Equal Pay Amendment Bill

Members, the House is in committee on the Equal Pay Amendment Bill. We start with the debate on Part 1, which is clauses 4 to 49, “Amendments to Equal Pay Act 1972”, and the Schedule. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I wish it was a pleasure to take a call in this debate, but it is absolutely shocking to be in the position of being in a committee stage where the Government is looking at making significant changes repealing rights for women and the bill has only been available to us for less than a few hours. So absolutely shocking to be here.

I wanted to ask the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety why she decided to take away, through this legislation, the rights of women to be able to take equal pay claims. This is in relation to Part 1 because in Part 1 we have one of the most significant changes to the Equal Pay Act, as we know it, and that particular change is to change the workforce requirement to 70 percent. Now, we’ve heard many comments in this House around the fact that allegedly this bill, according to the Government members, is not taking away the rights of women and is not making it harder for them to take pay equity claims. I ask the Minister: how does she reconcile that with this specific clause which requires 70 percent of the workforce, which is a higher number than previously required, in order to take a pay equity claim? Does she not think—and if so, what evidence was provided to her—that a workforce of 60 percent or a workforce, indeed, of 50 percent or 50 to 60 percent would not be predominantly female?

The other thing that I want to know is that there is a requirement here that this has been—in clause 4(2)(b)(ii), that that “has been performed by a workforce described in [the immediately preceding paragraph] for at least 10 consecutive years immediately before the date on which the claim was raised”. Now, I cannot see a reason for the inclusion of these restrictions, apart from to solicit fewer pay equity claims in New Zealand, and thus fewer low-paid women are able to take pay equity claims, and thus fewer low-paid women receive recognition from being in female-dominated work that has been historically undervalued. I can see no other reason for that. I would like the Minister to elucidate, if—allegedly it is the case, which I do not believe for one second—this bill is allowing pay equity claims to go ahead, why has she put in those two criteria that objectively make this much harder? I, in fact, intend to table an amendment on this which would remove the requirement for 10 consecutive years.

So I want to know from the Minister: what advice did she receive on that and what is the purpose of these two clauses which, on any objective basis, from any ideological perspective, make it harder for low-paid women in female-dominated work to take pay equity claims? I think I know the answer to that, but I’m interested in the Minister’s response to that. I think the answer is the reason they want to make it harder is because they don’t want to pay out pay equity claims, and they want to have that money—that was set aside for low-paid women who deserve to be paid what they’re worth—available to use for other matters which are not low-paid work of female employees.

I want to ask the Minister, because we haven’t had a select committee stage to be able to hear from members of the public on this bill, what does she say to a young mother that I met last week at the Maranga Ake protests who is a care and support worker who was seven months pregnant and is on the minimum wage? I would want to ask the Minister: what does she say to that woman who is on the minimum wage, who was speaking at that protest about how important it is for her to have her pay recognised as part of the equal pay claim that she’s a part of? What does she say to her when, today, she is extinguishing that settlement and she is not allowing that to go ahead on the same basis? Only making that much harder and much less likely that that young mother, about to have a baby, on the minimum wage, is going to receive any pay equity settlement anywhere in the near future for her work. So what does the Minister say to that woman and many other people who have not had the opportunity to provide submissions to a select committee in this process?

Thank you, Mr Chair, and I thank the member Camilla Belich for her contribution. One thing I do want to make clear right from the start is that we are not taking away a pay equity regime. We still maintain as a Government that we wish to not see discrimination based on sex. That is why the pay equity system will still remain in place.

However, there are some changes to be made, and the member touches on two: we are putting in place a threshold of 70 percent female-dominated occupation, and also that in order to take a claim you’d need to have 10 years of being at 70 percent female domination in the workplace. This change provides greater confidence that the pay equity process is identifying situations where there may be sex-based differences in the pay of work predominantly performed by women. What we’ve seen under the previous regime’s pay equity system is that there has been a muddying of the waters between labour market forces, other things like inflation and Consumers Price Index, and some sort of conflation of collective agreements and pay equity and systematic discrimination based on sex.

What we are aiming to do here is make a robust, workable bill that goes back to the original intention of pay equity: that it is genuinely about sex-based discrimination. Tightening that threshold will make sure that it is better to prove genuine sex-based discrimination.

What I would say to the young mother—and I thank you for bringing this example—is I very much thank her for the work that she is doing. Caring and supporting people who need it is a wonderful thing to do with your life. What we want to ensure is that for everybody who wishes not to see discrimination for the work that they do based on their sex, they can genuinely say that the claim that they have received is to extinguish sex-based discrimination, and that is what this does. This Government is committed to extinguishing that sex-based discrimination in pay equity.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I have spent my afternoon—since I have found out about this particular bill going through—going through the different clauses of this bill. So before I ask my first question of the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, I just want to outline how I intend my prosecution at this stage—the committee of the whole House—to proceed and then I will ask the Minister my first question.

So what I’ve done is I’ve gone through the bill itself and gone through the different clauses and highlighted what I see are the most important parts to the different clauses, and then I have some questions for the Minister in the different clauses. Now, along the way, I know that I have some Amendment Papers that I want to talk to, but I know a lot of my colleagues here have Amendment Papers that they will want to talk to as well. So that’s what we have done. The reason that I’ve done it that particular way is because we haven’t had the select committee process.

I have to say that since this was announced, I haven’t seen my email blow up like I’ve seen it in the last few hours. That’s from people who are incredibly disgruntled around the process that has happened here. So some of the questions that I am going to ask are on behalf of people who would have normally come in to submit to that select committee process.

First off, I want to look at clause 4, and my colleague Camilla Belich did talk a bit about clause 4, because that is the clause that does talk about the relevant work that is performed by the workforce that is at least 70 percent female, so it’s increased that threshold. But it also talks about the work that has been performed by a workforce of that kind for at least 10 consecutive years before a claim is raised. I have some real concerns around this. I feel like this is fundamental to the attack that was talked about in the first and second readings of this bill, around that of women’s rights and workers’ rights. As my colleague said, “Women that are in workforces that have 60 percent, does that not count as a female-dominated workforce anymore? Obviously it is.”

So my first question puts both of those areas together, the percentage of women in the workforce and also the consecutive years. That question is around: what happens to a workforce that is performed by 65 percent of women for nine years that has pay equity concerns in it?

Now, this is the ridiculous situation we have here. Obviously, all of us in this Chamber would say there are concerns around that that need to be addressed—65 percent female-dominated workforces have been an issue for nine years with pay equity concerns. Do they not deserve a path to pay equity? Surely the answer isn’t to say, “Well, no, because they’re 5 percent short of that 70 percent threshold.”, or, “No, they have to wait a year.” To me that seems ridiculous, Minister, and is that what you were aiming for, to make it so hard and so difficult to raise a claim that those workforces—and they will exist—would not have a pathway to a pay equity process?

It’s a very serious question that came through from a number of people today to me very, very concerned about the changes that have been made. They see themselves in a female-dominated workforce but suddenly they’re looking at this legislation and not seeing a place for themselves and seeing themselves marginalised even further. If that’s what you meant, Minister, then that is a massive concern for this country and an absolute change to labour law of the likes we haven’t seen for many, many years.

I thank the member the Hon Jan Tinetti for her contribution. There’s been a number of points made within her contribution about time periods and the threshold moving from 60 percent to 70 percent for female-dominated occupation. One thing I want to make clear is that part of the reason why we have made these changes is that we are moving away from having arguable claims, to claims that have merit, which means that there must be an evidential basis for sex-based discrimination. I think that’s really important, because to make a claim—which is a very serious claim—that you’ve been discriminated against on the grounds of your sex is quite serious. So there needs to be a justification for this claim. What we’re saying is that there needs to be evidence that you work in a predominantly female workforce for 70 percent, that there needs to be a time period in which to justify or find a basis of evidence that you have been discriminated based on your sex.

Part of what we’ve done here is we’ve also moved from having it as just a historic sex-based undervaluation, to suggesting that in order to bring a claim, you need to have historic sex-based undervaluation and current sex-based undervaluation. That’s where this threshold for having 10 years makes sense, because if there is a justification and an evidential basis for sex-based discrimination, that needs to be able to be proved over a period of time, which means there is a time frame.

In terms of the 60 percent moving to 70 percent, there is always going to be arguments of where that threshold should be met. The National Party’s original intention when they introduced the law had a threshold of, I believe, 66 percent, which was lowered by the Labour Government down to 60 percent. It is also the case that having a 70 percent threshold is not out of alignment with what we’ve seen internationally. If you look at Manitoba, Canada, they also have a 70 percent threshold for sex-based discrimination.

So this will make it a more clear, a more robust, and a more workable regime. But, more importantly, it will actually become easier to justify, to find evidence, and to make a basis for sex-based discrimination.

I’d like to ask a very quick follow-up question to that. I didn’t really get an understanding there from the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety’s answer about the time frame—the 10-year time frame. There was a lot of talk about the percentage. So I’d like that to be addressed. But I want to know: as a Minister, you get lots of advice. What other options were presented to you, Minister, and what were your reasonings for going with the 70 percent that you did? I’m not convinced from what you’ve said, because I don’t know what else—we haven’t seen what else was presented to you. So I think it’s only fair that we have an understanding of, and the people out there have an understanding of, the options that you were presented with and why you chose not to go with those options.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to first pick up some of the questions that have already been asked, and this is with regards to clause 4, subclause (2), in terms of the definition. But I just want to check: in terms of the “predominantly performed by female employees”, what the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety has done is added a second part of the requirement where both must be met, which means 70 percent and 10 years.

I would also like to, I guess, push back on the Minister’s response that there are no clear guidelines, where the current section in the legislation which is section 13F of the equal payment Act actually does have a definitions framework of how they work because, again, what we are seeing is that we shouldn’t be using a blunt tool of 10 years. That’s very restrictive whereas there are various mechanisms in the existing legislation that already allow for that.

But I want to ask the Minister: what other evidence has she been presented with when determining the increase to 70 percent? The Minister made reference to Manitoba, Canada. That’s one example, one area. The world is kind of big; what other regions has she explore in terms of that, rather than just one particular area? I also wanted to check: what is the evidence for having 10 years? Because, again, we have no regulatory impact statement—there is no RIS. We have no idea what has been presented.

So, I wanted to check in also then with the Minister on this point. Two things: number one is considering other bills—again, no legislation operates in a silo—some of the bills that are also introduced make it easier for employers to fire employees. What are the chances of making changes in year 10 to reset the timer, so in that way it takes another nine years, 10 years, before this claim can be made again, is my first question. What are the risks around if employers are able to fire employees easily and you have an incredibly high threshold at 70 percent for you to fire or to make voluntary redundancy or whatever mechanism that is used to bring it down below 70 percent to say, “Oh look, it is no longer 70 percent anymore, it is 68 and 69.” Therefore, you no longer meet the requirement for this claim. “But then after two years we’ll bring it back up.” So what are some of the risks for this and have those scenarios been considered?

So those are the first questions I would like to ask the Minister for clause 4. Actually, I’m going to stop there because there are quite a few questions there, but there are going to be further questions I would like to address under the Purpose section. But I think if the Minister could respond: What other evidence has she been presented with other than Manitoba, Canada? Why has she decided to use “and” in (b)(i) and (ii)—that both criteria must be met and not just one of them? What are the risks of employers using various manipulation tactics to reset the timer on that? Because, again, this is a blunt tool that the Minister has just introduced. Finally, when determining that new definition of “predominantly performed by female employees”, what employee organisations, workers’ organisations, and unions has the Minister consulted with when determining that?

There’s a lot in those contributions, so I’ll just stick to one that I have heard from both sides of those parties, which is about the 10-year time frame and looking for more information. Look, the 10year time frame provides greater confidence that any differences in remuneration are due to sex-based discrimination rather than any differences that may present due to labour market conditions or the workforces.

The time has come for me to leave the Chair. The committee will resume at 7.30.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Members, the committee is resumed. When we rose for the dinner break, we were debating Part 1. Once again, the question is that Part 1 stand part.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ve got some questions about some of the parts of the proposal which seem to go utterly against the intentions of something like the ACT Party. My understanding is that in that party, there is a value given to a freedom to contract, and yet here we seem to have a whole lot of agreements that have been settled by people and they have gone through a process that would’ve been really expensive and would’ve taken a lot of effort and it would’ve been something that workers would’ve relied upon. We’re talking about people who can’t necessarily afford a great deal, because the nature of the problem is that they’ve been underpaid. They’ve done all that work, they’ve come to an agreement, and my understanding is that the proposal put forward by the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety is to jettison all that work, to basically break those contracts and agreements by overriding them in this piece of legislation.

