it achieving what we want it to achieve?”

I have worked nearly my entire working life in male-dominated roles, and I think we can say proudly in New Zealand that we have progressed effectively to ensure that women’s work is valued. Are we at the end destination? No. There is work we can do, but the work has to be about the ability to resolve these claims, to recognise where they sit—differentiated from general concerns about pay rates—and actually deal with the specific conversation about sex-based undervaluations so that we can achieve the equity goals that we want to, and not blurring it with a whole lot of emotive language about all of these things and how we’re selling women down the road, and all of this emotional language which will make it easy to get some points.

Hon Carmel Sepuloni: Why is she trying to make this emotional—we’re talking about women, and it becomes an emotional issue?

Hon CASEY COSTELLO: But here we have this point where we have emotions being shouted across the House. This is about the point of exactly what we’re trying to achieve. It is a common-sense piece of legislation that will address and adjust what we’re trying to achieve, which is sex-based undervaluation claims being able to be raised and then resolved. That is the direction we need to do and that is the direction this Government is taking.

We are not removing the ability to raise these claims. We are not removing the ability to deal with the issues. We are working through a process to ensure that this ability to raise exists and the ability to resolve is a priority, and that is why New Zealand First is commending this bill to the House.

Hon Carmel Sepuloni: She should be ashamed of herself. Shame!

Takutai Tarsh Kemp. Sorry, we’ll just wait for the next—I don’t think we need personal attacks, right? I’m going to get it clear from the beginning of this that this is a Government bill, and we don’t want those sorts of comments passed to Ministers personally.

Point of order, Madam Speaker. I’ve been here a long time, and interjecting with the term “Shame!” to another member across the House has—

No, it wasn’t the word “Shame!”; it was the words you used—“You should be ashamed of yourself.”—to that member.

Hon Carmel Sepuloni: Actually, I said, “She should be ashamed.”

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, I think you used the word “you”, but I can check that out. But this is a Government bill, so let’s try and do it with the—we know that it’s going to be a bill that’s going to create a lot of angst and a lot of emotion, but let’s try and keep the personal attacks out of it.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Tēnā tātou e te Whare. Te Pāti Māori opposes this bill in the strongest terms. It is emotional, because we stand by wāhine, we stand by the rights of our wāhine, and we deserve better. This bill will make it impossible for people in female-dominated professions to be paid fairly. This is an attack on working women and will lock in gender discrimination for years to come. Why is this Government so determined to erase equity and entrench inequality? This bill will stop 33 current claims immediately, under urgency, because this Government can afford to give $3 billion to landlords and $13 billion to the military but we cannot afford to pay our wāhine fairly.

For every $1 a Pākehā man makes, a Māori wahine makes 81c—get that. A Pasifika woman makes 79c—even more shameful. An Asian wahine makes 88c, and Middle Eastern, Latin American, and African women make 88c as well. Where is the equity in that? That means that over a lifetime, taking inflation into consideration, the average Māori wahine will earn over $400,000 less than Pākehā men. Asian women, too, have earned over $400,000 less, and Pasifika women have earned nearly $500,000 less than Pākehā men. This illustrates the intergenerational impact of pay discrimination on whānau. These aren’t just numbers; these are tamariki, these are mokopuna.

I want to share an example. I worked in an organisation where this occurred. This happened to our team of workmates, to the wāhine in this team—high-performing wāhine, I’ve got to say. We did the same job as our male counterparts, but we were never paid the same equal, fair-pay rate as our male teammates. Every year, we would go to the performance review, fight and prove that we could reach our key performance indicators just as much as our male counterparts. Did we ever get that pay rise? No. Did we ever get the same pay rise, actually, as our male counterparts? No, we didn’t, and for years we felt undervalued. For years, it felt demoralising.

Yes, it is emotional, because you put your heart, sweat, blood, and tears into your mahi because you love your community, and all you ask for is fair and equal pay, the same as your male colleagues. Te Pāti Māori oppose this bill, and we won’t be supporting this bill in the House. Kia ora.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. My colleague the Hon Louise Upston made it very clear in her speech earlier that this today is about sex-based pay having equality and that National is committed to this and has been committed to this throughout. In fact, National led the introduction of legislation to this House in 2017. We have Labour crying foul this afternoon, when it took them three years even to get their legislation into this House. During urgency, they introduced a Supplementary Order Paper that fundamentally changed that legislation for the worse. This afternoon, we have come to the House to fix that. That does not take away from the importance of ensuring equality in pay based on sex.

I want to correct the previous speaker who spoke a lot about equal pay. The bill that has been introduced to the House this afternoon does not make any changes to equal pay. Equal pay is receiving equal pay for equal work. Pay equality is about ensuring—

Hon Ginny Andersen: It’s called “equity”, mate.

