Equal Pay Amendment Bill

Members, when we suspended last evening, we were considering the Equal Pay Amendment Bill and we were debating Part 1—Part 1 is the debate on clauses 4 to 49, “Amendments to Equal Pay Act 1972”—and the Schedule.

Before I call the question again, I just want to ask this morning: we’ve had a lot of debate on this, and it’s a very important bill and it is under urgency, but what I would request this morning is that as people are asking questions of the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, please refer to the clauses or the Amendment Paper or the particular area that you’ll be speaking to.

The question is, again, that Part 1 stand part.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wish to pick up a couple of questions that were made right at the end of last night and then I believe I’ve sufficiently answered nearly all questions from the previous segment.

We had questions from Lawrence Xu-Nan about the rationale for not being able to challenge an opt out, and that’s about the employers being able to opt out of multi-employer claims. Employers will still need to progress with a single-employer pay equity claim if they’ve opted out of that multi-employer claim. So it’s not the case that no claim is brought; it’s just that the employer has the ability to opt out.

The second question was also about how the Official Information Act (OIA) applies. The OIA does still apply, and this bill doesn’t change the OIA.

Another question from Lawrence was about the elements referred to in section 13H(b), in clause 12. These are the elements required for the pay equity claim to have merit, which are specified in section 13F, inserted by clause 11, which I also referred to last night.

Thank you, Madam Chair—and I’m pleased with that direction you’ve given us this morning, as I don’t feel that we have had enough time looking at the clauses specifically. We’ve asked, according to Speakers’ rulings, more general questions, but I do think there is time now to actually prosecute into the different clauses, and I do think—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): As long as it’s not repetitive.

Hon JAN TINETTI: Yes, I totally agree with you, Madam Chair, and I think that is really important because, as we keep saying, this bill has not gone to a select committee, and, as you have rightly said this morning, it is a really important piece of legislation. It has created a lot of anger and a lot of feeling out in the community. As I said yesterday, my email has blown up like it’s never blown up in the eight years that I’ve been in Parliament because of people wanting to know more about this bill.

I want to take members to clause 9, so I direct the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety to clause 9. I want to ask a couple of questions about that, but I just want to go through and see if the interpretation is correct in terms of how I’ve been seeing it and interpreting it and if what I’ve discussed with colleagues is correct.

Clause 9 is about threshold evidence—the way that I’m reading it—and it inserts new section 13DA before section 13E. The new section prefaces section 13E by providing that “A pay equity claim may be raised if—(a) it meets all requirements set out in section 13E; and (b) there is evidence that the claim has merit.” The effective changes are that the change of threshold is arguable to have merit, the bill contains consequential changes to several other provisions if the principal Act, and the change from the subjective test based on what the claimant considers to be an objective requirement that there be evidence that the new threshold is met. I’m just hoping that that is a correct and accurate reading of what that clause is actually saying.

When I was reading through this—and, again, we only got this very late in the piece yesterday, so that’s why it’s really important that we do have an understanding of exactly what is meant by these different clauses—it seemed to me that it is designed to make it as hard as possible to file a pay equity claim. That is quite the change that has been made to the primary legislation. That threshold of evidence has changed quite significantly with this one small insertion.

Is that what the Minister is aiming for here—to make it hard to file a pay equity claim? I suspect that, Minister, you’re going to say no, but this is what’s coming through from people in the community at the moment. They can’t see that this has been on an equal footing to what was before and they see that, actually, their pathways have been closed off to them, and I think that they, in terms of this particular clause, need some understanding of how they can actually find a pathway going forward to make these pay equity claims.

So I ask that question again: has it been designed to make this as hard as possible to file a pay equity claim, and, if not, what is the pathway for them at the moment? As I’ve said, what is in this piece of legislation seems to have changed the whole landscape incredibly and dramatically. So I’d really like some clarity around that, please.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I was listening really carefully last night. The frustrations of these debates is that, often, we don’t take the discussion forward, so I want to do a little bit of that today, but I want to make sure that I’m mindful of what you’ve talked about in terms of bringing up new issues.

One thing that came up last night is the issue of exceptional circumstances on the length of time that people are unable to take a claim. What we haven’t really heard is what is envisaged as exceptional circumstances and where it will apply. So I’ve been thinking about some of the cases I had where I was concerned about inequity and how it would apply in those circumstances. So I’ve got a couple of questions—I might take you through a few scenarios and ask you to explain how the new legislation will work.

For example, I had one woman—the case has always haunted me. She was on very low pay and she had been a caregiver her entire career. She had actually worn herself out in the job by lifting, and her employer frustrated her employment because she could no longer lift patients. She would have been in her early 60s. So she was basically just given a termination notice over a time. A person like that—are they a person where they might be able to reopen for that group of people who are of that age? So they’re not going to be able to take a case in their late 60s, because they’re going to be terminated from their employment for a long time—are they a person who might have exceptional circumstances applied to them, because their career is ending, and it might end at a time which isn’t necessarily retirement time, even?

So how flexible is the rule going to be in terms of who can reopen the issue? Because, in fact, their personal circumstances are going to be affected. I heard a lot from the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety about how we always had to think about the big systems and we weren’t concerned about the individuals. But obviously there’s a real balancing act, and when it comes to something like exceptional circumstances, that is where I’d expect the balancing act to take place.

Now, a similar issue is one about opt-out provisions, because what I heard the Minister talk about was a system—I think this is clause 15—and this is an issue about who can opt out from a multi-employer claim. So take my woman that I’ve just given you—a real human, a multi-employer claim—with her particular provider of care services. Is that employer able to, halfway through a claim, think, “OK, I want to opt out of this claim.”? So she’s relying upon a claim that’s being made by many employers at once, or going through a process with that.

The employer that was employing her—are they allowed, under this, to actually leave, and, if so, my understanding is they don’t have to provide reasons as to why they leave, but they leave her high and dry because she’s no longer covered by the claim. It says that they’re allowed to leave without providing reasons, but it’s got to be based on reasonable grounds. Well, sorry, how do we know what grounds it’s based on if they never have to provide any reason? What’s the balance, what’s the check in place that means that her employer can’t just walk away in the middle of something where that is the only process that she’s got, and not have reasonable grounds? How do we know that there are reasonable grounds?

Then, it says—my understanding is that the employer’s decision to opt out cannot be challenged by another party. So is that right? Are we saying that nobody can challenge—[Time expired] Sorry, Madam Chair?

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Helen White. I’ll let Helen White finish her question, but please can you—

HELEN WHITE: I’ll move on to one other point—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Yeah, short call.

HELEN WHITE: I hope that you’ve understood that point.

I’d also just like to talk about—and I really, really, would genuinely like an answer over the issue of back-pay. What I got didn’t go far enough into the logic of the situation here. If you’ve got an embargo on the authority awarding back-pay, when that happens and somebody can’t award at the end—and my understanding from the Minister’s answer last night is you can still negotiate back-pay—isn’t the reality that we’re going to see more back-pay claims because there’s no stick, there’s nothing where somebody can award it?

So we’re going to have these people who have 10 years to go for their claim and they’re being discriminated against every one of those years, and it’s an accumulation of harm to them—they’re missing out on all the interest, they’re missing out on all the wages over that time, their KiwiSaver’s being affected, etc. And their employer’s going to go, “Well, what is in it for me? Because I do not have to give you any form of back-pay and you’ve missed out for a 10-year period, and all I have to do is commit on the last possible time I can in that process to something that doesn’t discriminate going forward, and then we’re locking in for another 10-year period before you can go for it again, so I can discriminate for the next 10 years.”

Isn’t that the impact of what is happening, and what I’d like to know from the Minister is: if I’m right—because I’m pretty sure I am—then how is the Minister going to monitor the failure? I suspect what we’ll see is our equity claim change entirely. We’re going to see a wider gap. We’re going to see a wider Pasifika gap, we’re going to see a wider gap in pay. What is going to happen to make sure that if she’s so confident that this isn’t going to cause a problem—what is going to happen in two years? Are we going to see a monitoring of this situation by the Minister to see whether that gap’s growing again, because I’m pretty sure we are going to see a gap growing.

I appreciate the Minister saying it’s very confusing at the moment because we do deal with this in bargaining, as if it’s illegitimate to deal with in bargaining, but we’re not going to necessarily know. Well, what’s the other side of that coin? What processes are being put in place to look at this gap and measure the gap in other ways so that there can be an intervention, and I’m going to go right back and say, “Is this an exceptional circumstance, where we see the gap?”—where somebody like the woman from AUT, who’s the academic in this area and is measuring the gap, sees the gap grow and says to the Minister, “Actually, it’s happening in this sector.” Is that an exceptional circumstance where we might open again, because it seems to me that New Zealand women are going to pay the price for 10 years and then they’re never going to be able to claim back? And this is going to happen. So there’s going to be an adjustment every 10 years, with weak bargaining power, not strong bargaining power—actually, artificially weakened bargaining power, because under the old law, under the 1970s law, they could’ve claimed the lot. They could have actually gone out and claimed the lot, and what we’ve done is we’ve robbed them today.

So can I please have an answer to those various questions? I appreciate the time that I’ve been given. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to remind the Chair, but also the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, that one of the questions I asked yesterday or last night around this bill was clause 15(2), inserting new section 13L(10), around “may not apply to the Authority … for a determination” and whether that is still Official Information Act - able (OIA). So if that could be clarified, that would be great.

I’m going to move on to—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I believe the OIA-able has been clarified.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: Oh, it has been. Thank you so much.

I’m actually going to move on just a little bit further and I know that there are many other sections that my colleagues would like to discuss, but I think one of the things—and I know that there are many other sections that my colleagues would like to discuss—I would like to address is Schedule 1. I would like to mention a number of amendments under my colleague the Hon Marama Davidson’s name, around the amendments that she has submitted. This is particularly with regard to the Schedule, “New Part 2 inserted into Schedule 1” and this is inserting new Part 2, section 8, of Schedule 1, around existing pay equity claims. As we have heard yesterday from the public, there has been a number of concerns being raised by people who have to spend decades going through the process of getting pay equity. But, again, I think the concern that a lot of people had was in new section 8(1) of new Part 2 that is saying that the “existing pay equity claim is discontinued on the commencement date.”

So the amendments that we have here—and I particularly want to speak to those within my portfolio, which are the tabled amendments which are around care and support workers as well as education, is that they be exempted from this particular Schedule. So when we’re looking at the tabled amendments, what we’re proposing is, in new Part 2 inserted into Schedule 1, a new section 8(1) to insert a number of new subclauses which then would exempt care and support workers from this particular decision and also include residential school workers and various other workers from this particular one.

Now, the reason for that—again, like I mentioned—is there’s been a number of concerns around the way that their efforts would be diminished but also removed or wiped clean as a result of this bill. Also, as a result of this, we are also trying to address a concern from the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (NZBORA) perspective because, again, one of the few things that we do have evidence of and that we do have access to, despite the fact there’s no regulatory impact statement etc., is the NZBORA consistency report. But one of the things that we didn’t see in the report, that it did touch on, is around section 26 in terms of retrospectivity. I think the amendment here would also be a move towards some of the concerns and some of the potential challenges when it comes to NZBORA around retrospectivity and around punishment as a result of retrospectivity, whether it is criminal or not. I think, in this case, one could argue that removing existing pay equity claims would be considered a punishment under retrospectivity of NZBORA.

So I wanted to check with the Minister if she would consider the amendments that we have put forward as an addition to new section 8 of new Part 2 in Schedule 1, inserted by the Schedule. That is just simply bringing in consistence within the NZBORA, but also alleviate some of the concerns that the communities and existing pay claimants have.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I will answer some of the questions that we’ve had this morning, starting firstly with Jan Tinetti’s questions talking about “what was the issue with the claims system which has led us to making the change?” Well, the current thresholds are very low. Claims only need to be arguable and there only needs to be historic or current sex-based undervaluation, not both of them. The low entry threshold enables claims to go through the assessment process even where there is not strong evidence of undervaluation and this can result in significant administrative costs, which will be avoided with a more robust entry threshold.

There is also a second as to whether or not my goal here is to make it as hard as possible. You’re right, my answer is: no, that is not the case. My goal here is so that we can have more confidence in the pay equity system, that the settlements are about genuine sex-based discrimination—no conflation with the Consumers Price Index or collective bargaining or other labour market conditions—and this bill goes to provide more confidence to all parties that what we are rectifying is genuine sex-based discrimination.

Helen White talked about “what are the exceptional circumstances?” The bill itself doesn’t define what the exceptional circumstances are, but that is for the authority and the courts to assess whether the claimants are able to raise a claim within that 10-year time frame. I can’t comment on any specific cases that may or may not go through that sort of process.

Helen White also asked are they able to lead multi-employer claims for an employer. Yes, that is the process. However, employers still do need to progress with a single employer pay equity claim.