My understanding is also that the Minister proposes to go on and say, “In these agreements that you make in the future, you will not be able to put a clause in the agreement which says, ‘We’ll settle this now, but we’ll review it as time goes on so you never fall behind again.’ ” Now, that, to me, seems like the most sensible thing you could possibly do as an employer. A good-faith employer says, “We’re not going to let this happen to half or more of our workforce again—never again, because, actually, people not being paid a decent amount is hurting them and it’s unjust, and we are not that kind of employer.” By making those agreements for regular review, that’s what they’re doing, and yet here I understand the proposal is that we’re not going to do that anymore. We’re not going to allow people even the freedom to make those kinds of decisions themselves about how they will manage a problem that’s ingrained in our society, that we’ve recognised as ingrained.

I also wanted to ask the Minister about the history of this, because, again, the same issue is in play, I think, of understanding in the context why this is so devastating for people. I had a mother who worked as a teacher in the 1960s. She was paid a quarter what the male standing next to her was being paid for the same job because she was paid as a single person and the male was assumed to have a family of four, and the rate was set to actually be for the family of four. So along come the 1970s, where my mother has worked her socks off and not been paid; there is a piece of legislation put in place which says you must be paid equally. Nobody really does anything—don’t notice, don’t actually act on that for quite some time. Then someone comes along with the bright idea of actually enforcing something in the law. They hard-won it—they absolutely hard-won it.

We come along as a legislature and we say, “Right, we are going to look at this again. We’re going to make sure this works in a different way—trust us. Trust us—this is what we’re doing today. We’re going to compromise your rights. We’re not going to let you all just go through the courts and make your decisions and get the court to look at this objectively and decide if you’ve been paid the right amount. But trust us: we’re going to put in place a formula that works for you and works for us because it was already a compromise.” My understanding today, Minister, is what you are doing is compromising on a compromise on a compromise, and you are again eroding the justice—sorry, Madam Chair; the Minister and the Government are again looking at eroding a fraction of the rights of the people involved here.

So I would like to know: was there any kind of historical analysis of the loss that actually accrued to the people whose claims are now being compromised again? Was there any advice given to the Minister of the actual amount of money that those people are out of pocket because they’ve been treated badly over years and years? And was there any analysis of what that did to the rest of us, who have to pick up the pieces, when women cannot save enough money for their retirement, because we know the stats—

The member’s time has expired.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just before the dinner break—and I am sure you know this, but I just want to remind people—I’d asked the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety a question around clause 4 and around the advice that was given that led to the 70 percent. What I really wanted to know was what other advice—because, as a Minister, you do get alternative advice. What was the alternative advice that was given, and why didn’t the Minister go with that? The reason I bring this back up is that we didn’t get an answer to that. Because we have no idea what advice was given to the Minister, I have actually written a tabled amendment in my name, to clause 4, that goes back to the 60 percent.

When we had that 60 percent threshold, we were successful in getting pay equity claims through, which tells me, in the absence of knowing the advice that the Minister saw, that things were working in this space, and are working. It reeks of ill winds, really, that the Minister has changed this purely—and I want to be convinced here otherwise—as a cost-saving measure, particularly when I see the comments that have been made today in the media, and I would think quite unfortunate comments for the Minister, on behalf of the Minister, saying this was all about saving billions of dollars. So I would really like to know what alternative advice was given to the Minister, other than that 70 percent threshold, and why did she not choose to go with that?

As I said, in the absence of that, I think we should be staying with the 60 percent, because we know that it has been successful to date. We know that we have seen successful claims go through. And I think, when you look at the successful claims of support staff in schools, of science technicians in schools, all of those claims that came through, we saw a change in those workforces. We saw that predominantly female workforce change for the better because of those successful pay equity claims. My concern is that raising it to 70 percent makes it much, much more difficult. I can’t remember the place—where was the place that the Minister had said—

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Manitoba.

Hon JAN TINETTI: In Canada—Manitoba. That’s right. All we’ve been told is that they have it in Manitoba, in Canada, and I just don’t think that’s a strong enough case for the 70 percent. So, please, I really do want an answer as to why we haven’t stuck with the 60 percent or other alternative percentages that the Minister would have got from her officials.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I also want to echo the sentiment of the previous speaker, the Hon Jan Tinetti. We did ask a number of questions to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety before the dinner break and did not receive an answer other than it would “give confidence”. I guess, from that, I want to ask the Minister: confidence for whom? It’s certainly not for the workers, who were caught by surprise by this particular piece of legislation. So if the Minister wouldn’t mind elucidating to the committee, what does she mean by confidence?

But just to remind the Minister again of the questions that we’re asking and the fact that we are having to ask these questions because there’s no information and no context for this bill and no analysis that we know of that’s been done. So we really need to know from the Minister what analysis has been done for this.

So again, going back to my questions for clause 4(2), I asked the Minister questions around risk and around cost-benefit analysis, both in terms of the 70 percent threshold but also in terms of the 10 consecutive years. What confidence does she have that employers and corporates aren’t going to manipulate the legislation in a way that will always not quite meet the threshold on year nine, for example? In year 10, they change the system a bit. Is the system going to be reset? It says 10 consecutive years, which means that a company could reasonably change the system in year 10 to reset the 10 consecutive years for them to start again from year one the next year, and there’s nothing that employees can do about it. I can see the Minister smiling, but at the same time, I don’t know. I genuinely don’t know if that is something that has been considered because that could, in all likelihood, like anything else, be a scenario that could eventuate. So could the Minister respond if that has been considered or if any other analysis has been done from a risk perspective?

I also asked the Minister who she consulted in terms of this particular legislation. Has she consulted with any workers’ organisations or unions on this legislation before introducing it to the House? And like the previous speaker, the Hon Jan Tinetti, has also mentioned, what other areas has she modelled this legislation on other than Manitoba, Canada? But that’s one part of my question.

I would like to ask a few questions, and this is more broadly around clause 6, under “Purpose”. Now, the purpose section has also fundamentally changed from the current purpose of the existing legislation, but I want to pick up on a few keywords in this new purpose section, and particularly I want to pick up on what the Minister means by “process”. The current definition is actually very clear in terms of the fact that there needs to be a simple process, whereas there’s nothing in here, there’s no adjective that gives me confidence that this process isn’t going to be increasing the blue tape and yellow tape of this Government and is going to make it a really complex and arduous process for people to claim pay equity or gender-based pay equity. I also wanted to check with the Minister—in light of the definition in replacement section 2B, inserted by clause 5—has she received any legal advice on whether the purpose section can potentially override the definition of clause 4(2) when it comes to the definition of “systemic” and “predominantly”? Again, one of the things that we have been talking about is the fact that the “systemic” has been presumed to mean 10 consecutive years and “predominantly” has been presumed to mean 70 percent, but has that been checked by legal to also suggest that people cannot challenge it? As the Minister would understand from statutory interpretation, the purpose may override other definitions.

Thank you, Madam Chair. There are a few things that I was going to say I find confusing about this piece of legislation, but I’m not personally confused. I worked for an organisation that championed pay equity and spent an awful lot of time working with comparators, working our way through a process that was very clearly laid out and was achievable at the end. But there’s something about what the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety has responded to in questions so far that doesn’t quite sit well with me. For those paying attention at home, or for those who have been listening to the two or three contributions that the Minister has made to date, she’s talked about sex-based discrimination. She said things like “if you feel you’ve been discriminated in your workplace”. It kind of reeks of this classic libertarian kind of concept of the unit of analysis being the individual, and that is completely at odds with what the pay equity legislation was designed to do, because it was about rectifying historical undervaluation of what tends to be woman’s work but is certainly not exclusively woman’s work.

If we look back at the history of that—suffice to say, a history lesson—there were two types of work in our economy, historically: the productive work that tended to be done by men and was therefore valued as such and paid accordingly, and reproductive work that tended almost exclusively to be done by women. Over the years, that work moved into types of occupations like nursing and caring and all of those things where women may have worked outside the home but were still involved in what was considered reproductive work, caring work. Throughout history, throughout the world, those forms of activity, those forms of genuine work, have always been undervalued. Hence the fact that in the same organisation in the 1960s or the 1970s, as Helen White has previously pointed out, two people could do the same work and if one was a man they would receive what was called a family wage, whilst the woman would receive tokenism, essentially, because she didn’t “need” to be paid. It’s the same sort of argument we hear when we talk about youth rates from this Government.

But as a modern society, as a contemporary society, we’re supposed to redress that. Those are antiquated, old-fashioned ideas. It’s taken years to try and address that. That’s why some perfectly, incredibly valuable work that’s skilled and has autonomy, that may have budget responsibilities, that may have life-and-death responsibilities, is still underpaid compared to what has been traditionally male-dominated work that doesn’t have near as much responsibility, or, arguably, doesn’t necessarily add as much value—you know, even if we want to be cut and dry about it in a productive economic sense.

So when the Minister talks about this as if it’s some sort of contemporary problem—going forward, she wants to see this rectified to make it easier—she’s completely denying and completely overshadowing the fact that we’ve still got a lot of work to do to even the playing field and to fix up that which has not been appropriately sorted. So to change the rules and to make the criteria so much more strict—so much more not even very well-thought-out or practical solutions to a problem—just defies belief, really.

Thinking about that and taking that into a contextual sort of background, I have several questions for the Minister. The first one, though, is that we have 33 current pay equity claims, so by virtue of the fact that we haven’t been through a select committee process and we don’t have a regulatory impact statement, can the Minister take us through all of those 33 existing cases? Can she talk us through the analysis and the advice that she’s been given on each of those, individually—about what the costs to the Government are, what savings the Government will make what workers and people—not just women but men who are now currently working in traditionally women-dominated fields, who are also getting paid an undervalued wage? I want to know more details about that, because without a proper process we’re flying blind, and it’s up to the Minister to provide that information, tonight.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to go through a few of the questions that we’ve had so far. Firstly, in response to the member Helen White, about why the Government is overriding settlements that have been made, I want to make it very clear to anybody listening that that is not what the Government is doing. Settlements that have been made are still valid. It is only the review clause that is no longer enforceable, and then the follow-on question is: why are we not allowing those review clauses? In many of these settlements, the short review period made it difficult to determine whether any remuneration differences were actually due to pay equity issues having re-emerged in such short time frames or, simply, too short-term labour market dynamics. There’s also the case that aligning the timing of reviews with collective-bargaining rounds risked conflating pay equity and collective-bargaining issues. They are distinct issues, and they address different issues, which is why we believe in having a 10-year review date.

We have been asked, also by Helen White, about the historical analysis of what women will be losing and why we’re compromising the system. It’s not the case. There is always going to be those settled claims—they’ll continue to be settled. There’s still a process for raising and resolving pay equity issues. The current settlements stand; they don’t lose any gains. But we are making changes to ensure that the pay equity process is workable and sustainable going forward, and that will be a better process, for all parties, to assess whether there is sex-based undervaluation when they’re working through that claim.

To the member Jan Tinetti, speaking to her tabled amendment, the changes that we proposed in the bill provide greater confidence that the process is identifying situations where sex-based differences in remuneration exist and remain. Of course, there is always going to be people who would want to change the threshold of 70 percent or 60 percent or 50 percent, 40 percent—you have to draw a line in the sand somewhere, and I believe that having the higher threshold of 70 percent makes us have greater confidence that the analysis that we’re seeing is based on genuine sex-based undervaluation. It makes sense that the higher the threshold is, the more likely it is based on genuine sex-based discrimination.

We’ve been asked, by the member Lawrence Xu-Nan, what evidence we have for changing the 70 percent threshold and requiring the 10 years. Look, I have wanted to make it clear—with the claims—that they can only be raised when there is sex-based discrimination, rather than differences in labour market conditions. I think those two changes to the thresholds go hand in hand to achieve better outcomes and more confidence in the pay equity system overall, that they are focusing on genuine sex-based discrimination rather than labour market conditions. And that’s going to be my same answer to that same question if we get it throughout the night.

There is also a question on risks of employers attempting to game the system for the new requirements. There is still an obligation under the law for good faith to apply, and dispute-resolution processes are available to all parties. If a union or an employee disagrees with a decision on whether or not the requirements are met, that’s not changing. There is also a question on who was, ultimately, consulted. I think that’s also quite clear today: that we have needed to move quickly to make the changes to the Act to ensure that it is workable and sustainable.

