Equal Pay Amendment Bill

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I move, That the Equal Pay Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

The Equal Pay Amendment Bill improves the process for raising and resolving a pay equity claim and provides a better framework for assessing whether there is sex-based undervaluation in remuneration in female-dominated occupations. I consider that the current legislative settings are too permissive and have resulted in the pay equity framework not working as intended. The current Act only requires that pay equity claims are arguable to progress. I consider that the settings have resulted in claims progressing through the entry threshold without strong evidence of undervaluation. The bill addresses this by increasing the threshold for raising a pay equity claim, including requiring claims to have merit.

The current Act includes limited tools for employers to contest broadly scoped claims. This has led to broad claims where it is difficult to determine whether the differences in remuneration are due to sex-based undervaluation—for example, the DHB allied and technical health pay equity settlement covered 90 occupations, including hospital dental assistants, physiotherapists, wheelchair technicians, and cultural advisers. The bill addresses this by providing employers with the tools they need to ensure an appropriate scope of claim. There is insufficient guidance in the Act for choosing appropriate comparators and on comparison methodology. This has led to comparators being used repeatedly across several claims, despite there being a number of differences with the work of claimants and respective skills. Fisheries and corrections officers have been used as a comparator for nurses, DHB administration, and clerical claims, as well as school library staff. The bill address this by introducing a hierarchy of comparators and adding more prescription to the comparison methodology.

The current requirement to include review clauses in pay equity settlements has led to reviews considering factors that may not have been connected to sex-based undervaluation. Review clauses in the teacher-aides and DHB admin and clerical claims have sought to consider a range of factors beyond whether sex-based discrimination had returned. This includes the—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sorry to interrupt the Minister, but there is a lot of noise in the House and it’s not coming from the gallery; it’s coming from downstairs. Can we have a bit more respect, please. Thank you.

Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: This includes the Consumers Price Index. The bill addresses this by removing the ability for a settlement to include a review clause and limiting when claims can be re-raised. The current Act does not allow for the phasing of pay equity settlements. This does not acknowledge the disruption that can happen when wage costs shift unexpectedly. The bill addresses this by providing for the phasing of pay equity settlements. There are also a number of issues with the current parameters for the Employment Relations Authority relating to fixing remuneration, which do not provide the right incentives to resolve pay equity claims. The bill addresses this by changing how and when the authority can fix remuneration, including requiring phasing when the authority fixes remuneration and removing the ability for the authority to award back-pay.

It is worth noting that New Zealand’s pay equity regime is an outlier internationally. Most countries that we compare ourselves to, such as Ireland and the United Kingdom, do not allow multi-employer claims or comparators outside of the employer’s workplace. Australia’s pay equity regime does allow multi-employer claims but they’re usually progressed through their modern awards system that does not require the use of comparators. New Zealand has had significantly more pay equity settlements than Australia since pay equity legislation was introduced in 2020.

Overall, the bill provides for a better regulatory framework for parties to a pay equity claim to assess whether there is sex-based undervaluation. This will ensure that the pay equity regime is workable and sustainable. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Well, here we are, just over 30 hours after the Government announced this bill, which, in my time in Parliament, is right up there with one of the most egregious pieces of legislation that this House will put through. I continue with my anger and my disgust that a House of Government would put women in a position of putting them on the back foot, and would put their bad fiscal management in front of women’s rights, and in front of making it a better day for women by increasing their pay. This is taking the women’s movement backwards, and ensuring that women will continue to be paid less, well into the future. Again, what an egregious piece of legislation.

What have we heard over the course of the last 30 hours? We have heard a Government who has gaslit the public. They are saying that this is going to make this process better. We have heard it from all three coalition partners over that time—throughout the debate and throughout question time—that this will make it better. I cannot believe that particularly our women members on the Government side of the House can hold their heads up and say that. This will do nothing but put women backwards. Once again, women are paying the price for the bad fiscal management of that Government. This has happened year after year after year with a conservative Government. And, once again, women will pay the price.