Helen White also asked, “Is it right that no one can challenge an employee’s decision to opt out?”. Yes, that cannot be challenged, but the employer still does need to progress with a single-employer claim. So we are not suggesting that pay equity does not exist. The Government wants to make it very clear that a pay equity system does remain; we are simply changing those thresholds.

Helen White also asked, “Won’t we see no back-pay in claims if the authority cannot award it?” No, that is not true—employers and employees may still agree on whether to include back-pay in a settlement. This bill simply removes the ability of the authority to award back-pay to incentivise the employers and employees to resolve claims between themselves rather than seeking an authority determination.

Helen White also asked whether there’ll be reporting on the gender pay gap. I can confirm that the Government already publishes information about the gender pay gap, but that is separate to this bill. That’s through the Stats NZ and the Public Service Commission.

Lawrence Xu-Nan asked questions on behalf of Marama Davidson in her paper about having some exemptions for specific claims. No, that is not something the Government will be progressing with. We did consider that having one system for all claims to go through is clearer about what requirements will apply once the bill passes. This will avoid having two systems operating at the same time, which would be messier for all people involved.

Thank you, Madam Chair. There’s a lot to go through, obviously, in this Part 1, so I’m pleased to be able to make a contribution here today. I acknowledge your points around speaking to specific clauses. I’d also acknowledge that there are a number of themes within this bill that are repeated in quite a few of the clauses in the substantive part, which is Part 1, which is—essentially, Part 2 is actually looking at other Acts, so really Part 1 is where—and it has the Schedule so—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): That’s correct.

CAMILLA BELICH: —Part 1 is very substantive. I do have a number of amendments in Part 1, and I think I’ve only spoken to one of those so far.

I did want to take the opportunity to speak to another one, which is, I think it’s clause 6 which amends section 13A, which is the purpose clause. The reason I have put forward this amendment is because I don’t think that this purpose clause represents the true purpose of this Act. The reason that I think that is because of what has been said publicly about this particular bill, and also what the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety and her colleagues have said about this particular bill.

The current purpose clause states that it’s to provide and facilitate “the resolution of pay equity claims where there is evidence of systemic sex-based undervaluation of work that is predominantly performed by females”. Now, I don’t think that is actually the purpose of this bill; I think the purpose of this bill is to make making those claims harder. I think the purpose of this bill is to make the system more complex. I think the purpose of this bill is to make sure that fewer low-paid women receive their pay equity claim. I think the purpose of this bill is to delay the justice that they so need after decades and decades and years and years of systemic undervaluation.

That’s why I have proposed this amendment to clause 6, which actually outlines the purpose of this bill, which I think is much more accurate. I would love the Minister and her colleagues to consider this because I think, actually, to say that this bill is brought to make the process easier is just disingenuous. How is putting in a hierarchy of comparators, which makes selecting a comparator more difficult, consistent with facilitating the resolution? How is limiting the time period that a claim can be made to 10 years consistent with the facilitation of resolution of pay equity claims? How is the absolute unilateral taking away of back-pay, which was a common law right established under the Equal Pay Act 1972, established by Kristine Bartlett—taking that totally away—facilitating the resolution of pay equity claims where there’s evidence of systemic sex-based undervaluation?

It is simply not true. The purpose clause as proposed in this bill is simply not accurate. It does not reflect the fact that the main reason that this bill has been brought to the House, under urgency, just before the Budget is to save the Government money. Those savings are coming from working women. They’re coming not only just from working women but from low-paid working women who have had their hearts and minds set on equal pay for such a long time.

I do think it is relevant because we haven’t had a select committee process to be able to make sure the opportunities that we didn’t have last night to read out some of the messages that we’ve been getting, because this is specifically relevant to the purpose cause. I did have one of those messages last night from someone who’s been involved in the teachers’ claim, who did message me. She said that she is deeply disappointed by this Government’s decision, that was announced just yesterday, to put through these changes. She said that her claim, which is a claim for teachers—something that all New Zealanders value highly—has followed a robust process between all parties. More than 300 interviews with teacher and comparator roles across the sector have been conducted using a consistent, agreed-upon tool to gather data. That evidence has been through thorough consultation with both teachers and principals, and to have the Government walk away from that now is nothing short of disgraceful. That is from Christie. She has been involved in the teachers’ claim. She sees that this purpose clause does not reflect the actual reality of the situation. She has been involved in a robust pay equity process. They’ve done 300 interviews, and this Government, through this particular bill, is binning all of that work, all of that effort.

Just think of all of those women who have thought about their days and gone through every single aspect that they do—and that’s what a pay equity assessment is. It’s when you talk about the social skills that you have to use in your job; it’s when you talk about the dangers that you might have—and teachers do sometimes face aggressive students—some of those things have never been valued. We’ve seen traditional women’s work as caring only; we haven’t valued the true nature of it. To go into that is truly a very, very difficult experience, but one that makes many women feel their own value. I’ve heard from so many people that have said they never really realised how important their job was until they went through a pay equity process, and they understood that, actually, they did do skilled work, that the messages that they’ve been told by society that the work that they did was not valued or not highly skilled was not true. They felt mana, they felt self-esteem. This bill takes that away.

I don’t think this purpose clause reflects what this Government is trying to do. I would like the Minister to respond to why she isn’t honest with New Zealanders and actually putting the real purpose of this bill—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Just be careful how you phrase that question, please. I’ll just give you a chance to rephrase that question about honesty.

CAMILLA BELICH: I would like the Minister to reflect on why there isn’t a more accurate description of what this bill is actually doing, so New Zealanders have a clear reason as to why the Government is implementing this particular bill, because I don’t believe this purpose reflects the true intentions of why this bill should be put into place.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for allowing me to make a brief contribution to this debate. I’d like to ask specifically about clause 17, which amends section 13O of the original Equal Pay Act; section 130(4)(a) and (b) specifically. I’ll just read that clause, just for context, so that the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety understands what I’m talking about. The original section 13O says: “A request to consolidate must be made in writing and must include—(a) a brief description of the work performed by the employees who are covered by each of the claims; and (b) a brief explanation of how the work performed by the employees who are covered by each of the claims is considered to be the same or substantially similar.”

My question is: why has the word “brief” been deleted and the words “a brief explanation” have been replaced with “an explanation”? Is that in response to ministerial advice that perhaps the brevity of the request to consolidate wasn’t working? Was the Minister requesting it herself? What was the genesis of that piece of amendment?

My second question is in response to the Minister’s answer to my question last night—and thank you for the answer. I asked the Minister when the existing claimants and existing unions to the existing pay claims were informed, and she said “Today.” That was yesterday. I’d like to know a specific time, if possible, because the media release went out at 11.19 a.m., according to the Scoop Parliament website. So I guess my question is: did this Government give enough time for the people who are currently undergoing the pay equity process to actually find out about this news, not via the media? Exactly what time were the existing claimants and existing unions told that this legislation would be going through and that their existing claims would have to be scrapped and go back to square one again?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yesterday, I spoke about an amendment that I’d put up for clause 4, and now I’d like to speak to one that I have put around clause 10. Now, as my colleague Camilla Belich said—because this is a substantive part in Part 1 that you’re going to see—in this bill, there are a number of metrics that are being used across the bill that are similar. So in clause 10, which we haven’t discussed before but it does talk about that 10year metric—but it is talked about in a different way in this particular clause. One of the areas that I asked the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety yesterday and I didn’t get an answer to, in relation to clause 4, was: what alternate advice did she get, which I know that—being a former Minister—officials do give you a range of advice around different metrics and what that would mean. So, in this particular case, in clause 10, just for clarity, amends section 13E by replacing subsection (6), with the effect that there is now an amended test to meet before a person who is covered by a previous pay equity claim settlement may raise a new claim in relation to the same work. It must be at least 10 years since the past settlement.

So one of the things that has come through loud and clear in the past not even 24 hours, yet, is that people are feeling really disheartened by the fact that that 10-year metric has been used. We’ve heard it through different forms of media; I’ve seen it coming through via social media—that the 10-year seems to be very dispiriting to people, and not understanding where that has come from. So a couple of my other colleagues and I have put amendments forward that give alternate timelines for this particular clause because we don’t know what other advice the Minister got here, and I’m asking the Minister to be transparent around that: what was the other advice around metrics that was given to her in this particular case? What were those reasons that the Minister didn’t go with the alternative advice that would have been provided to her?

That’s the whole reason as to why we’ve come up with these amendments for clause 10 because we just don’t know why the 10-year (a)—and the Minister did say that it was about, “Oh, it gives it time.” But we don’t know why that was superior to alternate advice because we haven’t had an answer to what that alternate advice was, and why it was rejected. So, in our minds, the 10 years does not stand up because we can make equally valid and stronger arguments for different metrics. So, therefore, I want the Minister to be transparent around the advice that she has been given, but I also want to know and be convinced that 10 years that she settled upon is valid by evidence, researched, thorough; what is happening elsewhere in the world, that they have got 10 years as their metrics anywhere else in the world.

I just don’t know; we do not know because we haven’t had the opportunity to take this to select committee. We haven’t had the opportunity, which we would have had at a select committee, to ask officials these questions. And even when I ask questions on other clauses like clause 4 last night, this was not answered, and yet this is central to the whole argument of why people are being so impacted emotionally and feeling so dispirited around what is being presented to them because they have no understanding of where the Minister’s advice has landed because she has not been transparent around what alternates were given to her and why she rejected them. So I would very much like to know that and know exactly why we have landed on this part, and the evidence that supports it.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

I’m going to take some more calls, but I am starting to hear arguments against the bill that we heard yesterday. I understand that to the people that are making those arguments, they’re relevant arguments for them, but I really want specific questions rather than five-minute speeches.

Glen Bennett: Point of order, Madam Chair. Just to clarify, because I have been listening very closely last night and this morning and I know Camilla Belich has made clear in terms of Speakers’ rulings—I just want your guidance, because I hear what you say. Just to understand that, in fact, there’s very little we’ve actually traversed in terms of this section.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): My point is that we’ve heard the arguments against, loud and clear. I’m looking for specific questions that clarify what the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety’s doing, so that’s what I’m looking for.

Glen Bennett: Speaking to the point of order. So the fact that we can just continue to prosecute clause by clause by clause—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Well, we’ve kind of gone out of that range. You haven’t built a system in this case where—you know, normally in other cases you’ve run through, so I’m taking questions on clauses. I’m not running a clause by clause system, because that’s what I haven’t seen, but I want questions on clauses.

Camilla Belich: Point of order, Madam Chair. Just in terms of this system, I appreciate there being a number of Chairs because of the duration of the debate, but my understanding from our side was that due to the fact that there was no select committee process and relying on two Speakers’ rulings that I mentioned last night, speaking in general terms, initially—and I think you’ve had an indication this morning that we’re now going in a clause by clause manner. My understanding—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): No, I haven’t said clause by clause; I said I want questions related to specific clauses. We’re not ranking the clauses. [Interruption] This is a point of order, so I’d ask for points of order to be heard in silence. I just want to clarify that I’m not going numerically clause by clause, but I am asking for the questions to be related to a clause number.

Camilla Belich: Thank you, Madam Chair. I was just clarifying that it is now our intention to go more clause by clause—maybe not cover every clause, but my understanding is we’re on page 5 of the bill.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): And it has to be new as well.

Camilla Belich: Yes, I understand that. But one final point that I would make in my point of order would be to draw your attention to the fact that when you look at the clauses, a number of the clauses have slightly different ways of implementing the policy intent of this. For example, “merit” and “arguable” are mentioned slightly differently.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Yep. I understand that. So, yeah, I’ll take a call from Camilla Belich now to ask those questions.

Thank you—thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to go through this in detail; obviously there is a lot of concern around this bill because of the way it’s been brought to the House, and so it is important that we do, and, in the opportunities that we do have to scrutinise this, to make sure that we do it thoroughly. That’s our intention here: to work with the Chair to make sure that we’re able to do that. So I do appreciate the ability to clarify that and also to take this call.

So the question that I—I do have a number of amendments, and if I have time I’ll speak to my amendment to clause 10. But before I get to clause 10, I wanted to ask the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety—in relation to clause 9, which implements new section 13DA—in relation to this particular requirement, how is this consistent with the purpose of the bill? My understanding of the new section that has been implemented in this particular clause is that it means that people have to go through quite long, different areas that are outlined in section 13E to ensure that the claim has merit or is considered to be consistent with what she believes a pay equity claim could be.

So what I want to ask the Minister is: how did she arrive at this particular list, as outlined in 13E, which is implemented in 13DA, and why and how is that consistent with the purpose of facilitating the resolution of pay equity claims? Because I don’t—and I hadn’t heard yet from the Minister and I would be interested to hear that. So that is my first question to the Minister in relation to that particular clause.