There is another question as to who this is giving confidence to, and I think that the answer to that is very clear: it gives confidence to people bringing a claim. It’s for employers, unions, and employees. We’ve also got a question about which other countries I have looked into, in comparison to other jurisdictions, rather than just focusing on Manitoba. New Zealand’s pay equity system is actually quite unique in terms of international comparisons. The UK and Ireland don’t allow multi-employer claims. They also don’t allow any claims to be made outside of a person’s or the claimant’s workforce—so we are very unique in that regard. Australia does allow multi-employer claims, but they are usually progressed through a different system—again, that we don’t have in New Zealand—which is the awards system. So it is actually quite difficult to compare ourselves internationally to what other jurisdictions do.

Thank you, I’m gratified for that. And just aware that this bill has just been foisted on us recently, so I’m wanting to make some relatively general comments, but largely around process. And the first thing I want to know from the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety is: where is the Attorney-General’s report? Because the departmental disclosure statement, under the heading “Consistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act”, indicates that there has been an assessment of the bill and whether it’s consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. So that advice has been provided to the Attorney-General.

Now, if you’re going to introduce a bill with an hour’s notice, then we should be seeing on the Table the advice on the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. And it is shameful that the advice exists and yet it has not been tabled. I want to know what the expert advice of the Attorney-General and the Minister of Justice is on this, particularly because there are changes to offences in this piece of legislation and there are retrospective provisions.

Now, you are a member of a party which prides itself, or purports to pride itself on, its adherence to the rule of law. And, frankly, to come to this House in this kind of haphazard way is absolutely contrary to the rule of law, particularly when you’re introducing retrospective provisions. I am appalled to see, when your leader is pushing a regulatory standards framework which talks about consultation, that there has been no Treaty analysis done whatsoever. It says here in the disclosure statement, “Due to ministerial time constraints”—the Hon Brooke van Velden was busy—“no analysis on whether the bill is consistent with the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi has been done.” Why not? Because we know many of our lowest-paid workers are Māori, and in terms of doing right by Māori and ensuring that they are paid appropriately—our wahine Māori are directly affected by this bill and the Treaty analysis was absolutely necessary.

I also note towards the end of the disclosure statement that this bill is retrospective, that is to say that under urgency—and to be perfectly honest, on this side of the Chamber, we don’t understand why it’s so desperately urgent—you are introducing a retrospective aspect, in particular—

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): The Chair is not introducing it.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Pardon?

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): The Chair is not introducing that.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Sorry, Madam Chair. The Minister is introducing a bill with a retrospective aspect. In particular, there are clauses in contractual agreements which are being struck down, namely review clauses. These are clauses which parties in many cases have reached by agreement. They have negotiated these review agreements—sanctity of contract is something that the ACT Party talks about all of the time, and yet here they are legislating away contracts that have been struck between the parties. The process here is appalling and I want to know why the Minister thinks it’s appropriate to retrospectively change contractual agreements.

And I guess the other thing in terms of that disclosure statement is: why was the Ministry of Justice not consulted around the criminal provisions? This is not a difficult thing to do. It is not difficult when developing policy—I see other ministries: the Public Service Commission was consulted, Health New Zealand was consulted, the Ministry of Education was consulted, Treasury was consulted. But when you are changing criminal offences, it is absolutely appropriate and necessary to take the advice of the specialist ministry, which is the Ministry of Justice. Clause 3.4.1 of the disclosure statement says, “No”, we didn’t consult the Ministry of Justice about those offences.

And then there’s this: in terms of regulatory quality, the standard of our legislation, rule number one, which David Seymour and his Ministry for Regulation trumpets, is consult with the people affected. Who was consulted? Why are you so rushed that you didn’t consult the people affected by this? We know that that Minister is allergic to unions, but why did you not talk to the Council of Trade Unions? Why did you not talk to the groups of workers who are currently negotiating these agreements? How is this good process? How can we pretend that legislation under urgency, with that shabby process, has any quality whatsoever?

Madam Chair, thank you. I do also have some questions to ask around the process. It’s a little hard to pin it to a particular clause in the bill, but it is important that we discuss this, given that we didn’t have a select committee process.

Now, in terms of the papers that were available to us when the bill was tabled, as the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety was beginning her speech introducing the bill this afternoon—so, literally, we couldn’t get our hands on the bill until after the Minister had started talking. But amongst them, we were able to come across this, or maybe I got it from a colleague. It’s the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s (MBIE’s) paper Reviewing policy settings, from March 2025—which is a pretty vague title, isn’t it? But it is all about this bill, and, in particular, it’s the Cabinet paper, or the MBIE paper, on the bill, and, in particular, I think we need to talk about the financial recommendations. We need to understand the costs and benefits of this bill that the Minister is bringing to us today, and it turns out that this particular report is just full of great big grey redacted paragraphs.

So I want to know what advice—now, obviously, the Minister is not going to tell us exactly what the advice was, because it’s all redacted. But I want to know what sources of advice the Minister asked for and consulted in terms of looking at the financial implications of this bill. We already know that the Prime Minister has said that it’s going to save billions of dollars for the Government, so that’s an interesting little bit of analysis we got from the Prime Minister and it’s a shame that we haven’t had any more elaboration on that yet. But in terms of the financial recommendations in the financial analysis, I want to know what financial analysis was done for the impact on workers. How much do we think that workers’ wages are going to be affected by this bill?

We need to know whether perhaps some anticipated pay rises will now be foregone because of this bill. In particular, I’m thinking of teachers, teacher-aides, and anyone who works in that space where there is a claim that is now being set aside and just abandoned. What’s the impact on their future income?

So that’s the first part of that question, and it’s the direct financial implications for the workers who are affected by this bill. How much are they going to lose out of their back pockets? Of course, we’re talking about future pay rises that will no longer occur now, but they had a reasonable prospect of getting pay rises because of the pay equity legislation and their claims. How much are they losing now because those claims have just been set aside? So that’s the first question.

But there is some other really interesting information around in terms of wages for women, and I want to know whether the Minister has taken this into account, as well. I have here a briefing paper from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. It’s an economic analysis of what happens when women’s wages are increased, and the particular paper is entitled The Impact of Equal Pay on Poverty and the Economy. Very roughly—very roughly—what it shows is that increasing women’s wages for every—I think it was an 8 percent increase. No, it was a 4 percent increase in women’s wages—let me see if I can get the numbers exactly right. Providing equal pay to women cuts family poverty “in half,”—now, this is US numbers, and it might be different in New Zealand—“falling from 8.0 percent to 3.8 percent.” So that’s over half in terms of family poverty—there was a cut of over half in family poverty when women get equal pay.

So I want to know in terms of the financial analysis that has been so blocked out in this report not just the impact on the workers but the impact on poverty in New Zealand. We know that pay equity tends to go to reward the lowest-paid workers. We know that that is money that would have flowed through to families. What is the impact in there? Did the Minister get advice on that as to how workers and their dependants, and broader issues like family policy are affected by the changes that she is bringing into effect?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I wish to take the time to answer a few of the questions received so far.

In response to Lawrence Xu-Nan, who asked about the legal advice I’d received through this process, any legal advice I receive is legally privileged, as is normal.

To Dr Tracey McLellan, asking about what analysis has been done on the costs or savings associated with the current claims and the changes to this law, this is Budget-sensitive information, which I cannot disclose. What I can say, though, is that pay equity claims have been concentrated in the public sector, and costs to the Crown have become significant. My policy changes will have a significant reduction in costs to the Crown.

There has been a question from, I believe, Dr Duncan Webb about the Attorney-General’s advice. I understand that the advice has actually been published on the Ministry of Justice website, as is normal. I understand it has been up for a little while this evening.

“Why has there been no Treaty analysis?” also asked Dr Duncan Webb. My understanding is that an improved pay equity system will still be available under this law, and I consider that it is consistent. Also from Dr Duncan Webb, there have been concerns about the retrospective impact of the bill. I consider that it’s important that all of the claimants are on the same playing field, rather than allowing for two systems to operate at the same time.

There is only, really, one element of the amendment Act that is retrospective. It is that the review clauses in existing settlements and employment agreements will become unenforceable. This is because the short three-year time frame in the review cycle does make it quite difficult to determine whether any differences in pay are due to pay equity issues having re-emerged over a short time frame or whether they are to short-term changes in the labour market.

I’ve also got another question here from Dr Duncan Webb, on why we didn’t consult Justice on changes in the penalties. The penalties in the Act are civil penalties, not criminal, and the new penalties are consistent with the existing penalties.

Tēnā koe, Madam Chair. This is my first contribution in the committee of the whole House stage. I have a series of questions for the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety that I’m hoping she’ll be able to answer, so rather than giving it as a speech, I’d like to just be able to put the question: I’ve seen a lot of reporting on the 33 claims that will be discontinued by this legislation but I haven’t seen a list of the 33 claims and which workers are involved in those. Does the Minister have such a list of the 33 parties who are the claims and who it affects? If so, can she share it with the committee?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m not wanting to step on what the previous member, the Hon Julie Anne Genter, was just asking; if the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety wants to answer, I think the previous member was wanting an exchange. I don’t have my glasses on, so I can’t quite see what the Minister’s face is doing—which is a terrible ageing thing! Would the Minister like to have the exchange with the previous member? Yep, I’ll come back later. Thank you.

I thank the Hon Julie Anne Genter for the question. Look, I don’t have the specific 33 claims in front of me at this stage, but I’m sure you can google a few and find them.

I will take the time also to answer Dr Deborah Russell. What financial impact will there be on workers? Look, I think it’s really important for us here not to conflate the two issues of collective bargaining and pay equity. When we’re talking about wages that people earn for the work that they are doing and whether or not that’s keeping up with the cost of living, day to day, year to year, with inflation, those issues should be addressed through collective bargaining and through settlements with employees through that avenue. The pay equity system is not about that. It is about sex-based discrimination of a historic and current nature. That is a very different question than to whether or not people’s wages year to year keep up with inflation.

Thank you, Madam Chair, for that. Always good to have those interactions between questioners and Ministers in a committee stage. I’ve got a couple of fairly short questions that I would like to put to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety. The first one is in clause 6. There’s a replacement section 13A, which is the new purpose. This is really just a drafting question that I have for the Minister. So it’s a replacement purpose for this part of the primary legislation—of the Act. It’s gone from being a purpose that is to facilitate claims to one that is “The purpose of this Part is to provide a process that facilitates the resolution of pay equity claims”.

So the question is: is that language purposeful? Is it on purpose that it’s important now that there’s some sort of policy change that what this part of the Act is doing is all about process, rather than the final result, if that’s why the drafting has changed? Because it did used to say that it was to facilitate—“(a) setting a low threshold to raise a claim”, and some more words, and “providing a simple and accessible process to progress a pay equity claim.”

I note why this caught my attention in particular is because in the recently passed Fast-track Approvals Act, the purpose of that Act, at section 3 of that Act, “is to facilitate the delivery of … projects”. And when the Fast-track Approvals Bill was going through the House, there was this word “process” in that purpose clause. Now, this piece of legislation is doing the exact opposite of that fast-track in terms of the purpose clause didn’t used to be all about process, it used to be about an outcome, and now it’s becoming about the process. So that’s my question—really a legislative drafting question—for the Minister.

Next question, moving on to clause 11, which replaces section 13F. It’s the “Meaning of has merit”. So “(1) A pay equity claim has merit if”—all these different factors. And you cross the page, and at subclause (2) there is “The reasons for historical undervaluation of work … are as follows:”, and there’s a list at subclause (2). What I’m interested in is at paragraph (d)(ii). That is that “(d) the nature of the work requires an employee to use skills or qualities that have been—(ii) regarded as not requiring monetary compensation.” It’s this phrase “regarded as not requiring monetary compensation” that I am interested in. I’m interested in this because that seems like quite a binary statement that something has never required monetary compensation.

I understand that in the context of the historical factors and how women’s work has been seen, it might be that it hasn’t been valued as much as other work, but there’s still been some sort of monetary compensation. So it might be that cleaners have been undervalued and many people might say, “Well, people do cleaning in their own households so it hasn’t, perhaps, required much monetary compensation.”—but rather than no monetary compensation. This seems like a higher threshold than is necessary, given the policy explanations that we’ve had during this debate so far. So could that subclause (2)(d)(ii) be regarded as not requiring very much monetary compensation or regarded as low value in terms of monetary compensation, or something to that effect, is my second question, and I’ll leave those two questions there.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for allowing me to take this call. What I want to cover now is just, perhaps, to carry on from my colleague Dr Duncan Webb’s questions around process. So, Madam Chair, you will note that the bill in front of us has two parts, and the Schedule is part of Part 1, and then Part 2 which is much smaller, and then, obviously, we have the title and commencement section. So there are relatively few parts for a bill of this magnitude. We have, as far as I can ascertain, only covered a few of the first initial clauses in the first part of this. I do have a lot of comments, and I know that other colleagues do as well, to make on Part 1, which is the substantive part. I also have nine tabled amendments in Part 1 and the Schedule, which I am hoping to be able to speak to as well.