But in that gaslighting, we had one MP—one MP—who was caught telling the truth. Yesterday, we had the Hon David Seymour telling the media that this, of course, will save the Government billions of dollars—that ACT have found the money to make the Budget work. So we know—we have had confirmed what we know—that this is setting off a Budget that they could not make work. They went out and they thought, “Where can we find the savings? Women: that’s where we can find the savings.” How dare they? How dare they do that to women of this country? I am absolutely disgusted and I find it completely disgraceful that we are in the position that we are in today.

Yet when I look over there, I can see people laughing and thinking that this is a joke. I heard members in their first reading speeches talking about “the Opposition will dramatise this because they always do.” We are not dramatising this. We are angry. We are angry for the women who this will impact. We are angry for the Kristine Bartletts of this world who have changed the course and done everything that they can in their lives to make it a better day for living. We are angry and so are they.

They are out there and they are protesting this in great numbers, and they will continue to protest this in great numbers. This is outrageous, dishonest, and, once again, it’s taking us backwards. The ACT Party has shown their hand for what it really stands for. But what is absolutely disgraceful is that all coalition partners are standing by and doing nothing to stop it—nothing to stop it. Nothing to see and nothing to help stop what is happening to put those women backwards.

Now, yesterday, I had—as I’ve said in this House, over the past 24 hours, from a number of people—a large, large number of emails coming through from different people from different walks of life. All of them are absolutely taken by surprise and asking what on earth they are thinking about. Some of them—and a lot of them, to be fair—were their voters, and are their voters. They are asking what they are thinking. One of those people said, “It feels like we are in a parallel dystopian universe. It feels like we’re going back to a Handmaid’s Tale time.” Well, that is what women are feeling. They are feeling aggrieved—absolutely aggrieved.

We had in this country—have, actually, until this bill goes through—a strong process for pay equity claims. Many women—many women—felt absolute ownership of those pay equity claims, because they have worked voluntarily, many of them, to ensure the process was robust, to make sure we are making a positive difference for our future generations. In fact, I want to mention a couple of those women. There was one that was on the news last night, Ally Kingi. Ally Kingi is a teacher-aide and a NZEI Te Riu Roa member. Now, that’s probably going to get the other side a little bit, you know, agitated, because, I just mentioned the name of a union. But Ally, as I said, is a teacher-aide. For those of you who don’t know, teacher-aides are one of the most vulnerable workforces that we have in this country. They go from year to year not knowing if they have a job. Some of them go from term to term not knowing if they have the same hours for the next term. Many of them are on incredibly low pay.

Ally worked incredibly hard over her time on the team that worked through their pay equity settlement, to ensure that teacher-aides were valued for the work that they do. In fact, ask any principal and they will tell you that they cannot run their schools without their teacher-aides. Ally says, “Our pay equity settlement in 2020 was life changing for teacher-aides. But those pay gaps reopen over time. To be told this Government is happy to allow gender pay gaps to open up for a decade at a time, without the opportunity for review, is devastating.” On the TV last night, Ally said, “I gave myself to this process so that my daughters and my granddaughters will have a better life because they won’t have to worry about fighting like I am now to be valued for the work that they do.” She said, “It feels like we’ve just been kicked.” That’s exactly what many women like Ally are feeling.

Ally is a national treasure for the work that she has done for women in this country. What this Government has done has absolutely kicked women like Ally, and we’ve gone back to zero again—where women are just being expected to put up with it. Women in this country are being asked to put up with the fact that that side of the House have bad fiscal management, can’t make their Budgets work. They’re paying the price for tax cuts, tax breaks to landlords, and tobacco companies. [Interruption] And listen to them try and deny it—listen to them try and deny it.

This has been rushed through with little, little prosecution over that time. It wasn’t even taken to select committee. They never even gave women and people who are very much invested in this a voice. They took their voice away from them. They did not take it to select committee so that women could have their democratic say over such an egregious piece of legislation.