Moving on now to clause 10—and I’ll just double check here—I think that I have one amendment on this particular clause, and that amendment is in clause 10, to delete clause 10 and 6. The reason that I’ve suggested that is because I had particular issue, and this did come up last night, but I think it’s hasn’t been followed through in terms of the implications of it to the Minister, and that’s why I’ve suggested deleting it in my amendment that I’m speaking to—the “claim may not be raised within 10 years [after the date] of a pay equity [claim] settlement” being reached. So last night, the Minister clarified that for two of the most significant claims that had been brought into effect in New Zealand—with the support of many, or if not everyone, in the House—those, because they were settled in 2017 and 2018, will have to wait for 10 years.

Now, this is retrospective, so this is, essentially, taking away the right of those people. So we currently have claim in the Employment Relations Authority for care and support workers, and they will not be able to pursue that claim until at least 2027; 2028 for mental health workers. Did the Minister consider having the bill the way that she wants it to be, which of course we disagree with strongly, but not having a retrospective element to existing claims?

I know she says that she wants to have a new system, and she doesn’t want to have two different types of claims. I don’t actually see how a claim—if care and support workers and mental health workers were able to bring a claim after Royal assent in this bill, I don’t see how that would be something that creates two different systems. The Minister may, and I’m interested to hear a response to that.

She may say, “Well, the Government invested millions of dollars in the pay equity settlement when it was first implemented in 2017/2018.” Well, time has moved on. The effect of that pay equity settlement is now that most care and support workers are on the minimum wage. So there clearly isn’t an argument to say that they’ve received a benefit and therefore they should wait for another 10 years, because they’re on the minimum wage. I mean, anyone working has to be paid that amount. There is clearly no benefit from having that pay equity settlement, at all. So I suggest that that is deleted. I mean, there may have to be subsequent amendments too, if the Minister agrees with what I’m putting forward. But this seems to be a terrible injustice, and I don’t think the Minister’s answers to date justify making those care and support workers and those mental health workers wait another few years before they’re even able to file their claim. And, of course, settlement for some of these claims—but Kristine Bartlett’s claim took her five years. Are we really asking care and support workers to wait that long before they can raise their claim?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to respond to a few of the questions raised this morning, firstly, to Lawrence Xu-Nan, asking whether or not I would consider changing Schedule 1 with the element of retrospectivity. I just wanted to clarify that the only part of the bill that is retrospective is the clauses that make the existing review clauses unenforceable. The reason behind this is because the short three-year time frame in the review does make it difficult to determine whether or not genuine sex-based discrimination has reemerged after such a short period of time in comparison to other short-term labour market conditions. I do actually think having an extended time frame makes the bill more robust. So, no, I won’t be considering changes to that.

Camilla Belich did ask whether or not we would agree with her tabled amendment to change the purpose of the Act. No, that is not something that I will consider. The member’s proposed amendment does not reflect the purpose of Part 4 of the Equal Pay Act and the amendments proposed.

Jan Tinetti has also asked what alternative advice I was given about the time frame before a claim can be raised. I’d just like the member to note that I also considered whether to not allow claims to be re-raised at all, so claims would be full and final, but I decided against that in recognition that sex-based discrimination could re-arise. So this is why we have ended up with a claim being able to be re-raised after a 10-year time frame.

Francisco Hernandez asked why the word “brief” had been deleted in relation to a request to consolidate in section 13O. We believe that this change to the section will assist other parties to assess whether or not it’s appropriate to agree to consolidate a claim. This will help to ensure that claims are appropriately scoped, and that will support a more workable pay equity process. The change requires a more detailed description of what the work is and how it is the same or substantially similar, and that is a benefit for all parties involved.

Camilla Belich then went on to ask whether or not we would remove the 10-year time frame limit. I believe I’ve discussed this one at length. The answer to that is: no, we won’t be agreeing to her tabled amendment. The 10-year time frame, I believe, builds confidence and more robustness into the system, that we can see genuine sex-based discrimination re-emerge. A very short time frame means that that could be conflated with short-term labour market conditions.

Then Jan Tinetti asked whether or not we would agree to her tabled amendment to reduce the time frames for the re-raising of a claim. Once again, that’s a no. This does not provide sufficient time to correctly identify whether or not sex-based undervaluation has reemerged.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just note that this is the first opportunity I’ve had to take a call in the committee of the whole House stage of this bill, and I do have a number of questions for the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety and a number of tabled amendments that I’d like to be able to speak to. So I just want to note that’s my intention; this is the first opportunity I’ve had to take a call.

I want to speak to my tabled amendment on clause 11, and ask some questions of the Minister regarding this. Just to note from the explanatory note in the bill that clause 11 changes one of the sections—changes, first of all, the threshold to be met. But the piece I want to talk to specifically is the part which says “Besides this change of threshold, new section 13F requires that the claimed undervaluation of work must be based on reasonable grounds and must be both historical and continuing (rather than either historical or current).” I just want to make some commentary around that. My comment around that is we see examples of historic pay inequity that can go back decades, and, in many cases, goes back years and decades, but we also will see examples where it goes forwards, so we can see that that particular issue hasn’t been resolved, or it has potential to be unresolved.

What concerns us in the Labour Party is that the Minister is basically making this harder to reach the threshold, and I’d like to know from the Minister why it is—so that’s my question to the Minister—that’s she’s made this harder, why she wouldn’t look at a particular occupation that may, looking right now, have some of that inequality addressed, but still have those historic elements. Because one of the issues around pay equity—and this does come up in other clauses—is around that retrospective approach. So one of the reasons why we believe, on this side, that it’s important to look at historic or current is that there are times when a claim can and should be made, in our view, to address some of those historic injustices.

So I do just want to talk to my amendment, just noting that this is one of a number of amendments that I have. I also have one on clause 10 and a few on Part 2, as well, so I’m going to talk to those as the morning continues. But my amendment—in clause 11, new section 13F(1)(b)(ii) replace “taking into account all relevant matters (… set out in subsection (3))”, with “for one or more of the reasons set out in subsection (3).” Also—and I’ll wait for a separate call to ask questions on other clauses because I’d like to hear from the minister on that specific question that I have—I’ll take a shorter call now just by noting that I would like to come back to some further clauses later.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to ask some questions around the definition of “appropriate comparator” in clause 7. The Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety made a number of comments and there have been a number of comments made around the appropriateness of comparators and how that works in a pay equity process, using some examples like why would you—I can’t remember the exact example—compare an air traffic controller to a nurse, or something of that ilk.

I think it would be worthwhile to hear from the Minister the reasoning behind her decision making on comparators, because with the selection of the appropriate comparator in clause 7, she is, essentially—with the new system of comparators she’s introducing—assuming and giving extra weight to people who work for the same employer in terms of the similarity of their roles, and I wanted to ask why that was. There is actually no particular magic, for a pay equity claim, in having the same employer to compare two different job roles. The best thing is obviously to try and get the most similar comparator that you would ever possibly get, and my view is that you should be able to look widely for that in order to be the most accurate. The Minister is making a policy decision here to make people look to the employers in similar industries first.

So I wanted to ask why she decided to do that, and I wanted to ask a few technical questions around the use of comparators, because, essentially, when you’re looking for a comparator, you will never find someone who has the exact same skills or job description, and I think there is a little bit of a misconception—and certainly from some of the comments the Minister has made it appears that there is a misconception—around how these types of job evaluations go. So it’s not looking necessarily at the job description; it’s looking at what you actually do in your role.

Most jobs, for example, even if we look at jobs that appear to be very different, will have an element of human interaction in them. They’ll have an element of having to deal with people’s complex emotions, having to deal with stress. These can be common to different jobs even though they appear on the outside to be very different. That is how we understand the historic undervaluation—we look towards skills that have often been undervalued by society, like taking care of children, and we realise that, actually, when you take care of children you have to be a well-organised manager, you have to manage emotions, you have to do lots of complex things that may not have been appreciated by society.

So I wanted to ask a technical question. I think I might know what the answer to this might be, but I’d be interested to hear the Minister’s thoughts. When she is looking at comparators, she seems to be moving towards appearing to say that the current system does not allow the choice of appropriate comparators. Is that correct? I’d like to know the answer to that. Secondly, there is a concept in pay equity negotiations which is to look at composite comparators. For example, instead of looking at one job role, as we do now, we can look at a few different job roles that might be male-dominated and there might be an aspect in security that is more similar to a care and support worker’s role because of the nature of some of the people they’re dealing with. There may be an element in relation to stress which is more likely related to an air traffic controller. Those are just examples—not necessarily the best ones. But, essentially, a composite comparator would be taking a job role and looking to see if maybe three or four different male-dominated roles were more accurately compared to a female-dominated role.

I don’t see that idea reflected in this legislation, but I want to genuinely ask if this is something that is possible—probably not, is my guess, but I’d like to hear that from the Minister as well as whether she’d consider something like that. The reason I think that’s important in relation to this appropriate comparator definition that has been brought in is that it seems to me that if you’re looking at—and the Minister says this is very important—the most appropriate comparators, it would be more flexible and more likely to produce an accurate comparator if you’re able to look at several different job roles and not say it’s one individual. In the UK, for example, it is one individual. You have to find a particular human being, person, to do that. We don’t necessarily do that in New Zealand today. We look at job roles. But this kind of composite aspect of it would possibly lead to more accuracy, which is what the Minister seems to be desiring from this process.

So I genuinely want to know whether she has received advice on this, whether she’s turned her mind to it, and whether it’s something that’s possible under this particular piece of legislation.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to ask you specifically, Minister, about clause 7. That means that I need to flick to section 13, because I actually want to ask you about—it’s page 16—section 13ZE(8). It talks about, when selecting comparators, the parties having to take into account additional matters prescribed in the regulations. What I want to know is: this is in the exclusions—so there’s an exclusion to your rule—but then it seems to be very open season here as to what could be an exclusion beyond it. I wondered—because we’re going through urgency in the way we are—whether this has been before the regulatory standards people. What it seems to be doing is suggesting that anything can be added, even though the prerogative of the legislature is to create those rules. So I wanted to know what the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety had in mind would be included by way of regulation and whether that had been appropriately scrutinised in this process, and, if not, whether the Minister would undertake that it would be.

I would also like to know about clause 8, which is section 13D amended. It says, “Union right to represent members”. I’m always looking for what’s different about it. There is a difference in clause 10 here, which is that we replace “Unions” with “Circumstances in which unions”. I would really, genuinely like to know what the intention is there. Why would we do that, and what has she got in mind there? What’s the point of the change? I’d really like an explanation.

Finally, I want to ask about the issue over “exceptional circumstances”. Now, I understood the Minister, when I asked about what an exceptional circumstance was, was answering by question by saying, “I don’t know what an exceptional circumstance is. We’re just writing that down, and the courts will sort that out later.” That worries me, because an exceptional circumstance has got to be something out of the normal, and my concern is: what about all the cases where the normal is manifestly unjust?

I gave the Minister an example of a woman who is worn out. She’s not going to be there in 10 years’ time. She needs an answer now, and she needs her claim to be heard, because she has been discriminated against. Is that going to be “exceptional circumstances”? The Minister said that she couldn’t tell me whether it was or not. What I wondered was whether she had considered that the trouble with that is that an exceptional circumstance has to be something that isn’t normal, and that might be quite normal for that to happen—that people do age out or wear out and that’s normal. I wondered whether she would consider replacing the phrase with one which was more directive as to what the courts should look at, because that doesn’t direct in the right way.

I have just used the example of “manifestly unjust”. Now, I’m not thrilled with “manifestly unjust”, because I think “unjust” is bad enough, really, in these circumstances. We’re trying to deal with a systemic justice issue and discrimination, and so any discrimination should be looked at, but “manifestly unjust” is one that we’ve adopted quite recently in other legislation to make sure that people weren’t harmed in a way that was outrageous. So I wondered whether she’d considered using a term which actually did the job of looking at the injustice. Thank you, Mr Chair, I look forward to your answers.

Hon Dr Deborah Russell: Mr Chair?

I call Helen White.

Sorry, I will actually cede to my colleague. I know that she’s got another question.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): No, I’ve given you the call. The call is yours.

HELEN WHITE: Yes, thank you. But, as long as I get an answer to those questions, I’d rather follow up once I have.

Thank you for this call, Mr Chair. We’ve got a long way to go in this debate. It’s a substantial change for our employment legislation, and it’s a change that really creates tremendous difficulty for women.

I want to talk about a tabled amendment in my name, and it amends clause 15. Now, clause 15 allows employers to opt out of multi-employer pay equity claims, and a new section 13L(9) has come into this. It enables an employer to opt out of a claim, and then new section 13L(10) says that “A party may not apply to the Authority”—the Employment Relations Authority—“under section 13ZY for a determination concerning an employer’s decision under this section to opt out of a multi-employer claim.” What that means in plain language is that a pay equity claim across multi-employers can go in, but a single employer can opt out of that claim, and, more to the point, they can do it without there being any appeal—without there being any way for the employees affected by that to actually appeal the employer’s decision to find a way to get a separate judgment on it.