But I also wanted to refer you to the Speakers’ ruling 125/8, which, essentially, allows—and this is what I’m intending to do in this call—to have wider questions in the instance that—and this previous example that’s in the Speakers’ ruling was urgency when there hasn’t been a select committee. So we’ve got questions for the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety that are relevant to the bill, of course—because otherwise it would be out of order—but may take into a few different sections, which I understand is permissible under this Speakers’ ruling. So that’s just flagging to you that it’s my intention to make some wider comments; it doesn’t mean I don’t have specific comments, but I do have some bigger questions initially.

Also, we have been somewhat inundated with emails, following the surprise tabling of this bill, from people who would have commented and submitted to select committees but have been unable to do so. So, obviously, we would be quite keen to highlight some of those. I will do, if I have time, one of those emails today on this.

But the question that I first wanted to ask the Minister, overall, is that I have seen, reported in the media, comments that have been made by the Hon David Seymour congratulating the Minister on this bill, and saying that she has saved the Budget and would save the Government billions. I wanted to ask the Minister to reflect on that statement and ask if she had any response to that, because, from reading that, I would say that it would be most New Zealanders’ perception that the reason that the Minister is implementing this bill is to do exactly what David Seymour has suggested, which is to save the Budget and also to save billions. So we have had some questions around the advice that the Minister has received around the savings of the 33 claims. I also understand that we are also waiting for the Minister to go through those 33 claims as well. I’d note from my own research that there are around three claims which are already settled. A question for the Minister is: how many of those claims have review clauses that will now not be able to be utilised because of the retrospective aspect of this particular bill? So I wonder if the Minister could follow up on those particular wider questions in relation to advice.

I also wanted to ask—there are people in this country, many of them are low-paid workers, who have spent years and years and a lot of time working on pay equity claims which will be extinguished as a result of this legislation that the Minister has put forward. I wanted to know if there was any transitional support in place for those people with existing claims in the system—those unions, those low-paid women workers. Has the Minister considered that? Has she been provided with advice on that?

Additionally, she referred to legal advice and said that that was privileged. Legal professional privilege exists to the person who the advice is provided. So it is within the Minister’s power to make that legal advice public. That is her prerogative as the Minister and as the person receiving the legal advice. I want to ask her: can she, please, make that legal advice public? We are doing the best we can to scrutinise a bill which is very detailed, which we have only had for a few hours, and we would very much appreciate to be able to do the best advocacy we can with the benefit of the advice that’s been received. Currently, a lot of the advice has been redacted within the departmental disclosure statement and we’re unable to comment on that. So, please, if she would make that advice available.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to seek a quick call to ask the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety a couple of questions around the topic that my colleague Camilla Belich has already explored. I’m really interested in the question around those low-paid workers with current claims in the system—or, basically, anyone with a current claim in the system who the Government’s currently in negotiations with. My question is: at what stage were they told that the legislation was going to change? I mean, I guess, from a natural justice perspective, I would have thought that they would have gotten a heads-up ahead of the Minister announcing it via press release. So my question is: when were the claimants to existing claims told, and when were the unions that were party to those claimants told? Was it just this morning? Did they find out via the media release? When did the Minister and the department inform them?

Thank you, Madam Chair. The Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety previously said that I could google the 33 claims, but I just want to reflect on the fact that there’s no select committee process for this bill. Every single worker involved or who could’ve been party to one of those claims would have an interest, probably, in the legislation that we’re debating right now in the committee stage, which was only brought to this House a matter of hours ago. The Minister has a number of officials behind her. Could the Minister ask the officials to provide a list of the 33 claims, if she cannot get them now, and table it so those of us in the Chamber can look at it?

Could the Minister also give us any advice she’s received about the number of workers in each of those sectors? It’s really vitally important for the debate today, because, presumably, if we’d gone through a normal process and there hadn’t been a rushed, urgent process, probably a lot of the unions and the workers involved in these fields who are going to be directly impacted by these legislative changes would’ve liked to come to the select committee and tell their stories and explain how this would affect them. They are being denied that opportunity because of the process the Government has chosen to take, so at the very least the Minister could turn to the officials behind her and get the information and provide it to us so we can talk about the real people who are affected by these legislative changes.

I also want to reflect on the fact that—and other colleagues have raised this—many of these claims had already been in process for years. Can the Minister tell us how many of the 33 claims that are being extinguished by this piece of legislation were close to being settled? Were they going to be settled in the coming financial year, in two years, in three years? How many of them, because we’ve had 10 claims already settled; 33 now having to completely start over, if they’re even able to. It makes it very clear in the legislative statement that they’ll be extinguished and that they may have the opportunity to recommence, but only if they meet the new threshold. I just think it’s worthwhile for the committee to be able to have this information in front of us.

I did do a quick cursory google; it is not immediately available on the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) website or in any one place, a list of the 33 claims. We know that 75,000 primary teachers are affected. We know there’s a large clerical and admin claim, and I believe the midwives have a claim. Thirty-three is a lot—that’s a lot of different workers. When we saw in the news today the Hon David Seymour and Prime Minister Chris Luxon saying this was going to save the Government billions of dollars, and David Seymour actually said this decision saved the Government’s Budget, I just—like, the reality is that the Government has chosen to deny probably tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of workers in female-dominated professions a pay settlement that they were due in order to save money, which means they will continue to be underpaid based on gender-based discrimination, or sex-based discrimination, as the Minister keeps saying. And for how long, because if it took four years to get to the point they’re at now and now the claim’s being reset—how many years is it going to be till they can maybe access some of this historical underpay?

In the legislative statement, it also says that back-pay will no longer be able to be awarded by the ERA. So what is the rationale for that, Minister? Could you tell us what the rationale is for denying an ability for the Employment Relations Authority to award back-pay? We understand that the parties could decide to negotiate back-pay, but if the ERA is no longer able to award it, like, where is the justice in that? Let’s say with your new process that people have gone through, it’s been determined there was historical underpayment because of gender-based discrimination, because of sexism, and you’re taking away a tool for people to receive compensation for the work that they’ve done and been underpaid for—just, please, I really, Minister, would love answers to all these questions.

Madam Chair, thank you. I just want to follow up on that first, and I’ll come back to some of my other questions. The issue of back-pay is really interesting because there have been people waiting in the queue. There are a whole lot of people this has happened to, and I’d like to know from the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety whether she accepts that they have been injured and they have lost out and why it would be appropriate for them now no longer to get back-pay if they’re found to have a legitimate claim in that situation, and what information she has been given about the actual money that we’re talking about. This is a loss to ordinary New Zealanders. Has she been given financial information about the liability that it looks like, going forward in the kind of pipeline of back-pay? How much money are ordinary New Zealanders losing out on—that the Minister is aware of—and has she asked for that information?

Related to that question is an issue, really, about—we talked about the issue of the review clauses going. I understood from the Minister’s answer that she was saying it was OK, because they could still bargain, and she didn’t want those things to blend. Well, with respect, they already did, because people would have made a bargain based on that fact. Even in the pay equity space, they would have been negotiating—and I did this for a job for a long time and negotiated things, and you’ve got eggs in different baskets; you’re making a deal which is a holistic deal. If you’ve got a review clause in it that means that things are going to be different in a few years, you’re not asking for the same basket of eggs. What has the Minister done or been advised with regard to the justice of the claims that have been made on the basis of a review that suddenly won’t have a review in them? They are a very different settlement by nature, and that has been done ignorant of the fact. Is there an estoppel?

I wanted also to ask about the opt-out clauses, because one of the things that’s happening here is that usually, for the sake of the fact these are expensive claims and they’re systemic in nature, they’ve been wrapped up in an industry. You’ve had a whole industry bargaining together, but now one of the proposals is that anyone can just opt out of them. Well, why wouldn’t they? If there’s been an expensive process go through and they’re about to be liable for money to pay forward, etc., why wouldn’t an individual employer just simply opt out? And will that render the entire process a complete waste of time for all those involved?

I still haven’t had an answer back about all of the cost to ordinary New Zealanders who have gone through this process so far. Is there an answer to that question? There would have been an enormous amount of money and resource spent in this situation. And then I’d also like to know about—and I did ask some questions about this, but I want to take you in a slightly different direction. I talked about the cost to women in terms of savings, and I asked for your figures—and I haven’t had an answer to that—but has she spoken to the Retirement Commissioner about this move? My understanding in our last meeting in a select committee with the Retirement Commissioner was that she was very concerned about the level of savings. If women continue to not earn at this level, because they are hampered by this—maybe they’re in the 60 to 70 percent group; they’re not even going to be seen as having merit anymore in their case, even though their wages are lower because they’re in a systemic situation. So, in that situation, is there an extrapolation? Is there a cost-benefit analysis here in terms of what it’s going to cost those women and the top taxpayer in terms of settlement?

I’d ask you also to consider this issue about the 10-year period. My understanding is that if you’ve got a settlement, tough; you’re out for 10 years. You can go back and review in 10 years’ time. What is the provision—and what is the way that the Minister has dealt with the fact—that, during that time, there’ll be no KiwiSaver contributions at the appropriate level? Say you’ve got a scenario—this is my scenario for the Minister. Madam Chair, I’m about to come to the end of my 20 seconds and I’d love to have another call to finish this. My scenario in this situation is that you have systemic discrimination going on and it’s happening now, and somebody has settled and they have to wait 10 years to have another look at this situation, because you have got rid of the review period that they put in. And they did that, so that’s probably impacted on the amount that they settled for, by the way. Then we come into the 10-year period and you find evidence that there has been systemic discrimination—I call it “abuse”—in that period, and all that time they should have had a KiwiSaver at a much higher rate if they’d been paid the right amount, if they hadn’t been discriminated against. What happens with regard to all the savings that have been lost in that time, and is the Minister proposing that that is just tough? Or is the Minister saying, well, the taxpayer should be picking up the bill—because they really do; if people have no savings at that point, or very little, it’s actually the taxpayer who ends up paying it. Is that the way this is supposed to go here? That’s what it seems, to me, to be doing.

The biggest issue here is: what evidence is there that the Minister has sought with regard to this? It seems to me, when I go through this very new piece of legislation, that I keep on coming across “a narrowing”, “a narrowing”, “a narrowing”, “a narrowing”, making it more expensive, making it more expensive, making it more difficult. Now, we know civil litigation is one of the most expensive processes, and what you’re dealing with is people who, by their very nature, are low-paid workers. If you do that process, if you have narrowed the gap so far, what do you intend to do about the low-paid women who, in fact, get lower paid as a result at the end of the period where they are working at all? Ten years is actually—we only, really, have about four or five of those, maybe, in our lifetime. That’s a long time to not have an accrual of the right kind of pay. And then you’ve got the issue that you’re not allowed to actually award back-pay anyway. So you’ve got a gap where you’re expecting people to be underpaid and then no back-pay. That just seems, to me, like having your cake and eating it too if you’re the employer in the room, because you don’t get the back-pay but you can’t take a claim, in any kind of ongoing way, to stem the damage done. That seems very unfair.

Now, I’d just like to ask you, also, about the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act report that has come in. We’ve only just seen this, and we’ve only just started to go through it. I’m sure my colleagues will have questions, but I can see that the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act report talks about the remedy for people being—that is supposed to save this piece of legislation—that they can go to the High Court for a breach of section 19 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. It seems to me, and you can tell me if I’m wrong—I appreciate I’m just whipping through this thing now, because that’s what we’ve got to do—what it’s saying is there might be a breach, but you can go to the High Court to sort that out. Is that the Minister’s understanding of that? That’s at paragraph 19 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act report. Is that the way that things are supposed to be sorted out? And, if that’s the case, is that an acceptance that there is a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act here? And, if that’s the case, how extensive is that? How possible is that for the ordinary human being?

There’s been a lot of writing recently on how where we’ve gone wrong in modern society is that we have loaded up processes. And I think I’ve heard echoes of this from the Minister’s parliamentary leader; that there’s supposed to be an issue with red tape. This looks like red tape to me. If you have to go off to the High Court, who’s going to do it? Only the rich. Your clinical psychologist might be able to do it, but your cleaners won’t be able to. I would like to know from the Minister: is this really something that she has considered? How practical is this pathway for a low-paid worker? And is this really a breach that she’s accepting happens but that that is the pathway for sorting out any breach? The same thing is true later. There’s a suggestion that this is saved by the High Court’s power of review. Does she accept that the High Court’s power of review is much narrower? It’s not a substantive right; it’s a different kind of right. And what kind of advice has she had on that? Madam Chair, just to finish—

The member’s time has expired.

