Wednesday, 22 June 2022

WEDNESDAY, 22 JUNE 2022

WEDNESDAY, 22 JUNE 2022

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

Karakia/Prayers

IAN McKELVIE (Assistant Speaker): Almighty God, we give thanks for the blessings which have been bestowed upon us. Laying aside all personal interests, we acknowledge the Queen and pray for guidance in our deliberations, that we may conduct the affairs of this House with wisdom, justice, mercy, and humility for the welfare and peace of New Zealand. Amen.

Petitions, Papers, Select Committee Reports, and Introduction of Bills

Petitions, Papers, Select Committee Reports, and Introduction of Bills

SPEAKER: No petitions have been presented. A paper has been delivered for presentation.

CLERK: Te Pūkenga, Annual Report 2022.

SPEAKER: That paper is published under the authority of the House. Select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.

CLERK:

Reports of the Intelligence and Security Committee on the 2022-23 Estimates for:

Vote Communications Security and Intelligence, and

Vote Security Intelligence, and on the

Supplementary Estimates of Appropriations for:

Vote Communications Security and Intelligence, and

Vote Security Intelligence for the year ending 30 June 2022

report of the Justice Committee on the Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill.

SPEAKER: The bill is set down for second reading. The Clerk has been informed of the introduction of a bill.

CLERK: United Kingdom Free Trade Agreement Legislation Bill, introduction.

SPEAKER: That bill is set down for first reading.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Prime Minister

1. CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by all of her Government’s statements and actions?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes. Today, the Government introduced the United Kingdom Free Trade Agreement Legislation Bill, implementing the necessary legislative and regulatory amendments to give effect to the New Zealand - United Kingdom free-trade agreement. This is a gold standard free-trade agreement. Virtually all our current trade will be duty-free from entry into force, including duty-free quotas for key products like meat, butter, and cheese. The deal is expected to boost our GDP by up to $1 billion, supporting business and jobs across the economy and helping to accelerate our economic recovery. It’s estimated New Zealand goods exports to the UK will increase by over 50 percent through the agreement, and I look forward to further promoting trade and exports into the UK in my future travels.

Christopher Luxon: Why are nurses not on Immigration New Zealand’s fast-tracked straight to residence pathway when we are 4,000 nurses short and Kiwis are having their surgeries cancelled?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The important point to note here is that they are on a fast track to residency, and this is the first time that registered nurses have been on the fast track. The only request that is being made is that they continue to work as nurses. If the member believes that we should remove that provision, then, essentially, he’s telling us that we should have no request that anyone enter and work in our stressed health workforce, which, surely, I would have thought, would have been the point of fast tracking residency.

Christopher Luxon: Is she not aware that Immigration New Zealand has a visa pathway specifically called “the fast tracked straight to residence pathway”, listing 40 professions, and that nurses and midwives are not on it?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: We currently have 20,000 nurses registered but not practising in New Zealand. One of the issues that has been raised with us when we went out and consulted is a concern that if we did not attach to the residency pathway the requirement to keep working in nursing, there may be a loss of that nursing workforce. The point is to take stress—

Erica Stanford: It has been debunked, and she knows it.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: —Mr Speaker, if I may—out of the health workforce, and if the member thinks asking people to keep nursing is going to be a barrier, I can only assume, therefore, that people’s intention is not to work as nurses.

Christopher Luxon: When she told Radio New Zealand that “we did have raised with us by some DHBs the concern of whether or not we were retaining everyone that was coming in as a nurse.”, which DHBs raised those concerns, and when?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I’m not going to name individual district health boards but the stats do demonstrate that we have a higher movement rate for those who have come in as migrants into the nursing workforce than the general nursing workforce. Can I also point out that this is on top of the work that we’ve already been doing to bring in critical purpose visas for health workers. We have had, even while our borders were closed, 5,700 critical purpose visas for health roles since COVID. We have been recruiting offshore. At the same time, we’ve had the Return to Nursing Workforce Support Fund to try to bring back some of those 20,000 who are trained as nurses but are currently not working as nurses. We’ve had the general nurses campaign; the New Entry to Practice Programme, which had $25 million put in in 2019; and we have increased our nursing workforce, as a Government, by 15 percent. We have focused on turning around an understaffed health workforce, and we continue to do so.

Christopher Luxon: Was the health Minister, Andrew Little, wrong, then, when he wrote, in response to written questions, “I am advised that the Ministry of Health did not receive feedback specifically from the district health boards on migrant nurses leaving their profession.”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I was advised of this by Immigration New Zealand.

David Seymour: If we accept that nurses are being fast tracked through the immigration process, how many nurses are currently in that fast-tracked process, and how long will it take each of them to go through it?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I think the member will know it’s not unreasonable to ask for a question of that nature to be put in writing, but, as was asked in the House yesterday—how many, for instance, came through the specific critical purposes visa programme that we had running over the course of COVID—we had 5,700 who were working across the health workforce who came in under that visa category. Happy to answer a question put in writing.

Christopher Luxon: Can she explain why 40 occupations facing shortages, including multimedia specialists and food technologists, are on the fast-tracked straight to residence pathway but nurses and midwives are not and have to wait two years?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, this is guaranteed residency if you come and work as a nurse, so I fail to understand why the member sees it as so problematic. If our gap is in nursing, why not bond to nursing and guarantee residency? We need people to come in and work as nurses, and if they’re willing to do that, they are guaranteed residency.

Christopher Luxon: Does she stand by her statement to overseas nurses yesterday that “Our message is come to New Zealand and you will be fast tracked for residency”, and, if so, why did she exclude nurses from the “Fast tracked straight to residence pathway”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I stand by my statements yesterday, and we have been running a recruitment campaign since February, also, to ensure that we are out there in the market trying to seek those who are willing to come and be nurses in New Zealand. At the same time, another thing that we have to rectify, and we’ve been doing this since 2017, is the underfunding both in our health system they will work in but also in the wages they are paid. We’ve seen a 20 percent, and in some cases 25 percent, increase in their salaries, that was needed because, under that Government, in some cases they were seeing increases of as little as 1 percent.

Christopher Luxon: Isn’t it the case that, despite repeated warnings from the health sector and the Opposition over the last two years, her Government has simply failed to bring in the nurses we need to deal with something that was entirely predictable: the fact that people would get—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member has had his question.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: First point: would we be in the position of recruiting nurses offshore if we did not have nearly a decade of under-investment in health by the National Government? We now are trying to train at record [Members interjecting] rates to make up for that.

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The Prime Minister will resume her seat. This is an issue which I can tell the vast majority of the people in the House care about. I want—

Christopher Luxon: We care about it, too.

SPEAKER: The member is part of the vast majority of people in the House. I know he’s a relatively new member, but he does not interject when I’m on my feet. I want to be able to hear the answer, and I’m having trouble hearing it because of the barracking from my left.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: And, at the same time, we have increased health funding every year, as a Government, and can I point out the contradiction of having just delivered the largest budget and investment into health that this country has seen and the National Party want to cancel it and instead give broad-base tax cuts. At the same time, we’ve funded 3,400 extra nurses, we have 1,400 extra doctors, and we have funded more vacancies to take pressure off as well. Now, yes, because of lack of investment, we are having to look offshore, but that member should look in the mirror at his own Government’s policies as to why we are in this position.

Question No. 2—Finance

2. HELEN WHITE (Labour) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has he seen on the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The manufacturing sector has remained robust in a challenging environment. The seasonally adjusted BNZ - Business New Zealand Performance and Manufacturing Index for May rose 1.7 points to 52.9, just below its long-term average. Production, new orders, employment, and delivery of raw materials all expanded, and BNZ’s economists said that manufacturing output in the first three months of the 2022 year had been affected by Omicron-induced delays and the improvement in production signalled a decent rebound in manufacturing in the June quarter. The volatile global environment means 2022 is continuing to be challenging for businesses and households, but New Zealand’s strong response to the pandemic has put us in a position where we can come through better than most other countries and are well positioned to deal with the challenges ahead of us.

Helen White: What other reports has he seen on the economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Retail card spending has also remained resilient. Statistics New Zealand reported earlier this month that seasonally adjusted retail card spending rose 1.9 percent in May compared with the previous month, led by fuel and clothing sales. Stripping out fuel, core spending rose by 0.9 percent. The figures indicate that spending patterns are returning to a normal pattern following the end of COVID restrictions and the opening up to the rest of the world.

Helen White: What support has been available for businesses as the economy deals with the challenges of Omicron?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The targeted COVID support payment has helped keep viable the vulnerable businesses through the peak of Omicron. As of June, this payment had paid out $1.3 billion to 112,877 applicants. On a regional basis, Auckland has received 50.5 percent of the payments, followed by Christchurch on 9.6 percent and Wellington on 8 percent. By industry, construction made up 15.2 percent of all payments, followed by accommodation on 14.8 percent, other services on 9.3 percent, and retail trade on 8 percent. This payment has provided cash flow and confidence to help protect jobs and support New Zealand businesses through a very difficult time. We stand by the decisions that the Government has made to support businesses and households to get through Omicron and give us the strong basis to move forward from now.

Question No. 3—Finance

3. NICOLA WILLIS (Deputy Leader—National) to the Minister of Finance: What advice, if any, has he received about how much more interest each year someone with a $700,000 mortgage would be required to pay on a renewed mortgage today compared to the start of last year, and what impact does he expect rising interest rates will have on the cost of living?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): In answer to the first part of the member’s question, it may surprise her to know that I do not receive advice about such hypothetical examples with no parameters set out on the characteristics of the mortgage in question, such as the level of the mortgage at the start of last year, the parameters the mortgage had at the start of the last year—for example, whether it might have been a three-year term or on a floating rate, whether the principal payments were being made over 18 months, or what the split might be between the principal and interest payments at any specific point in time—and what interest rates were at each point in time. In response to the second part of the question, as I have said many times, there is no doubt that the global inflation spike currently being experienced is putting pressure on households in a number of ways, and one of those will be the impact of rising interest rates. Independent central banks around the world are increasing rates. Higher interest rates do mean that the cost of borrowing is higher, and this will feed through to the economy in a number of different ways. I expect that the effects may be similar to when the official cash rate rose under the previous National Government in 2010 and 2014.

Nicola Willis: Has he had advice on how many New Zealand mortgage holders will face a degree of financial stress in the next year as a result of rapidly rising interest rates?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What advice I have received—and the member will have seen this in the public arena as well—is that around half of New Zealanders who have mortgages would expect to be needing to re-fix them over the next year. Not all of those people will suffer financial stress as a result, but all New Zealanders are suffering the pressure of the global inflation spike. It’s the reason why we’ve stepped in to support New Zealanders through things like our 1 April package and the cost of living payment—all things the National Party continues to oppose.

Nicola Willis: Can he confirm that New Zealanders have not experienced such a rapid increase in interest rates since the official cash rate came into being?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, what I can confirm is that in 2010 and 2014, the official cash rate was increased under the previous Government. I can say that, in 2014, it went from 2.5 percent in March of that year to 3.5 percent by late July. The member also knows that those are decisions taken by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) independently.

Nicola Willis: Is he aware that a New Zealander with a floating $700,000 mortgage from ANZ in New Zealand currently pays $296 more per week in interest than someone with the same mortgage in Australia, and can he explain why that is?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: There will be many different reasons for that, and at the risk of trying the Speaker’s patience going through all of the different elements of what makes up a reason—

David Seymour: Oh, come on.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: —for someone’s mortgage payments, we have discussed—

SPEAKER: Well, Mr Seymour says that the member should do it, so the member can.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As we’ve discussed a number—I thank the member—of times in this House, the impacts of the global pandemic and, indeed, of the global inflation spike will be felt at different times in different countries.

Nicola Willis: Is he concerned that mortgage interest rates are now exceeding commercial test rates, which, according to the RBNZ, were between 5.5 and 6.5, and, if so, can he tell the House how many mortgage holders are expected to come under significant financial pressure in the coming months?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As I said in my earlier answer, we understand on this side of the House that the increase in inflation around the world is now being responded to by central banks independently lifting the official cash rate. That is what is happening in New Zealand. If the member is advocating a policy where she or some other person controls what the official cash rate is, that is an interesting idea and one that harks back to another time. On this side of the House, we understand the role of monetary policy. We also understand the role of fiscal policy to support New Zealanders through this time, and all we’ve heard from the National Party is opposition to the support we’re providing to New Zealand households.

Nicola Willis: Why is the Minister unable to confirm how many New Zealanders will face significant financial stress as a result of the fastest rise in the official cash rate—

SPEAKER: Order! I’m going to invite the member to rephrase the question.

Nicola Willis: Well, will the Minister finally take this opportunity to name the number of New Zealanders who will face significant financial stress in the next year as a result of the fastest increase in the official cash rate in New Zealand’s history, and, if he will not name that number, can we expect him to continue—

SPEAKER: Order!

Nicola Willis: —with the see no evil—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member’s gone away from areas that the—the basis of a supplementary question has to be somewhere in the first part of it. We have to get to something which is the Minister’s responsibility, and that number is not his responsibility.

Nicola Willis: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Well, I hope the member’s not going to argue with me, because we’ll end up with a problem.

Nicola Willis: Well, Minister, I would point out that what I asked—

SPEAKER: I’m not a Minister any more.

Nicola Willis: Sorry, Mr Speaker. My question was about whether or not the Minister would seek advice. Now, the advice he seeks or doesn’t seek is absolutely his responsibility. Now, he can say that he doesn’t wish to seek that advice; that’s fine. I’d like—

SPEAKER: No, no.

Nicola Willis: —him to confirm that.

SPEAKER: No—sorry. The member’s question was very narrow around the advice sought, and it was how much more interest each year someone—it was one person. There was nothing about how many people.

Nicola Willis: But—speaking to the point of order—

SPEAKER: No, no—no more. The member can ask another supplementary if she wants to.

David Seymour: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Frequently in question time, the Minister is asked questions by the Labour side about economic conditions, and frequently he takes credit for all sorts of things to do with terms of trade, GDP, and so on. Surely, someone on this side of the House can ask about the effects of interest rates on households and the bills they have to pay. How is one possible and the other not?

SPEAKER: Well, of course they can—of course they can. All they have to do is get the primary question right.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Point of order, Mr Speaker. The consideration that you need to make is whether or not the question was in order. Now, it certainly related to the primary question that’s on notice. It’s perfectly legitimate for the Minister to say, “I have no ministerial responsibility for that aspect of the question.”, but to rule it out anticipating that, I think, is detracting from the exchange—

SPEAKER: OK, all right.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: —in question time.

SPEAKER: No—thank you. I’ve had enough of this. There’s going to be no more there. The member knows that it is part of the Speaker’s role to make a judgment about whether a Minister has responsibility for a question. The member knows that very well—he’s been a Minister. He’s seen it happen on lots and lots of occasions.

Nicola Willis: Will the Minister now confirm that he has not sought advice about the number of New Zealanders who will face significant financial stress in the coming year as a result of the fastest increase in the official cash rate in New Zealand’s history?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I get—

SPEAKER: I will allow the Minister to answer, even though it was a neat attempt that didn’t make it.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: —advice from a range of sources about the impact of the global inflation shock on New Zealanders. The Reserve Bank publishes regular material on the stability of New Zealand’s financial system. What that material shows us is that New Zealand has a robust financial system. There will be individual households who will suffer stress as the result of interest rates going up. This Government is prepared to support them.

Question No. 4—Justice

4. NICOLE McKEE (ACT) to the Minister of Justice: Does she stand by her statement that she will bring “a very victim-centric” approach to her new job; and, if so, will she commit to advocating for an increase in the funding available for victims in the next Budget to support her approach?

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN (Minister of Justice): In response to the first part of the question: yes. In response to the second part of the question: I will always advocate for my sector, but the member will be aware, I cannot prejudge future Budget discussions.

Nicole McKee: Does her victim-centric approach mean she will now consult with the victims of three-strike offenders, which her predecessor did not do, before proceeding to repeal the three-strikes law, and, if not, why not?

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN: The three-strikes legislation was introduced for the purpose of deterrence—

David Seymour: Yes or no.

SPEAKER: Order! Who was that?

Hon Member: David Seymour.

SPEAKER: OK. We’ll keep going, and—I’ve just about washed my hands of that one.

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN: The purpose of three-strikes legislation when it was introduced was for the intent of deterrence. It has not proven to be a deterrent and therefore, no. We will proceed to introduce that legislation.

Nicole McKee: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I asked about whether or not the Minister was intending to speak to victims of three-strike offenders, and I don’t believe that that was answered.

SPEAKER: Well, I think if the member looks at her colleague’s copy of Speakers’ rulings, she will look at 184 and get the answer to that point of order.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does she agree that for her officials to admit to deliberately excluding victims from the victim support scheme by a deliberate strategy of under-promoting the scheme scarcely speaks of a victim-centric approach, and, if so, why would Kiwis believe her stated intention to be focused on victims more than they had believed the predecessors’ similar statements by Mr Kris Faafoi and Andrew Little?

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN: The premise of the question is that victims have not been supported. I think, over successive Governments, there has been significant under-investment into a victim-centric approach. Budget 2022—the first priority of the justice sector was to ensure a victim-centred approach, which saw the uplift of over $46 million specifically targeted towards victims; $12.4 million is to go directly towards providing in excess of over 7,000 more additional grants to victims.

Nicole McKee: What does she intend to do about the victims of crime who are owed more than $35 million in unpaid reparations?

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN: Unpaid reparations is one area of concern for us, and it’s something that I’m taking advice on right now.

Nicole McKee: Will she ensure that the Victim Assistance Scheme will reach, assist, and support more than the 4 percent of victims it currently supports?

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN: As previously just stated, there has been successive under-investment for victims across multiple Governments. To put it in context, the total funding for the Victim Assistance Scheme is now $14.6 million per year, compared to $5.3 million in 2017 under the last National-ACT Government. Victims are our priority and we will ensure that there is a victim-centred approach in the justice sector.

Nicole McKee: Will she commit to ensuring a greater portion of the proceeds of crime fund goes towards supporting victims, and that it will never again be used to fund the Mongrel Mob?

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN: I am sure that we are investing directly millions of dollars from the proceeds of crime to victims. A good example of that recently is the $6 million that we’ve provided for business owners who have been subjected to ram raids.

Question No. 5—Tourism

5. Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour—Banks Peninsula) to the Minister of Tourism: What response has he seen from the tourism industry following the announcement to remove pre-departure testing?

Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Tourism): The tourism industry has been delighted with the Government’s decision, as announced by Minister Verrall, to remove pre-departure testing from 20 June. Rebecca Ingram, the chief executive of Tourism Industry Aotearoa, the peak body for tourism, summed it up when she said, and I quote, “The earlier date will be a boost for the ski industry, with the news following Queenstown’s biggest snowfall in years … We’re excited that we can now move into the next phase of recovery and confidently welcome more international … (visitors) to our shores.”

Dr Tracey McLellan: What, if anything, has the Government done to help the ski industry recover?

Hon STUART NASH: In April, Cabinet approved a border exemption for 275 skilled ski workers to enter New Zealand. This has since been increased to 335 places due to the demand. NZSki chief executive Paul Anderson has noted that the outlook for the season is extremely positive and they had filled all the roles and were ready for the season. This past Saturday, I had great pleasure to accompany the Prime Minister to the Remarkables, where we officially opened the 2022 ski season. I can categorically say to international visitors that the snow is here, the requirement for pre-departure testing is gone, and we are ready to welcome you.

Dr Tracey McLellan: What is the Government doing to help the tourism industry move into the next stage of recovery?

Hon STUART NASH: The $54.2 million innovation programme for tourism recovery that I announced on Budget day will see the Government working alongside tourism businesses and key stakeholders to develop new, innovative ideas that will improve the sustainability and productivity of eligible businesses. The industry transformation plan for tourism, a partnership between workers, business, Māori, and the Government, has an objective of establishing a regenerative model for tourism. Its initial focus is on better work, which is a key issue for the tourism workforce. I will have more to say on this later in the year, but in the meantime I can say again to international tourists, the snow is fantastic, the borders are open, and New Zealanders are here to welcome you.

Question No. 6—Police

SPEAKER: Question No. 6—Mark Mitchell.

Hon Chris Hipkins: At last!

SPEAKER: Order! Who was that who made that interjection? Well, can I just ask the Minister to curb his enthusiasm.

6. Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa) to the Minister of Police: Does he stand by his statement, “we do acknowledge that, particularly when it comes to gangs, there is escalating tension there”; if so, when did the Government first recognise that gang tensions were escalating?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Police): Yes. Since the day this Government came into office, we’ve recognised the urgent need for more police on the beat and to make sure that they’ve got the right tools and the right support in place so that they can tackle crime—including gang crime. It’s the reason that this Government has increased the Police budget every year that we have been in Government, and it’s why, in Budget 2022, we boosted Police funding by $562 million. It’s why the number of staff working on organised crime has doubled, and we now have the largest police force ever.

Hon Mark Mitchell: If the Minister realised on the first day they came into Government that there was a problem with escalating crime, why didn’t they do something instead of allowing gang membership to grow by 40 percent—

SPEAKER: Order! Two legs to a question.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: One of the things this Government is absolutely committed to doing is making sure that, when we make commitments around policing, we deliver on them. I note that something like firearms protection orders, for example, were promised in 2014 and not delivered. They were then promised again in 2016 and not delivered. Our Government is actually going to deliver them.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Does he support the current ban on gang patches in hospitals and schools?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I have no intention of changing that law.

Hon Mark Mitchell: If he supports the banning of gang insignia in hospitals and schools, will he extend that to public places?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I have no intention to do so.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Has he seen reports that an aggravating factor of the open gang warfare between the Killer Beez and the Tribesmen is the wearing of gang patches?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I’ve certainly seen commentary to that effect. [Members cheer]

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Point of order. In light of the enthusiasm by the Government for Mr Mitchell to have more questions, I seek leave for two supplementary questions to be added.

SPEAKER: No, supplementary questions are, in the end, at my discretion. But I do think it’s a reasonable suggestion. Mr Mitchell will have two extras now, and the Opposition won’t suffer as a result.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Does the Minister think that the current ban on gang patches in schools and hospitals is a good policy?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: As I’ve already indicated, I have no intention of changing it.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Would the police Minister, seeing as he won’t change the policy in relation to gang patches being banned in schools and hospitals, extend it to public places?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Again, I’ve already—he’s very quick on his feet, that one! But I have no intention of doing so.

SPEAKER: There is something about déjà vu revisited! If the member wants another two, he can have them.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Why, under this soft-on-crime Labour Government, with record investment and record police numbers, are our streets more dangerous, with 23 drive-by shootings in Auckland, terrorising local communities; how has this Government allowed this country to get to that state?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I’ll tell you what a soft-on-crime position is: it’s saying that, if gang activity is taking place, as long as we can’t see it, it’s not a problem. That is the most soft-on-crime position I have seen in a long time, and it came from that member.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Why has the Minister, if he acknowledges that this Government recognised that there was an issue with gangs, waited five years for a dedicated task force to be put in place, when we told them and challenged them to do this five years ago?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: That’s just simply not true. The Government’s been increasing resourcing for the Police since we first came into Government. As I’ve indicated before, I first saw reports back in 2014 that there was going to be an organised task force on gang-related crime. It was announced by a National Minister, and it didn’t happen. It was then re-announced two years later by a National Minister, and it didn’t happen.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Why is this soft-on-crime Government—

SPEAKER: Order! The member’s had his extra two, I think, three times, but I’ve seen a wave from the ACT Party, who think it’s very unfair that the National Party gets so many opportunities. So there will be one question from a member of the ACT Party if they want it.

David Seymour: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Does the Minister stand by his statement in question time yesterday that he would ensure the Police were operating under the correct laws and have the correct resourcing, and, if so, why didn’t the last police Minister do it, and why should we believe he will if she didn’t?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: She absolutely did.

Hon Stuart Nash: Has the Minister seen reports that Police numbers actually decreased in the last three years of the previous National Government?

SPEAKER: If he had, it would not be something he had responsibility for.

Question No. 7—Health (Māori Health)

7. ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) to the Associate Minister of Health (Māori Health): How is the Government supporting Māori primary and community care providers to lift their capability, capacity, and service sustainability?

Hon PEENI HENARE (Associate Minister of Health (Māori Health)): Budget 2022 provides an additional $30 million over four years to support Māori primary and community care provider development through the Māori Provider Development Scheme (MPDS). This is the biggest uplift to the MPDS since it was established in 1997, and it will help secure the primary and community care innovation developed by Māori health providers during the COVID-19 pandemic, and will help them transition those new capabilities into the new health system. The funding will also provide back-office support to providers and help them sustain their capital infrastructure, and it will support the hiring and retention of a qualified and trained workforce in the development of new service delivery methods specifically for Māori, which we know make a big difference to how our community engages with the health system.

Arena Williams: How will this funding support equity in the health system?

Hon PEENI HENARE: Māori providers play an essential role in delivering kaupapa Māori - based health and social services in our communities. They both deliver services and provide a conduit for community engagement and participation for Māori whānau because of their trusted relationships in the community. Most of these providers operate as non-profit organisations. Their primary funding is project-specific investment that generally covers direct cost and limited overheads related to specific services. For these providers, a long-term capability sustainment and capacity development comes from the MPDS. The initiative will ensure that the MPDS can support these providers, especially smaller- and rural- and region-based providers to maintain and expand their capability and capacity to deliver care to their communities and ensure their meaningful participation in the new health system.

Arena Williams: What reaction has he seen to the announcement of this new funding?

Hon PEENI HENARE: When I announced this investment last month at Mahitahi Hauora in Te Tai Tokerau, providers were ecstatic to hear the news. Te Puea Winiata, chief executive of Turuki Healthcare in South Auckland, said, “This funding will support us as providers to increase our capability, capacity, and service sustainability. This funding is especially needed right now as we continue to support whānau Māori through the long tail of COVID-19.” Hingatu Thompson, chief executive for Manaaki Ora Trust, said, “Māori provider development scheme has historically enabled Māori providers to be sustainable in the challenging environment. The increase ensures Māori providers are able to extend their capacity to support whānau and the wider health system to respond during extraordinary times.” This announcement has been well received and I’m proud this Government is making the investment.

Question No. 8—Building and Construction

8. ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato) to the Minister for Building and Construction: When was the Government first made aware of the nationwide Gib shortage, and when does she expect to implement any recommendations made by yesterday’s reported “high level taskforce”?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister for Building and Construction): The Government first became aware of supply chain issues for Gib and other building products in the context of alert level 4 restrictions in August-September of last year. As a result of this, on 10 September, when the chief executive of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) authorised certain businesses or services that were located within the alert level 4 area to operate the manufacture of Gib, Winstone Wallboards was one of these businesses. At the time, it was thought to be not a systemic supply issue, and its stock levels were OK, but it was a matter of logistics. However, in November 2021, the building and construction industry began to report shortages of a number of products, including Gib. In response, MBIE issued guidance on product substitution on 6 December 2021 to ease shortages. This guidance included plasterboard. In response to the second part of the question, it’s important the member understands this is not a formal ministerial inquiry. This is a group of private sector experts brought together to advise me, to ensure the effective and swift execution and implementation of measures taking place. I expect issues raised at the first meeting next Monday will be actioned straight away.

Andrew Bayly: Why did she claim yesterday that “The task force has already got action under way. There are 28 containers of plasterboard that are on their way to New Zealand that will help alleviate the shortage.”, when the task force had absolutely no role in obtaining those supplies?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I said it because it is the case. If the member cares to have a look at the membership of the task force—in particular Shane Brealey of Simplicity Living, who we have been working with for a number of weeks—these are the group of people that are taking the actions that will solve this crisis and why our Government is committed to working in partnership with them.

Andrew Bayly: Does she agree with Bright Build director Jennifer Taylor on reputable international plasterboard brands that “We could get their products certified for New Zealand incredibly easily. The Government could assist to actually get these fast-tracked, onto containers and into New Zealand”, and, if so, why hasn’t she instructed MBIE to just do that?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Yes, I do agree with the person the member is quoting, and this is exactly what is happening. In fact, I think the member is referring to an interview this morning where the actual product, Boral, that she was referring to has already been covered off by guidance that MBIE has issued earlier this year, in addition to three other certified products.

Andrew Bayly: When she said yesterday that “if only the world were that simple”, what is so difficult about allowing accredited international plasterboard manufacturers to supply New Zealand automatically, provided they meet New Zealand standard 2588?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I think the member needs to look at the complexity of this problem. Obviously, the—

SPEAKER: Order!

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: —accreditation is an incredibly important part of this. We have already taken measures in terms of issuing guidance. In terms of identifying other products that meet the New Zealand standard, this is an issue that we do need to bring several parts to. Believe me, if this was as simple as passing a simple piece of legislation, we would have done that months ago when we began working on it, but I prefer the advice of private sector individuals that are working at the coalface of this than the member of Parliament opposite.

Andrew Bayly: Is she aware those 28 containers of plasterboard represent 0.003 percent of annual plasterboard demand in New Zealand, and, if so, why is she taking public credit for a close to zero increase in plasterboard supply?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Obviously, 28 container loads of plasterboard are not going to solve the current problem we have in New Zealand, and far from taking credit, I announced yesterday that we are going to work with the individuals that are finding solutions to this. I fail to see why it is the Opposition are so averse to working with the private sector on solving this.

Question No. 9—Digital Economy and Communications

9. JAMIE STRANGE (Labour—Hamilton East) to the Minister for the Digital Economy and Communications: What recent announcements has he made about improving connectivity in rural New Zealand?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister for the Digital Economy and Communications): More good news. Last week, I was delighted to announce how $60 million allocated through Budget 2022 will be used to further improve rural connectivity over the next few years. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us, time and again, how critical a reliable connection is important to learning, to working, and to socialising at home. For rural businesses, a reliable connection affords them opportunity to be more innovative and more productive, and that’s exactly what we need as we go about securing an economic recovery for the country. This fund was a 2020 election promise, and we have delivered on that promise.

Jamie Strange: How will the funding be allocated?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: The sum of $43 million will be used to improve network capacity and speeds where rural users have been experiencing slow broadband. This includes, but is not limited to, settlements in the Far North, Gisborne, the Manawatū and Whanganui region, Taranaki, Southland, and—the member will be pleased—the mighty Waikato. In addition, $15 million will go towards a new initiative called the Remote Users Scheme. This scheme will aim to provide broadband services to New Zealanders in some of the country’s most remote locations—those who right now have no coverage or only have voice calling and text message services—plus there’s a provision for an additional $2 million to be spent on extending the successful Marae Digital Connectivity initiative for up to two years.

Jamie Strange: How many people stand to benefit from this funding?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: Taken together with the rural capacity upgrades I announced in February, the Government has now allocated over $90 million towards upgrading the capacity of rural networks, to be rolled out over the next three years. Tens of thousands of rural residents stand to benefit from this combined investment. This is over and above those already receiving improved broadband through the existing RBI 2—or Rural Broadband Initiative phase two—which has another year yet to run. By the end of next year, we’re on track to see 99.8 percent of the population with access to new or improved broadband connections.