So this is a very, very simple amendment, and what I have suggested is that we go to amend clause 15(2), which is the one that specifically has in it the new section 13L(10), just to take the word “not” out so that a party may apply to the Employment Relations Authority for a determination concerning an employer’s decision. Now, it seems to me to be entirely reasonable that if an employer can unilaterally opt out of a pay equity process, then, at the very least, the reasonableness of that decision should be considered by the Employment Relations Authority.

The reason that this one particularly caught my eye was that after the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety told us last night to google the people whose pay equity claims had just been unilaterally struck out by this legislation; we managed to get the information—because she didn’t have it at hand herself. So we found the information, and sitting in here are the tertiary education library assistants. Now, this is really interesting, because in the Minister’s new legislation, the threshold for taking a pay equity claim is 70 percent—70 percent of the workforce must be female over a period of 10 years. That’s an “and, and”, isn’t it—70 percent, and 10 years—as far as I understand it.

But the information we have about tertiary education library assistants is that across the universities—and I don’t know about the polytechnics; I’d like the Minister to clarify that, because, surely, she would have done the work on this—68 to 85 percent of tertiary education library assistants are female, across the universities. Some universities are down at 68 percent females in terms of tertiary education library assistants, and some are up at 85 percent female, so what this gives is a very clear case of a pay equity claim that was under way where, overall, across a multi-employer workforce, the workforce is going to be at well above 70 percent, given that 68 to 85 percent range, but particular universities might be down at 68 percent. So what’s happened here is that because an employer can opt out at their own will with no appeal in place—with no appeal in place—those universities sitting at 68 percent have got every incentive just to drop out.

This amendment is a very straightforward one, and I think it’s an entirely reasonable one. I think it’s one on which the Minister could give way quite easily because it’s a very simple amendment, and there should be no reason why that decision of one employer to opt out of a multi-employer pay equity claim should not be subject to at least some kind of review. So let’s take that word “not” out.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’ll take the time to consider some of these questions. Firstly, in the name of Camilla Belich, we had a question regarding clause 9: how is this consistent with the purposes of the bill, especially in relation to section 13E of the principal Act? The requirements in section 13E are already in the Act. The changes are intended to ensure that employers consider them appropriately when making a decision on a claim.

We had an amendment by Rachel Boyack which is seeking to lower the threshold on merit. I don’t believe that this is something the Government will be supporting. It’s not considering all relevant matters that may contribute to sex-based discrimination. It would not ensure that genuine claims are progressed, so the Government will not be supporting that amendment.

We had a question from Francisco Hernandez about whether or not the Government gave enough time for claimants and exactly what time they were told. I’ve been informed that the New Zealand Public Service Association and the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions were informed about an announcement coming before it was made yesterday morning. There were further calls throughout the day to the New Zealand Educational Institute Te Riu Roa and the New Zealand Post Primary Teachers’ Association, and the Primary Principals’ Collective Bargaining Union were notified by phone at some point after 11—between that and 11.30; then, the Secondary Principals’ Association of New Zealand was notified shortly after that.

Camilla Belich had a query about whether or not the system is allowing for a correct appropriate selection of comparators. The current system does allow for multi-comparators to be used, but it also allows comparators to be selected that are from quite different industries and very different sectors, and so why are we requiring comparators to be in close proximity to be selected? Well, at large, I believe this builds in confidence and robustness to the system. The change will ensure that comparators perform comparable work and that the comparators selected are more closely related to the employer, which I believe will reduce secondary noise—things like the Consumers Price Index and other labour market conditions which are quite varied. The closer you get to the workforce that you are in, the closer we can make any resolutions of sex-based discrimination.

Camilla Belich also then asked if the bill allows parties to use composite comparators. The bill still does allow parties to select more than one comparator where they’re available at the relevant level of the hierarchy.

Helen White then asked what regulations I intend to make regarding the selection of comparators. The ability to make regulations regarding the selection of comparators is already within the Act. This bill is simply reapplying it and at this stage I don’t have intentions to make regulations in this area.

Helen White then also asks why we are not defining the exceptional circumstances. That’s the whole point of exceptional circumstances; the nature of them is that they are quite difficult to predict because they are exceptional. This is a common kind of provision to give a judiciary the role of a determination.

Deborah Russell then also asked if we can delete the word “not” in section 13L. No, that is not what the Government will be doing. We don’t support this. Requiring reasons to allow legal challenge would limit the ability of employers to ensure that pay equity bargaining is aligned with existing bargaining structures in employment bargaining.

Right, just before I take the next call, I’ve been watching this all morning. I note the observations and the comments by the previous Chair around the need for specific references to Amendment Papers and to sections. We’ve pretty much covered the general tenor of the bill, so that’s where the debate will need to continue.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to take this call. I do have quite a few amendments that I haven’t spoken to, and I will jump forward a little bit in the bill, which I’m sure the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety will be pleased to hear. I’ll also note that the Schedule is in Part 1, and the reason I mention that is that we’ve recently just tabled a number of amendments relating to that Schedule that haven’t been touched on at all, and they’re relating to the specific claims. So I’m sure the members who have those amendments in their name will wish to speak to that, so just flagging that once we go through the clauses, there are a number of amendments to that Schedule.

So the first one that I wanted to raise with the Minister in the chair, Brooke van Velden—and I might go through some of these amendments at pace, which I’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear, Mr Chair. So the first one I wanted to raise is an amendment that I had put forward around 13PA, that’s in clause 20. This particular amendment looks at the requirement for the employer to give notice of their decisions to the union or the workers that are taking the claim. So, at the moment, the particular clause 13PA(2)(a) has 60 working days after the employer receives the pay equity claim. Now, I have suggested an amendment to reduce that to 20 days. The reason that I have done that is because I think 60 working days is a very long time for the employer to, effectively, give a decision.

Of course, with these things, we know one of the legitimate criticisms of the system is the fact that it does take a long time. I think where there are efficiencies to be made, it should be in order to allow the claims to proceed as quickly as possible. That’s why I have suggested that particular amendment, and I’m interested to know from the Minister why 60 days was selected. I haven’t actually had the time to check if that’s the current number of days in the existing Act. Obviously, she’s changing this and saying she wants to make it more effective. So why has she arrived at that particular day?

But I do think one of the things we can all agree on is that women should be a—well, maybe we don’t all agree on it. I think, in general, it is a difficult principle to disagree with, that women who are entitled to equal pay should have that as soon as possible. So I want to know from the Minister: does she accept my amendment? What was the reasoning for choosing that particular number of days?

I also have an amendment, and I appreciate other members may have some other things that they wish to discuss in the intervening clauses, but the next one that I wanted to specifically raise was in relation to 13ZE, which is “Selecting appropriate comparators”. Now, we haven’t specifically talked about this particular clause, although we have talked about the fact that one of the major policy changes in this bill is the way that the Minister has decided to change the way that comparators are selected. I believe that the substantive nature of that is in 13ZE, which has not been discussed in detail.

This is an incredibly detailed section—or clause, as it is now—and it, essentially, puts into practice what we have talked about: the policy intent of the hierarchy of comparators. I would like the Minister to reflect on—she has said to us in her answer that the reason that she has decided that there is a good policy reason to make sure the comparator is closely connected to the claimant’s employer is because that is more likely to determine sex-based discrimination. Now, I don’t understand why that is. I don’t understand why, when you’re looking at undervaluation by society, the proximity to an employer is more likely to show sex-based discrimination. Because, of course, when we’re talking about pay equity claims, which we are here, we are talking about the undervaluation of skills by society. This is not something like an equal pay claim where you may be looking at the exact actions of a particular employer. Often, there are reasons within the society that have led to the undervaluation.

So my suggestion is that you get rid of that particular clause. That was actually the main reason that there was a different bill that was brought in by Labour than the one suggested by National. So this is the significant clause. This is the reason that the legislation was substantively changed from what was suggested by the previous National Government. So I want to know why.

I want to take the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, please, to the Schedule and to clause 8 of the Schedule. I’ve got a practical question that is concerning me at the moment, from the list that the Minister said to google yesterday—and we got that list overnight and we’ve got that in front of us now. My question is around the fact that on this list, it seems to clump some of the claims together. It clumps the teachers’ claim together. I am presuming, when I add all of this up, that we get to the 33 by separating the teachers’ claims.

Now, my question, and wondering here, goes back to clause 4 and the interaction between clause 4 of Part 1 of the Schedule. In clause 4, it talks about raising that threshold to 70 percent. In the claims on the answer to the written questions that the Minister gave that she highlighted last night, in those teachers’ claims it talks about the percentage of female teachers across all sectors as 82.4 percent. But when you break that down, the percentage of secondary teachers in State integrated schools sits at 63.6 percent. Considering that as a different teacher union, is the Minister then saying that secondary teachers, through their PPTA union, would not be able to put a pay equity claim in here because they are sitting under that 70 percent? If that is the case, does that not, then, create an unintended consequence of a differentiation that is going to be huge if the primary teachers and the early childhood teachers were successful in a pay equity claim—that they would go well above the secondary teachers?

Now, I say that because the two collective agreements are inherently linked or legislatively linked through the pay parity agreement. While pay equity claims are not about the collective agreements, this is going to have a huge impact on the collective agreement and on the teaching profession as a whole.

So my question is: are there two separate claims there, or is the Minister ensuring in that Schedule that those current claims that were in place that are getting dropped—but knowing that they’re going to come forward again—that secondary teachers would be seen as part of teachers as a whole and would have that pathway to a pay equity process? If they don’t, there is a huge, huge issue that is coming that Government’s way.

So that is my question—I want to leave it at that. I don’t want to take up any further time, but I’m really concerned about the unintended consequences going forward in that space.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Firstly to Deborah Russell, who asked about the tertiary education library assistants having a range across universities and does that mean if an employer opts out, some won’t meet the 70 percent requirement? No, the 70 percent requirement does apply to the workforce; it doesn’t apply to the workforce of a particular employer.

I’ve got a question from Helen White: what change is intended in clause 8? Under clause 8, the bill simply separates out the requirement to raise a claim, in order to be clear what claimants need to provide and what employers need to decide.

We’ve got a tabled amendment which Camilla Belich discussed in new section 13PA inserted by clause 20 replacing “60 working days” with “20 working days”. That would not provide sufficient time to assess if claims are eligible to be raised and whether or not they have merit.

Another question from Camilla Belich about why the bill introduces a hierarchy. Well, that’s because, under the current Act, it doesn’t provide enough rules on how to choose an appropriate comparator. The current process requires the parties to exercise a significant amount of judgment, which can lead to comparators being chosen even when the comparator’s work is very different to the claimant. An example is that under our current system, we have fishery officers and corrections officers being used repeatedly in claims as varied as administrative and clerical staff, nurses, and school library staff.

Another question, then, in relation to Camilla’s next tabled amendment to delete new section 13ZE, essentially around the hierarchy of comparators—I won’t be doing that. I believe the hierarchy of comparators means that parties can choose comparators in closer proximity to the employee and that, in effect, reduces the level of judgment that’s required to compare the complaint and the comparator’s work and remuneration, which is better and makes our system more robust.

I then had a question from Jan Tinetti about whether or not this change means that some teachers can’t raise a claim as they may not reach a 70 percent requirement. Ultimately, it is up to unions to raise claims that meet the new thresholds and requirements.

Thank you very much, Mr Chair. My question—I’ve been trying a while, Mr Chair, but thank you for choosing me—is in relation to 13DA, under that. It goes into the point around, and it’s under clause 10(4) of that section, the point that the pay equity claim may not be raised within 10 years after the date. My question on this is—I have received advice that this may cause problems with our international obligations under CEDAW. So CEDAW is the Convention of Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, which New Zealand signed up to in 1985. So we have obligations to regularly report on how we are complying with those conventions that we have signed up to. It is important to note that the purpose of the three principles in that convention, that UN convention that we have actually signed up to, is non-discrimination against women. But the second point is the State’s obligation under that. So we have an international convention that we are party to and that we regularly report on that requires us to show the State’s obligation to how we are complying with that agreement, and also to demonstrate how we are striving to promote equality for women and girls.

The issue I have is that because there is no regulatory impact statement for this particular piece of legislation, and also for the fact that the Cabinet paper that we’re able to see has had the human rights section completely withheld, that now we are receiving information that there is potentially a problem with what we’ve signed up to under CEDAW with that particular provision. There are other provisions, too, that we are also concerned about, how that would cause problems for New Zealand internationally for the Convention of Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

But my question to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety is, specifically: did she receive advice that we would be contravening our international obligations with that provision that “a pay equity claim may not be raised within 10 years after the date of a pay equity claim settlement if the claim would relate to any or all of the employees covered by the settlement and the work to which the settlement relates”? So that is the particular point. There are others as well.