We’ve already found anomalies, and we’ve found mistakes in the legislation. That is sloppy lawmaking, and that is the price that that side will pay for not giving people their democratic rights and their democratic say through a select committee process. That is just unacceptable, and the women in this country are absolutely angry and livid. The ground has been swept from underneath them.

Finally, I want to acknowledge someone who has done so much for women in this space, an absolute national hero, and that is Kristine Bartlett. Kristine Bartlett fought for and got a settlement for rest home workers. She said yesterday that this news brought her to tears. It was gut-wrenching. She feels so sorry for these women workers. Well, what I say to Kristine and other workers is to hold on to that anger. Hold on to that anger because that means we can organise, and we will mobilise. Women will not stand for such egregious legislation. Women will not be put on the back foot again. I absolutely condemn this bill.

I know that we can live in a country where all people have enough to live good lives and where the people who undertake some of the most important caring work that binds together our communities and supports us all are properly paid. I am talking about midwives who care for mothers and babies before, during, and just after birth; early childhood teachers who are educating our tamariki at a time that is absolutely influential to their outcomes later in life; our primary school teachers; our secondary school teachers; our nurses who care for us when we are sick and injured; and the clerical and admin staff who do the mahi so that doctors and nurses can do their job and we can get the healthcare we need; care and support workers, like Kristine Bartlett, those looking after our disabled whānau, looking after our elderly in retirement villages and rest homes. And there are others as well. These professions have been underpaid because they are mainly women doing the work, and that is not something anyone has debated.

I know that Nicola Willis has acknowledged there is a need for pay equity. I know that members opposite, women in the Cabinet, know and understand that there are professions that have been underpaid because they have historically been female dominated.

But the coalition Government of National, ACT, and New Zealand First would have us believe it is unreasonable, that it is unaffordable or unsustainable, to pay these people what they deserve. This bill, and the way it’s been rammed through under urgency over the last two days—two weeks before the Budget—is a disgrace, and the Green Party has always stood for fair pay. We oppose this bill.

Closing the gender pay gap was one of the key priorities in our confidence and supply agreement with the Labour-led Government from 2017 to 2020. Following on the work of my colleagues in the Green Party, Catherine Delahunty, Denise Roche, and especially Jan Logie, it was my honour and privilege to serve as Minister for Women. I worked alongside Labour to pass the 2020 amendments to the Equal Pay Act that established the process for pay equity that has delivered 10 pay equity claims that have resulted in absolute life-changing increases in pay to mainly women, to low-paid workers who do some of the most important work in our communities. That legislation would have delivered another 33 claims covering hundreds of thousands of workers in this country if it weren’t for the shameful legislation that we are debating right now.

It is not us alone. The fight for equal pay has been going on for over a century, and the fight for a pay equity process that would actually deliver for women and men and others who work in these female-dominated professions was many years, and even decades, in the making. Others have of course referred to Kristine Bartlett, who, under the last National Government, she and her union took a claim as a care and support worker that she had been underpaid because the sector is female dominated, and they won. She forced the then National Government to reckon with this issue, and it massively changed the lives and financial circumstances of over 50,000 aged-care workers and support workers. She was recognised as New Zealander of the Year in 2018. She’s been recognised so many times.

I acknowledge Kristine Bartlett. I acknowledge the whole union movement, men and women who have been working to get a good, evidence-based process that would properly deliver fair pay and pay equity, because that is what we need to do in order to close the gender pay gap. We need this process—which was world-leading, and now the Minister refers to it being world-leading as though that’s a reason to change it back, so we can go backwards. Well, Aotearoa New Zealand has often led, but not because of the people in power; because of the ordinary men and women who organised and fought for the right to vote for women, who organised and fought for rights when it comes to te reo Māori, and who organised and fight—and continue to fight—to close the gender pay gap and for pay equity.