I’ll take the opportunity to answer quite a few substantive items. Rachel Brooking had a question on why the wording changed from “facilitate” to “a process to facilitate” in the purpose clause. The word “process” was not the substantive change in this clause; the substantive change to the purpose was to require evidence of systemic undervaluation, and I consider that the amended purpose statement more accurately reflects the purpose of the pay equity regime in this part of the Act.

The second question from Rachel Brooking I believe relates to clause 11 amending section 13F(2)(d)(ii). The text has not changed; it has been copied over from the current Act.

We had a question from Camilla Belich about whether or not the Government is passing this law to save money. That is not why I have brought this bill. It has always been clear that there have been errors within the current system, which I am here to clear up, and the changes are being made to ensure that the pay equity process is workable and sustainable and that there is a better process going forward for parties to use to assess whether there is sex-based undervaluation when working through a pay equity claim. When it comes to comments that David Seymour has made, I think they’re very generous comments, but, ultimately, I guarantee that my reason, which is what I set out for the Prime Minister when I first came into this Government—that I wanted to do work in this area—still remains. I did want to do the work and I have done this work.

When it comes to the member Julie Anne Genter’s question about the list of the claims, I have asked our officials and I would also refer you back to Google and then back to the parliamentary website—

Hon Dr Deborah Russell: Oh, for goodness’ sake!

Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: Excuse me, I haven’t finished my contribution—back to Google to then find the parliamentary website, because I have answered the question in a written parliamentary question. So you need to find written parliamentary question No. 17121 (2025), and that, hopefully, should answer your question about having a list. I believe it is around 30 claims on there.

To the member Camilla Belich—I believe she also asked about whether I’d release the legal advice I had received—no, I will not be waiving my legal privilege.

Camilla Belich also asked how many of the settled claims have review clauses. All of the claims would, as the Act currently requires them to include review clauses. However, the short review periods made it difficult to determine if remuneration differences were due to pay equity or other short-term labour market dynamics.

Julie Anne Genter also asked how many claims were close to being settled. I actually don’t have that information. The changes are being made to improve the system rather than in response to any one individual claim. That’s why I’m progressing quickly: so that the new system can be applied to all of those claims once re-raised.

I believe Francisco Hernandez also asked a question about when existing claimants and the unions were told. I believe this happened today, by the agencies working on the claims.

Helen White also asked a question about why we are not having back-pay. We do need to make it clear that employers and employees may still agree on whether to include back-pay in a settlement. What this bill removes is the ability of the authority to award back-pay to incentivise employers and employees to resolve claims between themselves, rather than seeking an authority determination.

Helen White has also asked which parties agreed to settlement with review clauses, and whether or not it’s fair that those ones have been removed. I think part of that previous answer reflects the same answer here, but it’s also the case that the review clauses are not meant to be a way to bargain further increases. The settlements should only be reviewed and changed if pay equity and sex-based discrimination issues reemerge.

I think Helen White may have also had—Oh, I’ve run out of time.

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): I call the Hon Brooke van Velden.

Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: Thank you, Madam Chair—I’ve just got one further. Helen White also asked: why wouldn’t an employer opt out of a pay equity claim? Employers may decide to bargain together if a multi-employer pay equity claim that was raised aligns with existing bargaining structures. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. A couple of things that I wish to pursue in this more general note. Firstly, we have asked the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety for the list of the 33 claimants. The Minister has said quite confidently that there are 33 claimants. One would expect that the Minister’s officials would have that list of 33 claimants. And I’m afraid it’s not satisfactory to tell us to go google it on such a critical matter. So I’m just deeply disappointed that that was the Minister’s answer. I’ll leave it at that, but, heavens, if that’s the standard we’ve come to with Ministers in this Government, they don’t deserve to be there for all that much longer.

I want to go back to the matter of the savings, and the money. We’ve had this very interesting phrase from the Minister for Regulation, the Hon David Seymour, and the line that he actually said was “I actually think that Brooke van Velden has saved the taxpayer billions”. That’s interesting, but then it’s the next one that’s really interesting: “She saved the Budget for the Government.” Now, the only way this could be saving the Budget for the Government is if this legislative change goes through in time for the savings to be booked, if the decisions are made before the Budget moratorium. That’s the only way it could happen.

And so that is why we are sitting here in urgency. It has nothing to do with outstanding claims that might need to have an overlapping period. That wouldn’t have prevented, say, a three-week select committee process. That is the flimsiest excuse I have heard. We could have even had a three-day select committee process, at least something to go through this. We could have had time to have gotten that list of 33 claimants. But, instead, it’s all being done, as far as we can tell, to Budget. That’s what’s been said by the Prime Minister, it’s been said by the Minister for Regulation, and yet the Minister in the chair has said, “Oh no—oh no, I didn’t bring it for those Budget reasons.” Well, the evidence looks very suspicious on that one.

So I would like to invite the Minister to come clean on that and admit that the reason that they are selling low-paid women out is to save the Government’s Budget. They are saving the Government’s Budget on the back of low-paid women.

I hadn’t thought I would stand so quickly after giving my last contribution, but I did want to respond to Dr Deborah Russell, because it’s very clear that she did not actually listen to my last response. I made it very clear in my last response that if she wanted to turn to Google, which she got very [Pauses] about, she could have found my written parliamentary question answer No. 17121 (2025) on Google. I ask the member to not continue to repeat that question.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This is my first contribution, at this stage, on this disgraceful piece of legislation. I have a few comments, and I have a few broader questions and some specific questions for the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety as well. I think it’s pretty clear why the rush. My colleague Dr Deborah Russell has outlined why the rush. Basically, the Minister herself said that this will lead to significant benefits for the Government, when it comes to balancing their books. Although Minister Upston, of course, was at pains to say that this wasn’t about saving the Government money, I think it’s pretty clear, from various comments that Ministers and the Prime Minster have made in this House, that that is not the case—it is about the savings; hence the rush.

The Minister has said in the House, in the media, and in her speeches that this process was brought about, really, to bring about a better systemic framework, a better process, a more robust process—but for whom, Minister, I ask. I want to also include a quote, given that we are bypassing the select committee process. A number of people will be impacted—150,000 people will be impacted by this change; a number of unions who’ve been taking claims will be impacted by this change—and I want to bring in some of their voices and ask their questions of the Minister. I quote a retired residential aged-care worker, who says, “We’ve been fighting for 13 years. To have the rug pulled out from underneath us now is unbelievable. We thought we were going to get there—this just removes our road to fairness.” Then she talks about the impact on jobs in sectors like the aged-care sector. She says, “This will make it even harder to get people working in aged care. People won’t go the extra mile anymore—why would they, if they’re not going to get paid fairly? This announcement is terrible for women and families now and in the future.”

Minister, I want to ask you: what advice have you received? What work, what modelling has been done in terms of the impact of this change which makes it harder for women, for low-paid workers, to access fair pay for their work? What impacts will this have on the sectors that were part of those 33 claims—or those that were about to settle—in terms of the job losses that we’re going to see there? That’s my first question to the Minister.

Now, when the Minister says, “This was better,” again, I say, better for whom? Who was consulted? Who has the Minister spoken to? While I absolutely agree that this disproportionately impacts women, and I agree with my colleagues who have said that this is a Government that is waging war on women—and low-paid women at that—it also impacts, I know, many men as well, particularly from our Māori, Pacific, and ethnic communities. I know many from my own communities who are low paid and working in the sectors that we’ve talked about, who will be done out of the claims that they have been working towards for many years. What analysis has the Minister done on the demographics? Who is going to be impacted disproportionately by this particular change?

I also want to point to members opposite, many of whom got up when they had to speak, read off their lines, and basically said that this was going to make things better and not worse. I point them to section 27, paragraph 21(b) of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet, which clearly says—many of them said, “This doesn’t stop anything; it doesn’t stop pay equity claims.” Section 27, paragraph 21(b): “discontinues existing pay equity claims as well as any proceedings relating to those claims that have been started but not been determined.” So let’s put that to bed. Let’s not pretend that this is actually going to make things better when it’s going to make things so much worse for those who do incredibly difficult but important work.

My final question for now, Minister, is about the 65,000 care and support workers. Now, we don’t have the list of 33 claims. We know that, since 2022, claims have been progressing, or work has been progressing, on this claim. Thousands of hours have gone into doing this work and putting the claim together, processes that were already established previously. Those who’ve been part of this claim have messaged—emailed—us to say that they felt it was robust enough. So I’d like to know, firstly: where’s that claim at? Is that down the drain as well? Secondly, what was not robust about the previous process? Robust for whom, Minister? What changes in this—given that we’ve had the process laid out clearly, we’ve had significant milestones that many have had to reach, the Government could ditch those claims because they weren’t clear enough. What are you doing to make this more robust? Those are some of the questions.

I also do want to point out that those 65,000 care and support workers are across various sectors, like the mental health and addiction sectors, disability support services, the aged-care sectors I mentioned before—incredibly difficult work. They are now, essentially, working on the minimum wage, because the minimum wage has caught up. Now, given the years that they’ve been working—more than three years that they’ve been working towards this—where are they at? Now, Minister, I googled where they had ended in terms of their claim proceedings, and what I have found out is that, basically, in June last year there was a claim that was filed with the Employment Relations Authority for a determination to be made. Is that also down the drain now? Do they have to start from scratch in terms of the work that they need to do?

Another question that I had for you, Minister, is one that has been asked before but that has not been addressed or answered at all, and that is: in consideration of the changes that have been made through this bill, what are the other options that were put to the Minister? What are some of the options that you were working with before you landed on this, on making it harder for low-paid workers to actually get a pay equity claim by changing the threshold and bringing in the 10 years as well? I’d really like to know what some of those options were, and I will leave it at that for now.

Tēnā rā koe e te Pīka, otirā tēnā rā tātou e te Whare. Tāku patai—my question—to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety is specifically around Treaty obligations and Te Tiriti o Waitangi in relation to this legislation, and particularly looking at some of the Wai claims that have come out of it.

In the departmental disclosure statement, it says that it had a question around: “What steps have been taken to determine whether the policy to be given effect by this bill is consistent with the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi?”, and it basically says that there’s no analysis of whether this bill is consistent with that. That’s a huge issue, because we have the Mana Wāhine claim, Wai 2864 and Wai 2700, which has been ongoing since 1993.

Just going back to the amendment bill, in new section 13E(6) in clause 10(4), it specifically says as to whether a pay equity claim can be “raised within 10 years after the date of a pay equity settlement”, when we’ve already been waiting 32 years for this Mana Wāhine claim that 16 wāhine have taken to account. So I’m just wanting to know whether the Minister has had any engagement with this Wai claim specifically and with these wāhine, and how the bill will affect this specific claim and wāhine Māori, knowing that the data from 2018 in the Ministry for Women shows that the pay gap for Māori wāhine is 18 percent higher, compared to the national pay gap of 9.4 percent, and the same figures show that Māori wāhine face an unemployment rate of 11 percent compared to the national rate of 4.5 percent—given that data. So has there been any engagement with this claim that’s been ongoing for 32 years, and will this have any effect on the Mana Wāhine claim of Wai 2864 and Wai 2700?

They’ve also recently done a contemporary economic report that shows the evidence of what wāhine Māori have faced economically since 1990 and 2020, and Dr Duncan Webb has also brought this up. The Minister also hasn’t answered anything around other obligations under Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and I’m specifically asking with regard to these Wai claims: has she taken any consideration of how this will affect these Wai claims and the data that’s been presented?

Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Thank you, Minister, for giving us the correct answer to a written question so we can look at the list of the sectors that are affected by this decision today. What I feel compelled to stand up and note about this is we’re talking about teachers, support workers, youth workers in residential schools, education service education advisers, psychologists and service managers employed by the Ministry of Education, early learning teachers, tertiary education library assistants, public service administration and clerical workers, Corrections psychologists, social service workers, care and support workers—there’s two different claims—front-line managers and coordinators in the health system, Plunket admin and clerical workers, Plunket nurses and clinical workers, community midwives in primary birthing units, hospice nurses and healthcare assistants, primary care administration, primary care nurses, Access community nurses, lab tests—so the people who draw our blood—nurses in residential care.

And pretty much of all of these—and I haven’t even listed them all, right—the vast majority, according to the written answer that was provided, are overwhelmingly female. And all of their claims have just been cancelled or are about to be cancelled by this legislation. They’ve gone through years of work to try to establish a case that was arguable. And it’s very, very clear that they’re definitely female dominated.