Question No. 10—Police

10. CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT) to the Minister of Police: What did he mean when he said yesterday, “I think the work she was doing around culture change in the police was very important and I hope that we’ll be able to continue that”, and does he believe that the current culture of police is completely focused on catching criminals?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Police): I meant what I said. Throughout the country, over the last 14 years that I’ve been a member of Parliament, I’ve met members of the Police Force who are committed to continual improvement and I absolutely back the work that the current Police leadership are doing in ensuring that Police have an internal culture that is supporting the Police to constantly strive to do better and to constantly strive to serve our communities better. I believe that that involves focusing on cracking down on criminal offending but it also focuses on cracking down on some of the causes of that offending before it happens.

Chris Baillie: Does he believe there is systemic racism within the New Zealand Police and how does focusing on this kind of identity politics help catch criminals?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Within any organisation the size of the New Zealand Police, there are going to be people with a wide variety of different views. I think that it’s important that everybody, when it comes to issues around race, has the opportunity to reflect on their views, their own feelings, their own thoughts, and have the opportunity to consider how they might do things differently and how they might incorporate that into their practice. I think every organisation in the country is grappling with this and I think that that’s a positive thing, whether it be our school system, whether it be our police, whether it be our health system, or whether it be large corporations who are also grappling with it. I think that those conversations can be incredibly positive.

Chris Baillie: Does he stand by a police report that says, “Imperialism has instilled a legacy of eurocentrism, neo-liberalism, and white supremacy” and that “that had become a core component of policing delivery in the criminal justice system”, and, if so, how will that research help catch criminals?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Without having seen the report, I don’t think it would be fair to comment on it.

Chris Baillie: Does he stand by his statement, “My first job as Minister of Police will be making sure that police have everything they need in order to do their job effectively.”, and what additional tools do Police need to catch criminals that they don’t currently have?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Yes, I absolutely do. It’s one of the reasons why this Government, as I’ve indicated before, has increased the Police budget every year that we have been in Government. Of course, the criminals don’t just continue to repeat the same patterns of offending year after year; they evolve and adapt their criminal offending patterns, and we need to continue to evolve and adapt the Police’s response as well. I’ll be in touch with Police regularly, talking to them about what new tools they might need and we will respond accordingly.

Chris Baillie: What does he say to Police officers who tell me that they can’t get on with their job of catching criminals because they’re not supported by the Government to use the tools they currently already have at their disposal?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I don’t agree with the member’s statement. This Government has given the Police more tools and more resources than they have ever had before.

SPEAKER: Now, that looks like Julie Anne Genter, who’s clearly not participating remotely, as my notes say.

Hon Julie Anne Genter: Sorry

SPEAKER: The Hon Julie Anne Genter—question No. 11.

Question No. 11—Transport

11. Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green) to the Minister of Transport: Does he stand by his statement that “Investment in green transport options is a triple win for climate action – it reduces traffic congestion, promotes a healthy, active lifestyle and clears up the air around us”; if so, how does that factor into his consideration of options for mass rapid transit in Wellington?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Transport): Yes. Mode shift is one of the key investment objectives of the Let’s Get Wellington Moving programme and the various options that have been put forward for mass rapid transit will be considered against that and other objectives.

Hon Julie Anne Genter: What is his response to Dr Ralph Chapman that the Let’s Get Wellington Moving options, which include $2.2 billion in new road tunnels, will come with a large quantity of embedded carbon emissions and will also induce more traffic?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: I would note a couple of things. One is that one of the road tunnels that I believe is being referred to there within options one and two of the Let’s Get Wellington Moving programme is in fact a road tunnel that will be primarily used for bus rapid transit. Secondly, I would note that, by definition, any investment in hard transport infrastructure will carry with it embedded carbon emissions. The key point is to consider the overall outcome that is achieved, and I’m confident that across all of the options that are up for consideration—which have not been decided upon yet—there will, overall, be carbon savings through a shift to high-quality public transport, walking, and cycling.

Hon Julie Anne Genter: Can he confirm the analysis shows the majority of time savings for buses from the eastern suburbs is achieved by the bus priority measures also included in option four, not the $2.2 billion in road tunnels in options one and two?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: Across the various options, there are a range of configurations. My understanding is that some benefits are achieved by both of them. In respect of the additional tunnelling options around the Basin Reserve that are part of options one and two, there are a range of benefits, including some time savings for public transport, but more generally a better urban form and also, I would note, better and safer walking and cycling options for Wellington commuters.

Hon Julie Anne Genter: Can you confirm the analysis shows the proposed $2.2 billion for new road tunnels will save only 1.5 minutes for a car travelling from Johnsonville to the airport at peak time, and even less for those travelling from the eastern suburbs to the city centre, compared to option four, which is the most climate-friendly option?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: All of the options have different trade-offs within them. I do just need to note that I think the characterisation of a bus rapid transit tunnel through Mount Victoria as “a road tunnel” doesn’t really characterise the benefits that are carried with it. There are a range of different benefits which cut across all of the different options. One of the things that I would note—bearing in mind that decisions have not yet been made—is that we will need to consider, also, the degree of additional housing that is enabled by the different options, which is a benefit in and of itself, but also that if that is maximised there are potentially longer-term carbon savings from reduced emissions from that more intensified housing model.

Hon Julie Anne Genter: Is he aware that with the money saved from going with the most climate-friendly option—option four—we could build bus rapid transit to Karori with significant time savings for bus users from the northern suburbs, as well as the time savings from the bus priority measures in option four for those from the east and south?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: As I’ve noted in previous answers, the trade-offs are complex between options—for example, the broader Let’s Get Wellington Moving programme as a part of the City Streets programme is indeed creating better bus access to a range of suburbs around Wellington. It is true that there are a range of costs across options one to four for mass rapid transit, but there are also a range of different benefits between those projects that we need to carefully balance up and consider.

Hon Julie Anne Genter: Will he promise to current and future New Zealanders to fully apply the goals and initiatives in the emissions reduction plan to the Government’s recommended option for Let’s Get Wellington Moving?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: Yes. The emissions reduction plan is Government policy and something that we give great priority to. We will be considering that as we consider the best options to take mass rapid transit in Wellington forward, as we will be considering the investment objectives. I note that there was a 40 percent weighting on the mode shift objective within the Let’s Get Wellington Moving programme. Again, I would just note to the member that none of these choices and trade-offs are necessarily as simple and didactic as saying it’s “A versus B”; the trade-offs are often very complex. For example, as I said before in a previous question, the ability to significantly uplift urban housing along this corridor is potentially one of the ways that we can provide the greatest medium to long term carbon savings.

Question No. 12—Workplace Relations and Safety

12. CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) to the Associate Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: What announcement has the Government made about supporting new parents?

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Associate Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Last week, the Government announced that paid parental leave entitlements will increase on 1 July this year from $621 to $661 per week, a 6.3 percent increase before tax. This additional $40 a week will support approximately 20,000 Kiwi families and will see those parents taking the full 26 weeks of parental leave receive up to an additional $1,040 of support over that period. The Government’s committed to continuing to support new parents during the crucial early months of their babies’ lives.

Camilla Belich: How does the increase to paid parental leave entitlements build on the Government’s previous efforts to help new parents?

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: We know that having a parent at home as long as possible to care for a child provides a huge benefit for that child’s development, and that’s why we previously extended the duration of parental leave entitlements to 26 weeks. The Government is committed to making sure that families and parents receive the support they need to give their new child the best start to life, and paid parental leave is one way to ensure this happens.

Camilla Belich: What other work is the Government doing to support new parents?

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: Since we came in to office, we’ve delivered a range of policies and support for new parents. We’ve boosted the Working for Families payments, and the Best Start payments that provide financial support to all families with a newborn baby, and made successive increases to the minimum wage. We’ve delivered a cost of living package more recently, including a short-term payment for the 2.1 million people, including new and expecting parents, earning up to $70,000. Overall, we’ve introduced measures that have increased families’ incomes, lifted 66,500 children out of poverty, and seen a reduction in child poverty across all nine measures used.

General Debate

General Debate

CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Leader of the Opposition): I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business.

Well, thank you, Mr Speaker. I have to say there was an air of excitement in the Beehive this week—an air of excitement—and the reason was very simple: the Prime Minister was in her office and she was gazing at her calendar, thinking, “How many more days have I got before I get to leave the country and go travelling again?” While she was doing that, someone just burst through the door. It was Megan Woods bursting through the door, shouting and yelling, “I’ve found it, I’ve found it, I’ve found it! The solution to our Gib crisis!” And she said, “I’ll set up a task force!” But not just your run of the mill, normal task force; this is going to be a high-level, high-power task force! I have to say such is the urgency and such are the big ideas coming from this Labour Government that I thought Luke Malpass expressed it so eloquently yesterday, when he said, “The Government did what everyone screaming out for plasterboard to finish their house or renovation was asking for: another task force.”

Now, I know they’re really bad, but you really can’t start making this stuff up. It’s like the political version of The Office that we’re watching at the moment. I have to say that no New Zealand Government before Jacinda Ardern’s Government has spent so much and achieved so very little. No Government has spent so much on spending and delivered so little on outcomes, and I think it’s almost an achievement in itself. It’s kind of a Wellington miracle! How do you spend more money, more bureaucrats, and deliver worse outcomes? It’s a unique skill! It’s a very unique skill that they’ve perfected very well. What I can tell you is that, when National was last on that side of the House, in Government, we were spending less money each Budget than that Government is spending and we were getting much better outcomes.

Now, I thought, just to remind the back benchers of the Labour Party, it would be quite good to show them what a good Government looked like. Because what did we deliver? We delivered shorter hospital waiting lists. We delivered shorter emergency department wait times. There was a shorter social housing wait list, as well. There were shorter cancer wait times. There were actually more children attending school. We didn’t spend $5 billion, hire 1,400 more bureaucrats, and get worse attendance and worse academic achievement. I seriously hope Minister Hipkins is going to bring something different to Police. We had more kids actually passing NCEA level 2 at the same time. We had fewer Māori children leaving school without a qualification. We had lower gang numbers. We had less violent crime. We had fewer people on jobseeker benefits for longer than a year. We had lower inflation. We had lower interest rates. We had far higher levels of consumer confidence. We even had lower coal imports and an average national house that was $360,000 lower than it is now. We certainly had more competent Cabinet Ministers, and the New Zealand Transport Agency had half the staff that it has today and it managed to build more roads. Motels weren’t a permanent address, and you didn’t have to go on a waiting list at Mitre 10 to buy a piece of Gib board! I’m looking across the Chamber, which has emptied out very quickly, and I just want to say to the Labour back bench that I know they just wish they had a Government half as competent as that one.

The inability of this Government to deliver anything, I have to say, is quite staggering. They simply do not know how to get things done. They confuse spending announcements with outcomes, and in the middle sits delivery, implementation, execution, getting it done. Their answer to the Gib shortage: another ministerial task force. Their answer to the ram raids going through the roof: strobe lights and fog cannons and Chris Hipkins. Their answer to the cost of living crisis: a temporary band-aid that certainly won’t help the squeezed middle. It’s like putting a band-aid on open-heart surgery. Their answer to a skyrocketing State housing wait list: only a thousand KiwiBuild homes built in this last four years. Their answer to exploding gang violence: well, the police Minister is going to have a chat to the justice Minister, and maybe they’ll work it out. This Government, I have to say, couldn’t deliver its way out of a paper bag, and after five years, I have to say, it is so sad. It is so sad to actually see a Government literally making it up on the fly, putting band-aid solutions together, confusing spending announcements with outcomes, but I have to tell you that Kiwis up and down the country don’t have to wait long, because a National Government is just round the corner.

We’re the ultimate task force you need, and a National Government that actually knows how to get things done, that knows the difference between spin and achievement and delivery, and a National Government that will get things done for New Zealand and create a society where Kiwis can get along and they can get ahead. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): In my time in Parliament, I’ve heard some truly incredible speeches from a Leader of the Opposition. I regret to tell the member that that was not one of them. If I was him, I’d get someone more creative to write my speeches for me, because Christopher stick-to-the-script Luxon still has a wee way to go if he wants to capture the hearts and minds of New Zealanders and particularly the hearts and minds of his own caucus. It’s no surprise, after listening to that speech, that Christopher Luxon said he’s going overseas to gather some ideas, because it’s clear that his own party doesn’t have any, because not one new idea was put forward in that five-minute contribution from the leader of the National Party.

But he wants to talk about results, so I’ll take up that challenge. Let’s talk about results delivered by this Government. We could talk about the two world-leading triple A credit ratings, something few countries have been able to achieve, which has been achieved under this Government. We could talk about the fact that GDP is up by 5.6 percent compared to two years ago. Economic growth under this Government, which, actually, at various points has outstripped what was being achieved under the last Government, despite the fact that we’ve had COVID-19 to deal with, which has been the largest economic shock I think the world has faced in a very long time. Record low unemployment at 3.2 percent.

You want to talk about results? We’ve got more Kiwis into jobs and fewer people out of work than ever before. That is a result that we are proud of on this side of the House. We could talk about the fact that up until this year, wage growth has outpaced inflation. I acknowledge that there is a challenge with inflation around the world at the moment, and let’s put that into context. Across the OECD, up until April, the average OECD rate of inflation was 9.2 percent, and inflation in New Zealand was 6.9 percent. It was lower than the OECD average, lower than many of the countries we trade with, lower than countries we compare ourselves with, like the UK at 8.3 percent, the UK at 7.8 percent, Germany at 7.4 percent—the list could go on. Inflation is an international phenomenon, and it is putting pressure on households, and that is why we are taking action on that front as well.

I could talk about the cost of living payment announced in this year’s Budget that delivered for 2.1 million New Zealanders; the work that we’ve taken to reduce the cost of fuel by cutting fuel taxes; half-price public transport; increased minimum wages; the winter energy payment. And, yes, we are going to take action on the duopoly of our supermarkets, because New Zealanders are paying far too much at the supermarket because there has been a lack of competition and it is time that we did more to address that, and that’s exactly what we are going to do.

We’ve boosted financial support for New Zealanders—boosting student allowances, boosting superannuation, and, yes, boosting benefits because we realise that there are people living on benefits at the moment who have aspirations; they’ve got goals for the future as well. And unlike the members opposite, we don’t refer to them as—and I’ll quote from this because I think it’s a quote that’s worth reminding New Zealanders about: “we don’t just do bottom-feeding and just focus on the bottom … we focus on people who want to be positive and ambitious, aspirational and confident”. Right? That was from the Leader of the Opposition. I say to him, go and have conversations with people who are working on the minimum wage, go and have conversations with people who are living on a benefit, and you will find people who are positive and aspirational and who want to get ahead and who want a better life for their kids and a better future for their country, and they are committed to working for that.

I say to the National Party: why don’t they back those Kiwis? What is it about them that they so resent? What is it about them that says that the National Party thinks that they should get a cup of coffee a week in tax cuts when those on the highest incomes should be getting thousands and thousands of dollars a week in tax cuts? What is it about the National Party? What is it that they have against those people who are toiling and working hard and doing the vital jobs that we need here in New Zealand to keep our economy moving and to keep the many other New Zealanders in the style of life to which they have been accustomed—what is it that the National Party has against those people? I say that we should be celebrating those workers.

Remember during COVID-19, when people were out in the streets applauding the people who were going to work in the supermarkets? Today, they are more likely to be the subject of abuse. I think we need to recapture that spirit that says we will recognise and value those New Zealanders who are getting out there and doing the hard work every day. They deserve more than a cup of coffee, and the cup of coffee they’re being offered so that other people can have thousands of dollars a week in tax cuts just isn’t right.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Well, if there was ever a speech that completely missed the mark and was completely out of touch, that was it from Chris Hipkins. He’s talking about economic indicators and OECD averages and inflation and unemployment when people out there don’t want to hear that, because they are deciding whether or not they can afford to buy a meal for dinner tonight or a raincoat for their kid, or some shoes, or fill up the car with gas. That’s what they’re thinking about. They’re not worried about OECD averages, Mr Hipkins, and I’ll tell you what else they’re worried about. They’re worried about whether or not they turn up at the emergency department waiting area and whether or not they’ll be seen or whether or not they’ll be turned away to die, as it turns out.

Last week, there was a question from a poor mother whose baby had died in utero—she had to wait 48 hours to give birth to her stillborn baby. That’s what people are worried about at the moment, because of our crumbling health system, because of a Government that cannot prioritise getting nurses into the country, and no one on that side of the House can tell us why we are not prioritising nurses on the fast track to residence. All the Prime Minister could do today was to say that they are on the fast track to residence. Well, here is some information for the Prime Minister.

There is a green list that this Government has created. There is a fast track. There is a work to residence, two-year track. The nurses are not on the fast track. It doesn’t matter how many times she says it, they’re not on it. But I will tell you who is on that fast track. If you take a look at the green list you will see a “multi-media specialist”. I will tell you what a multi-media specialist does. They create and manipulate computer games, animation, audiovisual graphic files. An alternative title is that they are a specialist electronic game developer. That’s who this Government have prioritised on the fast track, straight to residency list. They put nurses on a two-year wait for residence, and they put multi-media specialists—electronic games developers—on a fast track to residence. That is the priority of this Government. Meanwhile, we’ve got people waiting in emergency departments who are not being seen and are being sent home to die while we have game makers being allowed into the country and getting residence immediately. How is that even possible?

We are 4,000 nurses short. I don’t know how many times we have to say it on this side of the House. I said it a year ago in Opening Up, National’s plan to tackle COVID-19. I said a year ago that nurses need to be fast tracked to residence and the Government didn’t pick it up. What have they done? They’ve put them on a two-year go-slow. Why does that matter? It matters because Australia has them on a fast-track to residence immediately, so they can go to Australia, and that’s exactly where they will go. We are not putting ourselves in a competitive position around the rest of the world. We’re putting ourselves at a competitive disadvantage. Nurses will choose to go to Australia where they’re paid more and where they can get residence immediately. Here they’re treated like second-class citizens to multi-media specialists who make games.

Why this matters, also, is because midwives are on that slow-track list. We are 300 midwives short in this country; 24 percent of the workforce is not able to be filled right now. That—24 percent—is the highest of anyone, of doctors, of nurses, of anyone. They are on the most critical skills shortage list, yet we are putting them on a two-year wait to residence, when in Australia, again, they can go straight to residence.

So what are we doing? We’re putting mothers and babies at risk; not only people who need urgent care and turn up at the hospital—those people who need elective surgeries and are being bumped down—but mothers and babies. We are putting mothers and babies at risk. Why is it? This Government hasn’t been able to tell us why there’s a two-year wait. We’ve asked so many times. I’ve asked Chris Hipkins. We’ve asked the Prime Minister. No one has been able to tell us. Firstly they told us it was the sector bodies they talked to. Well, the Aged Care Association said, “Well, it wasn’t us.” Then they said it can’t be the DHBs because they don’t hold that information. Kris Faafoi said it wasn’t the DHBs and Andrew Little has come back saying it definitely wasn’t the DHBs either. Then they said it was the Nursing Council, and the Nursing Council came back and said, “It wasn’t us. We don’t hold that information.” The Prime Minister again today was saying it was the DHBs when we’ve had written questions back from the Minister of Health to say the DHBs don’t hold that information and haven’t provided it. No one has provided that information. The reason is because it’s not true—migrant nurses do not turn up in New Zealand after years of qualifications, experience, and after paying $10,000 for a clinical nursing competence course, get into nursing, get their residence, and then say, “Hey, I think I’ll go and start a restaurant.” They don’t do that and there’s no evidence of it, so why are they still sticking to their guns? They need to just admit they made a mistake and fix it because lives are at risk.

Hon JAN TINETTI (Minister of Internal Affairs): I’m delighted to actually take a call in this debate here this afternoon, and it’s wonderful to be back in the House full time and not have other things that are taking my focus away from that. But I would like to take the opportunity to congratulate the new member of Parliament from Tauranga, Sam Uffindell, on his result at the weekend. It was a wonderful contest, and I’m now pleased to put that behind me.

I’d like to focus on how we’re securing the future of our young people through education. This Government has laid the foundations for rangatahi to be successful through the investments we have made in quality education, employment, and training, but one of the investments that I’m really close to is the work that we have done in the development of the Government’s attendance and engagement strategy. There was a debate that happened in the House here on 2 June around that, but unfortunately I was on COVID leave at the time. So I’d like to make a few comments about that now and about the strategy that we have introduced as a Government in the last couple of weeks.

Firstly, I would like to take the opportunity to acknowledge the work of the Education and Workforce Committee and the members of that select committee in their inquiry into school attendance. The eight key themes that were identified through the inquiry are consistent with the work of the Government that we have been doing over the last four years to turn around the long-term decline in school attendance rates. Attendance rates did start to decline in 2015, and two years of battling a global pandemic with COVID-19 had an even bigger impact. For those of us who have worked in the education sector, we know that the solution to this longer-term attendance challenge is not just marking kids present on the roll. Getting our kids through the door is only part of the challenge and only part of the priority for this Government. It’s the first step.

We have to meaningfully engage our young people in education, and their curriculum that they are learning needs to be meaningful. That is why we are taking a targeted-based approach to attendance, with the communities who know their kids best, and that approach needs to look close and be close to those communities that those young people come from. That is why we are putting the largest-ever investment into developing a world-class curriculum that is meaningful and engaging for those young people and has them at the centre of everything that they do. That is why we have a strong focus on wellbeing, culture, and inclusion in our education policy.

As the select committee report highlights, there are compounding issues that sit outside of the education system that contribute to non-attendance, such as poverty, family violence, mental health challenges, and transport issues. That is why the Government is tackling these head on through cross-agency work programmes that support families in difficult times and make lasting changes to reduce inequity. In the last few years, we have explored more effective ways of getting resourcing to school communities. When COVID-19 hit in 2020, we had the Urgent Response Fund that put $50 million into our schools to address the needs that they were facing straight away. But we knew that this fund was addressing the pandemic right at its height. We knew that a longer-term solution needed to be put in place, which is why we introduced our strategy around attendance and engagement last week and set really challenging targets that will bring us back to—

David Seymour: 16 percent?

Hon JAN TINETTI: Just listen to this. It will bring us back to a level higher than that that the National Government had back in 2015—higher. A very, very ambitious programme of work that we have set in place for ourselves, but not one that is impossible to reach, one that is too important for our young people to get wrong, one that will see our young people back in front of their schooling, and one that those of us that have been in education know only too well is critically important.

The Government is laying the foundations for lifelong engagement and participation in learning through tailoring solutions to communities and reducing the barriers that prevent kids from getting the education they deserve. This Government will face the challenge of school attendance head on, and we will turn this ship around. This Government is committed to doing things better for our tamariki and for the future of this country.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m sure a man of your vintage frequently listens to the tunes of Jay-Z, and you’ll be aware of the song 99 Problems! It seems relevant to this Government. They’ve got more than 99 problems, but what they don’t have is 99 problem solvers. They don’t have a practical approach to addressing the issues that New Zealanders are confronting day by day.

Let’s start with what’s happening in the hospitals, in the GP clinics, in the care homes up and down this country—4,000 nurses short. And what do we hear from the Government? We don’t know. There’s a fast track, but the Prime Minister can’t tell us how many people are on the fast track to immigrate into New Zealand. What would a Government that took a practical approach to addressing urgent problems do about the shortage of nurses? Well, first of all, they’d make the immigration fast track genuine. They would make it as competitive, if not more competitive, than what Australia offers, but they can’t. And the reason is they don’t understand that the world’s changed. It’s not a case of being able to pick and choose people wanting to come here. We’re in a war for talent where we need to attract people. Australia gets it. Canada gets it. They rolled out the red carpet as soon as COVID was over and they moved on and took people in. New Zealand has a Government that campaigned on reducing immigration to only 10,000. That’s why they’re so confused. That’s why they say they’re fast tracking nurses, but they can’t say how many.

Here’s another thing you could do if you had a practical approach to the problem of a nursing shortage. Well, you could say: we stood down 518 due to mandates in November. You know what? We’re not mandating the flu vaccine. Half of the medical profession hasn’t had that and there’s more flu in the hospitals than COVID today. So why do we lose 500 nurses in the middle of a shortage due to a lack of COVID vaccines? That is illogical. That is insanity. We should dump those mandates and get as many of those 518 stood down in November back in the hospital now.

Here’s the other thing that people that work in hospitals tell me. Our isolation rules are unworkable. The Prime Minister found this herself. Her partner got COVID—a week in isolation. Then she got it and had another week. That is happening in families across New Zealand. Every principal of every school is suffering at losing a teacher for two weeks because of a few days of infectiousness. That’s what’s happening in the hospitals. They’re losing their nurses. We should do what Singapore does and say you’ve got 72 hours stand-down; out with a negative test. We should dump the household requirement, just as Australia, for example, has so that people can get back to work. That’s just one of the 99-plus problems that we could solve if we took a practical approach to the shortage of nurses.

Then you’ve got the extraordinary circumstance of an industrialised First World Western nation that is falling over itself for a shortage of plasterboard. You can’t make this stuff up. It is literally a sandwich of cardboard and plaster of Paris and you can’t get it for love nor money in New Zealand. And what’s this Government done? Well, they’re going to appoint another working group. They’re actually going to have a ministerial task force. Let me make a prediction. This task force will soak up the time until Fletcher’s new factory comes on stream, and then when Fletcher’s back on stream, we’ll forget about the task force: business as usual. Man, you’ve got to admire Fletcher’s lobbying and the outcomes that they get. Wow. But that’s what’s going to happen.

A Government that was committed to practical problem solving would do what ACT proposed just yesterday. We would say, “MBIE, you need to create a materials equivalence register.” And on that register are materials that are equivalent to plasterboard from around the world. You can get applicants within New Zealand who can ask to be put on them and, if other countries already have materials registered, then the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment should proactively seek them out and put them on the register. If we can’t do that, why did we just hire an extra 14,000 fulltime-equivalents in the Public Service over five years? What are all these people doing if they can’t solve a problem as simple and straightforward as that?

That would then be followed by solutions on crime. I wish we had more time to give those, but let me finish with one that is salient to New Zealand’s long-term future. The world is changing. The Chinese Communist Party, who are a totalitarian dictatorship, are building their influence right against New Zealand’s area of interest. What a practical foreign affairs Minister would do is take those Kiwis of Pacific origin in business, the arts, and sport—take them on a road show of the Pacific and say, “We’re back, folks. We’re your friends, we’re here to help, and be careful of those people offering you money.” That’s what they could do. But what’s our Minister of Foreign Affairs done? Three waters and the co-governance of everything! Forced on New Zealanders. What a shame.

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN (Minister of Justice): Mānawa mai e te putanga o Matariki. Mānawa mai e Te Ariki o Te Rangi. Mānawa mai e te Mātahi o te tau. Mr Speaker, Mānawatia a Matariki.

[Celebrate the appearance of Matariki. Welcome the lord of the sky. Celebrate the beginning of the New Year. Mr Speaker, happy Māori New Year.]

I am so stoked to be on this side of the House this week. Right now, as we are looking up and down Aotearoa, we’ve got young kids learning about Matariki. They’re learning about our connections to our relations all throughout the Pacific right now who have been celebrating this time, mai rā anō [for ever].

We just heard my friend—what’s his name? Mr Seymour—lament on the relationships between Aotearoa, our Government, and our Pacific Island relations, our brothers and our sisters. You only need to look on this side of the House to understand the depth of relationship that we put into these relationships—at a Government level, an interpersonal, and real genuine relationship level. These types of hononga that we are creating through Matariki, they are symbolic of the fact that we voyaged through this region together. We share similar atua. We share similar beliefs and spiritual symbolism that connects us, more so than just forms on the paper—of which, though, those things are important. But as I look up and down Aotearoa right now, I see kids learning about each of our stars. I don’t know about you, but this is a time for us to reflect, it’s a time to connect, and it’s a time to cast our aspirations forward.

So very briefly, I just want to start with a bit of a reflection. She’s been a bit of a tough year, eh, across the board. I don’t know about you all, but I found myself locked up in my house with a couple of kids, and it was challenging. It was tougher than being in this House, I tell you. But this is the situation that all New Zealanders have found ourselves in. We’ve been in periods of isolation. We’ve had disruptions through our workplaces. The way that we’ve connected with each other has found ourselves in this incredible upheaval. But, too, we found some shining stars throughout our communities. I’m thinking of Reweti Ropiha, who is our CEO of Turanga Health, who led us steadfastly in Gisborne to assist with our care and community and COVID response. I’m thinking of the Tina Ngatas and Ani Pahuru-Huriwais up the top of the East Coast who have religiously been wearing their masks. They kept to a state where COVID didn’t permeate throughout the communities, with the support of, of course, our Government, but it was our people on the ground that were leading the charge. Linda Coulston, SuperGrans; they were out there cooking every single day for people that were disrupted in our community. It’s those people that I think about when I think about this last year.

But we’ve lost some incredible chiefs. We’ve lost some incredible dames. Moana Jackson, for his work that he did in the criminal justice system. Tā Wira Gardiner, a consummate statesperson and head of Oranga Tamariki. I think about Joe Hawke, a bastion for our people who led land rights movements and forced us to think about our connection to whenua. Dame June Jackson, the Hon Willie Jackson’s mother, who has been remarkable in urban spaces. But I think of two in particular, for myself: my colleague, my friend, and, of course, my mentor, Sir Michael Cullen—within our community, this week we will be planting a tree to commemorate his contribution to Aotearoa, and, of course, to us—and just last week, my cousin Maia Kuka, 38 years old, who was taken from us and her four children, far too young. We remember her.

When we think about where we are right now, our kids are growing up in a state of maturation, really different than what we grew up in. They’re learning about their connection to this place. They’re learning about their connection to each other. They’re learning to lean into mātauranga—that will form their identity. This is an exciting time for all of us. As I cast my mind forward to the future, those kids that are learning their connections to each other, they will be our leaders of tomorrow. Right now, they are singing songs that will teach them the names of the stars: Waitī, Waitā, Waipunarangi, Tupuānuku, Tupuārangi, ko Ururangi, Pōhutukawa, ko Hiwa-i-te-rangi, ngā whetū o Matariki.

Tomorrow they will be our leaders, with this mātauranga entrenched into their beings, and I cannot wait for the day that they take our seats in this House, because where they go, our future is fire.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker, and what a pleasure to follow my friend and fellow Auckland Girls’ Grammar School (AGGS) girl, the Hon Kiri Allan, the new Minister of Justice, especially because today I would like to speak about democracy and the work that we will do together to strengthen New Zealand’s democracy.

We here in Aotearoa have a lot of be proud of with our democracy: we were the first nation to give women the vote; we have a mixed-member proportional Parliament that is diverse and truly representative of the vote out there. But, for decades, Governments and politicians have failed to make the type of electoral changes that we know we need for a truly modern, strong, inclusive, and equal democracy. They’ve known what these changes were that we needed, because independent institutions like our Electoral Commission, our Justice Committee, our Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal, the Waitangi Tribunal, and the public, after round and round of consultation, have told them. These are the types of changes that are reflected in my Greens’ Electoral (Strengthening Democracy) Amendment Bill. It’s about taking party politics out of electoral reform and listening to the public, to the experts, and to the independent bodies without the stake that we have as politicians in maintaining the status quo.

Communities around New Zealand are locked out of our democracy right now because of arbitrary rules that we can change. Sixteen- and 17-year-olds have a right in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act to vote. They can leave school, they can have sex, they can work full-time, they pay taxes, but they can’t vote. We deny them that one vote—the say in our democracy that impacts their lives for the longest—even though they’ve proven to us again and again that they are engaged and passionate about the issues that affect their lives, about the climate crisis, about mental health, about public transport.