CARL BATES: Pay equity—thank you. It’s about ensuring that people doing different work in different organisations of similar value are paid at a similar level.

Rachel Boyack: We do know that.

CARL BATES: Well, clearly, the Opposition doesn’t, because the previous speaker got that wrong. I think, in order to have an effective, appropriate, respectful conversation as we fix this, this afternoon, and ensure that those with claims are able to go through the process in a robust manner, that we have a sustainable and workable system—are able to do that with the sorts of changes we are making this afternoon to enable that to occur. Because of that, I commend this to the House.

I don’t think anyone should be mistaken: this is a war on women. They are fundamentally doing this because they cannot afford their Budget. They promised tax cuts that they were told were unaffordable. They told New Zealanders before the last election that they would be better off. Now they can’t afford them and who do they expect to pay the bill? It’s going to be future women, women who will no longer have their pay equity claims addressed. In fact, they won’t even be able to take those claims up.

This just goes to show where the priorities of that side of the House lay. They were more than happy to give $2.9 billion to landlords, more than happy to give the tobacco industry a tax break, more than happy to pay out tax cuts that they were told were unaffordable and that would disproportionately go to those who were on higher incomes. Now what we see is that women are going to have to continue slogging it away in the workplace, earning less than their male counterparts, and it is wrong. And I do not resile from the fact that I’ve said previously that it is shameful—shameful for that side.

You know what really gets me, to every woman MP in this House, is that whenever we’re standing up at those forums—the New Zealand Parliamentarians’ Group on Population and Development (NZPPD), the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, the Inter-Parliamentary Union—any forum where women are expected to sit on the panels, women members of Parliament from across this House, including those in Government, are the ones that sit on those panels, stand up and do those wonderful speeches about things like pay equity in New Zealand, the claims that we have settled. They make wonderful speeches about representation of women in this House, but they are not the ones that have ever delivered for New Zealand women in any way whatsoever. They have always deprioritised the health of women, the working wages and conditions for women, the education for women, even representation in this House. Because of them, we’re no longer at 50 percent. So, please, I do not want to see the women in this House stand up at those forums—

Laura McClure: Point of order!

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Is it a point of order? Laura McClure—

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: What? Her feelings are hurt.

Laura McClure: Thank you, no, this is more of a personal reflection as opposed to the contents of the bill, to ask the Speaker to consider the relevance—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’m not sure that I heard any personal message from the speaker, so carry on.

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: And we heard from the member earlier that this is, according to that member, an emotional issue. Well, clearly it is to some. But I don’t want to deem it an emotional issue, because we’re not, on this side of the House, crying over what has happened here. All too often, when it’s a policy that involves women and women are outraged by it, it is referred to as something that’s emotional. Well, me being angry is not me being emotional. Me being angry for the women who have fought for these pay equity agreements, who have fought for fair pay—me being angry for the Māori and Pacific women who continue to be the people that are paid least in this country is me being angry for the right reasons, actually, and it’s not me being emotional.

We, of course, are opposing this, and we are absolutely shocked with the process that we’ve seen here. They have announced it today and brought it here in urgency to go through all parts, with no ability for the legislation to be interrogated by the general public, let alone women, who this is going to affect. This is a shameful way to conduct business as a Government, and so they should be ashamed. This bill is going to take progress back for women by decades. This bill is not only going to be bad for women, but it is going to be bad for their families and for their children.

This is a reflection of a Government who do not support workers, who do not support women, who do not support children, who do not support New Zealand families, and we need to be clear and make sure that we got that on the record. We will not be supporting this bill, and I will not apologise for being angry about it.

I think we just need to go back to first principles of this legislation, the Equal Pay Amendment Bill, for those who might have just tuned in. I reflect on the explanatory note, which is always a good start: “The purpose of this Bill is to achieve a better regulatory framework for parties to a pay equity claim to assess whether there is sex-based undervaluation, by ensuring that there are: a robust process for raising claims; clarity on the appropriateness of comparators to assess sex-based undervaluation; sustainability for employers to meet their obligations; and the right incentives to encourage parties to resolve pay equity claims.” Then we go to the legislative statement—and, again, it’s important to stick to the narrative around this legislation inside the bill and inside the legislative statement—“[This] Bill maintains a process to raise and resolve pay equity claims, while ensuring that the process is workable and sustainable.”