The reason I raised this point is because it puts the ability to scrutinise these types of things, international obligations to prevent the discrimination of women and girls, that we potentially are contravening our UN obligations. We are unable to have a verified answer on this because there is no regulatory impact statement, and that part of the Cabinet paper has been withheld. I think it is important to highlight that if we look at that, it was April 2024 that this went to Cabinet—April 2024. That is a year ago that this paper went to Cabinet. Subsequently, Cabinet committee signed off that Cabinet agreement on 24 December in December 2024.

So why do we not—not only the Opposition but members of the public—have the ability to understand why that information is not being made available for us to fully comprehend whether we’re complying with our international obligations for discrimination against women and girls? If this has been to Cabinet a year ago, and subsequently to Cabinet committee, there needs to be additional information provided to us in order to fully understand whether we are in fact complying with CEDAW. We need to be reporting on this annually, and there is some pretty strong advice coming into us that when we need to report back in 2025, we will not be complying with our obligations under a strong international convention that has been ratified since 1985. This is a long period of time. We need to have some clear answers from the Minister whether she’s received advice on whether we have breached the ratification of that international agreement.

I’d just note at the moment that a lot of the questions are going on for the full five minutes. Under requirement—or it’s necessity now, to be a little bit more specific. I just will invite members to wonder whether they need to have quite as much context into those questions as they currently do.

Thank you, Mr Chair—I appreciate the opportunity to take a second call, and, as I did indicate in my earlier call, I do have a number of amendments and a number of questions. I will seek to keep my call concise and just stick to that.

I do note, just one important point is that we haven’t had a select committee process, and so as we are going through this process and as the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety answers questions and as we obtain more documents, we do have more questions that come along. So that is one of the reasons why we are taking the time to ask this level of questions. We also didn’t have a regulatory impact statement (RIS), and so there are a whole lot of questions that would normally be answered through a regulatory impact statement that we aren’t able to find. So that means that, as we are going through this process, the Opposition is taking the level of time that we need. So I just want to make that point, because these are the kinds of questions we would normally have answered through a RIS, but also be able to engage with officials for, often, three or four hours every couple of weeks during a select committee process. This is what we have instead of that, so I just want to note that that’s why we’re going to prosecute this for a very long period of time.

My specific question is in relation to my tabled amendment to the Schedule. I’ll just note that in the Schedule, paragraphs 8(1) and (2) around existing pay equity claims—this is the piece in the Schedule that says that all existing pay equity claims are discontinued on the commencement date.

Hon Damien O’Connor: It’s just outrageous.

RACHEL BOYACK: Yeah—just reflecting on the comments from my colleague Damien O’Connor, it is outrageous. The question I have for the Minister, just before I speak to my amendment, is: did she consider transition and savings clauses around this? Because to ultimately just cut off all of those claims that are in existence—and for some of them they’ll have to wait, and all them will have to start again and redo the whole process. First of all, did the Minister consider putting in place a transition plan for those 33 causes? Again, I come back to the fact there isn’t a RIS. This is the type of information that would have been included in a RIS, but we don’t have access to the Minister’s advice that she received and the decision making around that, and I’d like to know in detail whether she did consider a transition plan.

The second piece I just want to raise is to speak to my tabled amendment, which is actually to delete that part, which means that those claims would continue to be live. The view of the Labour Party is very clear: that all of those existing claims that are in the process now—it is bad faith, it is not good faith, to just dismiss them immediately, and so we have an amendment in my name that would mean that that cancellation of those claims doesn’t happen. Given how serious it is for hundreds of thousands of workers, will the Minister consider supporting that amendment?

Thank you, Mr Chair. I will respond to the question by Ginny Andersen, asking about whether or not this bill will comply with international obligations, and questions around the date this went through Cabinet. The Government has a range of international obligations, and the Government took these obligations into account in its decision making. I can assure the member that Cabinet made these policy decisions in March of this year.

In relation to Rachel Boyack’s questions about her tabled amendment, the Government will not be supporting this paper. I deem it necessary for the claims to be going through the same system, as it will be messier having two different systems set up at the same time for claims to be reviewed underneath that. That’s why the Government has moved to draw a distinct line in the sand and have all claims go through one process.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to move on and ask the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety some specific questions around clause 29, replacing sections 13ZD and 13ZE. I think the first question I have is around section 13ZD(3), around making these sorts of assessments. Specifically I want to check with the Minister in terms of understanding new subsection (3)(b) and the term “recognise”.

Now, in new subsection (3)(a), it used the term “consider”, but (3)(b) just says “recognise”. One of the issues that we have when we’re looking at the way that the assessments are made—because, again, it says in (3)(a) “[considered] matters objectively and without assumptions based on sex, taking the following into account:”, but often we do find that in the type of work that we’re talking about, it is as expressed in (3)(b); they’re commonly overlooked or undervalued in work that is performed by our workforce, such as social and communication skills.

My concern is that “recognise” just means “Oh, we know it’s there.”, but it may not necessarily mean considering them in making an assessment. Can I just check that, even though the term is “recognise”, when making the assessment the parties to a pay equity claim still need to take seriously the importance of skills, responsibility, efforts, and conditions that have been commonly overlooked and undervalued. That’s my first question.

Now, in terms of section 13ZE, I thank the Minister for her response on the matter of selection and hierarchy. But one of the questions I have is around the fact that in section 13ZE(8), what we are seeing is the tie-in to section 19 of the existing legislation, which is what the current legislation states, which talks about the way the regulations are made. I just want to check: just because it doesn’t refer to section 19 when it says “prescribed by regulations”, as prescribed by section 19, that it’s still the intention that we’re talking about the definition of regulations under section 19. So that’s my second question.

My third question is around section 13ZEA(1), “Employer decides no appropriate comparators available”. Now, we have heard, before, the explanation from the Minister on comparators, but I wanted to check—because it says “If the employer decides that no appropriate comparators are available”, they can just, essentially, stop the claim from there. It seems like it’s not a consideration that is being made by both parties. In that case, when it’s just the employer who determines that there’s no appropriate comparator available, how would the employer make those kinds of decisions, and does it need to be based on evidence? Because it’s not specified in this section. Can I just check that the only recourse for the claimant in that case is laid out in section 13ZEA, where the only way for the claimant to move this forward is by applying to the authority for the determination of that decision.

So those are, I guess, four questions that I have. The first one is around the definition of the term “recognise” in section 13ZD(3)(b), and whether “recognise” has the same meaning as “consider”, and, if not, what are the mechanisms needed for it to be considered seriously. My second question is around consistency of section 13ZE(8)—whether the regulations there will still be consistent with the existing section 19 of the Act. My third and fourth questions are around section 13ZEA on whether the employer has the sole mandate or determination to decide if there is an appropriate comparator and, if it is, is the only recourse for the claimant in that case to apply to the authority.

Thank you, Mr Chair, and I appreciate the call this morning. This is my first opportunity to speak on this legislation. Can I just open by saying shame on those men in the National Party that are standing to put a closure motion forward to an equity claim that affects women the most. But, Mr Chair, I’ll get on with it. I appreciate that opportunity just to acknowledge that and to speak to my amendment to the Equal Pay Amendment Bill—the amendment here to the Schedule: new clause 8(5). That amendment is that none of the provisions in the Schedule affect the existing claim by tertiary education, administration, and clerical workers.

Of course, I started my career in this particular area, at the University of Auckland, and have actively supported kaimahi and workers in this particular place. The Tertiary Education Union has been working through what has been a very slow process of a pay equity claim for administrators and clerical workers, and we have had the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety respond to the library staff. Can I just note in the Hansard record that most library staff actually have Master’s degrees as a requirement of their job. This is why we use different comparators, because there are few sectors that have the same requirement.

This particular amendment is because the group of workers for whom, in this instance, this is considered feminised work—for the administrators and clerical workers—also has the highest percentage of women workers here. We know that the role that they play is important. I think of student support workers, who have an administrative function in their role; they are affected in these particular areas, across the eight universities in this country. It has been a large topic of discussion at Waipapa Taumata Rau - University of Auckland. This would, effectively, halt that. Given the reaction in the last 24 hours on this, I really would appreciate the Minister considering my amendment that would, effectively, remove this from the legislation that she has put forward, giving administration and clerical workers a chance to negotiate.

Second to that, on a new subject area, I do acknowledge that, in this legislation, the ministry does refer particularly to the term “sex” rather than “gender”, and I’d appreciate if the Minister could speak to that and the reason why she has used that language rather than “gender”, because, obviously, this does affect a number of our rainbow communities as well, working in and being represented in these claims.

My last point there, going back to my amendment, is that a lot of the workers in this area not only are women but also play a functional role in supporting Māori and Pasifika. While this isn’t a priority for the ACT Party, I do expect the Minister to be able to play a role in ensuring that this work is continued and that we have a workforce that is able to play the role that we need them to.

Minister, those three things—I would appreciate it if you would consider my amendment. I would appreciate it if you could put an explanation forward for the language used, around “sex” versus “gender”. We do appreciate more inclusive language in this House and in legislation and, largely, the impact on rainbow, Māori, and Pasifika communities.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I just wish to respond to a couple of the questions, especially in relation to Lawrence Xu-Nan. We’ve had a question in relation to clause 13ZE(8) which is still tied to section 19 and regulations. Yes, this is the case. “Prescribed” under section 13ZE(8) means prescribed by regulations as in section 19. This is also a provision that hasn’t changed from the original Act.

The next question is about clause 13ZD, which is a change in language from “recognise” to “consider” and does that mean that these factors won’t get the same consideration. These matters will still need to be taken into consideration in the assessment process. This is not a substantive change to the Act.

There was a question in relation to 13ZEA: does the employer have a sole mandate to decide on the appropriate comparator? As is the case currently, parties can identify and select appropriate comparators for the assessment process. If they disagree, then they can work together to resolve the dispute, if needed, by mediation.

I then move to Shanan Halbert, asking for a claim carve-out in his tabled amendment. No, the Government will not be considering that. We’ve made it very clear that this is about getting the legislative framework correct. It is not about any one particular single claim.

There is also a question there in relation to why we have used the words “sex-based” discrimination, not “gender-based” discrimination. I just want to make it clear that this is not something that this Government has chosen. That was the language that was used by the Labour Government when it passed the legislation. So that question is possibly better asked of the Labour Government that put it in place.

Thank you, Mr Chair. There are just two things I wanted to talk about. One related to comments made by the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety around comparators. We know that new section 13ZE in clause 29 is adjusting the framing of the comparators, and there’s a concern that there’s a narrowing of the ability to compare across industries. The Minister has made some comments sort of suggesting—or I think they were—that air traffic controllers were more deserving of their higher pay than, say, social workers, and that no comparison could be made across them.

I did just want to point out that this is a really good example of exactly where the problem lies, because, in fact, if you look at the careers.govt.nz website, there’s actually a useful framing of the qualifications needed for various roles and what the pay expectations might be. Whereas social workers are required to be a registered social worker under the current regime, which requires a professional Bachelor’s degree, which I understand is actually four years in social work, for an air traffic controller it may require—so it’s not even compulsory, but it “may” require—a level 6 qualification. The pay indications are $52,000 to $92,000 for a social worker, and if you go over to an air traffic controller, it is, in fact, $140,000 to $228,000 for an occupation which doesn’t actually require—although some of them will have it—a degree-level qualification.

That’s the example the Minister used to suggest that those disparities are in some way justifiable, and, to be perfectly honest, it beggars belief that she could think that, where there are clear comparators where you can say, “There’s a mismatch here and something needs to be addressed.” So that’s my first point. I’d appreciate it if the Minister could address that point, because it is her own point.

The second point relates to clause 30 of the bill and the amendments to section 13ZH, which is around how pay equity claims are settled. Now, the whole concept of a pay equity claim is that there has been an unjustifiable underpayment in the subject profession across many years. Some members of the Government say that this isn’t about the money, and other members of the Government say that it is and they frame it as sustainability. But I’m interested in this idea that you can phase in fair pay or equitable pay, and I want to know: if we have reached a conclusion that in these women-dominated sectors, these women are being underpaid as a matter of fact and law, then how is it justifiable to defer fixing the problem? How is it possible? How can it be justified to say in the clauses that the parties can agree or the authority can determine that there is a pay equity settlement in agreed phases over a maximum of three years, or that there are three annual phases in equal amounts, if it’s a determination—as I understand it.

So what we’ve got is that we are, essentially, saying to these underpaid women, “Yes, you’re underpaid. We’ve gone through a long and arduous process to reach that conclusion, but we’ll let you get your appropriate pay—your pay which is equivalent to your male counterparts in the male-dominated industries—not today, not tomorrow, not this year, not next year, but the year after that.” Can you, Minister, tell the underpaid women of New Zealand how it is appropriate or fair or good government or inconsistent with your party’s claimed equal rights framework to underpay women knowingly for three years after they have reached their equity claim?