Overseas New Zealanders can’t vote in the next general election unless they’ve been back here in the last three years. It’s been a bit hard in the last three years! It’s always hard for students, for families with small kids overseas, to get back in that tiny, arbitrary time. It’s time to change that.

People in our overcrowded prisons were disenfranchised by a bare majority Parliament under the National Party Government, and they haven’t been fully restored to that right. We know that our justice system is prejudiced. We know that it targets Māori, the poor, and people with mental health challenges the most, and then we cut them off from democracy itself. The Supreme Court and the Waitangi Tribunal have told us that that’s wrong, that that degrades human rights in Aotearoa.

But let’s talk about perhaps the biggest elephant in the room when it comes to democracy: money—secret money. There is, in New Zealand, no limit on political donations that any politician or party can receive. That’s shocking to me. That breeds the kind of American-style democracy—so-called democracy—where the highest bidder gets to influence elections and influence policy. That seems wrong. But what’s worse is that we have so few rules around transparency here in New Zealand that the public can’t know who is taking a stake in our democracy when they vote. Is it big oil stopping climate action? Is it the gun lobby? Is it property investors stopping the capital gains tax, rent controls, and rental warrants of fitness?

Earlier this week, the National Party did a U-turn on its position last term, when it said it would support electoral reform when it came to political donations. Of course, at the time, they were being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office. Now they say they don’t see the point of having more transparency in political donations, and of course they would say that, because, of the $1.4 million that the National Party got from donors in 2021, 71 percent was in secret. The ACT Party received 74 percent of its donations in secret. Is it one vote per person, really? It’s time to ensure Aotearoa has the kind of fair, inclusive, and truly equal democracy that we know we deserve. So I will be working with this new Minister, this old AGGS girl, to make that real.

IBRAHIM OMER (Labour): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to rise to speak on the general debate. Since last weekend, we have been celebrating World Refugee Day. In doing so, we heard a lot of stories—stories of people with amazing resilience, perseverance, and hope. We heard from a young Somali woman who came as a child from the war zone, but now she is an aspiring writer. We heard from the young Afghani woman who came from a war zone and now she is studying law and criminology. We are very proud of the work that we are doing in this space. The last two years of COVID-19 didn’t stop us from, to a certain extent, bringing former refugees from war zones; Afghanistan and the Ukraine is a good example.

With that, we’ve been hearing a lot from the Opposition. They have been talking about a lot of things that the Labour Government is doing and they are opposing everything that this Government is doing, whether that’s good or bad. So they are doing that without proposing one single solution—one single solution. No, they have one—one solution—and that’s cutting tax for wealthy New Zealanders who earn more than $180,000. People who don’t need this money, they are proposing to cut tax for them. On the other hand, minimum wage, no; free trade agreement, no; double sick leave for front-line workers, no. This speaks volumes about the Opposition.

The last two and a half weeks I’ve been on the road with my colleagues from the ethnic caucus, and we’ve been engaging with people. We’ve been talking to a lot of business owners, a lot of community leaders. We’ve been talking to a lot of people that were running NGOs as well. So they told us about how this Government is listening to them. They talked about hope. They talked about the light at the end of the tunnel, after two years of almost darkness, and they can now look forward. They can now look forward to reconnect with their families and to do business. One small-business owner told me about how he’s excited about the $100 million that Government put aside to support small businesses.

The moments that we’re living now—the optimism, the hope—are not a coincidence. It was carefully planned. It took brave and empathetic leadership. It took listening to experts. But that doesn’t mean that danger from COVID-19 is over. We will continue to support New Zealanders. We will continue to keep them safe. We will accelerate our economic recovery and rebuild from the impact of COVID-19, all this while we put in a strong foundation to address key issues such as climate change, housing affordability, and child poverty.

Visiting the Newtown Union Health Service, more than 20 percent of their patients are migrants and refugees. They told us how the numbers in patients have been increasing lately because of the half-price transport that the Government put in place. People are actually starting to turn up to their appointments. So what we’re hearing is that every decision that this Government is taking is making an impact in people’s lives, a direct impact, and the people are excited about that.

We’ve got an Opposition that’s opposing everything that we’re doing and, sadly, without proposing one single solution. That worries me—that worries me—because this Opposition, sooner or later, they’re going to be a Government. If they become a Government, then what’s going to happen to these working people? There is no plan. There is no hope. There is no aspiration to help working people. Nine years of a National Party Government, I was a cleaner, I was a hotel worker, and I was not supported. We cried for help. All we could get was 40c, 30c, 50c maximum from that Government. New Zealanders cannot afford that. On this side of the House, I am very proud of the actions that this Government is taking. We’re listening to Kiwis. We are supporting Kiwis. We’re very proud of that.

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I’d like to talk this afternoon directly to the professional firefighters and voluntary firefighters, who do a tremendous job on behalf of our communities across the country. This Government is completely letting you down. You have a senior team here down in Wellington—the Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) head office—that is a disgrace. And I am hearing every day from you how frustrated and angry you are that at your time of greatest need, this Government has let you down.

When FENZ was established five years ago, the plan was to get the best out of rural, the best out of volunteers, and the best out of the professionals by supporting them strongly with what they need. What has happened instead is an incredible inflation in the revenue of FENZ, all off the back of commercial property owners, of residential property owners, of vehicle insurance. Their revenue now is $661 million. No wonder the professional firefighters are so aggrieved that they cannot sit down with this Government and negotiate better terms—$661 million. That is $200 million more than what was assumed when the merger took place for this financial year—$200 million more, all off the back of insurance levy payers of this country. The Government puts in $10 million and a little bit of capital expenditure to refresh a few fire stations, the rest of it is paid by New Zealanders.

They have a complete disregard for the performance of this organisation. In 2015, the Fire Service of New Zealand spent $4.5 million on consultants and contractors. It is now $145 million over the last five years. That’s your Government, Labour Government. Five years, $145 million of contractors. Has that found its way to the professional firefighters or to the volunteer firefighters? No, it has not. And the culture of FENZ is a complete disgrace: vulnerable, predominantly women, but not exclusively, vulnerable, harassed. We have sexual harassment and bullying. It is so bad that a retired judge did a review in 2018 and had 33 specific recommendations. FENZ has been so incompetent in actually progressing those recommendations another Queen’s Service Order has been appointed in the last couple or three months to review the lack of performance of FENZ with respect to that outcome.

They have set up a behaviour and conduct office. That’s their big thing. So they’ve set the office up—240 complaints in the last two years. It is a complete disgrace. They have absolutely no ability to manage this organisation in a way that actually benefits the volunteers and the professional firefighters. The level of incompetence wherever you look is appalling. Last weekend, for the first time I think I can ever recall, fire stations had to close in Auckland because there simply wasn’t enough staff to crew the appropriate appliances and actually be there to keep the fire station open. The Professional Firefighters Union and the volunteers had been calling for this. They could see this was going to happen—a convergence of COVID, flu, and a complete lack of investing in this sector.

Hon Michael Wood: That’s right, comrade.

TODD MULLER: And they laugh and mock over there. They said, “Oh, ho, ho, good to hear you saying this, comrade.” Well, when are you going to actually stand beside the people you purport to represent? You’re full of hot air. You go up and you say all the right things at the right speeches, and you do it all nicely, but the people out there on the front line, the people that are actually driving these fire trucks today, you go and ask them what they think of this Government’s performance. They would rate you zero out of 10, because it’s just rhetoric. It’s just spin; it’s never delivery. And when they actually want someone to partner with, they want a National Government who actually can listen to them, who know how to take $661 million and get a result from it—not just spray it up against the wall, not just have process from A to Z and somehow think that’s progress. This Government is a disgrace, and the people you purport to represent know that. And they can’t wait till next November when finally they’ll get a Government that can actually get stuff done.

LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE (Labour): Mānawatia a Matariki. Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to rise, and I wish to add to and highlight in this kōrero the Labour Government’s significant investment in Budget announcements 2022. I do want to begin by thanking my colleagues, led by Minister Hipkins.

On reflection, reconnecting New Zealand to the world, there have been welcome announcements made recently of travellers no longer needing a COVID pre-departure test to enter Aotearoa New Zealand. That is so important to our New Zealand borders that are being reopened, and I really look forward to a number of family and friends who will be visiting Aotearoa later this year. The COVID restrictions have meant people needed to stay home overseas. Especially to our closest neighbours, whānau in Australia, that trans-Tasman comradery-ship is really important, and we really look forward to seeing them. It’s going to be a special time reconnecting with family, whānau, and aiga, and to have those special milestones.

I make comments to highlight that the Labour Government is working very hard, providing significant investment for Kiwis, and I want to hone in on Pasifika communities and focus my comments there: the creation of economic security for now and in the future. The unemployment rate is at a low 3.2 percent against the expectation when COVID hit that there would be a percentage of something like 10 percent. But that is not true: it is 3.2 percent.

As you know, I’ve only been here for a few months. I’ve had the privilege of travelling with a number of Government Ministers to see our communities—Minister Grant Robertson, Minister Aupito William Sio, Minister Poto Williams, and Minister Carmel Sepuloni—and to talk to our Pasifika communities and communities at large about the Budget announcements 2022.

The Wellbeing Budget 2022 Pasifika package is the largest—an investment of $196 million of funding for our Aotearoa Pacific communities. We had the pleasure of visiting the communities in Ōtaki with my colleagues Terisa Ngobi and Tangi Utikere. We visited the Horowhenua Learning Centre and we heard from the facilitator, a young Pasifika woman, Tessa. In her emotional tribute in a thankyou speech, she highlighted three of their young people living in this district. Those young people have benefited from the programme of the Government’s investment to lift their economic and health wellbeing, and that is part of the Government securing our recovery.

We also visited Porirua in a post-Budget breakfast. The Hon Aupito William Sio was able to launch the first Pacific employment plan, and that plan sets out a vision with better employment opportunities, including self-employment and training priorities for our communities. A key goal is that the Pacific communities will be able to progress the aspirations and prosperity of future generations.

Just lastly, I was able, on behalf of Minister Aupito, to attend and hand out and congratulate two young Pasifika recipients of the Tupu Aotearoa programme. Both had received a Master’s scholarship and a doctorate scholarship, and that will help both of those students—one young woman from Dunedin and a young Pacific man from Auckland—to benefit their Pacific research capability and capacity in recognising identity, language, and culture.

I am very proud that the Labour Government is committed to securing our recovery in these initiatives, and I am very proud of being a member of the Labour Government. Thank you.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): Mānawatia a Matariki, Mr Speaker, and it’s always a blessing to speak about the North Shore of Auckland in this wonderful House. Can I take a brief moment to acknowledge destination manager Kae Condon and the Birkenhead Town Centre Association for organising the very well-attended Birkenhead medieval fair last weekend. It’s not often that I’ll get to dress up in a tunic around in my community. The fair was supported by Minister Nash’s Reactivating Tāmaki Makaurau fund and achieved its aim of encouraging locals and visitors alike to confidently come out into our town centre, enjoy our wonderful hospitality, and visit our local retailers now that the COVID wave has peaked. It was an excellent local example of how this Government is securing our recovery from COVID-19, and today I want to speak about how some of the initiatives in Budget 2022 are giving my community better resilience to face our local challenges.

Last week, I brought together our community leaders in Beach Haven—school principals, Māori wardens, the North Shore community patrol, New Zealand Police, Kāinga Ora, church leaders, councillors, and our local board and our marae—to develop our own locally owned youth engagement strategy. People in my community want to give all our young people better options to stay connected to their learning and positive activities. It’s the opposite of what the Opposition are currently doing locally. We see them seeking to inflame community tensions about gang activity in the North Shore, opportunistically jumping on the recent gang incidents that we experienced but offering little on the ground.

Because of the investments made in Budget 2022, we know that Government agencies are able to partner with us as we develop local solutions for our local young people. For instance, I’m speaking of the increase in community policing on the North Shore. We’ve added 116 extra police on the beat in the Waitematā district since 2017, and just this month a new dedicated community policing team has been established in the area of the Kaipātiki, with extra community constables and a new sergeant position as well—services that were cut under the National Government in the Beach Haven area, closing our Beach Haven station. But Budget 2022 also invests $94 million in Police tackling gangs across our country and organised crime, and $114 million to respond to family and sexual violence. Again, these are the issues that our community on the North Shore wants to get on top of.

I’m also particularly pleased to see the focus on truancy and attendance management in the Budget. We all know that young people struggled with their learning during COVID lockdowns, especially so in Tāmaki-makau-rau Auckland at the end of last year. The Opposition decimated our truancy services on the North Shore, and I’m a big supporter of ensuring that truancy services are back in schools again, working with our whānau and building relationships across the community to get our young people engaged with learning again, attending school, and supporting community organisations to work in this space too.

The funding increase for He Poutama Rangatahi means that the Kaipātiki Community Facilities Trust will now deliver the programme on the North Shore. It targets 15- to 24-year-olds at risk of long-term unemployment, providing individualised support to connect to training and employment. Extra funding for trades training in the Budget will support more of our young people into apprenticeships, and local employers tell me how badly they need trained staff across all sectors. These initiatives, more community policing, properly tackling gangs, and focusing on young people reengaging in their learning, trades training—these were identified by our community leaders when we came together in Beach Haven.

We want local solutions that meet our local needs and secure our future. Budget 2022 delivers the resources we need to achieve this, and I look forward to seeing this impact on the North Shore of Auckland. Happy Matariki.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Mr Speaker. A pleasure to take this call in a general debate. I was interested to hear the Leader of the Opposition’s speech, and also interested to learn that he’s going to go overseas to “nick and steal” some policies, I think, was his quote. I’m not sure if he finished the sentence with “because I’ve got no ideas of my own and neither does my party”, but that’s pretty much the inference that we can take from there. I mean, what are the National Party’s ideas at the moment?

Shanan Halbert: What are they?

Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Well, good question. Tax cuts, or ban gang patches? I mean, I love that “ban gang patches”—as if by taking a label off someone, you’re going to change their behaviour. Of course, Michael Laws tried that in Whanganui. What happened there? Absolutely nothing. He was embarrassed when he got told it was unconstitutional to do so, and even Chester Borrows, that decent former National MP, said, “Well, that won’t have any effect”—negligible effect.

Now, we’ve got an entirely different approach, which is to look at the drivers of crime, not just the label on someone’s back—a much better idea. Look, it’ll be good for the Leader of the Opposition to go overseas and talk to his compatriots like Boris Johnson see if he’s got any ideas that he can steal from him, perhaps. But what he will find out is that New Zealand is seen as a leading light in terms of its economic response to COVID and that our Prime Minister is seen as a fantastic example of good, strong, compassionate leadership, and of course, pretty much at the same time, we will have the Prime Minister and the trade Minister overseas doing the real work, the real mahi, and negotiating free-trade agreements.

We’ve seen recently introduced the UK free-trade deal legislation, a great leap forward for us in these tough times of constrained supply lines and difficult international relationships but building a really strong relationship with our old partner, the UK, and, of course, the EU—a huge trading bloc that we’re looking to get across the line. An excellent free-trade agreement, and I’m very excited about the work that’s going to go on over there. That’s what we’re doing now: reopening New Zealand to trade. But also it’s not only our outgoing trade but we’re welcoming in people from around the world with the removal of pre-departure testing and everything else we’re doing.

We’re welcoming people to places like the North Shore—a great little town. It’s not quite the Christchurch and Canterbury that we should be welcoming people to, but isn’t it going to be fantastic that we’re going to get tourists here for the ski season? Canterbury has some great locations up on the slopes there. Get down to Tekapō, the dark skies area of Canterbury there, and the Mackenzie Country—see Matariki in all of its glory. That’s what we want to see, not the kind of idea that the National Party’s coming up with, which is, basically, to oppose the kind of steps that this Government’s doing to ease the cost of living issues.

What does the National Party say about the cost of living payment? “Don’t do it.” Here we are trying to help out the most struggling New Zealanders, helping them out whilst we know that there is a cost of living crisis, so what so they say? “Don’t do it.” And what do they say when we suggest raising the minimum wage for the people on the lowest wages?

Glen Bennett: “Don’t do it.”

Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Not only do they say, “Don’t do it”, Mr Bennett; they say, “No, give some tax cuts to those that need it least. Give some tax cuts to my mates. Let’s give $1.50 a week or $2.50 a week to those on the minimum wage, and let’s give thousands of dollars to those on the highest wages.” That’s the quality of the ideas that we’ve got from the National Party, and do you know what? They’re not new. They’re just the old National Party ideas. The old ideas, recycled again. They’re not even as good as Bill English’s ideas—no, not at all.

So they’ve got inconsistent positions. They don’t even agree amongst themselves. Nicola Willis, to her credit, said, “Oh, we don’t necessarily disagree with a raise in the minimum wage.”, whereas Simon Bridges said the opposite, and the leader is stuck betwixt and between.

Of course, what do they say about Matariki? Look, I’m so excited about the coming together of New Zealanders for this fantastic celebration: looking backwards, looking forwards, rebirth. Well, what do they say? “It’s another public holiday.”—the Grinch. “No, no, we don’t need one of those. We don’t need to recognise our nationhood.”

Well, I’m happy and proud to be part of a Government that’s recognising our nationhood and opening up New Zealand all over again. Fantastic!

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Standing Orders

Sessional

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Immigration) on behalf of the Leader of the House: I move, That Te Rā Aro ki a Matariki/Matariki Observance Day is not a working day for the purposes of the Standing Orders, and that the definition of working day in Standing Order 3(1) be read accordingly.

Motion agreed to.

Urgency

Urgency

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): I move, That urgency be accorded the passing through all stages of the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill.

The Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Act 2017 implemented several settlement agreements, including the settlement agreement for care and support workers signed on 2 May 2017 on behalf of the Crown, ACC, and the 20 district health boards and various union organisations representing support workers.

The amendment bill that is the subject of this urgency motion extends the benefits from the original settlement for support workers and ensures that new support workers are entitled to the same minimum wage rates and conditions as existing support workers. The operative provisions of the principal Act would be repealed on 1 July 2022 automatically. It is, therefore, essential that the bill before the House today is passed under urgency before that date so that this key group of workers can continue to benefit from the updated settlement agreements.

A party vote was called for on the question, That urgency be accorded.

Ayes 65

New Zealand Labour 65.

Noes 54

New Zealand National 32; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill

First Reading

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): I present a legislative statement on the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I move, That the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

This bill, as the motion for urgency indicates, does quite a simple thing, and that is it extends the life of the current legislation enacted in 2017—however, with the pay rates amended and in recognition of the fact that the part of the current legislation that prohibits pursuit of a pay equity claim is now ended and a pay equity claim can be advanced.

I should say that, in the lead up to this, there’s been a fair amount of exchange between the unions representing many of these workers, Government departments, and, indeed, myself to work out what is the best pathway through. We know that the one thing this group of workers has been campaigning for, and agitating for, for many, many years now—10 years at least—and indeed was behind the litigation that led to the 2017 legislation, is getting pay equity. In substitution for that, the previous Government enacted this legislation—admittedly with the agreement of the unions—that provided enhanced pay rates at the time but prohibited them from seeking a pay equity claim. The previous pay equity claim that they were advancing had been mounted under the Equal Pay Act, as it was at the time.

The current legislation expunges the claim that was lodged in that respect and all litigation, and so any pay equity claim for this group of workers has to start from scratch. But this group of workers did get the benefit of legislation in this Parliament that set rates of pay for a five-year period, and every worker that falls under the rubric of the legislation benefits from that.

We have amended the pay rates. Two things have happened in relation to this. First of all, this group of workers already benefited from a pay rise that took effect in November last year. It was a pay rise triggered by the labour cost index adjustment mechanism in the legislation. That adjustment was roughly 1.6 percent, and that was backdated to last July to the date of the most recent increase. In addition to that, this Government is funding a further 3 percent to take effect from 1 July this year, subject to the passage of this legislation, so that since the increase on 1 July last year, this group of workers will have benefited from a 4.6 percent pay increase. Added to that, they’ve had a small adjustment in their in-between travel allowance. It’s not quite at the IRD rate, but it is closer to it. An increase in that was funded on a temporary basis recently—as petrol prices went up—and Health NZ has agreed to continue funding that adjustment from 1 July.

So we’ve done everything we can to alleviate the current cost pressures on this group of workers. In my engagement with the unions and, indeed, with the providers, what they most want to do is get on with the pay equity claim for these workers, and the Government will provide resource support for both sides—for both the providers, that is to say the employers, and also the unions—so that each is supported by appropriate technical advice and expertise and can get on and deal with the pay equity claim for this group of workers. For this group of workers, the duties they do and the skill set that they have is reasonably well defined. So I’m not anticipating a huge difficulty in the parties finding appropriate comparators, going through the technical processes that they have to, and arriving at a suitable conclusion.

So we are supporting this group of workers to do the one thing that they and their predecessors have campaigned for for a long, long time—and that is that genuine pay equity that has been denied to them for a long time—and now they will get it. They’ll get a pay adjustment effective at 1 July this year to add to what they got in November last year. That’ll make a big difference. And on that basis, I commend this bill to the House.

Dr SHANE RETI (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak to this bill. I’ll start by making an observation that this is the second time in a week that we’re doing a health bill under urgency, with truncated processes. I’ll speak more to that.

I want to briefly talk to the history that brings us here today, re-examining the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill. In 2017, I think Jonathan Coleman was the Minister leading this, then under a National Government. We enabled the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Bill, also known as the TerraNova or Kristine Bartlett bill sometimes. A number of us sat on that select committee and grappled with complex issues such as cost pass-through and pay relativity. But we got to the end and enabled a bill. It was interesting, actually—during that process, the comparator for care and support workers was actually Corrections staff at that point in time. We go through, and the result was a scaled, tiered framework for an increase in wage rates that for the 65,000 caregivers was actually quite significant. Those 65,000 caregivers were mostly healthcare assistants and support workers across four funded sectors: the aged residential care sector, home and community, disability, and mental health and addiction.

Now, the bill had a sunset clause five years after commencement, 30 June 2022, in eight days’ time, which is what brings us here. What was required over these five years was a framework for wage bargaining to incorporate the pay equity principles so that ordinary, normal wage bargaining could occur when this bill disabled on 30 June, in eight days’ time. Clearly, that hasn’t happened, and that’s what brings us here today.

The background of what’s actually happened over those five years is substantively nothing. Nothing happened—five years to progress this. There was no epiphany that on 30 June, the pay equity bill was going to expire. What actually happened here was in August 2021, the New Zealand Aged Care Association (NZACA) reminded officials of the expiry date. It was raised through the regular ARC, or the Aged Residential Care steering group, which has district health boards and Ministry of Health officials on it. Nothing was done. So that was August last year—the first flag in the sand that I want to put.

On 21 December, a letter was sent to the interim chair of Health New Zealand, bringing again to his attention that this Act was going to expire on 30 June. Nothing was done. On 28 January, a letter was sent to the Minister, who did convene a meeting quite quickly, I understand. He brought in his officials. I understand he was unhappy with them as well and gave them the hurry-along, was how it was explained to me. In April, however, it appeared there was some suggestions from officials that maybe the best way to manage this was just to let the Act expire, and that would have been a disaster. To go back to the pre-2017 conditions—that was unacceptable to the unions.

E tū, PSA, and a number of other key stakeholders were present, and they expressed their vehement opposition to that plan. So in May, the ministry and the Government flip-flopped and said, “Look, what we’ll do is we’ll put $300 million over four years. That is $75 million per annum, is what the agreement will be.” There was no bargaining with this. It was a mandate, as has been the mandate for the rest of the sector—“This is what you will get.” Fundamentally, it relates to 70c per hour for those on the lowest wages, and about 3 percent per annum is what that $300 million over four years equates to. What then happened was that the unions and other stakeholders, other organisations, said “No, that’s not going to cut it.”, and they walked away from negotiations. That’s actually what’s happened; that’s what brings us here today. Amongst other things, it’s been pointed out to me that the lowest rate under this bill, at $22.49, is less than the living wage of $23.65.

Here are the consequences of this late and lazy bill that after five years is coming to us under urgency. Several things: first of all, 65,000 care and support workers will not have standard wage bargaining. Instead, they get told in primary legislation what their wages will be. This is a dangerous practice. Secondly, care and support workers are locked in for 18 months. This goes through to the end of next year. Thirdly, there is no opportunity for the voices of care and support workers to be heard through the standard legislative process—more particularly, through select committee—because today we’re going to pass all of this through urgency, and they wanted their voices to be heard.

We learnt an awful lot when we did the TerraNova bill. We learnt an awful lot from submitters, things we hadn’t thought about, and that’s the nature of the select committee process. None of us have got a franchise on all the good ideas in the world, and we learnt a lot from those submitters, and the bill was shaped appropriately—Jan Logie had a key role in that, as I recall. And yet we’re never going to get that opportunity, because today we’re going to do it all at once, and they are angry. E tū is angry. PSA is angry. NZACA is angry. They are all angry that their voices will not be heard.

Five years to get this ready, but no. All the attention has been on health reforms. All the money has been on health reforms. Five years—eight days out from when this bill expires, here we are doing this under urgency. Aged and residential care workers, HCAs, and support workers rightly feel that they’re being thrown under the bus, and there are many precedents here when the Government will legislate instead of incorporate fair bargaining practices. That’s a very worrying precedent.

So we want to send a signal here. Our position here will be: we will be supporting this bill, because we want to support and continue to send that signal that we understand and support the principles of pay equity in women-dominated careers. That’s how we came to be doing the pay equity legislation in 2017 in the first place. We need people to be paid, but we’re putting flags in the sand for the many issues we have got, not the least of which that under urgency, after five years—five years when this could have been done—we’re here today and we’re going to rush this through without the voices of those concerned being substantively taken into account.

So I’ve established our position, established the history, and established the three main concerns we’ve got. Again, I will conclude by saying we will be supporting this bill because we support the 65,000 care and support workers that it applies to. Like them, we are very unhappy with the process that forces us into this position. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Dr ANAE NERU LEAVASA (Labour—Takanini): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Mānawatia a Matariki. [We welcome and celebrate Matariki.] I rise as the MP for Takanini in support of the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill at its first reading.

It’s a great opportunity to take a brief call on this bill, and what does this bill intend to do? Well, it amends the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Act 2017 and also gives effect to an increase in the minimum wage rates from 1 July 2022 for support workers covered by the principal Act.

This is about delivering on an agreement back in 2017 on behalf of the Crown, ACC, 20 DHBs, and various union organisations. It is about showing the value of our support workers and the work they do. My experience with many of our community support workers back home is that they do tremendous work, and I honour and value their work with our whānau.

So just a brief call to say that I support this bill. I commend it. Thank you.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): If there is anything that I’ve seen that is emblematic of a “promise big, do nothing” Government, it’s this piece of legislation. Never, actually, have I been as disappointed as I am today at the fact that we were passing this legislation under urgency, completely unnecessarily, to protect what was significant gains for 55,000 care and support workers in 2017 that have been nearly entirely snuffed out for reasons that I will explain.

For all the crowing, actually, that Labour and the unions did in 2017 when the TerraNova settlement was finally reached, it was a National Government that got there. Indeed, the court case that precipitated this settlement—an eye-watering settlement at the time—the Government wasn’t even involved in. It was Kristine Bartlett and TerraNova—a private aged-care provider. The Government of the day could have sat on the sidelines with its popcorn out, watching with interest what was going to happen to what at the start of that process was a pretty novel claim under the Equal Pay Act 1972, but the Cabinet that I was in decided to act. It decided to do the right thing and it came up with a more than $2 billion settlement of a court case. Credit does have to be given to the unions and to Kristine Bartlett, but I was incredibly proud to be part of a Government—in fact, one of the Ministers—that was closely involved in the settlement. Obviously, as a health issue, it was led by the Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman, with a weather eye on it from the Minister of Finance at the time, the Hon Steven Joyce, but I was the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, and this had a significant effect on employment relations in this country and in employment law going forward.

So I was very, very keen to make sure that this was done in a manner that gave effect to the spirit of the pay equity settlement that we were looking for, and, indeed, shortly after that, I introduced the pay equity bill that for reasons that still elude me—although I have a suspicion that it simply was because it was a National Government that was doing it—Labour and the Greens went to war with that piece of legislation and threw it out in 2017.

Hon Andrew Little: It wasn’t pay equity.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well, the Minister can talk big, but we’re here, five years later, fixing up his mess. In fact, we’re not even fixing it up; we’re kicking the can down the road for another 18 months, because that settlement led to a 21 percent average increase in income for the 55,000-odd care and support workers that were eligible for it. A National Government did that.

The National Government did the in-between travel payment legislation that the Minister has referenced and thrown crumbs at, and it was designed to buy time for the normal bargaining processes between care and support workers, their unions, and their employers to be resumed. Five years was given; four years and eight months of that time under this Government. As Dr Reti has pointed out, and as this skinny departmental disclosure statement discloses, they didn’t get on to this until a couple of months ago. They were completely asleep at the wheel, and detailed discussions with the unions weren’t held until 3 May this year—between 3 May and 26 May. It, quite glibly, says, “The unions and employers do not agree with the quantum of the increase to the minimum wage rates to apply from 1 July 2022.” Well, no wonder—they had five minutes to consider it. They had nearly no time to consider it.

The Minister admits in his first reading speech that once we have done this, these workers are going to have to start again with a new pay equity claim because the benefits of the TerraNova settlement have completely unravelled.

Hon Andrew Little: The member is wrong—could not be more wrong. Totally wrong.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: And I’ll explain why. When “Angry Andrew” calms down a bit, I’ll let him know why I say that. The Prime Minister in question time today was crowing about the fact that this Government in five years has increased wage rates for health workers by 25 percent. What that means is, despite the 21 percent increase that care and support workers got in 2017, they’re, effectively, going backwards in real terms relative to other workers in the sector, and what does this give them? In an inflationary environment that is approaching and that will soon exceed 7 percent, these guys are being offered—not even offered; told they are going to get, effectively, an annualised increase of 3 percent. It’s 4.6 percent until the end of 2023—

Andrew Bayly: That’s half.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Less than half inflation, Mr Bayly—what a cracking good mathematician he is. So they’re going to go back even further, and it’s no wonder the Minister is saying, “Well, we’re going to have to start pay equity negotiations again because all of the benefits of that very large settlement have now unravelled.”

It’s even more insulting: I have been given information that went to aged-care providers as recently as 9 June that said that the offer made by Health New Zealand to the aged residential care sector for the annual price increase, obviously, that’s going to be not just staffing, was 1.2 percent—1.2 percent. So this Government crows about all the money they throw at the health sector this year, but the aged residential care sector is being offered 1.2 percent.

My colleagues Penny Simmonds, Joseph Mooney, and I had a Zoom call with aged-care providers in the southern region three or four weeks ago, and I must say—I mean, I’ve spent quite a bit of time in the health sector, and I’ve seen a lot of clinical staff get very emotional, under pressure, in tears. I have never seen managers and owners of facilities in that state, but they certainly were in that meeting. They don’t know how they’re going to survive. They are losing staff, they’re losing registered nurses—they can’t kidnap registered nurses right now. Healthcare assistants are holding the place together, and they’re being insulted with this offer and told that they can’t negotiate. Well, that is Muldoonism, that is socialism, that is “Shut up and be quiet.”, and that is not what good employment law and employment relations is about.