Our people and our country cannot thrive if we do not have people doing this work. It is public good work. It is ridiculous to claim that the commercial economy is somehow independent of this public investment. The commercial economy relies on public investment in people and infrastructure. We don’t have an economy if we don’t have healthy people, if we don’t have public education. This system benefits from underpaying workers. That is the status quo and that is what we are up against. That is what this coalition Government is now promising to do for years to come.

The most outrageous aspect about this bill being passed under urgency is that it completely cancels and annuls the work that has been done over the past five years since the legislation was introduced. Hundreds of thousands of workers are going to be affected by this decision to cancel those claims. It is deeply, deeply cynical. We see you, Minister of Finance Nicola Willis. We see you claiming that you’re a good economic manager, and we see you ensuring that hundreds of thousands of workers—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Julie Anne Genter! Please apologise. It’s about the Government; it’s not about individuals. Thank you.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Madam Speaker, are we not allowed to refer to the decisions made by the Minister of Finance and the consequences they have on the people of this country?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes, except this is not the Budget and you were singling out the Minister. So, carry on—and carry on without singling out the Minister.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: I would like to refer to this Cabinet paper by the Hon Nicola Willis when she was Minister for the Public Service, date of issue 25 June 2024, entitled the Pay Equity Reset. I would like to quote from this because it is directly related to the legislation that’s being brought today. It says, in paragraph 4, executive summary, “pay equity costs to the Crown have become significant”. And then it says, in paragraph 7, “Changes are required to ensure that there is a greater focus on transparency of costs and better management of claim costs. I propose a new fiscal management approach,”. It is very clear—through the Cabinet papers, delivered by Nicola Willis in her role as Minister for better public services, which disestablished the Pay Equity Taskforce, which was located within the Public Service Commission, who did a lot of really important work and mahi to help ensure that we were supporting closing the gender pay gap and progressing pay equity right across the public sector.

So there are decisions that flow from individuals in the Government and in the Cabinet, and those decisions have consequences for hundreds of thousands of people. They’re the people who are not on hundreds of thousands of dollars; they’re people who are on $60,000 or less and they are trying to make ends meet under really difficult circumstances. We all know that some of these professions—and 33 of them had active claims—had been systematically underpaid due to gender-based discrimination. The only way we will ever change that is if Governments take action.

The truth is that the Government, as an employer, benefits from underpaying these people. They benefit from women being willing to do the hard caring work, and they exploit these women and their work. They exploit them, and then they claim that we can’t afford to pay them more. But all of this is a political choice. Governments are elected by the people, and we, as the people of Aotearoa New Zealand, can show our values. If we’re serious about closing the gender pay gap, if we’re serious about fair pay, if we’re serious about ending horrific levels of inequality and doing more for the worst off in our society, then we can do that. We can choose to do that. We don’t have to sit back and say, “It’s too hard; we can’t afford it.” We can make the tax system fairer. We can tax wealth. We can tax capital.

Every decision this Government has made disadvantages workers and it benefits the largest corporates and the people who own the most: the landowners. This decision is a decision, and I think it is worth mentioning that Nicola Willis, as a member of the Opposition when this bill was passed and I was the Minister in the chair, spoke in favour of the bill that was passed, the amendment to the Equal Pay Act. I know that they’ll say that there was a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP), but the SOP reflected the changes and the issues that were raised at the Education and Workforce Committee. So, look, it’s all smoke and mirrors.

The reality is that this is an irresponsible Government that can’t pay for their promises, that refuses to make sure that the wealthy in our country pay their fair share. They’re supporting the private businesses, the profits of private businesses, like tobacco companies, and they’re telling teachers and midwives and nurses and early childhood workers and care and support workers that they don’t deserve fair pay for the work that ensures that our country can thrive. I think it’s a disgrace.