So when the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety comes and brings this legislation which in clause 4 says it’s really important to change it to say that the work is performed by a workforce that is at least 70 percent female, that would apply to the vast majority. In these cases it’s like 86 percent female, 97 percent female, 99 percent female—early intervention teachers. It’s 73 to 96 percent female across the universities, 83 percent female across all affected employees in clerical and admin, 71 percent female in social service workers, 96 percent female in Plunket nurses and clinical, community midwives 99 percent female. So all of these claims which are going to affect hundreds of thousands of people in New Zealand, the vast majority of them are women. The Minister could say, according to this legislation, “Well, we had to change it to make it more workable, so we’re going to change it to 70 percent.” But the Minister is stopping—the Government is stopping the claims. They’re going to have to start over.

So, effectively, the point of this is to delay access to pay equity for hundreds of thousands of people in this country in order to save this coalition Government billions of dollars in their Budget in two weeks. There is no other plausible reason for this legislation to be going through under urgency tonight, other than putting off the costs to the future. But the cost is real for those hundreds of thousands of women who are our teachers, our nurses, our midwives, our care and support workers—the people looking after the elderly and dying. This Government is giving them the finger and saying, “We’re going to make them wait and put years—years—more into waiting for a process to deliver pay equity.” It is shameful. It is disgraceful. And then try to claim that this is just about making the process more sensible. If this Government had the courage, they would take it to a select committee, but they aren’t, because the whole point of this is actually deferring the cost to save money in the Budget.

Hon David Seymour: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I’m sure the very experienced member well knows that to accuse a member or a Government of lacking courage, and also to imply that they are misleading the House because their true motives are different from those stated, is out of order and disorderly.

Hon Member: Sit down

Hon David Seymour: And rather than telling me to sit down, that member might like to hear points of order in silence.

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Speaking to that point of order. I think that particular member has misheard the contribution that my colleague has made. There was no accusation of misleading and also no accusation of an individual member’s integrity. Yes, you can actually criticise a Government.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Yeah, just taking that point on note. I also didn’t hear an individual reference in the one that was declared, but we can go through Hansard afterwards. I will call on the Hon Julie Anne Genter to finish her contribution.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: And thank you very much for the contribution from Minister David Seymour, who was very honest on the news and said that Brooke van Velden, the Minister, was saving the Government’s Budget. The cost is borne by these women who’ve spent years—and it does affect men in these sectors, but predominantly women, overwhelmingly women, as is made clear by the information that we had to go dig around for to find out exactly who’s affected. They are the people who are doing some of the hardest and most important work, looking after health, looking after education, looking after people at the end of their lives, looking after people with disabilities. And this Government is saying, “We’re going to put more hurdles in place and just completely cancel the years of work that have been put in already to rectify gender-based discrimination that affects these workforces.”

The real irony of all of this is that if the Government actually wanted to support the economy doing well, one of the easiest ways to do that is pay our lowest-paid workers more money, because they can spend more money. They immediately spend that money. If you give tax cuts to landlords, do they invest the money? No, they just use it on their yacht or their next overseas trip. But when you give care and support workers or nurses more money, it means that they can buy more food and they can actually spend money and maybe even go out to dinner once in a while. Maybe have the kind of nice meal that Mr Seymour has in his electorate while he slashes cuts by giving people disgusting, wasteful lunches—corporate welfare but more waste. That Minister is the “Minister responsible for more waste” from school lunches. I think it is fantastic that he’s been so honest in the media and made it so clear and transparent why we’re debating this bill under urgency.

But let’s bring it back to the hundreds of thousands of workers doing important, valuable work, who’ve put years into a process which now they’re going to have to start over for. I think the Minister needs to stop pretending that this is about fixing a process up, because if it were about fixing a process up, it wouldn’t be going through urgency two weeks before the Budget.

Just before I take the next call, I do want to refer members to Speakers’ rulings on unparliamentary language, 55/1 down to 55/4, where it is possible to criticise the Government; that is the role of the Opposition. However, 55/4 states that “A member may not (1) impute improper motives to the Government; (2) suggest that the Government has received orders to put a bill through; (3) impute dishonesty to the Government; (4) suggest domination by outside bodies.” So it’s about that outside influence, I think.

Thank you. I’ll make sure my contribution is brief. I wanted to take the chance to respond to some of the questions. To the member Helen White: we had a question about how practical it is that there is another pathway for resolving a breach—e.g., going to the High Court. Employees still do have the ability to resolve issues under the Human Rights Act or through the Employment Relations Act. I would also note that the acting Attorney-General has considered the bill and has decided it appears consistent with the rights and freedoms affirmed in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

Helen White also asked, “What if women become underpaid during the 10 years before they can re-raise a claim?” There does have to be a period of time that has elapsed before determining whether a pay equity issue has re-emerged. I consider that applying a 10-year limit before a claim can be re-raised will better enable parties to determine whether any of their concerns about pay reflect the re-emergence of sex-based undervaluation or whether it’s due to other market factors.

We had a question from Priyanca Radhakrishnan asking what wasn’t robust about the previous process. The settings of the current Act have caused problems, particularly the low entry threshold, limited tools for employers to contest broadly scoped claims, and insufficient requirements for comparison choice and comparison methodology.

I’ll just give you a couple of examples. With the DHB allied technical claim, it had over 90 different occupations which represented a very broad and diverse workforce. Another example is that quite often the same comparators have been used repeatedly, such as corrections officers and fisheries officers being used across many claims, even though those claims have substantial differences in their working environments.

Priyanca Radhakrishnan also asked who had been consulted. It’s quite clear that we moved quickly to make the changes to the Act to ensure the system is workable and sustainable. Priyanca Radhakrishnan also asked if current proceedings are discontinued. Yes, I did answer this one before. Proceedings before the authority or the court will be discontinued if they commenced before the commencement date.

Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke asked if I have had any interaction with wāhine involved in the Mana Wāhine Treaty of Waitangi claims. No, that is a very separate process to this bill and so that process continues unaffected by this bill.

Julie Anne Genter has also asked if all of the work and the effort on the claims to date will be lost and why. Not necessarily. If a claim is re-raised in the new system, the claimants can re-use some of the existing information where it is relevant.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I note that some colleagues on the other side are wanting to make contributions. I look forward to some substantive contributions because there is a lot more to go on in Part 1, boy oh boy! So much more stuff to go on in Part 1.

I wanted to—just because there is a different Chairperson in the Chair at the moment—just remind the Chair that previously when there was a previous Chair, I did refer to Speakers’ ruling 125/8. I also refer the Chair to—[Interruption] Take a call, Mr Court, if you’re interested. We’ve got lots of energy to discuss this. It’s a very important matter. So 127/1 is also a relevant Speaker’s ruling because it looks at when the House is in urgency, when we haven’t had the chance to view the bill, and there’s no public submissions, there’s a more fulsome debate. So I want to continue to make some overall comments on this bill.

I do have a very important question to start off with for the member. The care and support settlement was originally settled in 2017, and a lot of work was done by the previous National Government on this, and also the mental health support workers claim was settled in 2018. What happens to those claims? I’ve heard her answer around the authority, but what I want to know is a very specific answer as to when those claims that may have an argument to say that they were settled in those years will be able to be introduced. Is it after Royal assent of this bill, or is it at 10 years past the date at which they’re originally concluded? So that is a very genuine questions that I look forward to hearing the answer to, and I know there are a lot of care and support workers watching this debate who are interested as to what the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety’s answer might be on that.

Speaking of care and support workers, and in line with the Standing Orders that I have just mentioned, I have had people, as I mentioned before, email in comments. They’ve been unable to attend a select committee. So I think I would like to ask the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety what she has to say to respond to these people who are directly affected by these claims.

So the first person who I want to talk about is a woman called Marianne Bishop. She has been very active in the care and support world and has met a number of people in this House, I’m sure, on this side and that side of the Chamber, to talk about that. This is what she has to say about what has happened today: “I just can’t believe it. I can’t believe it could be done like this, I really can’t. I’m absolutely disgusted to hear about this announcement. It makes me angry as a woman and makes me feel like we’re going backwards. I thought about how long we’ve been fighting, 13 years; to have the rug pulled out from under us at this stage is unbelievable. It’s always been a struggle, but we thought we were going to get there. This removes our road to fairness. I’m frustrated. I’m annoyed and angry. The delays in our claim are one thing; stopping claims is another thing all together. It’s just demeaning to women. This announcement is terrible for women and families now and in the future. It devalues women workers. Apparently it’s now OK to pay women less for doing work of equal value. Women won’t have a leg to stand on. They’re just saying, ‘Shut up and do what you’re told.’ This is going to be terrible for the care sector. It’s going to be harder to get people working in that sector. People aren’t going to go the extra mile if they know they won’t be paid for it. I don’t think this Government values workers, full stop, but they definitely don’t value women workers or our struggles. We are already devalued, this is going to make it even harder.” I would like to know how the Minister would respond to Marianne.

I’ve also received another comment from another care and support worker. Her name is Tamara, and she’s also been active in this claim. She has said, “The announcement today makes the Government”—actually I won’t say that bit! “It’s 1,040 days since the care and support pay equity claim was filed. Why are we still waiting? We’re already disillusioned as it is. This makes it 10 times worse. This is absolutely BS. It’s going to completely screw the care sector. Why would you stay in a job when you get the minimum wage, if you’re lucky. Why would you? Why do our employers get to keep the profits that are made off the back of people who work? I challenge every single one of them to come and work for us, on our pay, with our issues, and then say why it’s a good idea that they can explain to us why we can’t have these pay equity claims. I’d like to see them live on our wages with the pittance we get for travel. I’d like to see them cope with getting assaulted at work every day. I, for one, have never voted for the coalition and I never will.”

I would like to ask the Minister, especially on that challenge from a care and support worker that we’ve just heard in the Chamber today, we actually did have the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner Judy McGregor when she was doing the study into the care and support sector, and she’s done a lot of work and I want to acknowledge the work that she has done in this area—she actually did go and work as a care and support worker and she did actually go and do those jobs, and she’s written about that and it’s been quoted in the Chamber earlier tonight. I want to ask the Minister: would she consider going and doing the work of a care and support worker for a day and then seeing how it would feel to be working on a claim to try and get pay equity when you’re working on the minimum wage for 13 years, and then have your claim completely extinguished by this Government? So I have that question to ask the Minister, as well.

I have another overall question to ask the Minister, which I do believe is very important. One of the first things she mentioned when she was talking about the changes in this bill is the change she is making to this legislation, to change it from “arguable” to “merit”. So instead of having the threshold of “arguable”, you have to have reached the threshold that there is “merit” within your claim.

I want to ask the Minister—because this is something that, when I have worked as a lawyer in pay equity claims, I thought was very important—what advice has she been given? It is very difficult to prove that a case has merit at first glance of the facts. Actually going through the pay equity process of looking at the claimant, looking at the comparators, actually seeing if there is a systemic undervaluation of predominantly women’s work is one of the major ways that you can establish merit. So what I want to know from her is: with this fundamental change—and it does come up in a number of sections of the bill, but it definitely does come up in Part 1 as well—what advice has she received on how it is going to be possible to determine if a claim has merit without going through the pay equity process? Because this merit is a hurdle which must be initially passed in order for people to take pay equity claims. So I want to know about that.

The other question I have is around the international comparisons that she’s made in relation to this particular piece of legislation. She’s talked about the UK. In the UK, they have extremely big employers and that is why their pay equity system—although there are a lot of people who will say that it’s imperfect—is able to have a system that only has one employer. For example, two types of employers that often have equal pay claims taken against them in the UK are National Health Service (NHS) trusts, which, if you’re familiar with the UK, employ a large number of different people in lots of different jobs, and also things like councils, which also—because they haven’t had privatisation in many places to the same extent as New Zealand—have a large number of directly employed people that can make those claims directly to their employer.

So what I want to know is: with those international comparisons, did she take those types of factors into account? And because those overseas jurisdictions just have a single employer that you’re able to make the claims against, does she think this is appropriate for the New Zealand context where we have a very different way of organising our public system? Many fewer people, of course, which means many fewer positions and fewer comparators, and what in fact the justification is for making people look, under the hierarchy of comparators, at their initial employer first and then afterwards the different layers of those, looking to similar employers and then further out from that. Because, in my view, that particular process is a quite limiting on the particular types of comparators it can use, and actually means that fewer claims will be able to be made because there is a much bigger limit on the types of claims that can be put forward, because it is just focused on one particular employer.