These so-called bastions of the working class are throwing crumbs at this vital workforce and telling them to be quiet for another 18 months. That is a disgrace, and it absolutely sticks in the craw for my party to support this bill, although we will, and we’ll do it despite that disappointment, anger, and frustration, and despite another terrible process.

Dr Reti was on the select committee that spent 10 days working through the issues that were raised in the Budget night legislation that had its first reading, and there were a number of things around the funding provisions, leave liability, a mediation mechanism, whether the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet was going to pass. There were some sensible changes to that legislation, and we got a meaningful settlement. We’re not getting a meaningful anything out of this. This is just a terrible—terrible—process. It’s a disgraceful process, and as Dr Reti said, it’s by no means the first time that we’ve had health bills rushed through—firstly introduced under urgency, and then by agreement with the Business Committee through remaining stages—and I absolutely am convinced that it won’t be the last.

In my second reading contribution, I’m going to go through why it’s so important to have that process and why I predict that we will be back here before too long, either fixing this because of an unforeseen consequence or having to do it again. But here’s my prediction: by then, we’ll have a National-led Government and a Government that actually cares for these workers and doesn’t just talk big and do nothing. We will deliver for these workers again.

RACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): What a rewrite of history about what actually happened with the Kristine Bartlett case and the National Party’s dismal attempt at putting in place a proper pay equity system. So I’m just going to start with that, because one of the critical parts of a pay equity system is having the ability to assess the correct comparators. One of the things that the National Party’s proposal did was it would have forced workers to compare with each other, not actually go through a robust comparator assessment to ensure that the correct male-dominated industries were being compared with. So that was a piece of law that we then changed when we became Government, and this Government has actually settled actual pay equity claims under the legislation that we have put in place.

Now, another thing was that the settlement—and I want to put on record my acknowledgment of the three unions, because he missed out one—the PSA, E tū, and the New Zealand Nurses Organisation—who fought for this legislation, those amazing hard workers who were forced to go all the way to the Supreme Court because the Government refused to engage with them. That was the point when they determined to do so—

Hon Michael Woodhouse: The Government wasn’t a party to it.

RACHEL BOYACK: Oh, Mr Woodhouse. I know the history around this. The important piece of this bill that is so critical is the piece that will allow these workers to finally take a pay equity claim. There was a small clause inside that settlement Act that said they cannot take a pay equity claim until the Act expires. Now, the bill we are introducing today does not amend that. So from that original expiry date, these critical workers, these workers who work so hard supporting our most vulnerable people, will be able to properly take a pay equity claim under our decent legislation so that they will actually have a proper robust ability—[Michael Woodhouse shakes his head] Yes, Mr Woodhouse, they will have a proper robust ability to get the pay equity that they deserve.

So we on this side of the House in the Labour Government are putting in place an ability for these workers to finally have the assessment that they need and I commend this bill to the House.

TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Mānawatia a Matariki to all the workers out there. You were essential workers before the pandemic, you were definitely essential workers during the pandemic, and, to the Greens, you will continue to be essential workers.

I want to start today by acknowledging Jan Logie, who could not be here today, because she’s unwell, but she has been at the picket lines with these workers. She has consistently stood by the side of care workers and support workers and nurses and teacher aides and every other underpaid sector pushing for better pay and conditions. Support and care workers deserve better. They work long hours, often without breaks. They do some of the hardest work there is, dealing with complex needs, complex behavioural issues, hazardous waste, always on their feet caring for some of our most vulnerable New Zealanders, and I want to acknowledge those workers. Kia kaha, kia toa, kia manawanui. We need to start valuing care work and the workers that prop up our whole healthcare system. It’s not OK to keep their wages low and keep our support workers from achieving fair pay because it’s work predominantly done by women.

Wāhine Māori and Pasifika women are far more likely to engage in undervalued care and support work, and therefore will be disproportionately impacted by continued low wages in the sector. For every dollar a Pākehā man makes—listen in, Pākehā men—wāhine Māori earn 81c and Pasifika women earn 73c. And here we are, at the eleventh hour, and the Government is offering with this amendment bill an extension of the settlement deal with a 3 percent pay rise, or an extra 70c per hour for support workers—70c. Times are tough, the cost of living is sky high, and they’re only getting 70c extra in an hour. That’s not even enough for an extra litre of petrol, not enough for a $1 bag of lollies at the dairy, or it’s one-twentieth of a block of cheese. At their protest, they were giving away Chupa Chups, which are about 70c, just to highlight the point. That is the reason why we will not be supporting this bill in the House today, and we will not be supporting urgency as well. We are practical, and we are generally supportive of things that take a step in the right direction, even if it’s a small step, but we cannot in good conscience vote for a pay increase of less than a dollar an hour and call it progress. We cannot in good conscience support this going through all stages under urgency when the Government had years—years—to sort this out properly and instead is rushing it through with an inadequate patch up.

I also wanted to recognise the history of the bill, and I know members on both sides of the House have done that. The Care and Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlement Act 2017 got to the Parliament because of the determination of one woman, Kristine Bartlett, and her supportive unions. She was a residential aged care worker. She lodged an application with the Employment Relations Authority, against the then National-led Government, that she was not receiving equal pay under the Equal Pay Act of 1972. She argued on behalf of care and support workers on poverty wages, between 2009 and 2012, saying that their work was undervalued because it was done by women. She won her case and, when it was appealed, she won again in the Court of Appeal. They found that support workers had been historically underpaid because they were women. Rather than have the courts dictate the wages of care and support workers, which they had done, had the Government not come to the table, the ex - finance Minister Bill English began negotiating support workers’ wages with Bartlett’s union, the Service and Food Workers Union, now part of E tū.

After two years of negotiations, punctuated with threats of protest by the unions to go back to court to have the matter adjudicated, a deal was struck with the National Government to pass the Care and Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlement Act of 2017 to give effect to the agreement. It delivered $2 billion in wage rises to care workers, brought in over five years. After that point, the pay equity deal and the legislation will be set to expire and self-repeal on 1 July 2022—just around the corner.

The Green Party has always been clear that the initial settlement was not a full equity settlement, and we do welcome the ability for the sector to begin negotiations to resolve their pay claims fairly through the process now being used by other sectors. I’d also like to acknowledge the work of the Hon Julie Anne Genter when she was Minister for Women, when she introduced and championed the Gender Pay Gap Action Plan, because one of the ways the Government is aiming to achieve this plan in 2021 and 2022 is through equal pay regardless of gender or ethnicity. This is not equal pay. It’s not fair. It’s not fair pay.

This Government must do better, because here we are, nine days out from 1 July 2022, when the 2017 settlement will expire, and despite the union’s efforts to initiate discussions with the Government last year over a replacement or an extension of the 2017 Act, nothing was achieved, either because the Government forgot or didn’t consider fair pay for support workers to be a priority. This offer is a 3 percent pay rise, or an extra 70c per hour for support workers. In these times, 70c is a slap in the face for someone who has been a support worker for 12 years. That’s a huge devaluation of the skill and expertise needed to do this work. That’s less than half the rate of inflation and nowhere near the union’s calculation for what is required to maintain the pay equity in the previous settlement. The starting rate the Government is offering for support wages is $22.49. That’s not even the living wage. In Australia, they’re offering their care workers an average of $35.86 in New Zealand dollars. That’s miles ahead of us.

The Government has known that this legislation would lapse and has failed to put in place a transitional process to protect the pay of these essential workers while negotiating their pay equity claims. It is beyond disappointing that a Labour Government with an outright majority isn’t willing to go further for support workers and for all underpaid sectors. The Green Party has always been clear that care work needs to be valued properly. It does. We have always been clear that the work done by women, particularly by Māori and Pasifika wāhine, in caring for our communities is the bedrock of our society. It is the bedrock of our community. We also acknowledge that there is a massive staffing crisis in care work because of the terrible pay and conditions. That could have been addressed if the Government had done their homework and got pay equity sorted in time.

So this is an issue for everyone with care needs and everybody with family with care needs, as well as the workers and their direct families. Every single Green Party MP understands that pay equity is more than just about money; it’s about the values that we have in society. It is about the values that we have as communities living here in Aotearoa, acknowledging care work for the essential work that it is and showing that we value the important things.

My message to the workers who are feeling betrayed by the Government because of this deal, the Government offering crumbs, is that we hear you loud and clear and we will continue to advocate for you. We’re not going to let Labour off the hook and say it’s better than nothing and good things take time. Kāo. Pay equity is long overdue—it is long overdue—and it’s simply not good enough to let past agreements erode it in real time while our essential workers face unprecedented increases in the cost of living. Nō reira e te Pīka, the Greens will not be supporting this bill.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in support of this Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill. The ACT Party is supporting this bill for a very simple reason: that some of the hardest working, most essential people in this country are the care and support workers who benefit from the pay rates set out in this legislation and the admittedly small but none the less pay increases that they will have delivered.

Now, we think that, you know, there’s a lot of underlying problems that I’m going to address, but at the same time, I think it would be wrong and churlish not to at least support that. There is a history to this legislation, which, unfortunately, I have to say, has been subjected to some historical amnesia by speakers so far on both sides of the House. Seeing as we’ve got a decent half hour of speaking time tonight—and that’s not counting committee stage—it’s worth just working through some of it. The Kristine Bartlett and Seafood Workers Union—

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Seafood?

DAVID SEYMOUR: —case—it’s not the right one; I know. The Service and Food Workers Union—it’s getting close to dinner time, but it was certainly the Service and Food Workers Union. It has led the court to make a rather novel finding, that the Pay Equity Act 1972—

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Equal Pay Act.

DAVID SEYMOUR: —was not about—the Equal Pay Act was not about—see, it is getting close to dinner. The Equal Pay Act was not simply about making sure that one job with a man and a woman working in it would not discriminate in terms of pay. They found that, actually, entire groups of workers could be discriminated against, and even men doing that type of work could be paid less, because the whole type of worker was discriminated against based on gender. This was quite a challenge to the Government at the time.

I said that there’s some historical amnesia. One of the National members said, “Well, the Government could have sat back with the popcorn and just watched.” Well, that’s not my recollection of being on the Cabinet Social Policy Committee at the time. There was enormous concern, because the precedent that had been set in the Bartlett case meant that there might be challenges in all sorts of areas of work, many of which would have fiscal implications, because in many cases the Government was, if not the direct employer of people who might take a case, at least the funder of those areas, such as care homes.

So the Government, fundamentally, had to make a choice. It had three basic options. One was to stay out of it, see what the courts found, and suffer the slings and arrows as case after case was taken and the courts found that groups of people were entitled to be paid more, much of which would have fiscal implications for the Crown.

The second option was to actually stick to the professed principles of at least some members of that Government, and certainly this one, and say, “Actually, you know what? We don’t want judges to set wages for entire sectors of the economy based on the assumption that there’s rampant sexism and people are being paid based on their gender rather than the actual work they are doing. We’re going to legislate over the top of this finding and say that the Equal Pay Act is for individuals. It doesn’t allow the kind of finding that the courts have just made.”, and move on in a market economy where wages are set between willing employers and willing employees.

That would have been the principled approach to take, but it’s not the approach that the Government at that time did take. What the Government did is as part of the 2017 Budget—and what we didn’t know at the time, but turned out to be its dying months—pass a piece of legislation which basically said there was no right to bring any more such cases for care and support workers, and, as a sweetener to that, care and support workers would be paid at a certain minimum rate set out in the schedules of the Act. In other words, instead of the judges setting pay rates for groups of people, Parliament decided to start setting pay rates for groups of people, which, if you believe in open markets and willing employers and willing employees, is anathema—but nevertheless, that’s what the then National-led Government did.

It also said that this will expire in exactly five years, which, as it turns out, that time is up on 30 June, which must be about next Saturday. Now, to give credit to that Government, they did do one thing right, which is that they referred the legislation to a 10-day select committee. At any other time, a 10-day select committee would be seen as rushed legislation, insincere, not giving people the time to properly prepare submissions. But the thing about a 10-day select committee is that it’s infinitely better than what’s being done tonight, having a zero-day select committee. That means that this legislation will be passed without any input whatsoever from interested members of the public, unless the Government has chosen to approach them.

There are two problems with that. One is lack of knowledge—there may be people with insights into this legislation who would have come forward but haven’t been asked. The second is with open Government and democracy. So there may be people who have a view who will not be able to express it, because the Government of the day didn’t ask them. That’s why we have a Parliament. That’s why we have select committees. That’s why we seek public submissions, because we’re actually an open society that allows all people to give a view.

So that is the history that got us here, and I don’t think the National Government of the time is quite as blameless, let alone heroic as it has been described. It was put in a difficult position by the courts and it basically reacted by kicking the can down the road five years.

But none of that is to excuse where we’ve got to over five years, which is that this Government has had five years to settle these pay equity claims and couldn’t do it. So now, with about eight days remaining, with no public consultation, under urgency, they’re going to rush through an 18-month extension to give themselves some extra time, hoping that they’ll kick a few goals then, and that is—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: They won’t do it.

DAVID SEYMOUR: Yeah, and Gerry Brownlee says, “They won’t do it.” One of the things I’ve learnt is that Gerry Brownlee has deep insights, and he’s probably right on this one.

The question is: what should have been done—or what should be done? Well, one of the things that needs to be done is we need to confront a reality that is underlying this whole problem, and it is the simple fact that New Zealand claims First World status, and yet we, increasingly, do not have it. In the time this Labour Government’s been in power, the gap between New Zealand’s median wage and Australia’s has grown $6,600 a year. Now, that’s not the gap is $6,600; the gap has got $6,600 greater, just in five years. We’re going to keep rubbing up against issues like this under urgency, trying to solve problems that no one’s really had the courage to solve, because we want to be First World. We want to have care and support workers. We want to feel that everyone that needs care and support is going to be looked after at the highest possible First World standard, but increasingly, we can’t afford it. The problem is that we haven’t even had the ability to negotiate, even with the Government we currently have.

Now, an interesting fact: I don’t put a lot of store in what people did before they were in Parliament—I’m interested in what they do when they’re here—but 30 percent of the current Labour caucus were union organisers. This is the most extraordinary thing. In the general New Zealand population, 0.026 percent of New Zealanders are union organisers. That means a Labour MP is 10,000 times more likely to be a union organiser than the average New Zealander. You might have thought—

Hon Willie Jackson: I was a union organiser.

DAVID SEYMOUR: —that such a group of people—and I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but Willie Jackson’s just said he was a union organiser.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: He also said he didn’t know what he was doing.

DAVID SEYMOUR: Well, he also said he didn’t know what he was doing. But you think about it: if there was ever a Government that you thought might have a chance of actually settling these pay equity agreements, you would hope that it might be one that was 30 percent union organisers, but as it turned out, they were not able to do that. That has got us into the current muddle. The previous Government didn’t have the courage of its convictions to put in place the proper policy. The current Government hasn’t had the alacrity or the urgency or the wealth or the wherewithal to actually settle the pay equity agreements, and, as a result, we are like a tinpot little country here, under urgency, passing laws because we’ve run out of options through the lack of alacrity shown through this Government. And yet, all the party is able to do is support it, because the alternative would be even worse. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Dr GAURAV SHARMA (Labour—Hamilton West): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Tēnā koe e te Whare. It’s a pleasure today to take a call on the first reading of the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill in the name of Minister the Hon Andrew Little. This bill amends the repeal date for various provisions of the 2017 Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Act, or the principal Act, and inserts new minimum wage rates for support workers from 1 July 2022.

The proposals in this paper deliver on the Government’s priority of accelerating progress in reducing pay gaps faced by women—and especially women who identify as Māori and Pasifika—through achievement of increasing pay rates. Recently, in Hamilton, I caught up with support workers in my electorate, along with E tū union representatives, and I heard from them the difference the principal Act has made in their lives in being able to afford their own flats and being able to afford fuel, food costs—all those important necessities of life.

I just want to acknowledge the work by Kristine Bartlett and the E tū union, as well as others, in this, as someone who actually used to work as a caregiver before I got into medicine. So thank you for all the work, and I recommend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I call Simon Watts—five minutes.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of National as the member of Parliament for North Shore on the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill at its first reading.

It’s been interesting to listen to some of the background history in terms of where we’ve come from to be where we are today. The reality is that circumstances are what they are, and at the time in which the decisions were made, these decisions were made. In 2017, National supported a pay equity arrangement and committed to that multibillion-dollar care package supporting some of our most vulnerable workers in terms of care and support workers across our sectors. That equity settlement came into play at that point.

We have traversed the conversations around where we are, but the reality, I think, is that we are here under urgency—or we’re about to be under urgency—in terms of putting through a bill which the Government has had five long years to avoid or mitigate, or prepare for where we are today. And with just on seven days between now and when this bill will come into effect, we are now out of options. We are out of potential mitigations in terms of what needs to be done, and we’re pushing through legislation to basically kick the ball a little bit further out for touch for 18 months. As a result of that, we are where we are.

National are supporting this bill and we’re supporting it for the fundamental reason that we believe that these workers within our system do a huge amount of value. They contribute a significant amount to a wide range of New Zealanders, particularly those, as I’ve noted, who are in vulnerable positions—many of our elderly and those within parts of our broader healthcare system. At a time when we’re dealing with a workforce crisis with regards to those sectors, the least we can do is ensure that those workers are supported in terms of the pay element they get.

I think we’ve heard previous speakers acknowledge the scale of that pay, and, you know, we are where we are and the concerns we’re raising today are in regard to the process which has not been undertaken and why we are here today. The element that is so important and an element that will not be available is the fact that there is going to be no select committee process or no formal process in order for people to be able to contribute or provide feedback, and that’s a real great shame. I think that, irrespective of where we stand, the ability for voices to be heard, the ability for Kiwis to be able to contribute in terms of our democracy, is critically important. But in this instance that option is not going to be available. That is a great shame, and it is something that could have been avoided had adequate planning been undertaken in advance—as I said: five years—so it’s not as if we’re under the pump in terms of pressure.

But someone—or elements—has dropped the ball on this and this has all of a sudden come up, and the Minister is hurrying to try and come up with a fix. And it’s a quick fix, and that is disappointment. But I think that is symptomatic of a broader way in which this Government is operating, particularly in reform within the broader health system, and I must say we’re seeing it in the local government sector as well. It’s the same old, same old. It’s a reactive response in terms of reform, it’s making it up on the fly, and it is just causing a huge barrage of collateral damage out the back, because of the simple fact that this isn’t planned, it isn’t structured, and it hasn’t been done in a proactive manner.

I think the other contributing factor, no doubt, is that those front-line teams have been distracted by the scale of the health restructuring that’s been put on their plate in the midst of a global pandemic. That element as well is something that those staff on the front lines are dealing with continuously, and I do want to acknowledge the efforts they are making day in, day out to keep our communities safe and well. We support this bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Sarah Pallett—five minutes.

SARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam): Thank you, Madam Speaker. As chair of the Labour Women Caucus, I welcome the introduction of this bill, which affects a predominantly female workforce. As we’ve heard, it acts to extend the repeal date for the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Act 2017 so that the benefits made in the original settlements can be preserved, as well as providing an increased minimum wage from 1 July 2022, simply so that unions and employees can work to progress an enduring solution. Because the fact that seems to be escaping the House this afternoon is that under the original Act, in section 8, they are prevented from bringing a genuine pay equity claim until this Act expires. So the talk of five years we’ve had to progress this pay equity claim is completely erroneous; it is prevented under the original Act. And that is why I commend this bill to the House.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Ngā mihi o te wā Matariki ki a koe me tātou Whare. [Greetings of the time of Matariki to you, and to our House.]

It’s a pleasure to rise and speak to this bill, which is a very straightforward one. It amends the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Act to extend the repeal date for the operative sections of the Act, that would otherwise be repealed on 1 July, and it increases the minimum wage rates that apply from 1 July.

So why is this very straightforward piece of legislation needed? It’s so that these women who work as support workers, predominantly Māori and Pacific women who are performing much-needed services in our communities, do not step backward while these pay negotiations are going on. That’s why this straightforward bill needs to be introduced to the House tonight, and I commend it.

PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise, unhappily, to speak on this Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill that amends the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Act 2017. I find it, as a new MP, absolutely astonishing to be in the House doing something like this—a piece of legislation that would be expiring in about a week’s time and here we are at the eleventh hour having to make amendments. And while I might normally agree with my colleague Dr Anae Neru Leavasa on acknowledging these support workers and these care workers, I don’t see how on earth this is acknowledging them. This is disrespecting them, that five years have gone past when nothing has been done and now they are being offered 4.6 percent increase over 18 months, which isn’t anywhere near the inflation rate. So I find it just not giving appropriate respect and acknowledgment to these workers.

So how can this possibly have happened? Five years ago, the National Government, at a cost of around $2 billion, gave wage rises to these care and support workers, and they are care and support workers who look after the most vulnerable in our community: the aged care, the disabled, those that are frail in their own homes through illness or disability. These are the workers that look after those people in our community who are the most vulnerable. So they were given these increases, which ranged from 15 to 50 percent over five years, and over five years you would expect that those agreements would then have been settled. But no, we are back here seven days before this Act expires, at which time there would be no mechanism to maintain the gains that were made in those wage rates back in 2017. And so this workforce would go back to prior to 2017 terms and conditions. To be doing this under urgency, taking away the voice of the care and support workers and their unions, and for this to be done by a Labour Government which is steeped—as we have heard—in union organisers, is just unbelievable.

So how could this possibly have been led to happen? Can you imagine if it was a National Government taking the voice away from these workers and these unions? Can you imagine the uproar from that side of the House if it had been a National Government doing that? So here we are, under urgency, being held to ransom, that of course we have to support this or all we do is punish those workers, the 65,000 care and support workers that it applies to. Society is judged on how a society looks after their most vulnerable. Well, I hope this Government is well and truly judged in about 14 months’ time on how they have treated these care and support workers.

So the aged-care sector, as my colleague the Hon Michael Woodhouse has said, is just on its knees at the moment. We have had managers in a state of absolute raw emotion telling us how bad the aged-care sector is. We know that across the country, 700 beds have been closed over the last few months; 180 in our own area, Otago-Southland alone, have been closed. So these workers in these aged-care facilities and supporting people in their homes—that probably should be in the aged-care facilities, but there aren’t beds for them—are absolutely critical. To have left them like this and offered them that 4.6 percent increase, well below what would be inflation—so that’s 4.6 percent over 18 months; only just over 3 percent over a year—is to have left our aged-care sector on its knees. They can’t get nurses, they rely on these care workers and they are left to this Government not getting the legislation sorted, not getting their wage agreements sorted—it’s just unbelievable.

I would have, on a weekly basis, people coming to my office with concerns about the care that they are getting in their homes from support workers and care workers. Not the workers’ fault in any way at all, but workers not turning up, not having enough time to meet their needs because there isn’t enough of them. So how do you think it helps them if they are disrespected in this way, how does it help to keep and recruit workers in the support and care areas?

Hon Andrew Little: The member’s party set the pay rates.

Hon Member: Five years ago.

PENNY SIMMONDS: The member’s party set the pay rates five years ago that ranged between 15 and 50 percent over five years, which is considerably more than 4.6 percent over two years. So we have left these vulnerable workers who look after our most vulnerable people in society. We have left them and we have hung them out to dry—or this Government has hung them out to dry. They have got no voice in this process at all. Their unions can’t represent them in a normal negotiation process. And goodness, as a chief executive, I can see how valuable that has been over the number of years. But this Labour Government, steeped in union organisers, has taken away the voice of the unions. It’s unbelievable. They’ve taken away the voice of the workers. No select committee process—we’re standing here doing it under urgency because there is no select committee process. And so there is no opportunity for them to say, “Oh, actually we don’t think full 4.6 percent over 18 months is good enough. It’s well below inflation.”

We’ve all heard the speakers from the other side saying how wonderfully important these workers are, how it’s mainly women, how it’s mainly Māori women, they are so incredibly important. Well, not very important, if they’re being offered 4.6 percent over 18 months, not very important at all. Not important enough to match the inflation rate for them. So hollow words from the other side. They have no opportunity, as they would have in a normal negotiation of a settlement, to say, “We’re worth more than this. We’re looking after these people that need to be looked after. We’re going to be going backwards because you’re offering us less than inflation.” No opportunity whatsoever for those workers that you purport to represent as a Labour Government. So they are sitting out there, waiting for legislation to give them a settlement that they just have to accept, that comes nowhere near what I’m sure they would be wanting to ask for.

Because this Government had five years when they should have addressed this and they did absolutely nothing. Well, no, that’s not true. They didn’t do nothing. They set aside half a billion dollars to pay consultants to rearrange a health sector, which I’m really keen to see how that’s going to go, having looked at how badly their rearrangement and centralisation of the polytech sector has gone. I’m very keen to be talking about that a bit more, given how badly that’s been exposed. Actually, that’s going to be another interesting one for us to talk about when redundancies get announced before consultation, and I would have thought unions would have seen things like that happening as a lack of good faith and predetermination. So clearly, perhaps, this Labour Government isn’t as joined to the hips with the union as they might have once been, because they seem to be running roughshod over all the normal union processes that you would expect to happen.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! I call on Jo Luxton.

JO LUXTON (Labour—Rangitata): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Mānawatia a Matariki. [We welcome and celebrate Matariki.] Can I just take a moment just to acknowledge our care and support workers across the country, who, as the previous speaker mentioned, do such an outstanding job for many of our most vulnerable in our communities.

What I find outrageous is the comments from opposite, whereby suggesting that this side of the House do not take into account the concerns and the voices of the care workers and support workers when the principal Act, section 8, that was put in place under that previous Government—existing claims were extinguished and potential claims were barred. Now, that completely takes away the voice of those particular workers. My colleagues on this side of the House have talked about many of the things that will be amended within this piece of legislation. I am very, very pleased to see that one thing that is not being amended is the fact that section 8 of the principal Act will be expiring on 30 June, and this side of the House is not changing that. Therefore, any claim or potential claim on behalf of support workers will be able to be raised going forward in the future. Now, if that is not listening to the voice of the sector, I don’t know what is. I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 109

New Zealand Labour 65; New Zealand National 32; ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Noes 10

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Second Reading

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): I move, That the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

I thank the members opposite and, indeed, the National Party for supporting the bill at its first reading. I’m impressed by the worker heroism that has emerged from the National Party! I’ve never known so many champions for the working class in the National Party. We’ve never had it before and that’s historic, but I think we should just look under the bonnet a little bit more closely and let’s just see what happened.

What happened was when this group of workers, through their unions, went to court to test the boundaries of the Equal Pay Act, the Government of the day sat aside and said, “Yep, you want it; you go for it.” And then, when they won there, the Government of the day said, “Whoa, this is not what we wanted.” and instructed their Government department to appeal. And so there was an appeal and then the unions won that one. Then the Government of the day said, “Whoa, we don’t want this. Appeal again.” And the workers, through their unions, appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, at which point the Government of the day thought, “Whoa, we’d better talk to the workers.” The one thing they were determined to do was not to let them have a pay equity claim. That’s what it was about. That’s what the heroes of the working class opposite actually did to this group of workers. They denied them their right under the Equal Pay Act 1972 to get a pay equity claim. Sure, they did a deal, but they were very clear that that deal had to include the removal, the expungement, the denial of pursuit of a pay equity claim for another five years. They set rates for five years. And when the member Penny Simmonds complains “No voice for workers.”; the National Party legislation denied these workers a voice for five years. There was no negotiation, not for five years. They denied it, denied them negotiation, denied them a pay equity claim, denied them their rights under the Equal Pay Act.

It gets worse, because then, when the union movement and the Opposition of the day, the Labour Party, said, “We need to improve the Equal Pay Act.”, what did the National Government do? They came out with a clause that would have denied pay equity. It said, “You’re not going to have women-dominated roles compared to equivalent male-dominated roles regardless; you compare women in the workplace with the men in the workplace.” It was no comparator at all. It was no real pay equity at all.

So having said to these workers, “We don’t want you to get pay equity,”—while legislating against it—“We’ll legislate your pay rates for five years, and also, we’re going to make sure that the pay equity machinery means that nobody ever gets pay equity again”. Well, we had to clean all that up. But here’s the real test. If this was an Opposition party, a National Party really concerned about the low-paid workers, why have they opposed every increase in the minimum pay that we put in place? Why, if you’re so pro-worker, would you oppose increases in the minimum wage? Every year we’ve put it up—well, they did. They did. They are not the heroes of the working class. They are not the heroes.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: None over there.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Sad to say, and I know Michael Woodhouse—I know the Hon Michael Woodhouse fancies himself, because he comes from Dunedin and there’s a good tradition down there, a good, strong tradition of unionism, maritime workers and others. But I’m sorry, the Hon Michael Woodhouse is not the hero of these workers. The one thing these workers wanted, the reason they went to court, went all the way to the Supreme Court, is because they want pay equity. That’s what they wanted.

The other thing, of course, that the National Party opposes is the one thing that these workers would benefit from, and that is a fair pay agreement. Now, we’ve been working very hard. The great Hon Michael Wood has been trying to get the fair pay agreement stuff through. We’ve got it in the House now; they oppose it. They don’t want workers to get fair pay rates. That’s the reality—that’s the reality. You’ve only got to have a look at the legislation that we’re amending to know that’s the case. But then you look at their conduct while they’ve been in Opposition and they’ve opposed every progressive measure possible.

This is about restoring the opportunity for these workers. We’ve made the commitment and we’re going to resource it and I’ve been engaging with them and they’re very positive about it. Both the workers and the providers are very positive about pursuing pay equity, because that’s actually what they want. And the employers know that that’s what we need to do, what they need to see, what the workers need if they want real recruitment and retention into those roles.

We are doing something that could have happened five years ago. We’re doing something that the previous National Government could have allowed to happen. But we’re doing it this way too because, remember, it’s not only that not all of the workers in this workforce are represented by unions but there’s a thousand employers and not all those employers are easy to reach and to sign up to. It is easier to legislate for, so we’re going to do that. We’re going to continue to provide the protection, we’re giving them a 4.6 percent pay increase, and we’re going to do what they most want, which is to get on with pay equity.

Then, in the meantime, parallel to that, the Hon Michael Wood is going to continue with his fair pay agreement legislation. This House will deal with that, and the “champions of the workers” across there have now obviously seen the light so we can guarantee on their votes for that. But right now we need to look after these workers, get them their pay increase, continue their protections, and get on with the pay equity deal. On that note, I commend the bill to the House.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, that’s the Andrew Little we’ve come to know and love in this House—just wind him up and let him go! Boy, did he go! I think Mr Little was born about the same year I was, about 1965, something like that—practically twins, as I’ve said in the House before—but he was born in the wrong generation. Couldn’t you see Mr Little on the waterfront in 1951 with his cloth cap and his bell and his whistle, leading the troops into the battle with New Zealand Police and the Defence Force. That’s back to the future, to me. I think we should find a DeLorean and send him back, because that’s what he’s suited to—not a modern workplace; not a modern economy; not a flexible, fair, and safe relationship; but a tub-thumping, union-focused, angry Minister.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: And why no action? Because he couldn’t find them.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: That’s quite right; he probably couldn’t.

He said an extraordinary thing right at the end of his intervention here. He said, “We’re doing something that the Government should have done five years ago.” Well, I say to the Minister, we did do it five years ago, and the clue is in the Act that the Government is amending; it’s called the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Act—pay equity settlements. He’s criticising the previous Government for somehow imposing this on the workers and the unions, at the same time as he passes, under urgency, an amendment to that Act, that imposes worse than that on those workers.