Five years ago, I stood in this House, along with my then National Party colleagues, and supported the passage of a reform to the Equal Pay Act. At that time, I made this comment: I said, “We support the simple concept that people should be paid the same for the same work, regardless of their gender, and we support the equally important concept that, if someone has been doing work and there are reasonable grounds to believe that that work has been historically undervalued based on their gender and has been underpaid because of that, they should be able to make a pay equity claim.” I made that comment five years ago and I repeat it today. What I also said five years ago was that we would reserve judgment on a Supplementary Order Paper that was introduced with multiple changes to the bill that we were supporting. In particular, I noted that we would have to watch to see whether that caused issues and problems. So it has proved.

So today, I wish to make a few things clear. The first is the concept of equal pay—that men and women should be paid the same for the same work—remains as strong today as ever. The second is the idea of pay equity. I wish to be clear what pay equity is, because it has sometimes been conflated by members on the opposite side of the House with equal pay. Pay equity relates to the concept that men and women should be paid for work which may be different but which is of equal value. Now, the question for lawmakers is how we judge what is of equal value. What Kristine Bartlett achieved was she said that our Equal Pay Act should be interpreted to go to this question of pay equity. What the last National Government formed a view on was that rather than leaving these matters to be interpreted by the courts, it would be better for both employers and employees if there was a clear process in law that would allow claims to be progressed. We put forward legislation to achieve that. The last Labour Government delayed that legislation so they could do a press release on Women’s Suffrage Day three years later, in the last year of their first term.

They put forward a process. What has turned out to be the case is that that process has led to challenges, which is illustrated by the fact that as of today, there has never been a claim by a private sector employer that isn’t funded by the Government. The large majority of claims have been public sector claims. So there have been challenges.

I want to make three things clear that, again, members opposite have intentionally, I believe, tried to confuse today and yesterday. The first is this: our Government is upholding the settlements that have been achieved under the existing Equal Pay Act. We think that’s important and we are continuing to fund those settlements. So no one is having those settlements taken away from them, as has been stated by some.

Second: we are ensuring that there is a very clear process at law for future claims, and we are doing that clearly and simply and immediately. Members opposite have asked that we take this process over many, many months—that we delay that process so that people are in limbo and don’t know whether they can make a claim. We are making a simple process. In doing that, we are still allowing that where women are able to prove that they have been underpaid for reasons of gender discrimination, for reasons of sex discrimination, then they can make claims.

The final thing that I want to say is this: there are many workers across our economy and, indeed, across economies internationally who continue to want to be paid more, and so they should, because, actually, that aspiration is held on this side of the House. In fact, the very reason I want the New Zealand economy to grow is so that we are an economy that is better able to pay good wages and provide good working conditions for workers. We have in law, our employment relations law, very clearly established processes for people to bargain and argue for better pay and work conditions, and so that should continue.

But this is about gender discrimination. So pay equity processes should be used for genuine issues of discrimination. They should not become a parallel route for bargaining. They should not become a backdoor route for bargaining. They should be about discrimination. With the changes that the Government is making here, we are ensuring that that is the case—ensuring that there is clarity about the comparisons that should occur and allowing people to factor in market-based factors.

Finally, I would say this—to private sector employers that have listened to this debate today and are listening, I’d say this: “Pay women fairly; pay them equally.” I do not subscribe to the tenant and the principle that the last Government did, which is that they, I believe, set up a principle that said, “If you, private sector employer, don’t pay people properly, don’t worry, if the Government is funding you, we’ll provide the backstop, we’ll write the cheque, and we will help pay for the settlement.” They made that decision and it had significant implications. We now are in a scenario where women can make claims, they can have them settled where gender discrimination takes place—this is fair; this is reasonable.

I want to end my remarks by referring to a statement that I made five years ago that I believe to this day and I believe that the Government’s work absolutely upholds: “We all, I believe, want to live in a country and a world in which men and women have equal opportunities, are equally rewarded for their work, and are able to progress and fulfil their own potential to the maximum extent possible.” I said it then; I stand by it today. I commend this bill to the House.

Debate interrupted.