So quite a few questions there for the Minister. I do have some other emails—I won’t read them all out now—but keen to hear from the Minister and how she responds to those particular individuals who are very adversely affected by the legislation that she’s bringing to the House.

Mr Chair, thank you very much for the opportunity, and I have a few questions for the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety in relation to trade. Yesterday, the Prime Minister and his ministerial colleague Todd McClay got up in front—post-Cabinet—of the country and said, and I quote from Todd McClay: “Strengthening ties with trading partners is crucial to growing this New Zealand economy and driving up incomes for Kiwis.”

So my questions to the Minister in the chair are: what advice has she received from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) when it comes to lifting—to use her colleague’s words—incomes for Kiwis? And, indeed, was it just for men, or was it for men and women? Because the other thing that both the Prime Minister and Todd McClay mentioned yesterday was the value and the benefits to the New Zealand economy from the EU - New Zealand free-trade agreement. Now, while it has been a year since ratification—actually the Labour Government, thankfully, negotiated this agreement, because probably if it wasn’t us negotiating it, there may not have been provisions in that trade agreement for gender equality.

Can I refer the Minister to, and the question for her is: what advice has she received regarding article 19.3 of that trade agreement, which states, “Multilateral labour standards and agreements”? There are many provisions in that, but I’ll go to subclause 3(d), which, without going through the whole lot, really back up the determination of both parties, that’s the EU and New Zealand. And we’ve heard over a billion dollars of additional trade in the last 12 months—great. But of course, the commitment to “the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.”

So my question is: has the Minister received any advice from MFAT saying that this move by her and this Government to eliminate the ability of women to apply for pay equity has contravened a core objective of the EU - New Zealand free-trade agreement? Because if it has, then the opportunity that that agreement provides New Zealand exporters could indeed be withdrawn.

I know the EU—we’re very proud of the trade agreement on the basis of shared values, the shared values between the 27 member states of the EU and New Zealand, and equity and equality of opportunity for Māori, for women, for small-medium enterprises was a cornerstone of the value objectives of that free-trade agreement. So I’ll ask the Minister on that issue alone: has she received any advice relating to article 19.3 of that trade agreement as to whether she thinks that this may contravene “the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation”?

Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to just address a couple of things the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety mentioned before. I had a look at the written question that the Minister referred to as well, written question No. 17121. It is a very comprehensive list. My first question to the Minister is: does the Minister know, based on that written question, exactly how many workers would be affected by this legislation? We know that some of those are in massive industries and sectors in education and health. So can the Minister give us the number of workers who would be affected by this piece of legislation?

On that, I also wanted to check—we haven’t really yet received any clarifications from the Minister regarding what alternative options were considered as a part of this. Now, the Minister said that this is something that she cares deeply about and also that this is something she would really like to address. But the timing of it—again, we have talked about the timing of it—and what we have seen now in the public and in the media suggests that this is done as a Budget consideration. If that is the case—and that is something that is in mind, for example, when we’re looking at the aged-care sector; when we’re looking at Bupa, to give a brief example. In 2023, Bupa made $12 million in profit, but only paid $11k, in corporate tax, whereas the corporate tax rate is 28 percent. So immediately, if they had actually paid the proper level of corporate tax, there would be a different shift here. Is this something where, potentially, other options would be that there is more scrutiny and requirement for companies to actually pay—international corporations to pay—the proper level of corporate tax, instead of punishing your everyday, average Kiwis? That’s one of the questions, the second question.

My third question is to do with clause 6 amending section 13A, the purpose clause. Now, one of the things that the Minister mentioned previously is that the key difference in terms of the wording is “evidence”. That was interesting for me, because evidence of systemic sex-based undervaluation of work seems to suggest that the onus of the burden of proof is now being placed on the claimant and not being placed on the employer to prove that there is going to be discrimination. So I want to check with the Minister on whether the Minister has received any advice on a potential shift in the burden of proof as a result of including the word “evidence”. If so, who does the burden of proof now fall on: the claimant or the employer?

I think this ties in really nicely to the question that Camilla Belich asked as well, in terms of arguable merit, because, again, a lot of these—where they go through negotiation, where they go through court or they go through claims—those definitions seem benign but actually are incredibly important and, again, may provide additional burden and require a higher threshold for the employee to make.

Now, my next question is around clause 10(4) replacing section 13E(6). Over here, it says that “a pay equity claim may not be raised within 10 years … unless the Authority or the court determines, under section 13ZY(1)(b), that the claim may be raised.” I had a look—and we can discuss the nuance of section 13ZY(1)(b) later on. But in the context of this, particularly when you’re looking at “unless the Authority or the court determines”—now, this is a variation of the currently existing section 13E(6). When we are looking at this particular part, what evidence or what advice has the Minister received on the potential increase in terms of the workload that will be placed on the authority as a result of an increasing number of cases that may be claimed within that 10 years? Because of the fact that—again, I mentioned that the 10 years is a really blunt instrument. That’s my fourth question.

My final question, my fifth question, comes back to the question that a previous member, from Te Pāti Māori, asked, but it wasn’t answered by the Minister. I acknowledge that the Minister has responded to the question around claims going through the Waitangi Tribunal, but the Minister hasn’t responded to what Te Tiriti analysis has been done for this legislation. Thank you.

Thank you. I just want to respond firstly to Camilla Belich’s question about how it is possible to provide evidence that a claim has merit. Under the current law, the threshold is low. Claims only need to be arguable and there only needs to be historical or current sex-based undervaluation, not both. The low entry threshold enables claims to go through the assessment process even when there is not strong evidence of undervaluation. This can result in significant administrative costs, which will be avoided with a more robust entry threshold. This bill does set out a number of factors that can be used to provide evidence that the claim has merit, and those can be found in new section 13F, inserted by clause 11.

Camilla Belich also asked how I would respond to people who are concerned about changes that would make it harder to make a claim. Quite simply, this is about finding genuine sex-based undervaluation. I think everybody should be supporting the fact that we do want to have a pay equity system that actually resolves genuine sex-based discrimination. If a new claim can be raised under the amended Act, if they meet the threshold, that is a good thing and that should help stamp out sex-based undervaluation. However, the current threshold is too low, it’s not robust, and it’s less workable.

Camilla Belich also asked: would the Minister be a care and support worker for the day? I love that suggestion; it’s a fantastic suggestion. However, I don’t think it’s practical. My job in here, in Government, is to look after legislation, to be an advocate for the people. If we look at all the different types of claims that we have, I’d be spending possibly well over a month out in the community doing other people’s jobs, which I don’t think would overall benefit the legislative process. So I’d like to focus on that.

Although I would say to people like Marianne, who Camilla Belich has named, and other care and support workers, that I very much thank them for the role that they do actually play in our society. I think it’s a wonderful thing that people want to become care and support workers and support people in our community, so thank you, but we are ultimately here to discuss this bill rather than individual claims.

I’ve also been asked, in the case of that very individual claim of the care and support workers, in so far as whether or not they can re-raise a claim. Yes, this is the case: that can be re-raised in 2027, but, like all other claims, if it meets the thresholds of the new law.

Damien O’Connor has asked: what advice have I received from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade regarding the EU free-trade agreement? Well, look, in the process of developing this legislation, the Government has a range of international obligations that we have considered, and we have taken those obligations into account in our decision making.

We’ve also had a question from Damien O’Connor about whether or not I’ve received advice about lifting wages in trade. This bill is focused on a policy for pay equity issues. Lifting wages in general would be a different matter, but the bill does not stop women or unions from raising pay equity claims, which was suggested in that contribution, which is incorrect.

Lawrence Xu-Nan asked: do I know the number of workers affected by all those claims? No, I don’t have that information in front of me, but, once again, I’m not here to address individual claims; I’m here to discuss the legislation.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

Thank you, Mr Chair. What a surreal day this has been, watching the clock that was ticking back slowly under this National Government suddenly go into freefall as this shocking, despicable, backward announcement was made that puts the rights of women in this country back into the dark ages.

I have questions for the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety about what questions and conversations she had with Ministers from other sectors, including the Ministers for mental health and for seniors. Those sectors are very much affected by this legislation, and also immigration.

Now, we’ve heard other people ask questions about modelling, but these are very serious questions that should have been considered from a policy perspective, given the massive impact that the changes will make on the sectors that I have mentioned.

We heard, revealed yesterday for the first time, although the Minister tried to conceal it for a long time, that 1,485 front-line workers are currently needed in the mental health sector—1,485. Now, that had been removed out of the final draft of the Mental Health and Addiction Workforce Plan, but yesterday it was revealed that was there. Let’s look at what that is made up of: 470 special nurses, 455 support workers, 70 addiction workers, 10 nurse practitioners, 20 associate psychologists, 145 clinical psychologists.

Now, what do they all have in common? They all are feminised sectors. They are all sectors that are predominantly served by the women’s workforce. Isn’t it a strange coincidence that under this Government we have a mental health front-line crisis with psychologists in burnout and leaving in droves, leaving the sector. The Minister has said he will create a new associate psychologist role—presumably for more women—because instead of thinking about paying properly, the magic bullet is just to try and create lower-paid, lower-skilled roles to try and fill the gap.

So the question I have is, when we look across over at the senior sector, the aged-care sector—very, very reliant as well on the 65,000 care and support workers that we’ve been talking about tonight. In Australia, where I’ve just come back from, one of the amazing things that happened on a cross-party group trip that we had to look at the aged-care sector—which is facing very similar issues in terms of the tsunami of need that is coming into the sector through the aging of the baby boomers and subsequent generations—is that every employer we spoke to spoke about how valuable the uplift was to the allied workforce of something close to 30 percent, because it meant that they didn’t have to rely on foreign workers and they had been desperate to get foreign workers into the sector.

So what they had been doing as a stopgap measure—and actually will still go on to be a permanent measure because there is no silver bullet and because the need is so big—is they’ve been recruiting from foreign jurisdictions such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Fiji. That brings with it opportunity, but it also brings a whole lot of issues around immigration policy settings, about gouging workforces from other sectors and countries, about how long those workers can come into New Zealand, what the pay rates should be, how they can assimilate into the work, what kind of training is offered to them, what kind of career pathways. Those are all in the immigration settings—and, actually, right through these sectors that currently haven’t really been addressed by this Government, that would make a difference to their workforce plans.

So my question to the Minister is: has she done some modelling around the immigration settings, given that we will have in the retirement villages alone, for example, currently 42,000 people—that by the year 2040 will be around 85,000 new residents who will all need care and support workers, and nursing and other allied staff. Has she considered that modelling? Has she spoken to Minister Doocey about how he is now going to fill an even bigger workforce vacuum that he hasn’t been able to crack yet and that has got him into a little bit of trouble because of some of the crazy suggestions like creating associate roles where clinical psychologists have said they won’t even oversee them?

So the final question that I had for the Minister is also from somebody who I’d really like the Minister to respond to. She is well known in the sector advocating for workers and that is the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions president Melissa Ansell-Bridges, who did a magnificent job today, leading workers, gathering, convening at great haste onto the forecourt with an absolute vibrancy and determination to bring workers together to challenge this Government on what they are doing.

Melissa Ansell-Bridges has written to the Labour Party saying, “Every single one of the changes being made will make it harder to initiate and progress claims. Our early analysis suggests the new requirements may be nigh on impossible to meet. Far fewer, if any, women will be able to successfully progress claims under the new scheme. If they are successful, they will be paid equitably for a moment in time and then not again for 10 years because the drivers of inequality still exist. The Government is happy to accept this for the sake of tax cuts. We do not.” She goes on to say, “We pay tribute to every single one of those workers who have fought tirelessly for years to be paid what they are owed. Teachers, nurses, librarians, care and support workers, teacher aides”—the list does go on and on.

Over on this side, we are receiving their text messages and their emails as I speak, who have proven time and time again they are not paid what they are worth. It is because they work in industries historically undervalued, because they are women. Thank you to every single one of those workers. The fight for equity, for fairness doesn’t stop here. We have fought for over 100 years. We will keep on fighting. Minister, do you really mean that care and support workers will not be able to contest their claim at the earliest until 2027?

Thank you, Mr Chair. I wish to answer firstly Lawrence Xu-Nan’s question: which other options did I consider in the process of creating this bill? Look, the Government wanted to design a system that maintained a process to raise and resolve pay equity claims while providing a better framework for assessing whether there is sex-based undervaluation. I consider that the design of this pay equity system in the bill does achieve this stated purpose.

Lawrence Xu-Nan also asked what advice I’ve received that potentially we could see an increase in the workload of the authority due to a union seeking a determination to re-raise their claim before the 10 years. Look, the bill does allow a claim to be re-raised within 10 years if there are exceptional circumstances, but I don’t consider that this will occur often and therefore would not affect that workload.