But I would also point out to him, because he clearly hasn’t read the Act that he’s amending, that the purpose of that Act in 2017 was to give effect to settlement agreements—settlement agreements with E tū, the New Zealand Public Service Association Inc., the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, and the NZNO—the New Zealand Nurses Organisation. They agreed to those terms, and they did so, and that window of no pay equity claims, because that eye-watering amount of money was designed to buy the time that was needed to normalise bargaining and reset and put pay equity behind them and get on with the normal negotiation process. And then the Labour Government went to sleep. And then they woke up.

There was a lot of yelling back and forth in the first reading, particularly when I was on my feet. But the one thing that they were quiet as a mouse about was the departmental disclosure statement description that said they had a two-week negotiation process with the unions and the employers, couldn’t agree, so they’re coming down to this House to impose a settlement, under urgency, by legislation.

I want to reflect a little bit on what Mr Seymour said. I accept the criticisms that there may be a revisionist approach to what I said when I said, “We got the popcorn out.” But then he went on to, effectively, agree with me by saying that the previous Government could have done nothing. That was the point I was trying to make. I accept the point that he said, that they probably should have done nothing, because the best place for the Government to be in an employment relationship is out of it, is to leave bargaining to the employers and the employees and their agents, and that it did, I’m sure, offend his principle, on that basis, when it was being discussed by the social policy Cabinet committee. But the previous Government did have a reputation for pragmatism, and it was a pragmatic response, and it was a response designed, as the label says, to achieve pay equity, and, at that time, it did.

The Minister can bang on all he likes about minimum wage increases. I was the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety that increased minimum wages at twice the rate of inflation—in fact, public sector wages and general Labour Cost Index under the previous National Government rose at twice the rate of inflation. He can crow all he likes about increases in the minimum wage; labour costs in this country are currently going up at half the rate of inflation. So they’re pouring money into, firstly, the public sector and then taking it out of the pockets of private business to put it into the hands of workers, and workers are worse off—and certainly these workers are worse off.

Now, I want to acknowledge the Green Party and Teanau Tuiono, who, I thought, gave a very good first reading speech. Now, I’ve been critical of the Green Party in past—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: What!

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: —pieces of legislation when they abstain—I know; it’s a character flaw of mine, Mr Brownlee—but when they sit on the fence and get splinters up their butt because they will not oppose things that they know they should. But today, they’ve made a line-ball call and they have said, “No; we can’t support this process and we can’t support this legislation.”, and I commend them for that, because it is a line-ball call. The National Party has considered whether or not it should oppose it and we’ve come down on the side of “OK; let’s hold our noses and support it.”, because the workers will be better off. I think what Mr Tuiono did was very clearly articulate that their opposition to this bill was not opposition to the workers getting more money. I commend the Green Party for their position on that basis.

But I think the most telling comment of the first reading was Penny Simmonds, because she asked a simple question, and that question was this: imagine what we would be debating if a National-led Government was doing this. These guys would be going to war with a centre-right Government that treated workers so disgracefully as they are treating workers today.

I don’t want to sound like I’m being critical of the unions or of Kristine Bartlett, because I think she does represent the face of a very, very important workforce who worked incredibly hard to get the settlement they got five years ago. But where are they in this discussion? Why aren’t they singing from the rafters against this Government? The simple reason is: they haven’t had a chance. They probably didn’t even know this bill was coming to the House, because we didn’t, until yesterday or this morning. So I’d like to hear from Kristine Bartlett. I’d like to hear from E tū. I’d like to hear from the NZNO, but we won’t—not today, at least, because they’ve been marginalised from the process.

In the committee of the whole House, there are a number of very important questions that we need to be asking on behalf of workers and also their employers, who, as Penny Simmonds and I have pointed out in the first reading speeches, are under crushing pressure. This Government thinks that because they’re not public sector organisations, and that some of them are allied to retirement villages that do pretty well out of property, that they don’t deserve the fairness of having their costs recovered. Most of them—many of them, at least—are not-for-profits; well, they’re not-for-loss either. Zero is a very small number, but they’ve fallen below that because of the neglect and the disgraceful treatment by this Government of those organisations. I think they deserve better.

So in the committee of the whole House, we really need to examine the funding elements of this. We have no idea how much this is costing, whether the employers have been engaged on the degree to which it was sufficient. Remember when we did this in 2017, there were about four or five issues that the committee had to deal with—and the Ministry of Health and the Government, to its credit, actually adjusted the funding formula to acknowledge equity sufficiency and the issue of relativity with supervisors. Why would one want to be a supervisor in an aged-care facility, of those care and support workers, if the benefit of that was only cents in an hour—and, in fact, that was a problem that needed to be addressed. The leave liability issues: remember there was a lot of built-up leave that the ministry hadn’t originally acknowledged and put into the funding envelope. And then general funding provisions, generally.

We need to reconcile the offer made by Health New Zealand to the Aged Care Association and members of 1.9 percent with this. Is that 1.9 percent over and above this offer? Is it meant to be paid out of that offer? There is a very murky kind of a world here and we don’t have the opportunity to examine that through the select committee.

So the Minister better lock himself in, because I think there are a variety of questions that we need to ask on behalf of both those workers and the aged-care sector, to make sure that that crushing pressure that they’re under doesn’t get worse and lead them to go to the wall because this Government was too lazy to negotiate sooner.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Dr ANAE NERU LEAVASA (Labour—Takanini): Fa‘afetai lava, Madam Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to rise again in support of the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill, second reading. What I’ve been hearing from the Opposition is some of the history lessons leading up to this bill, but I really enjoyed Minister Little’s contribution—very passionate contribution—the history lesson that he gave, in terms of what the Opposition did, in their time, for the support workers. It was really interesting because I didn’t get to know what they did when they were in term. So it’s really good to hear a bit of that.

I stand by my comments in the first reading about the value in honouring our support workers. My mother was a support worker for 20-plus years in South Auckland, worked for Spectrum Care. I was a young kid running around in the homes, raiding the fridge, but also helping out my mum, and saw the hard work that she did, and all the Spectrum Care colleagues that she worked with. I became a GP and also started looking after Spectrum Care clients, and that was all because of my mother and the work that she’s done. So, again, I support this bill to the House. Thank you.

PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, here we are again. It’s a bit of a quick turnaround, isn’t it? I neglected to welcome Dr Anae Leavasa back from his paternity time, and I hope he’s had an enjoyable time with the new baby.

The National Government, back in 2017, took a very pragmatic response, and we see the hand of the Rt Hon Bill English in this. He was a very pragmatic man, a good friend of mine, and he clearly knew that something had to be done and negotiations had to occur. So a very pragmatic approach was taken, which ended up in $2 billion being spent on seeking and getting equity—pay equity—for these workers. Now, I suspect his good wife, a GP, might well have been in his ear a bit over this, helping with his pragmatism on it. But it was good to see that approach being taken, and that was a huge amount of money that was put up for this pay equity legislation. But it was there for five years to give time for normalised bargaining to occur. And that is what is so astonishing, that those five years have been when there has been a Labour Government. Now, they could have blamed the first three years on a handbrake from New Zealand First, but they have nothing to blame for the last few years, when they are a Labour Government—so closely aligned to the unions—and here they did not normalise bargaining with these unions and these workers. Minister Little said that what they’ve done is given a 4.6 percent increase. Well, what they’ve actually done is imposed, not given. They’ve imposed a settlement—a 4.6 percent settlement. They might as well have given these women a wee pat on the head and said, “There you are, dear; you be grateful for that”.

Nicola Grigg: How patronising.

PENNY SIMMONDS: Terribly patronising, and, by golly, the Minister might have done some desk thumping and some yelling and some righteous indignation in his speech before, but I spent 23 years negotiating with the unions, and I bet there’s a back room where there’s a bit of table thumping and voices being raised and a Minister having his pedigree read to him by these unions on what hasn’t been done in the last five years. And those unions have got every right to be doing this—absolutely every right—because they are the unions that represent some of the lowest paid, some of the most vulnerable workers, looking after some of the most vulnerable people in our society. So I hope that that back room is getting a fair airing with the Minister, if not now, very shortly.

So let’s have a look at some examples of workplaces of these workers that are being given—being given. Isn’t that good of them? “Being given”. I’m reminded of one of the Government’s spokespersons the other day who said, “We’re here for the little people.” That’s what she said. “We’re here for the little people, and we give settlements.”—isn’t that lovely?

Hon Scott Simpson: Arrogant and condescending.

PENNY SIMMONDS: Arrogant and condescending—exactly—my colleagues are saying. So an example of an employer: the Presbyterian Support down in Otago and Southland are an employer of a number of aged-care facilities, and they provide a number of social services programmes. They are one of the aged-care facilities that has been to visit me on numerous occasions. They are absolutely screaming out for what’s happening to their sector at the moment. So they’ve been given—I think it is—a 1.2 percent increase in their funding for this year. And they are supposed to somehow be recruiting and maintaining their registered nurses to allow them to continue. They are relying on these workers, these care and support workers, that are being treated so badly by this Labour Government. As my colleague the Hon Michael Woodhouse has said, we’re going to need to tease out how this 4.6 percent increase to these workers is going to be funded. Because my fear is that this Government’s just saying, “Oh well, sort it out—you employers—even though we’ve only given you a 1.2 percent increase, nowhere near the inflation rate, the extra spending you’re having to do on the power and food and everything else associated with running an aged-care facility. Now you’ll look after this 4.6 percent increase with no additional funding.” Well, I can tell you that this extremely well-run Presbyterian Support, that has been operating for over 100 years, is going to run a million dollar deficit this year.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: How much?

PENNY SIMMONDS: A million dollar deficit this year. So when I asked them, “Well, what are you going to do? You can’t do this for ever.”, they’re going to do it for this year—to try and get the Government to see sense—because they have some reserves. But they can’t do it for ever. So what they have said is they’ll have to look at cuts to the areas that are most resource hungry. Now, where does this Government think the most resource-hungry areas might be in an aged-care facility? I’m sure my colleague Dr Anae knows. It’ll be the hospital care residents. It will be those with high-needs dementia care. They will be the highest-resourced areas. They will be the areas that will have to be looked at if an organisation such as Presbyterian Support continues to run a deficit of a million dollars a year.

I said it in my first speech: a society is judged by how well we look after the most vulnerable. And this Government will be judged. You will be judged in 14 months’ time. My apologies, Madam Speaker, I didn’t mean you would be judged; I meant this Government will be judged. In 14 months’ time, when the unions and the workers look back and think, “How well did this Labour Government look after us? How well did this Labour Government—that relies on us for so much support—look after us?”, they’ll be thinking, “Well, actually, not all that well. Not all that well at all”. And the employers will be thinking, “How well did this Government look after us?” And they won’t take quite as long to think about it; they’ll say straight away, “Not very well at all”.

So there’s going to be an awful lot of people assessing and reviewing the actions of this Government to the people that are most vulnerable in our society. I look—even as recently as during COVID—and it’s been well documented in the media how badly our disabled community were treated in COVID: how little money, how little time, and how little interest this Government showed in our disabled community during COVID. And now we’re getting to look at this amendment and we are saying, again, how little this Government has cared about the most vulnerable workers, how little this Government has cared about the most vulnerable people in our society. So I believe this Government will be judged very, very harshly in 14 months’ time. Madam Speaker, thank you.

SARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak again on this bill. And I’m a little bit baffled. I’m experiencing a sense of complete confusion about the revisionist version of history that we’ve been subjected to over the past wee while from the National Party. The National Party is not the party whose only policy is to give tax cuts to the very wealthiest but they are the heroes of the working people. But let me remind you that the National Party in Government prevented workers from bringing pay equity claims until 30 June 2022. Under the original Act in 2017, section 8—please refer to it—“Existing claims extinguished and potential claims barred” is its title, which is a bit of a clue. The National Party, when in Government, dragged Kristine Bartlett, supported by E tū who brought the claim to court, all the way to the Supreme Court. They are not the heroes of the working people; although, if they are going to revise history and become so, I really anticipate eagerly their support of our fair pay agreement and increasing the minimum wage. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green) (remote): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak on the second reading of the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill.

I want to begin by giving the absolute biggest shout-out to support workers around the country who have long fought for liveable wages and safe working conditions. You guys do essential work to support countless people in our communities and help them lead fulfilling and independent lives, and your pay needs to reflect this. You work long hours, often without breaks, and you do some of the hardest work there is dealing with complex needs, complex behavioural issues, hazardous waste, always on your feet, caring for some of our most vulnerable members of our communities.

As many speakers have noted, there is a history of this bill, and it’s a history that, I think, resembles a really long and hard-earned win by workers and, particularly, Kristine Bartlett, who secured a really important win via the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Act in 2017. She ended up lodging an application with the Employment Relations Authority against the National-led Government when she wasn’t receiving equal pay per the Equal Pay Act of 1972. And this was a long fight. Basically, after a lot of back and forth, and court action, and it did end up delivering $2 billion worth of wage rises. I think it’s been interesting watching and hearing the National Party members trash the Labour Party for not reflecting their working-class values. I want to just remind the National Party members that they themselves put up many hurdles at the time for the workers fighting for these livable wages.

I also want to remind the Labour members that via this bill they have missed an opportunity to ensure that the wage increases of support workers reflected the work that they do and the cost of living pressures that people are facing right now. The Government had the opportunity as the 2017 bill was coming to expire, to ensure that workers had their pay increases reflected properly. There were five years for the Labour Government to take action on this, and at the 11th hour, effectively, what we are seeing is a bill that will effectively be giving support workers a 70c an hour increase, which, as my previous Green Party speaker Teanau Tuiono noted, is effectively a Chupa Chup. I think when we know that so many support workers are getting burnt out, when people are leaving the profession shortly after entering it just because they cannot make ends meet and they’re so short staffed that the pressure is too high, I think we need to do far more.

I’ve also noted that today in the House, and actually over the past few weeks, Labour and National have had a bit of a back and forth about migrant workers and particularly about pathways to residence. I want to note that migrant workers make a pretty substantive proportion of support workers, particularly in the aged-care sector. And it was interesting that on the one hand, National was advocating for quicker pathways to residency for migrant workers and particularly nurses, and Labour was pushing back against it because they were arguing that if we gave them pathways to residency, they would leave the profession, and neither of those parties were acknowledging that the reason many workers, whether it’s nurses or in this case support workers, end up leaving the profession is the low pay and poor working conditions and the massive pressure they are facing. I think this bill is, again, not acknowledging that the reason why we continue having such a shortfall of support workers around the country is because of that poor pay and those poor working conditions. So if we’re going to be bringing migrant workers with the hope of staying in the profession—and in this case, not so much the hope but the fact that we’re putting them on employer-bound visas because they have no other option but to work for the employer that they came in with, effectively—I think we need to acknowledge that there’s a better solution, which is to give these workers liveable wages, and to actually then give them the freedom to move around. Because support workers who enter this profession, they do it out of the love and care they have for the communities that they serve. But when we put them into the impossible situation of not being able to make ends meet, we’re doing a disservice to the many people that we’ve talked about being essential during the pandemic.

I want to just briefly mention that this is why for us, we can’t support the bill in its current state. This is also why we’ve put an amendment, which we’re looking forward to discussing in the committee of the whole House, to, basically, lift the wages of these workers to much more substantive levels and to also reflect, for example, some of the pay levels that support workers see in Australia where they have far higher wages. Compared to New Zealand, they just start at a rate that would be the equivalent of the New Zealand living wage. I think it’s a disservice that we can’t even guarantee these workers a starting living wage, which should be the barest, absolute minimum.

It’s about time that we start valuing care work and workers that prop up our whole healthcare system. And it’s absolutely not OK to keep their wages low and keep our support workers from achieving fair pay because it’s predominantly work that is done by women; and not just women, but migrant, Māori, and Pasifika women. Many of the groups we now have are completely overrepresented in wage gaps across the country. So if we’re, again, serious about addressing these inequities, this bill would be amended, the Government would have committed to engaging with unions at a much earlier stage so that we’re not discussing this bill in urgency at the last moment. And we look forward to continue advocating at all stages of this bill tonight for the Government to increase the pay of support workers and to actually reflect the working-class values the Labour Party, particularly, talks about. So I’ll continue campaigning on this issue and ask for my colleagues to get Labour to support this amendment across the line. Kia ora.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): On behalf of ACT I’d like to support the second reading of this bill. It’s a very interesting debate. I think the facts remain that we’re here because of a novel finding in a court case that the Government of the day had a choice about. They could either legislate over the top of it and say, “Actually, that’s not what Parliament intended.”, or they could kick for touch—and they kicked for touch. They said, “You’ve got five years to figure it out. Make your settlements and then after that who knows?” Well, we’ve got to the “who knows?” One side kicked for touch and now the other side is having to kick it even further into touch and buy more time, because there’s no enduring solution. The fact is that the TerraNova case, or at least the findings in it, were unsustainable. They allowed judges to effectively set wages, and when this legislation expires—and the part of it that extinguished that right will expire despite the pay rates being extended for another year and a half—we’re going to be back to people taking cases where actually the judge can decide whether a whole group of people should be paid differently based on the judge’s view of their identity and the work they do. That’s not a good place to be. It doesn’t work. It’s interesting at the Auckland University of Technology, specifically one of the researchers there, Katherine Ravenswood, has done a lot of work on what the outcome of the pay equity legislation has been for the people who are actually affected by it.

Now, remember, fundamentally the Government decided to legislate minimum pay rates in exchange for extinguishing the right to go to court because they didn’t like the findings of the court. What occurred, according to surveys of people actually affected was that about half of them said that their job had stayed the same, half of them said they had extra responsibilities added to their job, and a quarter said that they had their workload increased. Others, meanwhile, said that they had had their hours reduced against their will. Actually, it’s all pretty understandable. Parliament stepped in and legislated what the wages should be and legislated them up, and, as a result, what happened is that they found that the managers, not having enough money to match it, found people they didn’t think were very useful and forcibly reduced their hours, and the people they did think were doing a good job were given more to do and added responsibilities to them.

You see, one of the things that happened is that Parliament may have legislated the pay rates, but that doesn’t mean that it necessarily funded those pay rates in the Budget. So the managers who were surveyed by Katherine Ravenswood were forced to make economies, like people are in every business up and down New Zealand. What they did is they said, “OK, we can’t change the pay rates—that’s been legislated by Parliament. We don’t have enough money. We still need to get the work done, so we’ll cut down people’s hours if we don’t think they’re very productive and we’ll give more work to people we think are productive.” Pretty simple and pretty predictable stuff, and it’s what happens when Parliament tries to interfere in wage setting across the rest of the economy.

Governments and Parliament cannot solve problems. They cannot avoid costs, but they can certainly shift problems and they can shift costs. That is fundamentally what’s happened. And that’s why the Government of the day should have responded not by kicking the can down the road but by actually saying, “Yes, OK. Parliament made the Equal Pay Act in 1972. Parliament, the majority at that time, no longer agrees with the way that the courts are interpreting it, and constitutionally the elected Parliament has the right to legislate again and change what the rules are.” Parliament didn’t intend in 1972 that judges would decide that whole areas of the economy were overpaid or underpaid based on their gender. It was supposed to create equality between a man and a woman doing the same job. Parliament had every right to push back at the courts, but instead it kicked for touch and said, “Well, you can’t do any appeals for five years, you can’t bring any new cases for five years, you can’t settle any that have been brought so far unless they’ve already been settled, and in five years’ time who knows what will happen.”

Well, of course, what happened is that the Government changed. The new one came in, filled with unionists, and didn’t we see a great performance from the cloth-capped leader of them, Andrew Little, just earlier—it was the Andrew that I miss as Leader of the Opposition—and what we found was that they actually weren’t able to solve the problem. And they weren’t able to solve the problem for the very simple reason that they didn’t have enough money. This is the real issue that we’re uncovering tonight. Productivity growth in New Zealand—and we hear this from the Green Party members; that we should have higher wages. Well, that’s great, if only we could judge all policies by intentions. But the question is: what has the Green Party ever been prepared to do to try and focus on raising productivity in New Zealand? That’s the debate that New Zealand really needs to have, because if we’re going to have a given number of people and they’re going to be retiring and they’re going to need extra care and support for a whole variety of reasons, then we better have the productivity in the rest of our economy so we can put aside money to pay people to do that care and support work. It’s pretty simple.

The Green member says that in Australia the starting rates for people in the care and support sector are like a living wage in New Zealand. Well, that sounds fantastic, but you need to ask the question: why is that? Most of the things the Australian economy is based upon are things the Green Party completely opposes. Most of the things that would make New Zealand more productive, making it easier to get foreign direct investment, making it easier to develop natural resources, making it easier to develop infrastructure, such as expanding ports in the middle of a supply chain crisis—all of those resource management reforms, foreign investment and trade reforms, the things that actually bring in capital and ideas and make infrastructure more productive, and actually raise productivity so we don’t have to be in this situation, are things the Green Party opposes.

My great hope is that some of those Labour members—and I see them listening when I speak like this—are thinking, “Actually, this guy’s got a point. I wish I could speak for more than one minute at a time.”, because, unfortunately—and it’s a shame—there’s some talented members on the Labour backbench and I hope some of them get another term, but I fear some of them may not. The problem is they’ve got a lot to say, but on team orders they’re only allowed to talk for a minute, and that means, for some of them, that the best thing about their speeches is the length. I think it’s a shame. I think they should be allowed to talk longer and say what they really feel. I think you might get some activism on the backbench of the Labour Party and they might say, “Actually, we do need to ask ourselves how we are going to grow New Zealand’s productivity so that in a global labour market, where we need people such as care and support workers and nurses and doctors, just to name people in the healthcare sector who are pretty globally mobile and who can take their 350 bucks from the Labour Party”—and, boy oh boy, there’s a good story in the New Zealand Herald about that tomorrow—“and go straight to Australia.” They are part of that global mobilised workforce.

We should be asking ourselves at the end of this whole debate, “Why do we have to be here under urgency, rushing this legislation through, while, fundamentally, the Labour Party, despite its deep union roots, has not been able to settle agreements in time and they had to use the big sledgehammer and said to the unions, ‘If you guys don’t agree, then we’ll just legislate it and your pay rates will be set in statute, mate.’ ” That must be a terribly difficult conversation for them, but nevertheless that’s the conversation they’ve had to have and that’s what’s brought us here.

But in some ways I don’t blame the Labour Party for it, because the real problem that we face as a country comes back to the fact that there just ain’t enough money to meet the First World aspirations that we have, which can be as simple as that when I retire there’s actually going to be someone there to care for me, and when my parents retire, they’ll be somebody to look after them at First World standards. That’s the real problem that we’re facing tonight, and I think it’s worth taking the time to spell it out, because if our country doesn’t start to think hard about the factors of productivity and why our productivity growth is low, then we’re going to be having more dismal debates late at night like this for a very long time to come, whichever of Labour and National say they’re leading the Government.

Dr GAURAV SHARMA (Labour—Hamilton West): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. A lot of fear mongering from the other side, as the leader of the ACT Party talked about doctors taking $350 and running away to Australia. Well, I’ve never known a doctor who earns less than $70,000 and runs away to Australia with that. Maybe you’re talking about the other party which has been giving or promising to give tax cuts to people who are earning six-figure salaries. So you definitely don’t have that right and there’s a lot of fear mongering going on, just as is there is with this bill.

But it’s a pleasure again to rise in the House to take a call on this bill for the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill for the second time. The sections of the principal Act will be repealed on 1 July 2022, and these sections include the minimum hourly wage provisions, training support provision, and the link between qualifications and increased minimum wage rates. It is surprising that even on the Green’s side, that they will not support this bill which will make sure that the new support workers get paid the same rates as the existing support workers—which is really, really surprising. But as I said the first time, I support this bill to the House. Thank you.

NICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m about to say something I never ever thought would come out of my mouth, and I don’t want it to be taken literally. Oh, I would love to be in the Labour caucus right now so I could listen to the conversations that are occurring within that room! I can just imagine the splits and the divisions in a caucus that’s so full of union members and union organisers and union delegates. Can you just imagine the conversations that have been occurring because of where we have got to with this bill in this House this evening?

Hon Scott Simpson: And frustrated ambition.

NICOLA GRIGG: It would be—“frustrated ambition”, says Scott Simpson. I could not agree more.

We have got to a situation where “the party of the worker”, “the party of the union”, is disallowing the voice of its members. This truncated process is disallowing their very people to come to the table and have a discussion, because that Labour Government did not like what it heard and it said, “See you later, guys. We’re taking this thing through urgency. We’re going to rush it through on a Wednesday evening and be done with it.”

Ordinarily in a second reading—as you know—we’d be discussing, generally, the submissions that we’d heard during a select committee process and we’d be speaking around those—the fors and against, and the pros and the cons. But we don’t have that opportunity.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Why is that?

NICOLA GRIGG: Indeed, Michael Woodhouse, why is that? That is because those very people that that Government purports to serve have been shut out of the conversation.

This bill that we are here rushing through under urgency seeks to increase the minimum wage rates that apply to support workers covered in the principal Act that we, the National Party, brought in in Government in 2017. Here this afternoon, under Andrew Little’s guidance, it’s looking to extend the key provisions of that Act past 1 July 2022. When’s 1 July? It’s in eight days’ time. Wow! That goes back to my original point. I would love to be a fly on the wall in that caucus room in an absolute shambles of a discussion that would have been going—

Hon Scott Simpson: You’re assuming they’re allowed to talk.

NICOLA GRIGG: I am assuming they’re allowed to talk, Scott Simpson! [Interruption] Anyway, back to the bill at hand, gentlemen. I shan’t be distracted from the comments that I’d like to make to this House this afternoon.

The pay increases that the National Party legislated for ranged between 15 and 50 percent over five years—five years, at which point brings us up to July just next week, at which the point of the legislation containing that very settlement would expire. I cannot imagine how we have got to this point. What sort of Mickey Mouse outfit is running this country? This piece of legislation has been in place for five years, and how often, everyone—how often—do we hear Andrew Little reminding us of what he’s achieved in those five years and the nine years of neglect under the National Government? Well, here we go. This is five years of neglect from this Labour Government. They have had five years, and they would have known about it for every single one of those five years. But here we are today, in a panic, in a flap, rushing through an amendment so that all those thousands—65,000—of affected workers won’t fall through the cracks after 1 July, in just a week’s time.

I am trying to stick to the bill at hand. The original agreement specifies minimum hourly wage rates payable by employers to support workers for work performed during that period of 1 July 2017 through to 30 June 2022. But for this reason, some sections of this principal Act will be repealed in just eight days, leaving no mechanism to maintain the gains made in wage rates. I ask that side of the House: did this not ring any alarm bells? Did nobody set a calendar reminder for 1 July 2022? Guys, 30 June was a hard deadline. It was included in the original Act. The Government has been so slow to get to this. If it weren’t so serious, it would be laughable. Cabinet only agreed in April—just a couple of months ago—that it would provide any additional funding whatsoever to enable the minimum wage adjustment.

Kristine Bartlett—2018’s New Zealander of the Year—has said how very, very disappointed she is with this Government. Grey Power, equally, has said it is sad and it is angry, and that is just the start of it. That is before we start to talk to those members affected and the very patients affected.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! This debate is interrupted. I will resume the Chair after dinner at 7 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 5.57 p.m. to 7 p.m.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Members, when we broke for the dinner break, we were on the second reading of the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill, and I will call the next speaker. Dr Duncan Webb. It was a long dinner break!

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Yeah, well, never long enough, Mr Speaker. Look, it’s just a real pleasure to stand up and speak to this bill that’s really just putting in, or extending, an appropriate settlement. The National Party is now the party of the working class, I heard earlier on, and it’s fantastic to hear that. But really this is just making sure that these people who are on the lowest wages are looked after, that their wages do keep up with rises, and it’s a great piece of legislation. I commend it to the House.

MARJA LUBECK (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. A pleasure to take a short call on this bill. As my colleague previously mentioned, it was quite surprising to hear the National Party talk about being the great defenders of the vulnerable and lower paid, the advocates for our working people. Must be why they continuously vote against minimum wage, and why they vote against doubling sick leave, and why they vote against fair pay for our workers, who have seen their pay and conditions being driven down in that race to the bottom.

But back to the bill, we are talking about a condition that was inserted by the National Party by the 2017 pay equity settlement, which prevented workers from, at the time, taking a pay equity claim until this actual Act would expire. So it’s really a very simple bill. It is making sure that our home-care and support workers have the right to take a pay equity claim, and at the same time we protect, with this bill, their current working conditions, and also delivering a pay increase.

I did want to mention that during the debate the word “patronising” was used. I think that was quite—yeah, I don’t really have a word for that. I think what is patronising is how the National MPs have, all through this debate, tried to rewrite history on the 2017 pay equity settlement, which was, of course, a settlement that the National Party, at the time, had to be dragged kicking and screaming to make when, after taking Kristine Bartlett and her unions all the way through to the Supreme Court because the National Government, at the time, just didn’t want to give those vulnerable workers what they well deserved. And so that is why we are here today. We are introducing a bill that will preserve existing terms and conditions, providing an interim pay increase, and ending that discriminatory situation that the National Party put them in. And now these workers will be able to take their pay equity claim. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Well, thank you very much, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill on its second reading. National will be supporting this bill. I must say, having listened to the many contributions on this bill—some longer than others, I must say; some have been reasonably brief, I would say—

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Very unreasonably brief.

SIMON WATTS: Very unreasonably brief, says the Hon Michael Woodhouse, and so true he is. This is an important issue. I was reflecting on it over the break, just before returning back to the House, in terms of a lot of to and fro. And just listening to the last speaker, Marja Lubeck, in terms of throwing a little bit of mud across to the previous National Government, who, I think—in listening to other contributions—made, under the circumstances, a very pragmatic decision. A pragmatic decision in order to deal with a situation that was in front of them, and a situation that was backed up with a bill that, in effect, gave five years in pay increases, in the range of 15 to 50 percent over that period, for a critical element of the workforce, and enough runway, I guess you could say, in order for the solution to be found. I think that seems reasonable. It seems pretty pragmatic. These are complex issues, and having spent my prior life sitting around the table in union-based negotiations within the healthcare sector, I understand this. I understand the challenges. But at the end of the day, no matter what side of the table you’re sitting on, you’re working for the best interests particularly of your people. And you know, that’s it.

But in this case, I guess my reflection is that we are where we are, firstly, and I think that’s important to recognise. But the challenge in what this reinforces is a Government that has squandered their opportunity and squandered five long years of Government—and I say that with an added emphasis and pausing, because it does feel like five long years. And I haven’t been in this House as long as many others, but you know, even in my short amount of time—

Melissa Lee: You haven’t missed very much.

SIMON WATTS: —it’s been a long period. Melissa Lee from behind me is saying I haven’t missed much, and I wish that wasn’t true, Melissa Lee. But she is so true. And that is a great shame, because the reality is that these important care and support workers that support our most vulnerable—and I think Penny Simmonds, close friend and colleague and classmate of 2020, so eloquently put in her prior speech on this that these staff and these people work in support of some of our absolutely most vulnerable. What the National Government did back when this bill was put into play was to acknowledge that that workforce did need the support and compensation in regards to that. Yeah, we can argue whether it was a right or wrong thing to do at the time, but we are where we are today, and the challenge is and remains that the time has not been used wisely in order to put a sustainable solution in place for this so important workforce.