As others have articulated, the National Party has a proud record on pay equity. It was the National Government, as others have mentioned, that made a $2 billion settlement back in 2017 with the care and support workers. It was National also who introduced the bill to formally legislate for pay equity in 2017. Labour decided not to progress that bill in 2017, when they came into office. The changes we are making through this bring us closer in line with that original 2017 bill. In fact, we look back even further to the landmark legislation of the day, which was the Equal Pay Act 1972, which aimed to eliminate sex-based discrimination. Now, it’s 1972. This side of the House here will jump to the incoming Norman Kirk Government, but can I just finish with this: it was the Jack Marshall National Party that saw this bill through the House in 1972. It achieved Royal assent and had a commencement date of 20 October 1972, with the Labour Government elected on 25 November 1972. National has a very proud record in this area, and we will continue to.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. This bill is good evidence that we have a two-faced Government. With one face, they tell Kiwis that they’re going to put more money in their pocket. They tell them that there is a cost of living crisis and they are going to do the right thing. The very words of Nicola Willis in this House were that she said she was proud to stand in this House and say that National support the final reading of the Equal Pay Amendment Bill and that she’s proud to be part of a party that’s contributed to crafting the legislation. Whereas today, in this House, we unpick the very fundamental fabric that gives women a fair go.

I don’t think that the National Party have fully thought through the consequences of what they’re doing today, because this will come with ramifications. This will come with the women of New Zealand standing up and saying, “We do not accept a Government that puts us second. We do not accept a Government that takes money out of our pockets, that makes it harder to feed our children, that makes it harder to buy shoes for them in winter, and that makes it harder for us to pay the rent. It wants us to work longer hours for less money because we are women.” And that is not fair.

This bill signifies the devaluation of women’s work in New Zealand. It sends a message politically and socially to our women and our communities that their work is not valued and that this Government does not value their work. It ends active claims to make pay more equal for women. In fact, it starts right from scratch with those 33 active claims being scrapped. Those women who have been waiting to receive the pay they deserve for the hard work they do, this Government has told them today that they have to go back to the start of the queue, and they’re going to shift the goalposts so it will be even harder for them to receive the pay they deserve. The truth is, while we’ve had the words from one face that, “Oh, we’re going to make this more robust. It’s got nothing to do with the Budget. We’re just going to make it a bit more robust.”, the reality is that the new law and this bill raises the bar for evidence required to prove historic undervaluation for women’s work. Many roles traditionally held by women, like caregiving, nursing, support, and education roles, have complex histories where direct evidence is difficult to find. This bill makes it even harder to find.

The next reason is the narrow definition of comparator jobs. New rules limit the ability to compare women’s work to better paid, male-dominated roles straight away making it harder for women to prove that they should be paid a fair wage, and it’s shameful. Without these comparisons in place, it is harder to show that women’s work has been undervalued just because it is a female-dominated profession. It places financial barriers for workers. Gathering the stronger evidence now required, like historic wage data and independent job evaluations, will be expensive and more difficult to prove. Individual workers and small unions may not have the money or even the expertise to compile the sophisticated cases that are now needed to do this. They have made it harder for female workers to get the pay they deserve, and that is unfair.

David Seymour today has applauded Brooke van Velden for finding billions of dollars just weeks out from the Budget, when it’s most needed. Those are the words used out there on the tiles today, while the Prime Minister has said it’s got nothing to do with the Budget. The reality is this Government borrowed for tax cuts. They borrowed for tax cuts they could not afford in order to get them votes. Now, who is paying for those tax cuts? Who is paying for the inability to make the Budget balance? It is women workers, who do not get pay for hard work. It’s absolutely disgraceful.

We have members opposite who don’t even know what pay equity is, let alone what it stands for. This is a dark day for women in New Zealand, who once again have been put to the back of the queue by a Government that doesn’t care about them and that is more interested in making sure that landlords and tobacco companies get a back pocket pay, but not those women who look after the very fabric of our society. Those ones that are working hard just to be able to see their family before the sun goes down, you just made their lives a whole lot harder and a whole lot more difficult to feed their families. You’ll reap the rewards come election day.

Madam Speaker, thank you. I rise to take the last call in this first reading for the Equal Pay Amendment Bill. Look, I think it’s fair to say that the National Party has a proud history of supporting pay equity. It was a National-led Government that first introduced the bill to legislate a pay equity system, and we still support pay equity.

The Government is now committed to addressing sex-based discrimination in the workplace, and we’re amending the Act to make the process more workable and sustainable. As our colleague the Minister Louise Upston said, this is not about a collective bargaining tool or where wages are low; it’s about a clear framework to assess where pay discrimination is as a result of gender. It is the Government’s view that the previous system became too wide and unsustainable, and we are now correcting that.

This is about pay equity. We support pay equity, and we applaud the work that Kristine Bartlett did in this, and we’ve always done that. The Opposition can dramatise this all they like today, and they will, but this is a pragmatic approach to a clear framework, and we support the bill.

This bill is set down for second reading immediately.

Second Reading