I have a really short question for the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety on clause 20, “New sections 13PA and 13PB inserted”. Before section 13Q, there is now section 13PA , “Time limit for employer’s decision about pay equity claim”. Now, my question is just around language. Can I just ask the Minister this question. It says here in section 13PA that “(1) An employer who receives a pay equity claim must, as soon as reasonably practicable after receiving it,—”. Now, is this traditional language in the crafting of legislation, because my question really is: what is reasonably practicable?

The second thing is that in subsection (1)(b) it talks about equity claims that have merit. Now, in terms of the definition of “merit”—again, just on language for the committee—is that traditionally how it’s done? So subsection (1)(b) talks about the pay equity claim having merit. What actually defines “merit” in legislation? Thank you.

I must say to members that a new member bringing a point up doesn’t mean that it’s a new point. There has been quite a number of Amendment Papers that have landed here, which I’m working through, and I would expect that most of the contributions from here on in would be at least referencing those Amendment Papers. At this stage, it’s hard to see many points that haven’t been raised already. With that, I call Camilla Belich.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I have here two points that haven’t been raised, relating to my amendments, and close but not exactly beside the preceding section to the one that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan was talking about, and it’s 13ZE(6), (7). Now, this particular section, essentially, says that the parties may not select a comparator if a workforce is too small to allow a meaningful comparison between its work and the work to which the claim relates, which I don’t believe we’ve touched on at all.

So this amendment which I have put forward would change that section, delete the current section, and insert that “Parties may select an appropriate comparator if that workforce is large or small providing there is an evidential basis to do so.” Now, the reason that I suggested that amendment is I think that if there is an evidential basis which is arguable—even with a small number of employees—then you should be able to make that argument.

Essentially, it’s giving people who would utilise this Act more tools to be able to make solid arguments. Of course, if it’s so small that you wouldn’t be able to have any evidential basis to utilise then, of course, it’s not appropriate that it should be used. But this particular amendment would give those utilising the Act a much greater ability to be able to argue if there was a case for that. Also, I see that there are inherent problems and I know that a lot of this has been taken from the existing Act but we’re looking at a new Act. Of course, I would expect the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety to consider the Act and how it could be improved upon, and when you’re looking at large or small workforces, there is not a lot of detail on that. We know that every aspect of these can be litigated so some clarity around that.

I think my amendment is preferable to what is put in the bill, in terms of making the decision based on evidence rather than on what’s small, what’s large. So that’s my first amendment, which is a point which I don’t think has been made at all—I’d like to hear the Minister’s response to that.

The second thing that I want to raise is in relation to clause 31 and that replaces section 13ZH(1)(b)(ii) with what is written in that particular clause, and, essentially, that states that the maximum period that an equal pay claim can provide incremental instalments is to a maximum of three years. I have a question in relation to this. The Minister has, on many occasions in this bill, put in 10 years as a time limitation for when claims cannot be brought. So, for example, because of this legislation—we’ve talked about this particular point—you are unable to, if you’ve got a settled claim, bring another claim for 10 years. Now, it appears to me from this section that you are only able to utilise the agreed phases over a maximum of three years. I don’t understand why that is and I would like the Minister to explain why three years is a maximum period where you’re allowed a phased settlement, but 10 years is the time before you can bring a claim.

Surely there should be consistency with these and you should be able to bring phased payments up to the 10-year limit if that’s what you agree, and this is all available to the parties to agree if they want to, that means you go into an equal pay claim, you settle the claim, you have agreed instalments up to 10 years—if you want to, if that’s appropriate for your workforce—and then at the 10-year point, you are then able to raise a new claim, if that’s not appropriate. Why is the maximum period so low? I don’t believe that’s been addressed at all. I’d be really interested to hear the Minister’s response to that in relation to consistency, and it just seems fair and logical to be able to do that. So an answer to that would be—[Time expired]

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’d like to firstly start by responding to Dr Duncan Webb when he was talking about comparisons between different people, the claimants and the people they’re being compared to. The example I think he used was the air traffic controllers versus the social workers. He attempted to suggest that I was suggesting they were more deserving than others, and it is not what I’m suggesting at all. I don’t believe anybody is more deserving of their pay under this system. This is about sex-based discrimination. It is not about my individual judgment—that is for the legislation and for people to have these.

When it comes to people’s specific educational levels, it’s far from me to suggest that because people have specific educational levels, that means that they’re more deserving of pay. In fact, some of the smartest people I know have never been to university and they are phenomenal New Zealanders. So in no way am I saying that they are more deserving. What we’re simply doing by making the hierarchy of comparators in different sectors is to suggest that there are many and varied different working conditions and terms and conditions, and it makes determining how much of the difference in remuneration is down to sex-based undervaluation easier under our rules than the previous regime.

He’s also asked how it is justifiable to defer fixing the problem by phasing. This is to do with the three-year instalments. We’ve decided on this as a Government because this change to the legislation allows employers to better mitigate any potential negative impacts such as on employment, which should benefit all parties. In essence, money doesn’t grow on trees. If there is a settlement—and we know in the past that the settlements have been extremely large in financial terms—that money actually needs to come from somewhere, and so having phased instalments over three years allows for those mitigations to be reduced. In some ways that goes to answer the question from Camilla Belich.

In terms of Glen Bennett’s question on what defines merit, that’s something that I’ve outlined numerous times. Glen Bennett also asked what “as soon as reasonably practicable” is under new sections 13PA and 13PB inserted by clause 20. That is language that is the same as in the original Act. That hasn’t changed. It depends on the circumstances, and it’s also a term commonly used in legislation.

Camilla Belich also asked about her tabled amendment to, essentially, remove the exclusion on very, very small workforces. The reason that we have decided on this as a Government is that workforces need to be large enough to ensure that any differences in remuneration are not based on differences of individual workers, but it is actually due to workforce.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’ve been standing to get a call as a follow-up to an answer that the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety gave quite some time ago to my question around the teachers—and thank you, Minister, for answering the question at that time. This is a very quick follow-up question. It is around the fact that when that question was answered, the answer was given that teachers can bring their claim. I still didn’t get clarity around whether teachers could be seen as a whole, as a profession, or whether they would be coming as primary teachers, early childhood teachers, secondary teachers, because, as I’ve said, you’re talking about two very distinct groups.

Now, the Minister talked about, in one of the answers, this being around getting the framework right. But I don’t believe that the framework can be correct in any which way if these answers aren’t given. Therefore, I point to my colleague Camilla Belich’s schedule of tabled amendments—and I thank her for putting that forward—to the Schedule in clause 8, to have a carve-out for teachers, because I cannot see that we can get this right unless we have absolute definitive knowledge that one lot of teachers is not going to assert itself over another group. So I’d really appreciate an answer to that, and, as I said, it was a very quick contribution.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This is, again, a very short contribution, and it’s around the freedom of contracts. In section 30 of the Act, which amends section 13ZH, it inserts clause (2A), which states: “The parties may not agree to review, or agree on a process for the review of, a pay equity claims settlement.” It’s just perplexing to me, if two parties who are well advised want to put in a settlement agreement, a process to check up on that later on, why the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety is actually intervening in that freely negotiated arrangement and telling them that they can’t.

It would strike me that that’s a real fetter on the free rights and exchange of private property rights, which is often dear to the Minister’s heart. So what is the reason for a fetter on freedom of contract to stop the parties reviewing, should they so choose?

Tēnā koe. Thank you, Madam Chair. I wanted to ask a specific question about clause 47 which amends section 19, related to regulations, and it’s very, very broad. It says, “The Governor-General may, by Order in Council, make regulations for either or both of the following purposes: (a) providing for anything this Act says may or must be provided for by regulations: (b) providing for anything incidental that is necessary for carrying out, or giving full effect to, this Act.”

Really, what I wanted to know from the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety is whether, after this legislation passes, there will be substantial, new, prescriptive regulations put in place to specify what evidence can be used to determine whether a claim has merit or not, or whether the legislation, as drafted, does that? Because I noticed in the Cabinet paper it does say that there is going to be a regulations-making power that will enable the Government to specify what can be used as evidence. Given that there is no select committee process for us to discuss the merits of different evidence, is it the Government’s intention to introduce regulations specifying what can be considered evidence, and, if so, what process will the Government use? Who will the Government consult with on that? What can the Minister tell us about that?

I also have a question that is more broad but it hasn’t been raised yet, and that is: to what extent was the Minister for Women involved in this legislation? Because when I was Minister for Women when the legislation passed in 2020, I worked hand-in-hand with the workplace relations and safety Minister—and, in fact, I was the Minister who oversaw the committee stages and the third reading of the bill, which is now an Act. So I was extremely involved and I just wanted to know because there’s no indication in any of the Cabinet papers of the Minister for Women, Nicola Grigg, being involved in the development of this legislation.

In the Cabinet paper, the human rights implications of the legislation are completely redacted, so we cannot see that. So I just want to know from a Government process point of view—because this legislation is not being subjected to the same process and scrutiny that was applied to the legislation that was passed in 2020. It’s being passed in two days. Parliament can’t see what the human rights implications advice was that was provided to Cabinet, and there’s no indication that the Minister for Women was involved in this.

I’m interested in getting answers to those questions, but particularly about clause 47, the new regulations-making power. What are the Government’s intentions around regulations specific to evidence and what is the process they will use to consult? Who will they consult with? What is our expectation about what requirements are going to be put in place for regulations that will have a substantive impact on whether a workforce or a union representing a workforce that is predominantly female—what barriers and hoops they’re going to have to jump through to be able to seek just pay?

Kia ora. Thank you, Madam Chair, for this call, my first call on this. I was hoping to have the other Minister there, but I see Minister Seymour in there, so it’s probably appropriate to ask him if he’d like to elaborate on what he said yesterday in terms of saving the Government. I’m sure we’re all very interested to hear that.

I will come to this amendment very shortly, but it was an interesting kōrero from that Minister yesterday. Just as an aside—and, as I said, I’ll come to this amendment shortly—I ran into Ali Mau this morning, who’s a very famous broadcaster, who talked about this kaupapa. When she took over Mike Hosking’s position, she said she was happy to take Mike Hosking’s position as long as she got Mike Hosking’s pay, and, of course that wasn’t forthcoming, so I thought I’d just put that as an aside and come to the amendment that we’re talking about today.

We’re talking about clause 8 and we want a new subclause (5) put in. We want to insert that none of the provisions in the schedule affect the existing claim by the Public Service administration and clerical workers’ claim. I think it’s a very fair claim to put forward. I was part of the equal pay for work of equal value campaign back in 1986, believe it or not, so we’re talking nearly 40 years ago. That was driven by my uncle Syd Jackson and it was a claim that has resonated through the years. Camilla Belich will know; her auntie was involved with that claim.

I would like to ask the Minister in the chair: what are the chances of this being retained, given this is an intergenerational claim in terms of equal work for equal value? What does that mean to the Minister going forward? Is there still a possibility of this claim being retained, given the history, given the tradition, given what it meant in terms of particularly the New Zealand Clerical Workers’ Union at the time, as I said, driven by Syd Jackson? Tau Henare and myself were part of the claim. So it wasn’t just about a Māori claim; it was a claim in terms of equity for all workers across the spectrum—incredibly important. That was driven by the New Zealand Clerical Workers’ Union but taken up by other unions through the years and treated as incredibly serious by us as a Labour Government.

I also asked the Minister in the chair today: was there any consultation across the different ministries, particularly if we look in terms of Māori workers and Māori female workers, the way that they have been discriminated against over the years? Was there any kōrero in that area with the Minister for Māori Development, Tama Potaka? Was he brought into the equation? Where did this come from? Was it just driven in terms of the Budget, as Minister Seymour has said yesterday? He saved this Government—ACT to the rescue again for this Government. Was that what it’s really about, or is this really about equity and fairness?

This claim in terms of none of the provisions in the schedule affecting the existing claim by the Public Service administration and clerical workers is, as I said, an incredibly important claim given the tradition, given the prejudice against workers. Here we had women doing incredibly important work at an administrative level but not receiving the status or the mana or the type of wage that they should be getting. That’s a claim that was put on the table in 1986; it has gone through the years, and now it’s being wiped off. Now, I ask the Minister in the chair today: is that something that could be re-examined and what sort of process did the Government go down in examining what was happening across society? Was there consultation with other Ministers? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Can I just say, I’m not ready to take a closure motion, but the Opposition has been advised by former presiding officers in the chair that the conversation now needs to be quite targeted. Please refer to the Amendment Papers and specific topics that haven’t yet been covered.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I’d like to speak to an amendment that is there, in relation to the Schedule and the particular claims that will be impacted by this—the 33 claims. My amendment seeks to take a look particularly at corrections probation officer and senior practitioners. That is a claim that is on the 33 claims that will be wiped out by this legislation and that comes under the Public Service sector.

My point is that, in the corrections probation officer and senior practitioner claim, that particular proportion of the workforce is 68 percent female, as of 30 June 2020, which is the last information we have. Under the previous legislation, which this is taking away, the threshold was that the sector needed to be 60 percent represented by female, and the amendments in this legislation before us today increase that threshold to 70 percent. So, effectively, what that does is remove the ability for corrections probation officers and senior practitioners to be able to bring a claim, because they are only at 68 percent female.