That’s the reality, and people get measured by what they do, not what they say. And I think that is going to be the reality and should be the reality, because this Government should be held accountable in terms of what they’ve said and what they’ve done—and what they do do between now and when that option comes up for the people of New Zealand. And I’m sure, you know, we’ll go through that at that point in time.

Let’s get back, though, in this second reading, to acknowledge the fact that we are pushing this through under urgency. We are using the House’s time in regards to that process, and we’re not affording the time—which I don’t think is unreasonable, but had we started this a week ago, we could have done a week of consultation with key stakeholders. If we started maybe two weeks ago, Minister Little, we could have—maybe three? I don’t want to push the boat out too far, but, you know, we could have started—couldn’t we have started this last month? I hate to say it, but, I mean, surely, surely—and I don’t think there’s any other examples of any other reform policies where they’ve just decided to make it up on the hoof. I’m looking at my colleagues for any examples. But that is the reality, every time—

Simon Court: Banning oil and gas was on the hoof. How about announcing a discount on fuel excise duty? That was on the hoof.

SIMON WATTS: Yeah, well, I can hear Simon Court from ACT reeling off a long, long list of examples. And one only has to open up the New Zealand Herald app every hour, actually, at the moment, and read another example of that long, long, long list of aspects in terms of things being made up on the hoof.

But this bill absolutely personifies, I think, that lack of planning in regards to where this is. And let’s be fair, the Government’s had a lot on its plate, you know: COVID and dealing with all that, and I think the war in Ukraine. And what other excuses have we had that slowed them down? You know, inflation and cost of living and all those things. It seems to have, you know, blown this Government off course. But how could you miss something like this?

Nicola Grigg: They didn’t set a calendar reminder.

SIMON WATTS: My colleague Nicola Grigg—I don’t think she was being flippant when she said, “Surely, wouldn’t you have had a calendar reminder in your inbox?”

Hon Michael Woodhouse: 1,900 staff, somebody could have set the calendar.

SIMON WATTS: Nineteen hundred staff, the Hon Michael Woodhouse is reminding me about. [Interruption] Maybe the unions, because we heard a great example from David Seymour before, where he said, actually, one-third of the Government members actually have a background in terms of being union organisers, so that amount of anyone probably would have had the hotline with their prior colleagues and prior lives to say, “Hey, team, I’m sure you haven’t forgotten about it, but just in case, we’ve got this pretty reasonable piece of legislation. It’s about to be repealed, and maybe, surely, you haven’t forgotten about it?” I know they haven’t, even though we’ve got eight days before this is repealed, and here we are in urgency going through and pushing the deadline out on this by another 18 months.

I think the picture that I’m painting, and it’s not that difficult to paint, is that, you know—where was the thought and planning and consideration around such an important element for such an important group of workforce and people within our community, at a time at which that workforce is absolutely under—“crisis” sort of seems like it’s understated, at the point at which we are now. But I recall questioning and having questions of the Minister on exactly this topic, in May and June and July of last year, around the healthcare workforce crisis. We had conversations in committee, we had conversations because COVID was on our doorstep, and the questions that we discussed across the table were: have we got enough people? What are we doing about being prepared? Have we got all that? Is someone thinking about it?

The reality now is the rooster is coming home to roost on this type of legislation. The simple reality, and the sad reality, is that that was not and continues to not occur. Where’s the accountability, in terms of actually doing what is required in order to support people within this country that do so much for this country? This personifies, as I said, the reality of a Government that have basically, you know, just forgotten or left this element to the last minute, and now we’re in a process under urgency in terms of trying to tidy this up.

National are supporting this legislation for the simple fact that we believe it’s fair and reasonable to be ensuring that this workforce receives the compensation that they require. We acknowledge, and the speakers previously have noted, around the quantum, whether that’s appropriate or not. But we shouldn’t be in this position. We should have, surely, with the capability on the other side, with their relationships with the unions, been able to have negotiated and worked through this well in advance and push this through in an orderly manner. But we’re not, and that is a great shame. And, most importantly, it’s a great shame for those hard-working Kiwis that are doing these difficult roles under difficult circumstances. I support this bill.

IBRAHIM OMER (Labour): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise to take a short call, and the last, on the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill, second reading. Kristine Bartlett’s case was based on the argument that low rates of pay in the care and support sector were the direct result of systematic gender-based pay discrimination. I also want to add my voice to the Minister’s voice and thank the Opposition for supporting this bill tonight. The bill amends the repeal date of the various provisions of the support workers, and inserts new minimum wage rates for support workers from 1 July 2022.

The confusing part, however, tonight is listening to the speeches from the Opposition speaking in support of caregivers—or pretending to, at least. Kristine often spoke to me and many others of how hard it was for her to be dragged through all the courts. She is a shy woman, but she said that the Government had every intention to make her and others give up on the case. And they tried and tried and tried. But she said she had to put on a brave face for the sake of thousands of workers in the sector. My colleague Rachel Boyack tonight called it the Opposition’s attempt to rewrite history. But you don’t rewrite history by pretending to care—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Not the Speaker.

IBRAHIM OMER: I’m sorry, Madam Speaker. My apologies. You don’t rewrite history by trying to care—

Hon Member: No, no, no.

IBRAHIM OMER: The Opposition—I’m sorry. I’m not referring to you, Madam Speaker. I’m rather referring to the Opposition. The Opposition cannot rewrite history by pretending to care. My apologies. If you’re keen to support working people, let’s start tonight. The National Party—if you are keen to support the working people, let’s start tonight. How about we start with minimum wage? How about we start with fair pay? Three hundred thousand workers throughout the country are crying for fair pay agreements. Let’s start with that. However, as it always does, this Government is yet tonight cleaning up another mess the previous Government left us with. I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 109

New Zealand Labour 65; New Zealand National 32; ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Noes 10

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): This bill is set down for committee stage forthwith.

In Committee

Clause 1 Title

CHAIRPERSON (Ian McKelvie): Members, the House is in committee on the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill. Members, we come first to clause 1.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): Thank you, Mr Chair. As we know from the debates in the previous readings, this is a very simple bill. There’s a change of date and a change of rates in the Schedules, in order to achieve the purpose, which is to provide protection and a pay increase to support workers, but also to enable to get on with their pay equity claim.

I look forward to the continued examination of the bill in this stage.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m happy to take a call on clause 1, the title, and I want to examine some of the comments that the Minister made in his—I think it was his second reading speech, around the Government’s plan to reopen pay equity negotiations with the care and support workers in the context of this bill, this Act, being extended for another 18 months. If that is necessary, why is the Minister calling this the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill, which amends the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Act? The label on the tin says we have settled pay equity, and I understand the need to do this, although we’re deeply unhappy with it, but it seems to me that the Government wants to start this process that has been going on for the better part of a decade all over again. I don’t believe that’s either necessary or appropriate.

The initial settlement of more than $2 billion was a settlement that removed the inequity that was perceived in this female-dominated workforce, and yet the Minister made it very clear to the House that the Government’s intention is to start this all over again. I wonder, in addressing the title of the bill, whether he could lay out what the Government’s intentions in that regard are.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): Mr Chairman, I’m happy to oblige the member. He refers to clause 1, the title, “Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Act”. I think, if we’re concerned about labels on the tin that actually don’t reflect what is in the tin—I suspect it’s the inclusion of the words “pay equity”, because what was settled under the 2017 legislation was a legal claim. It was litigation relating to pay equity. What the legislation did not do was legislate for pay equity. It was the opposite. It set up some new pay rates that were to apply to this workforce of now 61,500 people. That’s what it did. But section 8 of the current legislation is very clear. Section 8(1) says, “This section applies to—(a) any claim by on behalf of a support worker under the Equal Pay Act … and (b) any potential claim by or on behalf of a support worker under the Equal Pay Act [etc.]” Section 8(2) says “The claim or potential claim cannot be pursued and must be treated as if it had been withdrawn or is incapable of being lodged.” That’s what section 8 does, and it is time limited. That section applies until 30 June this year. So no action could be taken on pay equity—the very thing that these workers wanted, the very thing that the Government of the day insisted they go all the way to the Supreme Court to get and then sued for peace to achieve this legislation.

So this does enable the workers to get their rates protected in a way they could not do, up till now. And I know all the working class warriors opposite are all saying something should have happened before now.

David Seymour: A working class hero is something to be.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: It’s always interesting to hear the most anti-worker party in the Parliament, the ACT Party popping up. It just would help if more members of the intelligence of the likes of David Seymour would understand our industrial history. But the reality is that on this occasion, these workers, this workforce of 61,500 people, an employer force of 1,000—there is no mechanism for them to continue to have rates that are protected that are fair that will continue after the expiry of this legislation. And equally, there is no basis on which they could otherwise pursue a pay equity claim. They now have rates protected, increased and protected, and they will now be able to pursue their pay equity claim.

But to answer the Hon Michael Woodhouse’s question that I think he was asking—why does this have to start all over again?—I just simply say that section 8 didn’t just sort of say, “Pause it, stop it, that’s it.”; it expunged it altogether. The original claim under the Equal Pay Act was completely destroyed and so they now have to start all over again and we are supporting them to do that.

Now, my discussions with the unions and with the providers, both together and individually—everybody is on the same page. We just want to get on and deal with pay equity, and, yep, they would like a higher pay increase. They also know the priority is to get on and do what these workers most want, which is to get their pay equity claim done.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Chair. Just picking up on the Minister’s claims to being the sole friend of the working class, I have to say: a working class hero is something to be. But it got me thinking. The Minister also claimed that because he has legislated minimum pay rates for care and support workers and he claims to care about workers, I wonder why it is that in five years, his Government has not legislated pay rates for every sector of the economy. Is he aware of any country that may have tried to do this in the past, and how did it work out?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Mr Chair. Look, we’ve had a bit of accusations across the House of a rewrite of history, and I’m desperately trying to avoid descending into that because it’s not actually helpful.

I get what the Minister is saying about the status of the ability to be able to take a pay equity claim in what was an interregnum—a very long interregnum—but I dispute the Minister’s description of that being some kind of punitive imposition on the workers and their bargaining agents.

The reality is: this legislation gave effect to an agreement. Now, when the Government committed to intervening to settle the case, the case itself was not dispensed with by the courts; it was paused. At any time, either party, but probably the—well I’m not sure who was appealing who by then, but basically Bartlett et al could have recommenced the claim in the courts, which, by the way, was not a pay equity claim; it was a ruling that pay equity was part of the Equal Pay Act 1972. It wasn’t a substantive bargaining for more money; it was a very technical question of law.

Now, the reason that is relevant is because the creation of that interregnum was the quid pro quo to a very generous $2 billion - plus settlement where the Crown said, “OK, we’ll make pay equity go away if you agree not to pursue your claims in the court.” The way that was done was through section 8 of the original Act. I do think it’s disingenuous for people in this debate to describe that as some kind of punitive imposition. What the Act said was it settled pay equity, and so, by the way, let’s no longer—because I had introduced a piece of legislation at about the same time called the Pay Equity Bill which was then going to take a new approach that clearly Labour and the Greens didn’t like; that’s fine, that’s history. But the idea that that five-year hiatus on claiming in the courts was some kind of punitive imposition, I think, is a mischaracterisation of what had happened. This was an agreement in good faith with good will to make the problem go away, and as part of that agreement which was legislated, parties agreed—not just the law stated, parties agreed—they would not go back to court. But as the quid pro quo in return for that $2 billion settlement needed to be in writing, it also went into law.

This pay equity claim was settled. That’s why it was called the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Act 2017 and had the parties and the Government—because clearly if the Government accuses the previous Government of not acting quickly enough, then the same accusation can be laid at the feet of this Government. If the Government had normalised bargaining and commenced negotiations not on 8 May 2022 but on 8 May 2020 or 2019 or 2021 and got around the table with the parties to make sure that there was an appropriate settlement which reflected the current value of these care and support workers, inequity would not have arisen. But Mr Little clearly thinks there is a new inequity that has to go through a whole new process.

I think the Equal Pay Act has been amended now to provide for a framework for that to happen, but, frankly, the first cab off the rank should not be the care and support workers. They were the first cab off the rank before the law was even passed thanks to the negotiated settlement. So it is disingenuous, I think, and a misnomer to say on the one hand we’re going to continue to call this Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Act but act as if pay equity had not been settled.

What the Government is better to do is to get on and bang a few heads together—including their own, frankly—and make sure that bargaining commences for an adjustment to the rates of pay for care and support workers that don’t lead to the very inequities that this original Act eliminated.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Chief Whip—Labour): Mr Chair, various members’ contributions have been wide-ranging. The debate is technically clause by clause. I wonder if I might simply seek leave that the bill be considered as one part.

CHAIRPERSON (Ian McKelvie): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is none. The question is that clauses 1 to 8 stand part.

Clauses 1 to 8

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): Sorry, I was going to continue the wide-ranging debate, as advanced, indeed, by the Hon Michael Woodhouse. We are getting into a very detailed historical argument here. I don’t want to cast aspersions, necessarily, on Mr Woodhouse or his colleagues at the time—although, of course, we’ve done our level best to. I do want to make this point: the italicised heading just prior to section 8 of the existing legislation is “Extinguishing and barring claims under Equal Pay Act 1972 by support workers”. That was the purpose—it was to extinguish the claim that had been advanced.

The Hon Michael Woodhouse is right. It was at the point of litigation. The claim had been mounted, but because it was a piece of law that largely had been a dead letter for—what?—45 years up to that time, a number of aspects would have been tested in court. But, nevertheless, I’ve seen an account that said that the Rt Hon Bill English—as I think he was at the time—had contacted one of the union leaders and said, “You keep winning in court. We should sort this out.”

There was an agreement done between the unions and the Government of the day, and it gave the workers at the time improved pay rates—not pay equity rates, but improved pay rates—and another thing that they were very deeply committed to, which was a training regime funded as well. They could lift their skills and lift their credentials—because it was a credentialed training under the New Zealand Qualifications Framework—which would improve their marketability in the labour market. So it did those things.

But the one thing they had gone to court for—the one thing they were fighting for—was pay equity. That was, effectively, kicked down the road for five years. It’s all very well for the member and other members opposite to say, “Well, you had five years to sort out a framework.” There was no framework. Pay equity could not be advanced. This is a group of workers—61,500 of them—who are dispersed right across the country amongst 1,000 employers. Some are represented by unions; many are not. There was no framework that could be easily stood up—certainly under our current collective bargaining framework—that would have allowed them to negotiate on behalf of both represented workers and unrepresented workers. I know that’s a challenge to the purity of the principles of the ACT Party, but the reality is this is a workforce that is low paid and difficult to organise but who want to be paid fairly, and they should be paid fairly, and there should be some minimum standards. There is no framework in place for that, and there could not be discussions about pay equity or rates approximating pay equity, because that was specifically barred until 30 June.

The discussions I’ve been having with the unions and the providers since last year is: how do we get ourselves gearing up, ready to go, once that bar to negotiating a pay equity claim is gone? That’s what we’ve done. We needed to increase and protect rates as well as get the other processes set up ready to get pay equity going. And that’s what we’re doing.

That is, in fact, the background to the legislation, and that is quite consistent with the title as expressed in clause 1.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Mr Chair. I won’t prolong overly this particular point, except to say that the court case itself, I think the Minister described as a pay equity claim; actually, it was a claim for a declaration that section 9 of the Equal Pay Act 1972 applied not only to pay between men and women but to—I can’t remember the exact words—equal pay for work of equal value, or something to that effect. It was that the court may state the principles for implementation of equal pay, and therefore not having appealed that, once that court case had ended, a whole new pay equity process had to start, which was the court then would have determined, on the basis of criteria that were not laid out, that were never intended, too, I don’t think—in fact, that was an acknowledgment by the courts—that the 1972 Act never intended that the legislation as it was written would be applied in that way but nevertheless it should be. That’s fine; I get that. That left a huge gap in the framework for being able to determine how to establish work of equal value and then to make sure that pay was equal as well. So I make that point simply to say that the pay equity journey had really only just begun in the TerraNova case despite being before the courts for several years, and the Government cutting it off at the pass was not intended to take away access to justice in this regard; it was intended to fast track it, and that was the point of my earlier call. I will end my contributions on that, because we could go round the traps on it.

My main concern, and what we weren’t able to do in a select committee process, which we were in May 2017, is to examine the manner in which the funding of this settlement is going to take place. We know from the bill—it’s pretty easy maths to determine—that this is a 4.6 percent increase over 18 months for the workers themselves. And what followed last time was a very, very complicated formula being established to work out, on an averaging basis, how each aged-care provider was going to be remunerated—and was going to be compensated, effectively—for the Crown legislating for increases in pay. That took quite a bit of work even before the bill got to the House, and then, through a shortened select committee process, it considered issues around holiday pay, relativities, and a few other things. And I’m sure officials—who actually look a bit familiar; it’s starting to come back to me—may have been involved in it. What I’d like to know is how that’s been dealt with in this bill, because I think it’s really important that we examine this through the lens of the employer as well as the employee, to make sure that these people who are already under significant financial pressure are actually no better or no worse off as a consequence of the law that we’re about to pass. That was what we attempted to do in 2017. I think largely we achieved it. There were some problems at the margins.

And I also would like to get a sort of reconciliation between that formula and a transfer of money, because it’s not clear from my reading of the Budget where this money resides, with the communication that was made by Health New Zealand to the Aged Care Association of an increase in their—it’s not bulk funding, but, you know, their sort of funding envelope of 1.9 percent. So I want to just clarify whether, or that, the 1.9 percent offer is separate from the 4.6 percent increase that’s being legislated for tonight—what the quantum of the money being appropriated in order to compensate for the requirement by the employers to actually pay that extra 4.6 percent from, effectively, next pay—and what the total quantum of that amount is, just so I can do some back-of-the-envelope calculations.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you. I just want to ask the Minister to reflect on the role of care and support workers. What do these workers do, and why are they important? Well, these workers care for the most vulnerable people in our communities. They care for people in aged-care facilities who may suffer from dementia, may have a whole lot of physical issues that make them extremely vulnerable and at times anxious about the person who cares for them, and they come to rely on these support workers in a way that is akin to relying on a family member.

So this pay equity claim, or this proposed settlement, while it resolves an immediate problem for the Government, which is that time had run out on the existing legislation and so they’ve offered a 4.6 percent pay rise—significantly less than the cost of living is increasing right now, Minister—actually, if we take a step back and look at what is the role of these support workers, how do they help the people they support to live their best lives, I’d actually have to ask you, Minister, as a member of this Government, are you actually valuing the people that these support workers care for highly? Because if we look at, say, for example, the way that carers are funded to support children with disabilities who want to attend their local school, there is an extremely convoluted process to apply for Ongoing Resourcing Scheme funding, ORS funding.

Many parents have told us, as we’ve gone around the country asking people what the problem is in your community that’s important to you, they’ve said, “Actually, it’s getting the ORS funding and a suitable carer to support my child going into mainstream education so that they can have the benefit of the educational opportunities that my other children do, who don’t need this support.” So while this piece of legislation brought to the House under urgency addresses a short-term need around the legislative fix to make sure that these care and support workers are actually compensated fairly—although a 4.6 percent pay rise when inflation is running at almost seven doesn’t seem to cut it—we need to ask the Government: what are you doing to support the entire sector? Because during the last couple of years, when we’ve had the COVID lockdowns, parents have not been able to access carer support hours and actually have that respite care that enables families to stay healthy and allows particularly children or older people who live in family homes, who might have dementia or other significant needs that place a burden on families—those families are suffering because they haven’t been able to get access to the carer support that they need.

There is a risk—a significant risk—that if these workers aren’t paid adequately and actually aren’t supported adequately with training and development, they will leave this profession and the families who depend on them will then be left all at sea. Parents might be unable to work if they can’t get support for a child with a disability. Family members who have an elderly person living with them might not be able to work. So it has a massive knock-on effect to the economy and to the health of communities. So, Minister, I’d just like you to address in your response what this means, this settlement, this Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill, and what’s the wider context. What’s next, Minister? Because this is an issue that affects many, many families, people with children, adolescents, as well as elderly people. Thank you, Minister.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): Thank you, Mr Chairman. I thank the member for his question, the points that he’s raising, and I’m very interested because one of the things that this Government is in the process of doing is lifting remuneration within the health sector generally. This is not an even path. It happens in stages and in parts, and eventually it will come together. But the member will be aware, we’ve done pay equity agreements with admin and clerical staff for district health boards. We’ve done one with teachers. We’ve reached an agreement with the nurses’ organisation. They seem to have backed out of it. We’re currently negotiating pay equity arrangements with midwives, and we have a number of others in the queue—allied health workers is one of them.

For the lower-paid workers—and this is one of the groups of them; home-care and support workers—they have been seeking pay equity. They want to have the chance to get that. And as I’ve indicated to the House already a couple of times, we have been working with the providers and the unions to get back everybody around the table to understand what a pay equity arrangement—what it entails in terms of the technical work and then reaching agreement. But everybody is ready to go, and we want to get that going a little further.

There are other parts of the health workforce that we will also have to deal with, what we call the funded sector, so what otherwise might be described as the private sector of the health sector, but actually heavily State-funded. Primary care and aged residential care are two classic examples. We know we will very soon have a basis on which we can engage with the employers in those sectors to talk about how we start to lift the wages of the workers in those sectors. That’ll not just be, you know, the registered nurses and others carrying qualifications but also the healthcare assistants in those areas as well.

Over time, we are doing everything we can—bearing in mind as that member and his party will be well aware, Governments are under budgetary constraints. But over time we are seeking to lift wages in those sectors. For those providing help and support to people who need it, be it for health reasons or other reasons, whether because of their own health or because, you know, it’s funded out of ACC because of injury, or for whatever reason, the member is right: people do need that help and support, and it’s what actually enables them to better participate more fully as citizens in the community.

So that’s the context in which this is happening. This is a group of low-paid workers within the broader health system who we do have to support to get better pay, to continue to provide the help and support that many people are dependent on them for.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green) (remote): Thank you, Mr Chair. I just want to reflect on the fact that I think everybody across the House has spoken on the important contributions that support workers make, and so just acknowledging that. I think there are some differences that we’ve picked up from the first two readings in terms of where we would like to go as a Green Party, so I’m hoping that the Minister can help me answer some of these questions that we’ve gotten along the way.

First of all, I was wondering whether unions have told the Minister what increases were needed to maintain the 2017 value, and if so, what was that amount? The reason why I’m asking is because my colleague Jan Logie did table an amendment which is basically aiming to lift the minimum rates of pay in the principal Act by $7 per hour compared to the 2021-22 rates in Schedule 2, clause 2. We did note that the current rates proposed in the bill equate to a 3 percent increase from the 2021-22 year, which does not even match inflation. So those do present a significant increase, and these rates that we put in the tabled amendment were endorsed by the PSA, E tū, and New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) members, and they represent the increase that support and care workers are seeking. So, keen to understand what conversations he’s had with unions to reach the rate that is presented in this bill, which ultimately reflect a 70c increase. The other question I had is: how do these pay rates take into account the living costs indexation in clause 3 of Schedule 2 of the principal Act? Also, keen to know what percentage increase will support workers get compared to their current pay, noting this pay takes into account the 2021 indexation.

And I also wanted to note the fact that support workers, those on temporary visas, currently, under the new accredited employer work visa scheme that is being set up—they’re one of the sectors that basically have a median wage exemption. I just wonder whether the Minister had considered whether this bill presents a missed opportunity to ensure that we don’t need to carve out an exemption, because I think the exemption is a recognition that the pay is low, and those sectors that are being given exemptions I think are sectors that are traditionally low paid. So if we’re all talking in the House about how much we value support workers, I just wonder whether this could have been an opportunity to reflect that and have starting rates that are above the median wage so that migrant workers entering that profession do not need to be given an exemption.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): Thanks, Mr Chairman. I thank the member Ricardo Menéndez March for his questions. I hope I’ve understood them correctly, but I’ll respond as I think I’ve understood the points the member has raised.

I hear what the member has said about a proposal to increase to maintain the 2017 value. The member has said that that is what a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) by the member Jan Logie does. I haven’t seen that SOP. In my engagement with the unions, they did put up some proposals, and I know that the Minister of Health in their engagement considered carefully those proposals. They looked a lot like the rates of pay that would apply following a pay equity exercise, and we were conscious of the fact that section 8 of the current legislation does not allow pursuit of a pay equity claim. We thought that it was important that to get the rate that the members are seeking, as a consequence of pay equity, we should go through—we must go through—the pay equity framework that is now set out in the Equal Pay Act, which followed the enactment of this legislation. I think the Hon Michael Woodhouse was absolutely correct; the previous Government did introduce amendments to the Equal Pay Act. They were revised by this Government, and we’ve now enacted that. But we now have a framework for that that wasn’t in place at the time that these workers were litigating through their unions or engaging with the previous Government over this legislation.

So what we have come up with is a rate that takes into account the statutory triggered increase in November last year, as well as a further top-up funded this year to achieve a total increase compared to 1 July last year of 4.6 percent. And I know some members are saying we should have fully inflation-adjusted. We’ve never—I don’t know of any regime that fully inflation-adjusts wages from time to time. Sometimes, actually, wages move ahead of inflation, as has been the case for some time in this country. But in other times it doesn’t. Over a period of time you want wages to grow, but in a single year or a single period, that may not be the case. And we have not achieved that in this particular instance.

In terms of the temporary visa workers—I’m not fully familiar with the immigration matters that the member who’s just resumed his seat is raising. In the end, what we’re motivated by is the need to increase rates, provide some ongoing protection for those rates, and do the most important thing, which is set out the basis on which the parties can enter pay equity discussions and negotiations.

NICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): Thank you, Mr Chair. I would just also like to put on record for the Hansard, Michael Woodhouse’s comment that under a National Government wages do stay ahead of inflation.

Hon Andrew Little: No they don’t. Ask the Minister.

NICOLA GRIGG: I would like to turn the Minister’s mind to clause 8, thank you Minister, which amends Schedule 2 to set out the new rates. I have been listening and trying to keep up with the debate, but I don’t think the Minister has answered the question around what is the total figure for the budgetary appropriation. We are very interested in how that rate of 4.6 percent was determined. As has been canvassed already, we do know inflation is running at 6.9 percent, and I’m no mathematician, but by my calculation that would indicate that these care workers, like the rest of New Zealand is, will be going backwards with this negotiation.

The Minister, as well as answering those two questions, has also previously talked about the incentive regime for further training and development, so I’m quite interested to hear from him about what consideration or what matrix is put in place to compensate for that. What further rates consideration—is it over and above the 4.6 percent, or is it all inclusive?

Finally, I’ve seen some feedback, and I’d be very interested in the Minister’s interpretation of the feedback from the sector as to how this 4.6 percent has been received.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): Thank you, Mr Chairman. I know that Nicola Grigg’s—the member who has just resumed her seat—first statement wasn’t a question; it was an assertion. And, of course, it was wrong. Wages had not kept pace with inflation under National, and that is one of the reasons we’re dealing with the nurses the way that we are—because, after nine years, their wages went back in real terms. Anyway, I’ve beaten that drum before, and, hopefully, that’ll be the last time I beat it tonight.

On the issue about training that the member raises, I mean, the legislation sets out, effectively, a matrix depending on length of service and the training that you’ve had. So that is already there; that won’t change. The existing training regime will continue, and that continues to be funded as well, so there’s no change in that respect. We need to continue to provide opportunities for this group of workers to become credentialed and grow their skills and therefore increase their wages, and that will continue to happen.

In terms of the rate, if the member is asking me do I think this rate is universally accepted by both providers and unions, I can tell the member, no, it is not. They have both communicated to me—both sides have said to me—“We think the rates should be higher.” What I have looked at is the fact that, at the moment, across pay, settlements generally are running between 4 and 5 percent. This sits between 4 and 5 percent, taking into account the increase in November last year and the further increase that this Government has backed. It is a 4.6 percent increase. That is consistent with pay adjustments that are happening in other parts of the economy right now.

NICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): To the Minister one more time: what is the total appropriation?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): There’s an appropriation in the Budget this year that covers the adjustment that took place at the end of last year. I don’t have that figure in front of me. And then, in terms of the further top-up—and officials are going to be really studious and helpful—in terms of the additional funding, for the purposes of this legislation, the total amount for the four-year period starting 1 July is $327.38 million. That’s funded through a number of sources, but that is what the value of this particular matter is.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green) (remote): Thank you. Just hearing the Minister’s previous answers, I want to encourage the Minister to have a look at the tabled amendment from Jan Logie; it’s on the Table. Like I mentioned, it is endorsed by the Public Service Association, New Zealand Nurses Organisation, and E tū. I think it reflects the unions and what those aspirations [Audio issue] what is currently being presented.

My question was also around whether this legislation brings support workers closer to full equity than the 2017 settlement reached under a National Government or does it actually create a wider gap once cost of living and [Audio issue] wages in comparable sectors are taken into account?

The other question I had was going back to the immigration point—and I know the Minister said he’s not fully on top of, I guess, those interactions regarding pay and temporary visas, but basically with the Accredited Employer Work Visa, there is a requirement that employers have to pay migrant workers coming in the median wage for them to be employed. The reason why I’m asking in relation [Audio issue] because we know that migrant workers do make up a substantial portion of the workforce in that area, and at the moment, there is, effectively, an exemption to support workers needing to be paid the median wage. I think that’s just a recognition that it is a low-paying sector. Other sectors that have that exemption include hospitality and tourism. I think my concern is that if the bill goes through at the rates that we have, basically, support workers who are coming on temporary visas will continue to have an exemption. I think it just will be telling that we accept the sector is going to be low paid.

So I guess my question is around whether the Minister feels comfortable having those workers as part of that carved-out exemption, as opposed to just bringing them in line with many other professions who are paid above the median wage as a starting rate. So I’m eager to, hopefully, get the Minister’s views on Jan Logie’s tabled amendment as well as the other questions I’ve raised.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): I will have a study of Jan Logie’s tabled amendment. As I recall the member saying, if it calls for an increase of effectively $7 an hour then no we won’t be supporting that. That has to be funded and it’s not.

In terms of the two questions the member raises: is it increasing the cost of living cap, and is it right that, effectively, we’re still relying on a group of workers from overseas who, in order to take up this work, end up getting an exemption from rules that would otherwise apply to those obtaining a work visa. Look, I agree with the sentiment that I think underpins what the member is asking. The whole purpose of this for this group of workers is to get on with the most important thing, which is getting them pay equity—getting them paid at rates that are not based on sex-based discrimination, which is pretty clearly what is happening in this particular industry. There is a framework for doing that, it’s the Equal Pay Act, as amended. There is a process for doing it. For this group of workers, it was not possible for anybody to commence on that process until after 30 June, but it’s important in the meantime we afford appropriate protections, particularly of existing pay rates. And those protections are particularly important for unrepresented workers, which is the large chunk of these workers. So I’m satisfied that as an interim step this is a good step to take, but I remain committed and, in fact, most of my effort has gone into making sure that we set up all sides of the pay equity claim to proceed with that with alacrity and get pay equity for these workers just as quickly as possible.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Mr Chair. I appreciate the Minister’s informing the committee of the sum of $327.8 million being the envelope to give effect to this legislation. By my calculations—and, indeed, they are very rough, back-of-the-envelope calculations—that constitutes about 16 percent of the $2.05 billion that was the original funding envelope which increased care and support workers—at that time, the 55,000 of them—by an average of 21 percent over the five-year period between 2017 and 2022. We’re now dealing with 61,000 care and support workers, and it just seems to me that the $328 million - odd isn’t going to be enough to fund what is essentially a 4.6 percent increase for those 61,000 workers.