Ingrid Leary asked what consultation have I done with the Minister for Mental Health and the Minister of Immigration. Look, it’s fairly clear that those Ministers are part of Cabinet, which did approve this policy that I put forward in the bill, and so therefore we did have consultation with those Ministers.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Look, I’m going to ask a couple of quick questions, because, like my colleagues have said tonight, I too have been inundated with emails and texts and various other messages. Quite frankly, there’s a whole lot of other people I’d rather be speaking to tonight about their genuine concerns and about what we should do next. If I was to channel my colleague the Hon Phil Twyford, I might sort of pose it in so far as I can just imagine the conversation that’s going to be happening in the National caucus room tomorrow when they reflect on the fact that whilst it’s an ACT Minister bringing this bill to the House, it’s actually their MPs, and their backbench MPs in particular, who will probably face the brunt of this. I know in my electorate alone, there’s at least three or four protests being organised between now and Sunday. I can assure you that that will be replicated throughout the country, because if there’s one thing that galvanises people in this country—in particular, women, and, in particular, people who are used to battling and used to working hard and used to fighting hard—it is basic, basic unfairness, and particularly at the hands of someone who doesn’t seem to care.

So my very quick question is that the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety has said on more than one occasion tonight that the impetus for this bill is that she wants to ensure that only genuine cases of sex-based discrimination get through across the threshold. So that, by definition, means that she is worried about cases that are not genuine. Can the Minister, please, explicitly specify to us tonight, given we’ve got no other avenue to discuss this, which particular cases on that list of existing cases she regards as being not genuine and give us some reasons as to why?

Also, the Minister has mentioned several times tonight about how she needs to make sure that this process is being used to remedy issues of pay equity, rather than other labour market dynamics. Can the Minister, please, give us an exhaustive example, every example, of what other labour dynamics are at play here and attribute those to any of the cases that she has before her, which is her remit to try and resolve?

The final comment I want to make is that the Minister, and the Government in general—the Government, in particular, has made quite a big deal over the last few weeks about a focus on primary health; a laser focus, I think we’ve heard from the Minister of Health. I want to ask the Minister: what advice or what conversations she’s had with the Minister of Health, given that scrapping their pay equity claim—as I just check my messages from people working in that sector—will really help us with our recruitment and our retention? There’s some little emoticons there that I won’t describe, because they’re all a little bit uncouth!

If the Minister could answer those three specific questions, given that during the course of tonight we have been continuously asking for what advice she has received—I don’t think she’s given very robust answers to that, but these are three specific questions that she should be able to answer off the top of her head, given that she’s stated these as being her primary concerns.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

Thank you very much, Mr Chair, and I tried to keep my interventions short and to the point and I’ll do it again. As I said, there are a number of questions that are serious questions relating to trade issues. We have a number of international conventions, one of them being the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). These are developed and negotiated through the United Nations and they probably go along with little, I guess, up-to-date knowledge on what that means. But when they are brought into a trade agreement—a trade agreement that the Minister of Trade and the Prime Minister yesterday highlighted once again, the EU - New Zealand trade agreement—it is really important that the Minister has had advice on this.

She says, “Well, we’ve considered it.”, but the absence of a proper select committee process means that this side of the committee and, indeed, the wider New Zealand public—particularly, you know, the just over 50 percent of the population who will be adversely affected by this—want to know that it has been considered and it does meet our international obligations.

Aside from being what we would say is morally wrong, if we are then undermined in our trade position, that undermines the economy, and the growth strategy that we hear from the Government all the time will in fact be less credible than it already is. Can I refer to article 19.4? It is specifically ‘Trade and gender equality’; that is the title of it. Clause 1; I won’t go through the whole thing but I will say, at the end of it, it says, “Accordingly, the Parties emphasise their intention to implement this Agreement in a manner that promotes and enhances gender equality.” The elimination or the scrapping of pay equity claims—an attempt to bring that equality and equity together—may indeed be seen in the eyes of our trade partners as a backward step, and I said that first off.

Can I then go to another part of it? This is subclause 6, which, as I say, refers to CEDAW, and I’ll once again go down to the end of this saying, “In this respect, the Parties reiterate their respective commitments under Article 19.3 (Multilateral labour standards and agreements), including those regarding effective implementation of the ILO conventions related to gender equality and the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.” It’s there in black and white. We negotiated in a trade agreement with the EU. The Prime Minister and the Minister of trade have just been shouting about the values of this—and we agree, the potential—and the next day in the House, this Minister brings in a bill that will undermine the objectives of a written agreement through a trade agreement.

So the question is: if the Government or she has considered it, what advice did she get? And, indeed, does it leave us exposed? I’ve seen much advice over the years from Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT). It’s very good advice, it usually does highlight the potential risks of passing legislation like this. There is flexibility in trade agreements, I accept, but it seems to me in reading through this, what the Minister and the Government are doing in passing this piece of legislation under urgency is flying in the face of the objectives of the EU and New Zealand and trying to bring in—where it isn’t in place—gender equality through pay and conditions. The Minister should explain in detail to the committee, or reassure us, that this is not going to put us at risk of trade challenge.

Aside from the points raised by all my colleagues—I’m not going to raise those again—this is a real issue of economic opportunity, not just economic equality, and the Minister, I’m sure, can take an opportunity to answer.

Thank you, Mr Chair, for the call. This is the first call I’ve taken on the Equal Pay Amendment Bill, and I just want to quote something, because members on this side of the Chamber have been quoting a number of emails, pieces of correspondence, and texts that they have received in the last six hours from members of the public who have been affected by this, but, actually, I want to backtrack a bit and I want to quote for the committee a particular quote from the third reading of this particular Act when it was first enacted in 2020. “The dreams I have for my daughter and my grandchildren—one day, when I have them, hopefully—is that they will grow up in a country where the work that they do is equally valued and compensated equally to that of their male counterparts. This bill sets out the framework that we will achieve that outcome. I want to acknowledge tonight the Minister, Julie Anne Genter, who has done an exceptional job. She did an exceptional job earlier answering our questions and has done a great job shepherding this bill through the House, and I commend her for that. She’s been outstanding.”

I’m not going to name who that member was, because it’s quite clear the member, who’s here in the House, understands who she was in her comments at the time. The reason why I raise that particular quote—and it’s the reason why I want to ask a question to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety about the Pacific pay gap, knowing that the Pacific pay gap in the Public Service, for example, was 17.2 percent in 2024 whereas the overall Public Service pay gap is 6.1 percent. The reason why I use that particular quote is because I am a daughter of an agedcare sector worker. So, therefore, if my mother’s dream was for me to be equally treated, fortunately for myself, I was able to be supported by a Government who supported my family when she died, when my family had to go on the benefit.

But what I wanted to ask the Minister is, because I’m here standing on behalf of my daughters, who are Pacific women, who are Pacific and Māori women, and knowing that there is a pay gap between Pacific and Māori women as to what they’re paid compared to their counterparts—what advice has the Minister received around these groups who have disproportionately been, basically, discriminated against already within the current environment? What has she done in this legislation? What advice has she received in order to address that? I would assume, given the large number of aged-care sector workers who are Pacific, who are within that workforce, that the Minister at least would’ve got some advice, some human rights implications, some population group implication analysis from her officials for those particular groups where there is very, very clear evidence that they are disproportionately impacted. I want to hear that advice from the Minister, on behalf of every other Pacific and Māori woman and their children and their grandchildren, as to what implications and what advice she has received about them, because we’re standing in here tonight in the Chamber to address the implications for them.

In the same way that another member in the House in 2020 talked about the hopes and dreams for her children, her grandchildren, I’m standing here for the same hopes and dreams for the Māori and Pacific children and grandchildren and for all those children and grandchildren of low-income workers who will be affected by this. So what advice has she received on the implications on population groups as a result of this particular bill?

Mr Chair, thank you. I’ll just answer two of the contributions so far. Firstly, from Tracey McLellan, asking which examples of claims that should not have gone through I would give to the member, I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to single out any particular claims. I will look at the legislation in general. The current thresholds are low. The claims only need to be arguable, and there only needs to be historical and current sex-based undervaluation—not both. We are here to make the legislation more robust for all of the claims, for the businesses, the unions, the workers—everybody involved in those negotiations.

I also wish to answer a question that has been given by Ingrid Leary, asking if I can confirm that the care and support worker claim won’t be able to be re-raised until 2027. In similar respect to the previous question—I’d already answered that in a previous answer—I’ve already answered this one in a previous answer, too: that is true. That won’t be able to come back until 2027. However, the care and support workers claim was settled in 2017, and the Government funded $2 billion to assist the employers to settle. I want to reassure people that the Government is committed to a process to raise and resolve those claims.

On top of that, I’ll also answer Damien O’Connor’s question, which I would say I have already answered as well, which is about advice from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade on article 19.3, regarding the EU free-trade agreement (FTA). Once again, the Government has a range of international obligations concerning labour issues, including conventions and other agreements in our FTAs. We have taken those obligations into account in our decision making. I had already answered all three of those questions prior.

Thank you, Mr Chair, and also I thank the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety for her responses to my previous questions. One of the things the Minister responded to was the advice and the question around the options that she was given. The Minister gave me a response, which was: “I have been presented with the options and I think this is the best way.”, which is a fair response, but my question is: what are the other options? So if the Minister wouldn’t mind elucidating for the committee on the other options that were presented and say why this is the one that she landed on, that would be great.

I just want to go to a few specific clauses, and I want to start with clause 12, which is the amendments to section 13H, with clause 12(4) and (5) being the first one. I just want some clarification from the Minister around the definition for certain clauses, because it’s not linked to any other clauses and, unfortunately, I can’t find this bill on the New Zealand Legislation website at present, as well—unless it is there, and I just haven’t been able to find it.

In subclause (4), it provides that new paragraph (aa) is to be inserted after section 13H(a), and the new section mentions “any information about the work prescribed by regulations;”—and I’m only going to touch on things that are different from the existing legislation. I want to check with the Minister: if this is the case, what about the work that people do that, potentially, is outside the requirement of the regulations but that they are somehow required to do?

The reason I want to ask that question is that we have also heard in some of the sectors, with aged care being one of them. We have heard from managers and directors who have said, “Oh well, do you know what? These people”—with it predominantly being a female workforce, but—“these workers, they care a lot about these people, and they’re going to do the work regardless.” So I am concerned that if you’re only looking at things that are within regulations, what we are forgetting is all of the work that workers are doing outside of what they’re required to do, out of the goodness of their hearts, particularly—as other people have mentioned—in the particular sectors that are dominated by women.

On to subclause (5): “Replace section 13H(b)”. Now, the Minister mentioned in terms of what that evidence could be, but I want to focus on the words “elements required”, and I have not seen a definition of “element”. So will the Minister point to a particular section of this bill that will elucidate what those elements could be, and that would be really helpful for us, should we have any further questions.

Moving on to my final question, which is around clause 15, “Section 13L amended (Opting out of multi-employer pay equity claim)”, this is, again, a new section, and I find this particular section quite peculiar. In subclause (2), it says, “Replace section 13L(9) with:” and there is a new subsection (10): “A party may not apply to the Authority … for a determination concerning an employer’s decision under this section to opt out of a multi-employer claim.”

Now, this is a new thing, and I want to really check with the Minister on what is the rationale for a party not being able to apply for clarification as to why an employer decided to opt out, and whether that would still be upheld under the Official Information Act (OIA), as in: does that mean that although a party may not apply to the authority for that determination, they can still apply under the OIA for that? But in that case, what happens then if that information doesn’t exist and the OIA request is rejected because that information doesn’t exist because an employer doesn’t actually have any valid reasons for the decision made to opt out?

So those are my three questions. They are on clause 12, subclause (4) on regulations, and the work outside of regulations that a worker has to do; clause 12, subclause (5), on the definition of “element”, linked to one other section of this bill; and clause 15, subclause (2) on the application to the authority for a determination concerning opting out of multi-employer claims.

I’ll just briefly make one contribution, in response to Barbara Edmonds, who raised concerns about impacts on particular groups, in particular Pasifika women. Look, the bill is intended to ensure that a pay equity system does provide for a better framework for assessing whether or not there is sex-based undervaluation. This system will enable women, including Pasifika women, to raise a pay equity issue.

Members, before we suspend, I just want to assure members that the bill is on the legislation website. We’ve just checked it out up here as well, so it is there. The time has come for me to leave the Chair. Sitting will resume at 9 a.m.

Debate interrupted.

Sitting suspended from 9.55p.m. to 9 a.m. (Wednesday)