My amendment would seek to make an exception for that in particular. There is a fair argument—they are only 2 percent short of the requirement—and it seems to be an arbitrary and unfair ability for a part of our workforce that is 68 percent female and, under this legislation, is now unable to bring a claim under pay equity ever, ever. Not only they’re not even in the sector, because they don’t reach that threshold, they’re not actually able to proceed.

I would be very interested to hear from the Minister in the chair whether it’s some of those calculations that will be saving this Government billions of dollars and whether it’s some of those calculations that will be, in fact, saving this Government’s Budget billions. Is it, in fact, corrections and probation officers and senior practitioners—who form 68 percent of the workforce—who will not ever be eligible to get fair pay as a result of this legislation?

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I heed your earlier message. I want to make this contribution relevant to the Schedule, clause 10, review clauses, and I intend to discuss them with respect to groups that I know have not formed part of this debate already.

The review clauses, it appears, extinguish the ability of workers with current already accepted pay equity claims to have their situation reviewed under this Act and a reassessment of, essentially, whether or not their pay has kept up its relativity. So what I want to understand from the Minister in the chair is: when Cabinet deliberated on this bill, how did they weigh the matter of, as the Minister has mentioned, saving the Government’s Budget against the rights of the women who were part of this agreement, and those rights that are now being extinguished?

I want to speak particularly about the nurses and midwives who have reached pay equity agreements with the Government—tens of thousands of them made a decision to make a deal with the Government about fair pay. They are women who made a decision to agree to a settlement with the Government where they weighed the impact on their future earnings, their ability to provide for their families, their ability to continue in their job as adults. That was their decision they took. They made a decision with the Government that, “Yes, we accept your offer, but if something changes in the future, if you pay this other group more who do similar work to us, we have an avenue to come back to you and renegotiate.” The decision the Government made with them is being broken. That agreement is broken by this bill. So how did Cabinet weigh the impact on their rights, on the rights of women, to make economic decisions concerning themselves and their income for their families, against their efforts to balance the budget?

I know that certain members of the Government think that they take individual liberty seriously. Well, I can’t think of something more serious for working women than the ability to make these decisions about your pay, rights that are being extinguished in this bill. I’ve been seeking this call for some time, and while I’ve been seated here, I’ve been thinking about women’s rights in New Zealand over the time that I can remember, in my living memory. I cannot think of a backwards step as big as this when it comes to the legal rights of women to pursue getting an income that they deserve in the workplace. That’s why this bill, being pursued under urgency, without information on its human rights impact, without a regulatory impact statement, matters so much. That is why it is such bad progress, because women’s rights are going backwards under this.

We have no information from the Attorney-General to know how those women’s rights were held in the balance by this Government, because it seems to me that without that information, it would be very reasonable to conclude that Cabinet paid no attention to women’s rights, that they just thought, “Well, the Budget and the ability to balance a Budget, and the ability to pay for our unaffordable tax cuts, and the ability to pay a tax cut to tobacco companies.”—all of those considerations seem to be prioritised over the rights of women.

So my question is: how did Cabinet consider the rights of women and the agreements we made with adult women, as Government, to enter into pay equity settlements, and why are their rights now being extinguished?

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): I just want to take this opportunity to remind, again, that the views of the Opposition towards this bill have been well canvassed over the past few hours. Can we please contain the conversation to the amendments and the detail in the bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The actual clause that I want the Minister in the chair to be able to—and it may be something he might need to talk to his officials about, is the same clause that the Hon Julie Anne Genter looked at, which is clause 47 around the section 19 amendments. The reason why I think the Minister should talk to his officials about it is because it’s potentially a drafting error. I will step through why clarity from the Minister is incredibly important, because this is a regulation-making power. It’s a regulation-making power and primary legislation which a future Government—a future Government such as a Labour Government—may, within their powers as the executive, recommend to the Governor-General some changes. So I just need to understand from the Minister the parameters of those changes.

So, if I step through this, clause 47 replaces section 19(1) and 19(1A) with the now amended clause 47. Now, amended clause 47—so section 19, the new section 19(1)(b)—has a very broad regulation-making power that is very different to the section 19 currently, which is what this section is replacing. So new section 19(1)(b) says: “providing for anything incidental that is necessary for carrying out, or giving full effect”—that is the key part—“full effect to, this Act.” Now, if you go back through the legislation and the history of that regulation-making power, you look currently—section 19 of the Equal Pay Act 1972; now, that section was amended by the Secondary Legislation Act 2021, which was also amended by section 34 of the Statutes Amendment Act 2022. It was also amended by section 19 through the 2020 bill. At three different stages of that bill, that particular section was changed, but at every single one of those five changes it did not open up that section 19(1)(b) to anything giving full effect to this Act. The changes in that subsection were very narrow to prescribing matters that must be taken into account when identifying comparable work under section 13ZE.

Now, there are amendments to section 13ZE underneath this particular bill, but the question that we need clarity from the Minister on, and I think it’s important that he clarifies it, given the legislative history of this particular clause in the section within the Act, again, having been changed five times through different bills. This particular bill, if it is passed, will create the new regulation-making power to provide for anything—anything—incidental that is necessary for carrying out and giving full effect to the Act.

That is very different from the legislative history of that section, which is just narrowed to identifying comparable work on a particular section. So I think it is important to the Minister to clarify either with his officials or to the House, given we are coming under urgency, we have not had time to scrutinise the bill through a select committee process. We could have had other public lawyers, constitutional lawyers who may have picked that up, but I think it’s just important that we have some clarity and some comments in the Chamber so that in future years, if this goes through as I currently interpret it, it means that any future executive can make a regulation, make a secondary piece of legislation only going through the executive through a recommendation to the Governor-General.

That is a very different position than what has historically been through that particular section for the Equal Pay Act 72, again, changed five times—three times in 2020, twice by the Statute Amendments Bill. But here we have this bill, which has now widened up that regulation power. So if I’m interpreting it wrong, that’s fine. But I think the Minister should provide a response to that, and to the questions of Julie Anne Genter, because that will provide context for future lawmakers or future lawyers who have to look at this and may be able to take a judicial review of any of the points brought up here, because it’s “anything” in the Act, not just “comparable work”. So I think that’s an important point which I would like to see some clarity from the Minister, please.

Oh! Thank you, Madam Chair. That was a very excited “Oh”, wasn’t it? It was good to hear from my colleague the Hon Barbara Edmonds asking the Minister for some responses, because, of course, this goes on the Hansard, and we are in urgency and the bill has not been to select committee. So it would be very useful to hear David Seymour, the Minister who is currently in the chair, answer some of the questions that are being put to him. It was a very sensible, technical question from the Hon Barbara Edmonds, and it will be useful for future people who have to look at this horrible piece of legislation to know exactly what it was that the Minister was thinking about in terms of those technical aspects.

The Hon Barbara Edmonds referred to the Hon Julie Anne Genter’s questions as well, and she asked about the role of the Minister for Women. We heard, yesterday, my colleague Ingrid Leary ask about the role of the mental health Minister and the immigration Minister. The Minister in the chair at that time responded to Ingrid Leary’s question that those Ministers—being the mental health Minister and the immigration Minister—were in Cabinet and that this was a Cabinet decision. The Minister for Women is not in Cabinet, so it would be useful to have an answer to that question. It is a different question from the question that Ingrid Leary asked, and I have not heard a response to the Hon Julie Anne Genter’s question.

I do want to move, though, to the Schedule. I note that there is an abundance of Amendment Papers on clause 8 of the Schedule. How clause 8 works—and “Existing pay equity claims” is the title. Clause 8(1) states that “An existing pay equity claim is discontinued on the commencement date.” There are Amendment Papers to exclude some of the different claims from being discontinued at clause 8. I’m not going to touch on those amendments one by one—other people may do that. What I’m interested in is turning the Schedule on its head, because we’ve heard the Minister—the Minister in whose name the bill is in—answer some questions and say, “Look, I don’t want to talk about it claim by claim. This bill is about a framework, so I don’t want to talk about it claim by claim.” But I’m interested in whether she got advice on that point. This is quite different from what the Government did recently with the Fast-track Approvals Act. What happened with that Act was that there was a schedule that specifically named 149 projects and went through them—added at the committee stage, with no public submissions enabled at select committee. So was that approach considered for this bill? We know that there are these 33 claims that the Minister—the Minister in the chair previously—said people could google. Was there consideration and advice about actually laying out those 33 claims in the Schedule—33 being a much smaller number than 149—and about considering whether it could even have gone through the process of weighing up whether the thresholds that apply in this bill, as compared to the current legislation, would be next?

There’s been a lot of discussion about the 70 percent reducing to 60 percent in terms of females in the workforce. Could that not have been done in the Schedule—well, we know claim X of the 33 isn’t going to meet the 70 percent but does meet the 60 percent, so are we going to deal with that specifically in the Schedule one by one? Was there advice on that, and, if not, why not—given that inconsistent approach from this Government with how it deals with schedules when we’re talking about discrete issues?

These issues are much more discrete than resource management and fast track. I can think, off the top of my head, of hundreds of different activities that people might want a resource consent for. But there is no way that you can do that about professions that are predominantly women-based and paid an unfair amount compared with professions that are not.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ll just quickly respond to a number of issues that have been raised.

If I understood Jan Tinetti correctly, she asked if the Government was in favour of creating carve-outs for some in the teaching workforce in line with an amendment put forward by Camilla Belich. The Government’s not willing to create carve-outs. We believe that laws should be simple and comprehensive wherever possible.

Julie Anne Genter raised an issue also raised by Barbara Edmonds in relation to the breadth of clause 47 and the potential uses for that. She also asked if perhaps it could be a drafting error. I’m advised that there is no drafting error and that in fact this change reflects modern drafting practices and is a standard approach to drafting empowering provisions.

There was a question from Ginny Andersen in relation to the threshold being 70 percent instead of 60 percent, and could an exception be made for a workforce that was 68 percent female rather than 70 percent. Of course, it’s always tempting to argue around what I think people call “edge cases”, but the problem with any threshold is that there will always be some people that are either just above or just below. Unfortunately, that’s how thresholds just have to work.

Then there were some political questions from Ayesha Verrall. No, Cabinet did not make the equivalencies that she accused the Cabinet of. I think that was very unfair.

Finally, Rachel Brooking asked: “Did the bill’s drafters consider explicitly listing the 33 existing claims in the Schedule, as was done for the fast-track legislation?” I’m not in a position to answer in detail about the advice received, but I note that the member was quite opposed to the inclusion of those scheduled cases in the fast-track bill.

Hon Rachel Brooking: Because they benefited private companies. These are not private companies.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: OK, well, look, tempting as it is to have a debate of political philosophy, all I would say is that I think the member will be pleased to know that there’s no explicitly listed schedule in this legislation, seeing as she was so critical of it previously.

Hon Rachel Brooking: Was there advice?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: She’s now shouting, “Was there advice?” I’ve indicated that having not been involved in the detailed development of the bill, I’m not in a position to answer that question.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

I’m going to call the Hon [Pauses] Deborah Russell. Thank you. Sorry.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We all look the same. I want to pick up on a couple of comments that have been made by the Minister in the chair and then relate them very specifically to an Amendment Paper. The first one was made by the Minister who is currently in the chair, Hon David Seymour, and he said that with thresholds, of course there are always cases where people are just above or just below. That is obviously the case, but the problem here is that this legislation that is being proposed will have the effect of knocking out a pay equity claim that was under way and it will now—not only is it going to be knocked out but it will, in the future, fall under the threshold for a pay equity claim. So an existing claim has been disallowed by this legislation and it will have no way of getting back in. That, surely, is a case for a carve-out. So I’d like the Minister just to reconsider that particular claim that has come through in respect of the corrections probation officer and senior practitioners. So if there was one amendment to that Schedule that was to be considered, that would be the one.

But I’m going to pick up another comment that was also made by the Minister in charge of this legislation, who said that “money doesn’t grow on trees”. Well, teachers don’t grow on trees either, and neither do support workers grow on trees. Education advisers don’t grow on trees. Psychologists don’t grow on trees, either. Early learning teachers don’t grow on trees. Nurses don’t grow on trees. These people don’t just come from nowhere.

I’m going to point to a very specific amendment: library assistants don’t grow on trees, either, and I really want to speak to the library assistants claim, because when you’ve got the librarians coming for you, you’re in trouble, I’m telling you. But this legislation is going to knock out the claim from library assistants, so I’ve got an Amendment Paper in there asking for the tertiary education library assistants claim to be reinstated.

Here’s the thing: to get a job as a library assistant, you need a degree. That’s the beginning qualification for a job as a library assistant—it’s a degree—so these people have already done three years of study. Now, we can compare that to any number of other professions dominated by men where a degree is not required, but that is the beginning position to get a job as a library assistant: have your degree in hand.