I raise this in the context of the other two questions that I had in respect of the funding, which was the relationship between that amount of money and the 4.6 percent increase with the offer by Health New Zealand of 1.9 percent.

The question is about that $328 million, which the Minister acknowledged, in his response, was over and above the labour cost index adjustment that was made at the end of last year under section 8 of the Act, where, if inflation had gone above 1.7 percent—I think it was—or something, there was a formula in the Act that provided for an increase. I’m not sure, actually—in the time that I’ve had to look at this—whether the 4.6 percent increase calculation I did was correct in respect of what the current rates are, because I used the current rates in the Act, but those rates must be below what is currently being paid, in which case the increase is actually less than 4.6 percent.

Now, the Minister in one of his interventions said, “Oh, well, the prevailing rates at the moment are between 4 percent and 5 percent. This is 4.6 percent. We’re kind of in the middle.” But I understand—and I’d appreciate the Minister correcting me if I’m wrong—this is going to be for a period of 18 months. So the annualised effect of that is only 3 percent, which means that this is well behind what the other pay increases within the health sector are. I’m very open to the Minister and his officials challenging my math on that.

But my central question is about the relationship between this offer, this legislative settlement—it’s not even a settlement; it’s just a legislative increase—and the 1.9 percent offer that’s being made right now to aged-care facilities. Does that 1.9 percent include the $328 million, and are they going to be expected to pay a 4.6 percent increase in staff costs with 1.9 percent of their total budget?

Now, I used to run healthcare organisations. I’ve got a pretty good understanding of the cost base. Between 66 percent and 70 percent of the total cost of running an organisation are staff. Health New Zealand were informed by the Aged Care Association that their assessment of the increases in costs right now are running at about 9.4 percent, and that’s what they were seeking. Let’s just assume that for two-thirds of their cost base, they’re going to get 4.6 percent. Then, for the other third of their cost base, where general inflation is running at—what is it now?—

Nicola Grigg: 6.9.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: —6.9 percent—thank you, Ms Grigg. Then that’s another 2.1 percent on top of the costs that they’re including—that’s a third of the current inflation.

Now, that’s actually gilding the lily a bit, because, in my experience, healthcare cost inflation runs at between 50 and 100 percent—more than general Consumers Price Index inflation. By any measure, the 1.9 percent ain’t gonna be enough for the aged-care facilities to go anywhere but backwards pretty quickly. So it’s very important for the committee to understand whether the offer of $328 million is on top of another general offer for increases in bed fees and so on that is intended to cover those other costs.

PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thanks, Mr Chair—really just following on from the Hon Michael Woodhouse’s question. If I can give a very practical example from Presbyterian Support Southland (PSS), who I’ve met with at least three times in the last year, canvassing this very problem that they have. So, again, this 1.9 percent increase that they have been given—they have informed me that they are going to run at a $1 million deficit. I might have to ask my colleague Michael Woodhouse to do some maths for me. They have a $23 million annual staffing budget, and I think you made the estimate that it might be about two-thirds of their cost base would be in that staffing area. So we’re talking about a really significant addition to their deficit if we are talking about this amount. I haven’t quickly done that, but I’m thinking—what are we talking?—that might be about $16 million or $17 million. And I think the 4.6 percent on that might be nearly $500,000. So, instead of running at a $1 million deficit, they’re going to be running at a $1.5 million deficit.

I’m keen to know, because I know they will be wanting to ask this question of me, because they visit me and talk to me on a regular basis—their chair and their head of nursing and their chief executive. So are they looking at this 4.6 percent increase that needs to be paid out—and to these caregivers that definitely need to get this increase—but are they looking at having to pay that out within the 1.9 percent increase they have been given? And, as my colleague said also, their increases are not just the same as the cost of living. They gave the examples to me of the medical supplies and the percentage increases. Some of them were getting up to 20 percent increases—certainly not a 6.9 percent increase—for some of their medical supplies. So is this entity that provides more beds, I think, than any other single entity in Southland—more aged-care beds—looking now at a $1.5 million deficit, or is there going to be additional funding to cover the 4.6 percent increase to their caregivers?

That’s one very big example, but, equally, for all of the home-based care entities, they are running on really small margins, which is why I get contacted by families who have got family members with muscular dystrophy and other very, very serious medical issues who are concerned that their healthcare worker doesn’t turn up sometimes, because they don’t have enough; they are not being replaced when someone is sick. So I would think that the impact on the individuals that are relying on that healthcare might actually be even greater in those home-based care situations. So, Minister, I’m really keen to be able to go back to particularly the PSS with an answer. And I don’t want to have to go back to them and say the Minister of Health just refused to answer that question, even though he was asked it four different ways; to say that he didn’t care enough to tell them whether they’re facing a $1.5 million deficit instead of a $1 million one. Thank you very much, Mr Chair.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): The discussion—I’ve yet to hear anybody ask a question about the bill—is ranging very widely over a lot of broader policy areas.

On the funding issues, as I understand it, the offer that has been made to aged residential care in terms of the funding agreements they have currently with DHBs, eventually with Health NZ, is a 3 percent offer to cover their full range of costs. I understand the members are seduced by the calculations by Simon Wallace of the aged and residential care association, but the offer that’s been made for aged and residential care is not 1.9 percent; it is 3 percent. So there is funding available to fund this increase for home care and support workers, whether it’s from health money, ACC money, or Ministry of Social Development money, because we need to support these workers.

In the end, what’s most important, and what even the providers and their representative tells me, is they are keen to get on with the thing that will make the biggest difference in terms of recruitment and retention, and actually properly supporting this workforce, and that is getting on with the pay equity claim. That hasn’t been possible for the past five years. It was not possible to commence until 1 July this year. That is what this bill facilitates.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): That opening salvo really does behove a response. The idea that actually understanding what the cost of this bill is on, firstly, the taxpayer and then, secondly, potentially on the aged-care facilities is not part of the bill, I think is an outrageous comment. The very point of the bill is to pay money to people. The problem we’ve got as a committee of the whole is that because we’re rushing this through under urgency and it hasn’t had the scrutiny of the Health Committee and the departmental disclosure statement makes zero reference to the cost, that means this committee—this committee—has to do that work. And it worries me that the Minister deflects what I think are pretty straightforward mathematical questions about the cost of this legislation. Sure, there’s no particular clause in the bill that says that’s the total sum, but that’s the effect of the clause in Schedule 2, and I think we need to know it.

Now, I think Penny Simmonds has made a very good attempt at assessing the potentially harmful effects on a sector that is already on its knees. And it worries me—the Minister hasn’t said it, but I think his flippant comments about the seduction of comments by Simon Wallace underscore the animosity that this Government has towards the sector, because some of them happen to be connected to property organisations like Ryman and Summerset and so on. That is not the organisations we’re talking about. It is the organisation that Penny Simmonds is talking about: Presbyterian Support services, a religious-based not-for-profit that’s already losing a million dollars a year in the Otago and Southland region alone. That deficit could blow out by as much as 50 percent on the passage of this bill, if our maths is right, and I’m very, very happy for our maths to be wrong. In fact, I really hope that it’s wrong, but I haven’t heard an answer to the question.

What we did hear was, OK, the 1.9 percent is actually 3 percent. I didn’t use Mr Wallace’s claim of 9.4 percent. I merely mentioned it, but then in my own calculations used Consumers Price Index (CPI). And actually that’s a very conservative estimate, as I mentioned, because health cost in inflation always runs higher than CPI. It is almost gravitational certainty that that is the case. And I’m sure Simon Watts, as a former chief financial officer in the DHB, went greyer because of the stress of trying to make the books balance of the Waitematā District Health Board, a heroic effort and very successful when compared with other DHBs. So it is wrong to suggest that these are (a) questions not related to the bill or (b) somehow based on some seductive numbers that Mr Wallace has come up with. He represents a group of organisations that are caring for our most vulnerable, that are on their knees, and that want to know whether or not this bill when passed is going to put them flat on their backs.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): It’s an answer I’ve already given. I’m happy to give it again. I’ve spelled out what the appropriation is, or at least what the cost is, of this: $327 million over the four-year period. The cost of the increment that was triggered last year is an additional $40 million. That is what the cost of this is to get these pay increases up. No one is being left high and dry. We’ve worked closely with the sector on it, and I can tell you that the advocate for the providers with whom I have been dealing has been very constructive, very clear in his representations about what his sector agrees with and doesn’t agree with, but equally very clear on behalf of all of the providers that he represents.

What the sector is saying is they want to get on with the most important thing, which is the pay equity claim. So this provides an increment to the wages, and the various providers, a thousand of them—a thousand of them—will be funded accordingly to meet these costs, as well as the cost of the training, as that is taken up. There is nothing further to add by way of an answer to the question about the cost of this. That is the cost of the increase, the total increase, made up of the increment last year, an increment this year, and that enables us to get a pay increase to these workers that is not out of step with what is happening elsewhere in the labour market, provide some protection for that, and enables us to get on with the pay equity claim.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green) (remote): Thank you. I’m acknowledging that, because this is in urgency, we haven’t had the time to go through a proper select committee process to maybe unpack some of those broader implications of the bill or the process that the bill has gone through, so I’m keen to understand why are we having this in urgency. We’ve had five years to, basically, address this and put forward some updated figures. I hear the Minister of Health mention that he’s not supportive of the tabled amendment by Jan Logie, but, I mean, the tabled amendment does reflect the aspirations of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation and the Public Service Association too. I guess I’m keen to understand, in the process leading up to this bill being introduced under urgency, what consultation you had with those unions in terms of ensuring that what is being put forward represents the needs of those workers and the aspirations of the union movement as well. I mean, the way I see it is cooperation agreement partners don’t let their friends be out of line with what the working class is asking for. So I’m keen to understand in terms of the rationale for leaving this until last minute and then having an urgency process, and, if you wouldn’t mind explaining, why the rates that the union movement is calling for is not what you are supporting.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): Again, I’m pretty sure I’ve answered most of the member’s questions already. But in terms of the rates and my engagement with the unions, it is true they wanted higher rates—in some cases, it’s significantly higher rates—and it was pretty clear that the rates they were seeking were the sort of rates that you would expect would be the product of a pay equity claim. The legislation prevents Government agencies—in fact, anybody—from engaging over a pay equity claim until after 30 June, so we could not engage on that basis.

The member asked why it’s taken five years. This group of workers has had legislative pay rates, including legislated pay rises, over a five-year period. It’s unlikely that any of the unions representing any of these workers could have grown their membership amongst this group of workers sufficiently quickly to negotiate a collective agreement that would have provided or afforded comparable protection. And I think everybody saw it as appropriate that while the legislation was in place and these rates were in place, that afforded a degree of protection. I know the unions have been working closely with this Government on fair pay agreements, and I think this group of workers would be a great candidate for a fair pay agreement once that legislation is passed. Given the concern being expressed by so many in the House tonight about low-paid workers, particularly these workers, I look forward to all members’ support for the fair pay agreement legislation when it comes back to the House.

But it hasn’t been possible to engage over a pay equity claim, and it hasn’t been possible to do other collective bargaining for this group of workers without leaving a substantial chunk of the 61,500 workers out. We’re trying to prevent that from happening. There’s no question in my mind, there would be some workers or at least be some new entrants to this workforce that, were this legislation not to be in place, would almost certainly be offered inferior rates of pay, and that would be unacceptable. So it’s taking all those factors and saying, “What do we do? What is the best interim step?” Once we get to the point of kind of pay equity freedom for these group of workers, we should throw off the shackles of the prohibition on pursuing a pay equity claim. At the end of the day, on 30 June and 1 July, we’re in a position to pursue a pay equity claim. What do we do in the meantime to afford appropriate protection for these workers? And this is the step that we’re taking.

We engaged over an appropriate adjustment or pay rate; we didn’t reach agreement. And, likewise, with the providers, they certainly made their views clear: they would have liked more. But we haven’t done that, and we’ve done what we think is an appropriate interim adjustment pending the most important thing, which is getting a pay equity claim settled.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I acknowledge the Minister’s comments before that we seem to be caught up on the numbers, but I feel like we’re caught up in a game of dodgeball here.

Nicola Grigg: Ducking and diving.

SIMON WATTS: Yeah, as you say—ducking and diving on just answering what is quite a simple question. I think the way in which you would articulate it, quite simply, Minister, is have you had assurance from the sector that the rate in which the cost in which you’re placing on that sector is going to be covered by the funding envelope that you’re providing, because that’s quite simply the question. So it’s either yes or no. Let’s not play the sort of left or right, back and forth, over the net or under the net, or whatever—just say yes or no. Is the quantum in terms of this increase within the funding envelope—yes or no? Then I think we can move on and move on to other aspects—which I will do, just in the interests of time—which is around clause 8 in regards to the rates.

I refer to the departmental disclosure statement. It refers there to the dates in which this conversation was had between the Minister and these parties, and the dates are 3 May to 26 May 2022. It doesn’t indicate that that conversation was initiated in advance of where we are today. I think that’s been the challenge to date in terms of when did we actually clear off. Why was there such a delay, or why did those conversations not occur earlier? It’s been five long years in order to initiate that conversation. The departmental disclosure statement states 3 May to 26 May—a simple question is why did it take so long to initiate those conversations.

The third question I’ve got, again in regards to clause 8, related to the rates is that it states here that the stakeholders sought a larger increase. We’re trying to attack this from two angles: one is we’re looking for assurance from the Minister that the offer on the table equals that of which the funding envelope that’s been provided. The simple reality there is we want to ensure and want to get confirmation, because we haven’t had a full select committee process. We haven’t had the benefit of being able to ask officials about this process. We’re ramming this through under urgency, and that assurance around the fiscal cost of this is critically important.

So my question around the point I’m making around the larger increases—and I acknowledge you might want to not get into the detail. But how far away are we in terms of where these representatives on behalf of this workforce—how far away are we on this, because, in effect, 18 months is a long time, and it says here that they sought a larger increase, so I’m wanting a little bit of clarity in regards to that point.

So those are the three questions on the table—nice and easy. It shouldn’t take long to cover those off rapidly, and then we can move on to the next tranche of questions which I’ve got in terms of a number of other clauses.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): The member asked why it took so long to initiate discussions. I’ve been engaging with the unions on this issue since last year, so it’s a variety of discussions. Most of the discussions last year centred on a whole range of workplace issues, and it’s fair to say that there’s a range of issues with this workforce where improvement is called for in terms of the structure of work, work hours, the in-between travel issues and what have you. So a range of issues have been under discussion during all that time, and in that time the issues about this legislation of continuing protection but—most importantly—seeking pay equity have been very much at the forefront of that discussion.

In terms of when we can expect things to happen, as I’ve said, my engagements more recently with both unions and the employer representatives have been about making sure that all parties are supported, but particularly in relation to the technical work that goes with pay equity—because it is pretty full on—is there. So that support is there. We will support both sides, not just from the Ministry of Health but from the Public Service Commission. We’ll have technical experts available and we will provide funding for both sides so that they can progress their claims.

The bill sets a self-repeal date of the new rates of 18 months. It’s my expectation that we would conclude pay equity discussions before then, and, of course, there’s nothing that prevents—following discussion—the Government, with the parties, from increasing these pay rates on a subsequent occasion within the 18 months that is provided for in these terms.

I come from a union background. I come from a negotiation background and I operate on the principle that nothing is beyond negotiation, and I’m sure that will be the case with this group of workers.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Chief Whip—Labour): I move, That the question be now put.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Thank you, Mr Chair. I rise because maybe I didn’t make it clear enough when I stood up last time, around that very simple question. I’ll say it again, because I think this is the seventh time that we’re asking it, and it’s simple: have we got assurance back from the sector that the offer in terms of the increase on the table is within the funding envelope that has been provided by Government in order to make that happen? I’ll just buy a little bit more time, just to let the officials provide that, because I think that’s important, and then we can crack on.

But while we’re doing that, let’s move on to that other clause—again related—in regards to clause 8 of the legislation, as well. So what I’m interested in particularly is that the Minister has just articulated in regards to the conversations that were actually occurring, I think you mentioned, last year—which obviously indicates that there was some level of dialogue that was initiated with the unions in regards to this earlier, which is obviously reassuring to hear that that hasn’t just been kicked off recently. But in regards to that dialogue, I guess the challenge is what were some of the key factors—again, related to clause 8 of the legislation: what were some of the key factors around why that agreement couldn’t be reached with these parties, taking into account that we’ve had five years to try to resolve this?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): Sorry, I just wonder whether the member might repeat the last part of his question, because he faded off. I’m the one losing my voice, but I couldn’t hear him.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): I’m not sure who faded off then, but I’ll take it that it was a bit of both of us, maybe. So my question was: what were some of the key reasons why the parties couldn’t reach agreement in regards to the dialogue that was had around trying to find a resolution to this matter? It notes, obviously, in the departmental disclosure that one of the factors was around the size of the increase, but were there any other factors that were at play, and what steps were taken in order to mitigate that so that we could have avoided where we are tonight?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): Thank you, Mr Chairman. Look, with all due respect, members are repeating themselves, and I’m happy to repeat the answers, but—

Hon Michael Woodhouse: That’s because we’re not getting any answers.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: And the members have got the answers, though sometimes you do get to choose whether you hear or not, and they’ve clearly made a choice.

I once again reiterate that the funding envelope that is provided for to meet the cost of this increase covers all costs, including the on-costs. Also, to the member’s second point, it’s not for me to explain why others don’t reach agreement, but agreement wasn’t reached, and so we are proceeding accordingly in order to provide an increase and to provide protection. Everybody is, however, agreed the most important thing is to get on and get pay equity done, which is why most of my discussions in the last few weeks have centred on how do we support the pay equity discussion process, because that’s what these workers most want and have been waiting the longest for.

WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Junior Whip—Labour): I move, That the question be now put.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the question be now put.

Ayes 77

New Zealand Labour 65; ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Noes 42

New Zealand National 32; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Ian McKelvie): The question is that Jan Logie’s tabled amendment replacing clause 8 be agreed to.

Amendment not agreed to.

Clauses 1 to 8 agreed to.

Bill to be reported without amendment.

House resumed.

(remote)Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Deputy Musterer—Green): Point of order, Madam Speaker. Kia ora. Because we were online and not able to unmute ourselves, we were not able to vote yes for Jan Logie’s amendment or to vote no for the passing.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Thank you. Does the member wish to seek to have the vote corrected?

Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Deputy Musterer—Green): Yes, please.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Point of order, Madam Speaker. Without wanting—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Before I take the member’s point of order, I will just take some advice.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Oh, that will be the same advice.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I’m sure you’re going to give me something—I’m quite convinced you are. Where would we be without you?

Thank you for that, members. As the vote passed on the voices, there is no need to recast the vote. Was that consistent—oh, point of order.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Point of order, Madam Speaker. That is absolutely correct, and 50 percent in respect of the point I was going to make. What I was going to suggest to the House is that this is a technical issue that is a consequence of the virtual Parliament. If leave was sought for a vote to be had on those two questions, certainly the National Party would not oppose it. The difficulty the Green Party has now is that their opposition can’t be recorded, except in Hansard by this dialogue.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Let me just think about that.

Thank you for your indulgence, everyone. We’re going to complete the committee stage, and before I take the first call on the third reading, I will again invite any party—Dr Elizabeth Kerekere—to seek the vote being recast.

CHAIRPERSON (Ian McKelvie): Madam Speaker, the committee has considered the Support Workers (Pay Equity Settlements) Amendment Bill and reports it without amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the report be adopted.

Ayes 109

New Zealand Labour 65; New Zealand National 32; ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Noes 10

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): This bill is set down for third reading forthwith, but, before I take the Minister’s call, I understand that a member may wish to raise a point of order.

(remote)Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Deputy Musterer—Green): Thank you. Point of order, Madam Speaker. Kia ora. We would like to seek leave to do a vote again on Jan Logie’s tabled amendment.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Oh, hang on—no.

Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE: Oh, I’ve done it wrong. Aroha mai.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Right. Order! You’re going to love this—you’ve got to love this. It’ll be infamous. So, members, I would invite some kind member to seek leave to go back into committee—

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Ah!

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): —I know—for the purpose of casting party votes on two questions.

(remote)Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Deputy Musterer—Green): Oh, I’m not sure of the exact right words—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Not yet—take a point of order.

Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE: Point of order, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Seek leave to go back into committee.

Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE: I seek leave of the House to go back into committee to recast the two votes.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Is there any objection? There appears to be none. House in committee.

In Committee

CHAIRPERSON (Ian McKelvie): Madam Speaker, the committee has considered the Support Workers (Pay Equity Settlements) Amendment Bill and reports it without amendment. I move that the report be adopted.

Willow-Jean Prime: No, we go back.

CHAIRPERSON (Ian McKelvie: Oh, we’ve got to go back further than that.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I am seeking leave on behalf of the House to recast the vote. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.

CHAIRPERSON (Ian McKelvie): Members, I think we are there.

The question is that Jan Logie’s tabled amendment replacing clause 8 be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 12

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2

Noes 107

New Zealand Labour 65; New Zealand National 32; ACT New Zealand 10.

Amendment not agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clauses 1 to 8 be agreed to.

Ayes 109

New Zealand Labour 65; New Zealand National 32; ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Noes 10

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.

Clauses 1 to 8 agreed to.

Bill to be reported without amendment.

House resumed.

CHAIRPERSON (Ian McKelvie): This time! The committee has considered the Support Workers (Pay Equity Settlements) Amendment Bill and reports it without amendment. I remove—I don’t remove; I’ve done that twice already. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

Third Reading

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): I move, That the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

I won’t speak for too long, not only because I won’t be able to speak for too long, but I’m thankful for members of the House for the very great scrutiny that they have given in traversing all manner of policy issues that sit behind the bill and the funding of it as well. The members have quite correctly pointed out that that is what would be ordinarily discussed in the select committee proceeding. That is not what has happened this evening.

It is important to get this legislation through, and I do reiterate the motivating factors behind it. This is a group of low-paid workers. The previous Government legislated a set of pay rates that were protected and applied to all of the workforce. I know we’ve had a bit of banter across the House this evening, and the National Party has proven, really, what heroes of the working class they actually are—on their off night. It was the right thing to do and it was a progressive thing to do, but it did leave in abeyance the pay equity ambition that this group of workers had, and to the extent that that was done in order to get changes to the Equal Pay Act so that there might be a better process for that to happen, that was certainly understandable. In any event, five years has moved on and it has not been possible to progress anything further, at least towards this group of workers’ ambitions for pay equity.

What we are doing tonight is an interim and somewhat pragmatic step that gives a pay adjustment. It is not what the workers themselves would have wanted, it is not what the employers themselves are saying they would like to have provided—funded by the Government—but it is, I think, in the circumstances not out of order in terms of what’s happening elsewhere in the labour market. But what’s most important is that we now get on.

This Government backs these workers and their employers to get on and get a pay equity settlement done under the Equal Pay Act. We will do that. We’ve made some arrangements and made some commitments in order to do that, and we will do that. In a matter of, hopefully, not too long a period of time, we’ll significantly lift the incomes for these workers and make it a more attractive proposition for those who would want to go into this sort of work, and this is on the back of a general movement that this Government is making to lift remuneration in the health sector.

This is a very important workforce, as we have seen. They’ve made an enormous contribution throughout COVID, but, actually, they do every other day as well. We need to do everything we can to show how much we value the health workforce and support them to lift their pay. So that’s what this does.

As I say, I’m very thankful to members for their attention to this in this urgent setting, and I look forward to their continued support. On that basis, I commend the bill to the House.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Before I provide some reflective and concluding comments in my third reading contribution, I want to briefly reflect on an interjection I made on the Minister of Health at the end of the committee of the whole House about not answering questions. There was one question that I thought was inadequate, but I actually want to commend the Minister for his contribution to the committee of the whole House. There are, I think, unfortunately, a small number of Ministers that I think really enter into the spirit of the committee of the whole House and the technical analysis of bills, and Mr Little is one of them. To the degree that he could, he attempted to address the very, I think, legitimate and quite important questions that the committee had, especially given that we didn’t have the opportunity to do so in a select committee. So I put that on the record.

He is a hard-working Minister, but that is really where the commendation ends in respect of this process and this bill, because I think even if Mr Little was reflecting, in his heart of hearts he knows that the process was poor by any measure. But the outcome is going to be deeply dissatisfying to all of the parties and probably to his own Cabinet, actually, in not being able to achieve a better outcome in the time frame—and I don’t mean the time frame of the last six weeks; I mean the time frame in the last five years, of which four years and eight months have been under a Labour-led Government. So there is still some work to do.

A few weeks ago, I had cause to dive back into my calendar for the second half of 2015 or early 2016 to try and ascertain the date of a meeting that I and my then ministerial colleague Amy Adams had with the Hon Peter Dutton, who was then the home affairs Minister. We met in Sydney, as the joint justice Ministers, with Amy Adams as justice and I as Minister of Police—so it must have been 2015. I found the date, but I had to pour through an absolute mountain of appointments and meetings in this diary, and it reminded me of the tremendous workload that busy Ministers have, and I know Mr Little is one of them.

But in amongst all of those diary appointments was a plethora of meetings of what’s called CMSSER, or at least it was then: the Committee of Ministers for State Sector Employment Relations. I don’t know if there’s an equivalent committee. But the membership included and was chaired by the Hon Paula Bennett, our Minister of State Services. It had the weather eye of the Minister of Finance, the Hon Bill English; Dr Jonathan Coleman; myself; and one or two others.

The two big health issues that were emerging at that time, one of which remains unresolved, was Holidays Act remediation across the State sector—and, as Minister of Police, I had the very uncomfortable role of going to Cabinet and saying the police had told me that they had an estimated $26 million of holiday pay arrears. That ended up being $33 million. The CMSSER, basically, went to the Ministry of Health—actually, at my request, based on my experience in the health sector—to say that, well, if police, who have shift work and time in lieu and all of that sort of thing, have got a $33 million problem, I bet the district health boards have got a much, much larger problem. The response was: “No, no, nothing to see here.” We had that response all the way through to the 2017 general election, when, we now know, there was a billion-dollar problem—and it’s still not solved, five years later. Actually, there’s a pattern that emerges here about problems not being solved five years later.

Then there was an emerging issue with the TerraNova case. We had a regular item on that agenda to consider, as observers, actually—interested observers to the case—about what was happening in the claim for section 9 of the Equal Pay Act 1972, applying to not only equal pay for the same work but pay equity for different work but of a similar nature, and that’s where the previous Government ended up with the 2017 Act.

Now, one of the things I think was revealed in the answers and in the speeches given by the Minister of Health today and tonight was—and this is the impression that he left me—that pay equity negotiations are somehow an iterative process, that female-dominated professions are on this kind of wheel of inequity. That’s not my perspective. It certainly wasn’t the previous Government’s perspective. The purpose of a pay equity settlement was to bring that occupation, that sector, or that role up to parity with occupations that were similar but were not female-dominated—a one-time thing that then remains equitable, and the pay increase has come through the normal bargaining process.

Now, it is possible that over time some sectors may slip back and it might be necessary in years to come for there to be a subsequent pay equity claim. My sense, and the way in which the pay equity bill that I introduced in 2017 was written, was that that not be the case, that that would be a very, very rare exception. But the framework for achieving equity was a singular event—with a pretty big price tag, but, nevertheless, that was it. That’s what I believed and my Government in 2017 believed we were doing with the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Act that we are amending tonight. Indeed, it would have been, had the Labour Government done what was intended, which was to actually get a framework in place for bargaining for increases past June 2022, and they didn’t.

As my colleague and friend Nicola Grigg said, not one of the 1,900 staff at the Ministry of Health put a diary note in the calendar and said, “You know what, in 2019 or 2020 we better get around the bargaining table.” No one in the Ministry of Health was actually aware of and planning to do just that, and I find that extraordinary in the extreme. Actually, the unions have probably let their members down too—I say that gently but firmly—until the Aged Care Association actually approached the ministry and the Minister last year, as was described by Dr Reti in his first reading speech.

Clearly, there wasn’t enough time. We were talking weeks, not years, to get to bargain, and we know that these things are very complicated, with multi-employers and a number of variables. There wasn’t a show of being able to get that sorted before this bill expired. So to kick the can down the road for another year and a half, after a five-year hiatus where the Government did nothing, really leaves a sour taste in my mouth and, certainly, in the 61,000 workers who are not being well-enough remunerated by this piece of legislation. It’s going to leave the business owners and the not-for-profits in that sector, frankly, mildly terrified, if Penny Simmonds’ calculation of one organisation is even remotely correct—and I think it’s pretty damn accurate, frankly—that the funding envelope to give effect to this piece of legislation will not be enough to cover even the wage increases, much less the other cost increases and the deficits that the aged-care sector are already carrying.

That is going to be the test over the next weeks and months, and, boy, we will hear about it. My colleagues and I have got good connections into the aged-care sector. We understand it. We care about it. We’re listening to it, and we will highlight, if we’re right—and I really hope we’re not—the degree to which the Government has underfunded this piece of legislation. We just don’t know. We are literally flying blind, despite the Minister’s best efforts to quantify the financial impact of this on the Crown, on the taxpayer, and on the providers. We know easily what it’s going to be for the workers, because that’s set in black-letter law, and they won’t be happy. I fear that nobody will, and that’s what happens when bad law is rushed through without good process—in fact, without any process. So we’ve done our best to highlight these issues tonight. I regret we’re having to do it. We do support it, reluctantly.

My last comment is actually to the Greens. There’s been in the past, as I mentioned earlier, from time to time a situation where the Greens will abstain. I respect the fact that they oppose this bill, even though they support care and support workers. I get where they’re coming from, and we nearly did the same. But we will support it, and we look forward to seeing what happens next.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Dr ANAE NERU LEAVASA (Labour—Takanini): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to support this bill, the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill. I thank the Minister, Andrew Little, for his responses during the committee stage. I also want to confirm there is a ministerial group that oversees employment relations—that is the Ministerial Group on State Sector Relations (MOGSSR). So I am happy with everything. I commend this bill to the House.

PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Well that caught me a little bit unawares, Dr Anae, Ha, ha! I rise somewhat reluctantly again for I don’t know how many times tonight on this to speak in support of the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill. A name that, actually, we did spend some time on because, as my colleague the Hon Michael Woodhouse pointed out over and over, the pay equity bit of it was done by the National Government back in 2017 with the $2 billion pay out. And so, in fact, this time there is no pay equity component to it. And the other thing that, actually, I thought was missing from this title was that these workers really are caregivers. They are caregivers to our most vulnerable, and I’m not sure that “support workers” does justice in describing them.

We have talked about the five years, and quite frankly this has been sloppy and shoddy, and I’m sure there are a few backbenchers over there hanging their heads in embarrassment over this. It should not have been five years sitting abeyance like this. There is a thing called “bring up” in your Outlook; you might want to investigate how to use bring up so that this doesn’t happen again, because it should have been a simple process. In fact, if I was going to borrow some words that we frequently hear come out of Minister Little’s mouth, it would be “five years of neglect—five years of neglect.” So perhaps just reflect on that a little bit: the five years of neglect that did not get on to normalising a bargaining process for these care workers, these support workers who deserved to have a greater level of certainty. And it beggars belief that a health ministry, a Government, and unions didn’t bring this up; it actually took the employers, the aged-care sector, to bring this up. So there must be some pretty embarrassed people around, thinking, “How could this possibly happen?” And I said it right at the start. I shook my head as a new MP, how astonishing it could possibly be that this could happen.

So as we’ve been moving through this bill, I’ve been reflecting on the associations that I have with these care workers across a range of areas that I’m involved with. I think of all the care workers in the aged-care sector. And look, we’ve canvassed how much that sector is suffering at the moment, and I’ll come back to that a little later, but also I reflect on the care workers that we see in a number of the disabled residential facilities and the wonderful work that many of the care workers do there. I want to particularly acknowledge the ones that I had a lot to do with at Bainfield Park in Invercargill—an absolutely fabulous residential facility for people with disabilities. I just want to acknowledge the wonderful work that they and their staff do. But I also think of all those that go into homes all around the country where there are people suffering from different frailties, from disabilities, from injuries, from getting older, and they require the support of these care workers and they are under tremendous pressure, often getting from one place to another. I’ve seen them take time to have a chat and do a little bit more than just the caregiving role but actually extend some friendship and some much needed companionship to the people that they are working for.

And so it really is important. I know there’s been somewhat glib comments made about being the champions of the workers, but I hope there isn’t anyone in this House that isn’t the champion of our care workers in this country. They do a marvellous job under really trying circumstances. So I guess that’s where I have some real concerns at how disrespectful this process has been to them. The process has been disrespectful—the fact that they have not had any say in the process, they have been given or imposed a settlement of 4.6 percent and we’ve all canvassed how that is well below the inflation rate. So these workers that we’ve acknowledged are at the lower end of the pay rates, they have been given less than inflation rates, and that has got to be a concern. I am at a loss as to why a Labour Government would do that to these workers when the hard work was done back in 2017 by the National Government, when the large amount, the $2 billion, was put in to get that pay equity.

The other thing that I’m really concerned about is the impact on the aged-care sector. So our aged-care sector is on its knees at the moment, whether this Government wants to recognise that or not. A number of us have been liaising on various occasions with our individual aged-care providers, but collectively my colleague Joseph Mooney and the Hon Michael Woodhouse have spent time with this sector, and they are seriously in trouble in terms of their staffing and being able to provide the services that they need.

Now, they face all sorts of increases in their costs, just as households have: so increases in their power bills, increases in the cost of running their vans, the diesel and the petrol for their vans, increases in food, increases in medical supplies, maintenance of their facilities. So they’ve had all these increases and they’ve been given a 1.9 percent increase by this Government—1.9 percent. And I’m not sure how much more this Government thinks they can squeeze blood out of that stone, because what we’re hearing is that this sector is on its knees. We’re hearing big providers that have been providing these services for 100 years are running significant deficits—$1 million deficits. So when we couldn’t really get a sense of whether there was going to be more on top of that 1.9 or whether, in fact, the Minister thinks that 1.9 can cope with this increase of 4.6 percent for what makes up the bulk of their workforce—whether he thinks they can cope with that—or whether, in fact, those providers are going to have to go back and redo their budgets and try and squeeze something more out somewhere else to stop their deficit blowing out any further.

So I think this Government, by its five years of neglect, have been disrespectful and have put those workers, those caregivers in a position where they are going to have absolutely no say over whether they accept their 4.6 percent or not, and they are going to put all those employers who have a workforce made up predominantly of care workers in a position where they thought they were facing a deficit because they’d been given so much less than inflation but they’re now going to be facing an even greater deficit. So sloppy, shoddy, and having implications across workers, employers, whole sectors. There should be an awful lot of heads being hung low over that side of the House. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

SARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’ll tell you what I think is disrespectful: dragging Kristine Bartlett to the Supreme Court to actually put a clause into a bill in 2017 that prevented workers for five long years from bringing genuine pay equity claims, which, fortunately, expires on 30 June. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon Member: Is that it?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order!

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green) (remote): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. It’s been quite a journey this evening, listening to—I think all members from across the House recognise the value of care and support workers and the amazing contributions that they make to the long-term wellbeing of our families, our communities, and our country as a whole. This takes me back a bit to the rhetoric in 2020—during the pandemic—where instead of guaranteeing livable wages for all essential workers we kind of just said, “Thank you”. I think we need to do far more than a 70c increase, effectively.

Throughout the process, what I heard was both the National Party and ACT trying to trash the Government over the process while at the same time not really committing to further wage increases for care workers. And at the same time, we have the Labour Party who was rightfully calling out the National Party for putting so many of these workers—back in 2017, and prior to that—through an arduous process in terms of getting that $2 billion pay increase.

I think the reason we put in a tabled amendment to lift those wages of support workers was effectively to recognise that we needed to maintain the value of the 2017 settlement while pay equity is negotiated, as it was based on the same calculations that were used to establish the rates in 2017. This would have basically seen an increase of around $7 instead of what we’re seeing, which is around 70c. I think if we’re all going to be speaking about the amazing value and the contributions that care and support workers make, I would have liked to see parties across the House support this tabled amendment, which by the way—and this particularly goes to my Labour colleagues—this is the approach that has been endorsed by unions such as the Public Service Association, E tū, and New Zealand Nurses Organisation members and representatives.

The truth is that care and support workers deserve so much better than the pay rates that Labour is pushing. We should have not been in a situation where the Government is rushing through legislation at the last minute, effectively silencing caregiver and community voices just to increase their pay by a paltry amount. Unions have said that if the same rate calculations were used today as were used in the historic Kristine Bartlett 2017 settlement, wages would be around—again, as I said earlier—$7 higher. So it just feels like exploitation, effectively, and this is why the Green Party cannot be voting for the bill as it is. We would have loved to vote for a bill that had reflected the fight of so many people, you know, all the way to 2017. And it is worth noting that the workers who will disproportionately be impacted will be Pasifika, Māori, and migrant women.

During the committee of the whole House, in fact, I was asking the Minister about the repercussions that he thinks this will have on migrant workers and the migrant women who are facing exploitation because many are on employer-bound visas. But the workers who effectively are having an exemption carved out when they’re coming in to being paid the median wage so they can work as support workers—and I was surprised at the Minister not understanding the implications of how this plays and interacts with the immigration system, because the immigration system itself identified that support workers aren’t paid enough. Despite the Government’s intent of having a so-called high-skill, high-wage workforce, we are accepting that we’re going to continue paying our support workers below the median wage, and below the aims that other Government departments are effectively trying to get in terms of the types of workers that we’re bringing in.

So if we want to stop our support workers from leaving their jobs overburdened, tired, exhausted, and with ill physical and mental health, as a result of those working conditions, having higher pay rates would have been an excellent start to retain that workforce and address some of those shortfalls that we have that are creating massive pressure on the support workers that are out there at the moment. So again, the Green Party is committed to achieving genuine pay equity for support workers as soon as possible, and we will continue fighting for more substantive increases.

I wanted to, lastly, reflect on some of the comments that the Minister made during committee of the whole House when I was asking him about why he didn’t support our amendment. And one of the things that he said at the time was that fair pay agreements would hopefully help bring those workers to a much higher pay rate. And I think it’s worth basically noting, though, that fair pay agreements are a long-term fix to prevent pay equity gains eroding after pay resettlements are all sorted, not really [Audio issue] of sorting pay equity settlements. So I just don’t buy it that we can sort of hope that in many months’ time maybe, potentially, pay agreements will lift those wages. We have an opportunity right now to lift the wages of support workers to a level that reflected their struggle back in 2017.

So again, I’m really, really disappointed in the Labour Government for bringing in what I think is insufficient and a smack in the face for the many workers who’ve worked so hard to address this. I also noted that the Minister talked about revenue considerations as one of the barriers for not sort of putting the rates higher. And I want to say that the Green Party remains the only party with a credible revenue plan. So, you know, we really want Labour to adopt some of our ideas regarding tax reform so that they cannot keep using this issue of revenue as a barrier to guaranteeing workers the pay that they deserve. We look forward to pushing our Labour colleagues to do better and to genuinely be a movement for the working class. Kia ora.

SIMON COURT (ACT): ACT supports the working class. We support carer support workers to get a decent wage. What we don’t support is a Government majority—the Labour Government, the Labour Party—legislating wage rates in the House and embedding them in statute. That’s the kind of thing that Third World, tin-pot democracies that we regard ourselves as being far ahead of—that’s the kind of thing that goes on in countries that New Zealand would say, “We never want to be like them.” In fact, we don’t want to be like countries that don’t live up to our standard of democracy, potentially like Fiji when they had a coup. We’d ostracised them for a decade.

But what this Government has done is embedded in legislation wage rates, and that’s because rather than focus on fixing real problems with delivering services to the most vulnerable people—because that’s what carer support workers do. They look after people who have dementia. They look after people in aged-care homes, nearing the end of their life, and they look after people in families who have children or adult family members with disabilities. So these workers who ACT supports do a very important job, but it’s completely inappropriate to be legislating for their pay rates.

Now, there are some members of the Government ruling party—of the ruling party—who would like no more than to go around the country legislating wage and salary rates for all kinds of roles. They call those “fair pay agreements”—fair pay agreements. Now, imagine every time a sector, 1,000 workers or 10 percent of a workforce, wanted to get a pay settlement, a fair pay agreement—this is what they’d get. It would be a legislated process to deliver a wage settlement.

So if we think about the people who need carer support, those people with physical and intellectual disabilities, those people who are elderly and need care, and the type of people who’d care for them—well, I mean, this is the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Bill, and it recognised that there was a case that primarily women who worked in a sector were paid less, and the evidence was given that in fact that was because it was mostly women who worked in this sector. Well, it’s now 2022. This legislation has been around for over half a decade, and what we know about this sector is that, actually, it takes all types of people to look after all types of people.

I have a family member with a disability, a young man, and he actually prefers blokes to look after him. He prefers blokes to take him and do blokey things, to be there with him after school, to get the hammer and nails out and to fix things and make things. So while this is a pay equity settlements amendment bill that essentially, according to the Government, targets a gender disparity, actually what this bill doesn’t recognise is that it takes all types to care for all types of people.

Now, my colleague Karen Chhour has visited over seven aged-care facilities recently, and what the operators told her was that it’s not just the pay; it’s also all the other things that are cramming down on this sector. So there’ll be a pay rise that’ll go through, a legislated pay rise will go through—4.9 percent. The sector has been given a 1.9 percent uplift in their operating allowance by the Government. But if you think about all of the other things affecting them—the cost of feeding residents in aged-care facilities, the cost of taking them to activities in vans and buses, the cost of energy, electricity, gas, and everything else—this is going to impose an additional cost on the sector which they’re not funded for.

They’re actually struggling to get workers. Like, 4.9 percent isn’t really the problem. The problem is that it’s very, very difficult for people to come to New Zealand, to immigrate to New Zealand, to work in roles like carer support which are lower waged. They’re lower paid. That’s because these roles don’t require a significant level of qualification. In many cases, the experience required is minimal. The training is delivered on the job. In fact, they’re roles where actually some of the physical requirements of the job can be quite unpleasant. So these roles aren’t that desirable.

Now, if the sector was able to pay people a lot more—and look, I’ve worked in the waste industry. I know what it’s like to go to a site, to work at a rubbish tip, to work in hazardous environments wearing a whole lot of personal protective equipment, where things don’t smell that great, and you’d have to say that, actually, working in some facilities that care for people would have some similarities to that. Now, that’s not to say that those workers aren’t valued, because they are. But in fact, those roles are just not as desirable as other roles in society which people do aspire to become qualified at and to move on.

In fact, a lot of these roles have a high degree of flexibility. Caring for people is sometimes only a few hours at the beginning or end of the day or a few hours on a weekend to give a family respite, particularly if they have a child or a person in their family with a disability. So one of the reasons that this sector is not particularly well paid is because, actually, there is a high degree of flexibility and it’s very, very difficult in some cases to deliver a career path that would lead to the typical progression in wages and salaries.

But I want to come back to the problem with the bill. The main problem with the bill is that it legislates wage rates by statute. It’s completely unacceptable to ACT to take that approach. However, because the Government has left the sector with no choice and these workers otherwise would be left in limbo from 30 June, ACT will reluctantly support this bill while we ask the Government to resolve this once and for all, to give the responsibility back to the sector that employs support workers and to the workers themselves to negotiate an enduring settlement that actually means that the Government in future will not need to extend this beyond the end of 2023.

Dr GAURAV SHARMA (Labour—Hamilton West): It is a pleasure to take a call, for the third time, on the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill, for the third reading. I just want to say it’s been interesting hearing all sides of the conversation. I think it is an important bill that helps plug some of the gaps that are remaining from the original issue, and I would like commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

NICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I will say with some conviction that it is a pleasure to take a call on the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill, but isn’t it a shame we’ve found ourselves here?

I would just like to correct for the record this evening that there’s been a number of assertions from the Government benches that this was a dreadful bill from the outset, designed by the former National Government. Actually, our piece of legislation was a significant correction to decades of underpayment of a female dominated workforce. But then you have to ask yourself the question: why have these women had to come to the table again? Where was the Government? It has had five long years to get this sorted and at the eleventh hour they finally come to the table, have a pseudo discussion, from what I understand, with the unions and couldn’t reach an agreement, so they slam it through the House this evening under urgency.

When a cost of living crisis is biting as hard as it is at the moment, I would contend that the 2017 settlement that meant about $100 extra a week for so many, and about $5,000 a year, made a real difference. Fast forward five years at a time when we’ve got inflation running at 6.9 percent, petrol $3 a litre, rents up 150 bucks a week—back then, that settlement actually meant a lot. It was significant. But here we are eight days out from the original piece of legislation expiring and we are coming to the realisation that the appropriation set aside for this 4.6 percent might not quite cover that.

I think it was about seven times the Minister was questioned this evening as to what that fiscal envelope actually looked like and we eventually, after seven questions, got a roundabout figure of about $358 million. But the very clever colleagues of mine—you know, those who have been chief executive officers of major institutions and those who have been chief financial officers of major institutions, and the Hon Michael Woodhouse, who was a part of the negotiation team of the original settlement—came to the conclusion that it ain’t going to be enough. It ain’t going to cut the mustard, which, once again raises the question: instead of keeping its eye on the ball, instead of staying abreast of the legislative agenda, ensuring everything was functioning as it should be, the Government contents itself with making hollow empty promises about how much they care and how much we should all be kind, when actually when it comes to the tangible work, when it comes to the effort of creating an amendment bill that will make a meaningful difference, it has fallen short.

As a number of people have mentioned this evening, while it is the care workers themselves who are deeply, gravely impacted by this and it is them and their needs and their welfare that we must hold to the fore as the most important issues that we must deal with, they in turn also impact the public, those who need to be cared for. Everybody’s got a personal story. Myself, I have a 91-year-old grandmother, who just recently suffered one too many falls. She can no longer live independently. So whilst the family waits to get her into a cared-living arrangement, she’s sitting in the Hastings hospital. She’s been there for three weeks. She’s taking up a bed that someone from the public who’s really sick could use, all because the aged residential care cannot provide the staffing to care for her. That is just one example.

I’m just one person of the 5 million in this country who can relate a story like that. In my own patch in Selwyn, there are two aged-care facilities who have been shut since the Omicron outbreak. In Leeston, the Ellesmere Hospital had 12 beds for aged care. The Darfield Hospital had 10 for aged care. They have been shut because the Canterbury District Health Board cannot staff them.

Now, we’ve seen Andrew Little roaring across the Chamber this evening, claiming that Labour is the party of the worker and Labour is passing laws to look after the worker, but actually it was National’s law in 2017 that set this motion in train. Anything that that Minister has said to degrade and diminish the National Party’s legislation is just a diversionary tactic.

The Labour Government has dragged the chain on this. They’ve had five years to negotiate whatever agreement they wanted. It has taken until today, eight days out, to drag it through the House under urgency to come up with a substandard deal.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I call Glen Bennett—five minutes.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): I’m grateful to be part of the Labour Party, which is the party of the working people; I’m grateful to have a Minister of Health who is exceptional; and I’m grateful for the Minister of Health, Andrew Little, for bringing this piece of legislation to this House. On behalf the working people, I commend this bill to the House.

WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour—Northland): I commend this bill to the House.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. You probably can’t hear from the background, but it’s that time of the evening when we start to get into the flow of this bill. It’s an absolute pleasure to stand to rise on behalf of the National Party and as the member of Parliament for the mighty North Shore to do the third and final reading in regards to the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill.

It has been a process this evening in order to pass through elements of this bill under urgency; a process, I must say, that’s been more comprehensive on the Opposition side than this Government has done in the five long years that it should have utilised in order to avoid us even standing here this evening. But the role that we’ve had to do under urgency is to try and fulfil the fact that actually no feedback, no select committee process, and no opportunity or ability for voices to be heard in regards to feedback of this legislation has been possible. That’s a great shame, because we’ve talked about that this evening, in terms of the reality of where we are because of a failure to take the right action much earlier on in the piece.

I refer to the departmental disclosure statement which referred, quite clearly, under section 3.6, that the consultation or the discussions with the parties only occurred between 3 May 2022 and 26 May 2022. And, of course, we are on 22 June, and the original legislation that was put in place by a National-led Government back in 2017 under what was, at that point, a pragmatic solution—actually quite a quantum step change in terms of a reset required, and a significant injection, between 15 and 50 percent pay increases for this critical workforce, a reset piece of legislation that closed the gap, was put in play. As a result, it provided the framework and the runway, I guess, for the future Government to be able to use the time that they had, the five-year time period in which the bill was set up before it was to be repealed, to actually put in place a sustainable solution in regards to a pay discussion settlement between that workforce. But the great shame is that that process has not occurred, and, as a result, instead of that all being done and dusted, and, actually, the workforce and this critical workforce being able to have the ability to actually enter into those negotiations and do all that, we’re now, basically, just looking to extend this by another 18 months. That is a great shame because there was an opportunity to turn this around, but that opportunity has been right and royally squandered by this Government, and that is a disappointment.

It was interesting in the committee stage that we went through—and I do acknowledge and I do often enjoy, a little bit, as much as I do enjoy that, the interaction between Minister Little and that on aspects around health, genuinely. Out of some Ministers, when you ask questions, the responses are generally quite mixed, but I do recognise that the Minister generally does engage in a way in which provides responses—after a while, I must say—this evening. So he can be a little bit swifter in terms of getting to the point, but after seven attempts, valiantly we got him there in the end. But, I think that is important because we didn’t have a process. For those hundreds of thousands of people at home watching this this evening, we didn’t have a full and comprehensive process in terms of feedback. So it is important in terms of our democracy to go through this process.

I guess the element, and why we’re talking about this bill, is to recognise that large and significant healthcare workforce that this bill is intending to deal with, around their pay and compensation aspects. That workforce has been touched on, and it’s been interesting to hear some personal stories of my colleagues on this side. We all have examples in our lives of members of our broader family that are involved with, and are cared for by, these care and support workers. They do an absolutely tremendous job, under what are often difficult circumstances.

I have had the pleasure, and still do when I am out on an ambulance doing a shift, to go into rest homes quite regularly. As you can imagine, there’s a pretty high level of work load in that role, and often the interaction in that role is with those care workers and support workers. I take my hat off in terms of what they do in often what are hugely challenging, difficult circumstances and environments where, with workforce shortages, the burden and the pressure of that role on those individuals is very, very high. They are often not necessarily equipped particularly—you know, we talk about these aged-care facilities that are all gloss, the nice flash ones you see on TV, but the reality is that that is a very small percentage of the aged-care sector. Many are voluntarily organisationally led. They are significantly struggling around fiscal elements because of the funding model, and not only the funding model in regards to their workforce, which is what we were trying to get out of the Minister tonight, which is: does the funding envelope for this bill actually reflect the true cost burden that goes on to those entities as a result of this change. That’s important, because there’s a whole lot of other deficits or costs that that sector faces that they just simply cannot afford—the fact that they have to therefore absorb out of their other baseline funding the costs regarding increases in staff salaries.

As we know, and we’ve canvassed 70 percent of these entities, total expenditure budgets relate to staff costs, and that is a considerable element, and that is in this environment, with the impact of inflation, the impact of attractive opportunities within other aspects of the sector, or at the moment offshore primarily. The ability to retain this such important workforce is a significant challenge. So the importance of this bill in order to be able to provide some level of certainty and stability in terms of the pay of those critical elements of our health workforce is an element that I think we should have done better, and we still must do better in regards to the way in which we treat them, because trust and confidence in terms of this workforce is so important. You can thrash and stretch and take for granted a little bit a workforce, but, at the end of the day, that can only take them so far, and you cannot continue to sustain that level of pressure without expecting and not being surprised that they’re going to end up leaving the workforce, potentially not go into other employment or actually leave New Zealand full stop. So we must get our healthcare workforce and the way in which we retain that workforce in this country sorted. We’ve been raising this as an issue pretty much since I’ve been in this House, in regards to the challenges, and we haven’t seen the sustainable change in plans that we should have had, which would in part have avoided where we are this evening.

I think the other aspect just to recognise is that we have sort of been a little bit flippant around the fact that this wasn’t thought of until a month out from where we are today, but that’s the reality. You sort of reflect on this and you go, “Surely not. Surely that can’t be right.” I can imagine people at home going, “That can’t be right.” But that is the reality of where we are, and we’ve talked about and evidenced it this evening, and that’s a great shame. Whether it’s the fact that officials, or whatever, have been distracted by other aspects, at the end of the day Kiwis want accountability from their Government, they want accountability for delivery, they want accountability from their Ministers, and they just want to see that, when someone says they’re going to get something done, they’re going to get it done. The challenge here, and what we’ve seen through this bill, is that the reality is that we’ve got a Government that makes a lot of promises, does not have ability to deliver, and as a result someone pays the cost, and the cost in this example is going to be paid by some of the most vulnerable workforce. I commend this bill to the House.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Ngā mihi o te tau hou Māori. Haere mai nei ki tēnei Whare. A short call from me. This bill is a simple, straightforward one that ensures that, while the enduring solution that we need is progressed, our support workers don’t move backward. And it’s been a pleasure to hear the contributions of the members around the House tonight, engaging with the technical detail of this bill. It’s been a pleasure listening to a Minister who is engaged with that detail, has answered the questions, and has thoroughly engaged with this House’s processes, and I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 109

New Zealand Labour 65; New Zealand National 32; ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Maori 2.

Noes 10

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Commerce (Grocery Sector Covenants) Amendment Bill.

Bills

Commerce (Grocery Sector Covenants) Amendment Bill

In Committee

Part 1 Amendment to Part 2 of Act (which relates to restrictive trade practices)

CHAIRPERSON (Ian McKelvie): Members, the House is in committee on the Commerce (Grocery Sector Covenants) Amendment Bill. Members, we now come to Part 1. This is the debate on clause 4—“Amendment to Part 2 of the Act, (which relates to restrictive trade practices)”. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Mr Chair, we meet again! I’m very pleased to open proceedings on the Commerce (Grocery Sector Covenants) Amendment Bill. It’s an important portfolio commitment for me and for the Government.

This bill responds to the Government’s commitment to address the increasing costs of living facing New Zealanders. Groceries are an essential purchase and a major expense for most New Zealand households. Competition is a key driver of the price, quality, and range of food and groceries offered in New Zealand. The Commerce Commission found that both Foodstuffs and Woolworths New Zealand were using restrictive covenants on land and exclusivity covenants on leases to impede access to sites by other grocery retail stores. The covenants reduce competition by restricting the scope of activities that can take place on a plot of land or within a mall or shopping centre. The bill amends the Commerce Act 1986 to directly prohibit such covenants and make existing covenants unenforceable.

I’d like to thank the EDSI committee—the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee—for considering the bill, and I’d also like to thank everyone who made submissions on the bill. I did specifically mention in my second reading speech Jamie Strange as the chair, and Andrew Bayly as the Opposition lead, for the constructive way they and everybody on that committee worked together to progress this bill.

The bill directly prohibits covenants that the Commerce Commission’s market study identified as limiting the availability of land or sites for grocery store development, and it does this by deeming such covenants to contravene existing provisions in sections 27 and 28 of the Commerce Act. The effect of this is to make such covenants or provisions unlawful and unenforceable. This improves on the general prohibition in section 28 of the Act by avoiding the need for complex analysis of the covenant’s impact on competition in the relevant market. The covenants described by the bill would instead be presumed to be anti-competitive.

The restrictive covenants and exclusivity provisions which the bill applies are set out in the new section 28A, inserted by clause 4. There are, effectively, two requirements: (1) that the covenant or other provision is one in which a designated grocery retailer has an interest as defined by section 28A(5); (2) that the covenant or other provision has the purpose, effect, or likely effect of impeding use of the land or site as a retail store by an existing or new competitor.

Initially, the bill will apply to Foodstuffs North Island Ltd, Foodstuffs South Island Ltd, and Woolworths New Zealand Ltd. The bill does this by defining these companies as “designated grocery retailers”. It also includes a provision for other grocery retailers to be designated in the future by Order in Council.

The committee recommended that the bill be passed with amendments. These amendments are consistent with the original policy of the bill but respond to concerns raised in submissions as well as addressing technical issues. The committee recommended several changes to the scope of the covenants that the bill would prohibit, including amending the definition of an “exclusivity covenant” to explicitly include rights of first refusals that a landlord might give a supermarket. This might include a first option to lease or purchase a new site when it becomes vacant. These provisions can have an exclusionary effect.

The committee recommended extending section 28A to include other provisions in a lease or agreements outside the lease or land covenant that may contribute to a purpose or effect of impeding the use of a site by other retailers. It also recommended broadening the scope of retailers that might be affected by the covenants the bill prohibits to include non-grocery retail stores, which may compete with a designated grocery retailer.

The committee also recommended creating a more streamlined process for designated grocery retailers to voluntarily remove or modify restrictive covenants affected by the bill from a title of land. I endorse all of the committee’s recommended changes and note again for the record that the committee has added value to the bill as it stands.

I want to speak just to the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that’s come forward, to speak a little about that. The committee recommended a change, but were restricted in scope. But, instead, a Government SOP has been brought forward that gives effect to the intention of the committee. So the committee recommended creating a new power for the Commerce Commission to proactively require designated grocery retailers to supply information on demand about covenants or other contractual arrangements relating to this bill. The recommendation was unanimously agreed by the committee, but was not included in the bill, because, in the time available, it was not possible to scope the provision. I’ve tabled a Supplementary Order Paper under Standing Order 315 to give effect to the recommendation of the committee.

The SOP will enable the commission to obtain any contracts, arrangements, or understandings to which new section 28A might apply, including information relating to the renegotiation of those arrangements. The section provides that this information may be used to assess compliance with specified provisions in both the Commerce Act and Fair Trading Act relating to anti-competitive conduct and unfair conduct. These amendments replace the new monitoring function that currently appears as new section 28A(3A) in clause 4. It will enable the commission to proactively monitor the major grocery retailers’ activities in relation to covenants and assess their back compliance.

And finally, the committee also raised concerns that a designated grocery retailer may be able to make unreasonable claims for compensation or damages from their landlord because of the bill making exclusivity covenants in their lease unenforceable. Section 89 of the Commerce Act has the potential to facilitate a process of renegotiating the lease, if this is appropriate, to reflect actual losses incurred by the supermarket from a greater exposure to competition in the area. The committee’s concern, as I understand it, was about landlords having little protection against the potential for supermarkets to abuse this process. There are general provisions in contract law, the Commerce Act, and the Fair Trading Act, which prohibit the kinds of behaviours the committee was concerned about—for example, undue influence, coercion, or unconscionable conduct. I consider that these provisions should provide protection to mall and shopping centre owners. I also consider that the Government SOP will help mitigate some of the concerns by giving the commission the ability to actively monitor—which was a point that I had conversations with both Jamie Strange and Andrew Bayly on—these arrangements to assist compliance with both Acts. And with those introductory comments, I turn it over to the committee for wider discussion.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a pleasure to be talking in the committee of the whole House stage of this bill. I thank the Minister for giving a fulsome introduction, which is very useful. I just want to reiterate that we find ourselves in the situation where New Zealanders are facing a huge cost of living crisis, and this is a way of trying to deal with this issue—certainly with the cost of buying groceries. That’s why National is supporting this bill.

But I just want to labour, before I get into the actual details of the bill, that this is but one of many aspects that need to be put in place if the Government is serious about making sure that the price of groceries, and living costs in general, are reduced over time, because without effective monitoring, without a proper regulator, and without wholesale access being opened up—all those other aspects that the Commerce Commission talked about—then this one small portion, which deals with what grocery retailers have been doing in respect of their land rights, is a small and significant, but certainly by no means comprehensive, solution in terms of reducing grocery prices over time.

So with that sort of caveat, I just do want to turn to Supplementary Order Paper 174 that the Minister has tabled. I’m grateful that he acknowledged that it was in response to the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee’s views of the issue of making sure that what is meant to happen actually happens. Of course, the issue we’ve got is that we don’t quite know what the future regulatory body that’s going to oversee the grocery trade is. The Government is talking about establishing a grocery regulator and it says it’s moving at pace. We don’t—and certainly didn’t at the select committee stage when we were deliberating on this bill before it came back into the House—have access or know anything about the proposed grocery regulator, if that’s indeed going to be the option that the Government puts forward in due course. But we did want to make sure that there was a mechanism for active and proactive monitoring of the changes proposed, particularly around new section 28A, inserted by clause 4.

So the first thing I just want to ask around the rules here is that we had a couple of concerns at the select committee stage. The first one is that some complaint could be laid at the door of the Commerce Commission for actually allowing many of these lease arrangements being put in place. So we’re now trying to deal with something that has happened in the past, and so it gives rise to whether, in fact, the Commerce Commission is capable of actually adequately enforcing this. So I’m so glad that the Supplementary Order Paper gives the Commerce Commission the right to seek information—and as the Minister said—relating to any contract, arrangement, understanding, or covenant, including the process relating to the negotiation or renegotiation of the contract, arrangement, understanding, or covenant.

So my first question is—I just want the Minister to be absolutely clear with the House that this is going to be a proactive operation of the Commerce Commission, because, traditionally, the Commerce Commissions acts in a reactive way—i.e., if someone makes a complaint, then they respond. What the select committee was very clear about, and wants to make sure that the Minister shares this understanding and makes sure that we’re clear in the House what the intent of this is, is that the Commerce Commission will be proactive in monitoring this.

Secondly, the other issue that we talked about was the issue of resourcing of the Commerce Commission. Has and will the Government provide sufficient funding or ensure that the Commerce Commission has sufficient resourcing to actually proactively monitor this? One is intent and the second one deals with capability. We want to make sure, and I’d be very keen for the Minister to be absolutely clear with the House, if he can tonight, in the time we’ve got left, as to whether, in fact, that is right on both counts.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members, the time has come for me to report progress.

Progress to be reported.

House resumed.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Mr Speaker, the committee has considered the Commerce (Grocery Sector Covenants) Amendment Bill and reports progress. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): This bill is set down for further consideration in committee next sitting day. Members, the House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow.

The House adjourned at 9.57 p.m.