Here’s the other interesting fact about it. It comes out of the recent pay round at Victoria University where library assistants finally—finally—got up to the living wage. Before that, they were down at about 50 percent above the minimum wage, and this is an area of work, a workforce, which requires a degree to get into. Now, if ever there is a case for a pay equity claim, that is it, because it is a profession that’s dominated by women. When we go to the list—which the Minister told us to google because she didn’t have it in hand and couldn’t be bothered putting it in her legislation—we find out that the varying rates of pay for library assistants across universities are between 68 to 85 percent, in terms of having a workforce that’s female. So it’s not even clear—we don’t even know what the percentage is, but it’s not even clear that they are going to be able to take a pay equity claim under the new legislation.

So I’m just going to put it out there that the gentlest souls amongst us, the librarians, who instead of telling you to go google something will actually go and help you find it, who are there to assist, who are highly educated—these people deserve consideration. I am urging the Minister: let’s at least get some of these groups back under consideration. I urge the Minister and this House to vote for my Amendment Paper which ensures that the existing claim by tertiary education library assistants does not get wiped out by this shameful legislation.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

Thank you, Madam Chair, I appreciate that. I do appreciate this call, and the reason I do is because I do have a number of Amendment Papers to—and I believe we are on to the Schedule now—the Schedule which I haven’t had the opportunity to speak to yet.

The first one, to a certain extent, although the amendment wasn’t referred to, relates to review clauses. My colleague Ayesha Verrall covered that; I won’t go into that in more detail, but just to note, if the Minister was convinced by Dr Verrall’s arguments, as I was, I do have an amendment here—that would allow review clauses to continue—in my name. So I’m just wanting to know from the Minister: would she entertain that?

The other amendments that I have in the Schedule are—the one that I want to refer to first, and it’s kind of, it’s an important point, I think. It’s to delete clause 8(1) in Schedule 1. The reason that I have put this forward as an Amendment Paper is because I believe if that particular clause was deleted, that would allow existing claims to continue and not be discontinued, which I think is one of the major elements of unfairness under the Act. So we do have specific amendments, a long list of amendments in relation to specific claims, which I do believe deserve the attention of this House and the Minister. This one is an overall amendment which would allow those claims to continue, which I think is important.

One of the areas which we hadn’t touched on at all is a claim that is an existing claim, which is the New Zealand Artificial Limb Service. Now, this workforce is 65 percent female. This is one of the lower percentages. Generally, most of the equal pay claims are much higher, but this particular claim, which we haven’t touched on at all, which would be saved by my amendment, which I’m now speaking to, would be protected by that. So for that group of female-dominated—and it is female—I mean if you look in the dictionary, “dominated” would probably give you something over 50 percent. So 65 percent certainly is a large percentage of women to work in a particular area—doing very important work. We know that our Artificial Limb Service provides life-altering services to those who require it.

They have an equal pay claim in place due to what they allege is the systemic undervaluation of their work; that claim, as I understand, could not continue—by 5 percent. So it’s unlikely that they would be able to continue with that. The Minister is discontinuing that. So I want to know, for those women in the New Zealand Artificial Limb Service, will she consider my amendment to delete clause 8(1)? She could still have her new regime, which I also disagree with, but it would allow those existing claims to continue, which I think would be fair.

One other amendment I want to mention briefly in relation to the Schedule: as I have an amendment to delete clause 9, that would mean that the 10-year limit wouldn’t apply. I’d like to know the Minister’s answer to whether she would consider that, because, alongside the discontinuation of current claims, I think that is an element of unfairness. Will she agree to my amendment on that particular point?

So I have asked probably four questions of the Minister in relation to Amendment Papers that I have that have not been addressed today, and I’d appreciate an answer. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I firstly want to start in response to questions raised by Julie Anne Genter about the involvement of the Minister for Women in the process, and I understand Willie Jackson also asked a similar question about the Minister for Māori Development. The Minister for Women was involved in the policy meetings that I held between Ministers leading to this bill. The Minister for Māori Development is in Cabinet and, therefore, was involved in the decisions leading up to this bill.

Ayesha Verrall asked a question about the extinguishing of current claims to have reviews, and how we have weighed up those proposals. Well, it was really important for Cabinet that there is one system that all of the claims operate under, but it is possible for claims to be reraised if they meet the new requirements.

Willie Jackson also asked which ministries were consulted on the proposal. I refer the member to, I believe, paragraph 94 of the Cabinet paper, which outlines the agencies consulted. Julie Anne Genter also asked if I was intending to introduce regulation on the need for merit, and I’ve answered that already this morning.

Dr Duncan Webb asked why parties can’t choose to agree to a review clause. We have stipulated in the bill that review will be done after a 10-year period, and while the review clauses in settlements will no longer be permissible, they can be reraised after that 10-year period after settlement, which does provide a way to address any new sex-based undervaluation if it develops over time.

Jan Tinetti asked: can teachers be considered as a whole? To raise a claim, the work covered needs to be the same or substantially similar, so it will depend on the evidence provided to support that particular type of claim, but I don’t intend to try and prejudge any outcomes or claims into the future.

Dr Ayesha Verrall asked about her tabled amendment. My response to this is that the transitional provisions allow all claims to have the same pay equity process, so it is which process applies.

Camilla Belich—getting quite busy with the tabled amendments—has proposed to make phasing up to 10 years for employers. I have to admit that I am actually very surprised by this tabled amendment, because the member has been making a lot of statements about the need for pay equity and it surprised me that she wished to extend the need for an employer to pay for up to a three-year phase—to extend that for 10 years so that pay equity would not be reached until a 10-year time frame. It is just a very interesting contribution, but that’s not what the Government will be accepting.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

I’m not going to put the question, but I think we are getting quite close.

Thank you, Madam Chair. You know I always want to add constructively to this debate, and, in particular, it was around clause 47. The Minister in the chair at the time stood up and did confirm that it wasn’t a drafting error. He said that it was a “drafting style”. So, then, my question is: given that this has now broadened up the regulation-making power for any future executive—hypothetically, for example; even though it wouldn’t happen because this side of the House, the Labour Party, has said we’re going to repeal this amendment bill in a future Government—it could mean, though, if the Labour Government wasn’t so committed to that, that we could actually provide any regulation, again not coming to this House, not through primary legislation. We could make any changes to the rest of this Act, because it’s no longer about comparable work; it’s about every single provision in the new Act once it becomes enacted, as long as it gives full effect to the Act.

For example, with the amendment that was just raised by Camilla Belich, which the Minister responded to, a future Labour or a future executive might think, “Well, actually, we think it’s necessary to ensure it is carrying out and giving full effect to this Act. We’re going to put through regulation so that, actually, all those”—was it 13 or 33 claims?—“13 claims that are currently being cancelled by this—

Dr Tracey McLellan: 33.

Hon Jan Tinetti: 33.

Hon BARBARA EDMONDS: —33 claims that are being cancelled by this; we’re going to say that that’s incidental, and we’re going to put it in through regulation, because it gives full effect to the Act. We’re, basically, going to allow those claims to be reopened.” That is, effectively, the response from the Minister, who said, because of the drafting style, because we can make a regulation, this now applies to the whole Act, not just comparable work; therefore, we can make that executive decision at a later date. Not that it would matter, because, actually, we’re just going to repeal this Act once it comes in force and when we get into Government.

I just want to—and I know I labour the point—make sure, because this is a different drafting style. The last amendment to that provision was in 2022—very narrow style. Are we saying that there has been such a change in the drafting style in three years since 2022, which now has a much wider regulation-making power, that the Government is very clear they are comfortable with that? What it means is that a future executive can make any regulation as long as it’s necessary for carrying out or giving full effect to this Act and it’s no longer narrowed to comparable work.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I do want to raise some questions that have not been raised in this debate, and I think it’s really important because this is going through under urgency, and, in public, the Ministers, different Ministers in the Government have made reference to savings of billions of dollars because of these changes. Now, presumably, that’s due to the extinguishing of the 33 claims which would have otherwise had some fiscal liabilities represented in this Budget. So in the Schedule, that’s where the claims are extinguished, the existing pay equity claims in clause 8 in Part 2 in the Schedule that’s been inserted.

So my questions are, and it would be great if the Minister could answer this and if she could refer to the officials if she needs help answering this: is the savings of billions of dollars a gross or net expression of savings? Does it include the PAYE from wages and the GST from wages where if the claims had been settled, the low-paid workers would tend to spend everything they earn and would have an impact on GST? What analysis has been done about the impact on superannuation contributions, recognising that women will have less savings for their retirement because of extinguishing these claims? Has the Minister received advice from Treasury and/or Audit with reference to the wellbeing outcomes and the effectiveness of this legislation? I note that there was no regulatory impact statement completed on this. So there hasn’t been a thorough regulatory impact statement.

Finally, and this is really important because the Minister has said the Government supports pay equity, they just want to change the parameters, right? So of the 33 claims that have been extinguished, the vast majority of them have well over a 70 percent female ratio. So the change to 70 percent will not mean that the majority of those claims that were under way can’t reapply and try to have merit. So, given that, does the savings in billions—like, effectively, if they go back through the new process and it’s delayed by several years, there will still be a fiscal liability on the Crown of bigger wage bills if we expect to someday achieve pay equity for those workforces; will that be reflected? Is that fiscal liability still reflected in the Budget or is it just gone now? We say we’re saving billions of dollars this year, but in a few years’ time this will come back, and a future Government will have the fiscal liability.

So I guess I’m just wondering: has the extinguishing of the claims resulted in a short-term perception of reduced fiscal liability? Has the Government taken into account the fact that the majority of the claims currently under way have well over 70 percent women working in them and therefore will still be able to apply for pay equity? Maybe it’ll be delayed by a few years, but eventually, if the Government does support pay equity, a future Government is going to face this fiscal liability. To what extent is that reflected in the savings of billions?

Well, I thank the member for her question and I think it is an interesting one, but the member will be well aware that anything that is Budget sensitive is Budget sensitive. While there have been comments made about potential savings, what I can say is that there are significant reductions in cost to Government, but I can’t go into Budget. I’m not the Budget Minister responsible and so you’ll just have to wait until the Budget in a couple of weeks.

When it comes to the question from Camilla Belich, it appears the member has proposed a number of amendments which are all on a theme of not discontinuing the current claims, either by deleting the whole clause or exempting certain occupations. As I’ve repeatedly said in the House today and yesterday, the transitional provisions in the bill are important to ensure there is one process for all claims, rather than allowing for two systems to operate for a period.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

The question is that the Hon Jan Tinetti’s tabled amendment to clause 4(2) to set a 60 percent threshold be agreed to.

The question is that the

The question is that

The question is that the Hon Rachel Brooking’s tabled amendment to clause 4(2) to set a 65 percent threshold be agreed to.

The Hon Marama Davidson’s tabled amendment to clause 4(2) to set a 60 percent threshold is out of order as being the same in substance as a previous amendment.

The question is that Camilla Belich’s tabled amendment to delete clause 4(2)(b)(ii) be agreed to.

The question is that the Hon Marama Davidson’s tabled amendment to clause 6, new section 13A, be agreed to.

The question is that Camilla Belich’s tabled amendment to clause 6, new section 13A, be agreed to.

The question is that the Hon Jan Tinetti’s tabled amendments to clauses 10 and 38 to set a two-month bar be agreed to.

The question is that the Hon Rachel Brooking’s tabled amendments to clauses 10 and 38 to set a one-month bar be agreed to.

The question is that the Hon Deborah Russell’s tabled amendments to clauses 10 and 38 to set a 12-month bar be agreed to.

The question is that Rachel Boyack’s tabled amendments to clauses 10 and 38 to set a six-month bar be agreed to.

The question is that Camilla Belich’s tabled amendment to clause 10 be agreed to.

The question is that Rachel Boyack’s tabled amendment to clause 11, new section 13F, be agreed to.

The question is that Rachel Boyack’s tabled amendment to delete clause 13 be agreed to.

The question is that the Hon Deborah Russell’s tabled amendment to clause 15(2) to delete the word “not” be agreed to.

The question is that Camilla Belich’s tabled amendment to clause 20, new section 13PA, to replace “60 working days” with “20 working days” be agreed to.

The question is that Camilla Belich’s tabled amendment to clause 29 to delete new section 13ZE(1) to (4) be agreed to.

The question is that Camilla Belich’s tabled amendment to clause 29 to delete new section 13ZE(6) and replace new section 13ZE(7) be agreed to.

The question is that Camilla Belich’s tabled amendment to clause 30(1) to replace “3 years” with “10 years” be agreed to.

The question is that Camilla Belich’s tabled amendment to clause 35(3) to replace “3 years” with “10 years”, be agreed to.

The question is that Camilla Belich’s tabled amendment to delete clause 46(3) be agreed to.