SUE BRADFORD (Green) : I move, That the Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. For too long young workers in this country have been underpaid and devalued. When I started work on this bill just after the 2005 election, I was motivated by anger at the unfairness of the way in which 16 and 17-year-old workers were paid less for doing the same job simply because of their age, and also by a broader concern at the way in which so many older people in this country disrespect the young. It is a disrespect that the pay differential simply serves to magnify.

The bill we are passing today goes some way towards remedying both these problems, and I am grateful for the support the Green Party found from enough parties in this House to see the bill through. I know that it has been a tough call for MPs in some parties to see their way clear to supporting the elimination of age-based employment discrimination, but at least we have got there, almost. I am hopeful that in a few years’ time equal pay for equal work on the basis of age will not be seen as the radical notion some people seem to see it as today.

I am, of course, sorry that the clarity of my original purpose—to completely remove youth rates for 16 and 17-year-olds—has been watered down, but the compromise we have ended up with still marks a huge improvement on the status quo. From 1 April 2008, 16 and 17-year-old workers will have to be paid the minimum adult wage once they have completed 3 months or 200 hours of work with any employer, whichever period is the shorter. If they are supervising or training other workers, then they will have to be paid the adult wage, full stop.

The new entrants wage for the first 3 months or 200 hours will still be paid at 80 percent of the adult rate. Personally, I think this is superfluous. By the age of 16 many young people in our country have already been in the paid workforce for some time—for months, if not for years. Even if they have not, every person who is new on the job needs time to learn the ropes and to be oriented to the new workplace, whether they are 16, 25, or 60.

However, although the Greens do not support the new entrants wage concept, we do accept the realities of political compromise, and I am grateful to the Labour Party, New Zealand First, United Future, Jim Anderton, and Taito Phillip Field for helping to get the bill this far. I would also particularly acknowledge Māori Party members, who are opposing the bill in its amended form, but who are in fact its fiercest supporters. I am grateful for the Māori Party’s unflinching and uncompromising support for the bill as originally conceived rather than in its watered-down version, and I hope that one day their party and ours, and others, will join in going the whole way in abolishing youth rates altogether.

This bill, even as it was originally drafted, was a compromise all along. Right from the start I was criticised in some quarters—and rightfully so—for putting up a bill that did not do away with age discrimination altogether but maintained it for workers under 16. There were two main reasons why I did not take the bill down that path. The first was pragmatic. I did not think a bill that did that would have had any chance of succeeding in this Parliament, and I think that events have proved that to be so.

The second reason was that although I do not support wage discrimination on the basis of age for under-16-year-olds, I do think we need some serious thinking and discussion in this country around the issues of children and young people in paid work. At what age should our children enter the paid workforce? Do we think that some jobs are OK at certain ages and some are not? On what basis do we make that decision? Why are some jobs seen to be worth less than others? Where do we draw which line? How do we stop some children being exploited in basically slave labour conditions? That is something that still happens here, to which we as a society remain almost completely blind.

I hope that the debate around this bill will help trigger serious consideration of these issues by the Government, other political parties, trade unions, employers, churches, and non-governmental organisations. In the end, I hope we will have a society that recognises that if someone is doing an adult job on an adult job description, then that person should get adult wages. We must also protect our children from having to go out to work too young, or from working in conditions or for wages that are untenable by anyone’s standards.

I sometimes cringe when I hear human rights groups and people of goodwill rightfully rail against slave child labour in other countries, while not acknowledging the increasing use of child labour, as defined by the International Labour Organization, that is occurring here. Addressing this issue will take more than a member’s bill, and I hope that the Minister of Labour takes up this issue and includes it as part of the Government’s employment relations work programme. I can assure her that she will have the support of the Green Party if she does.

Now I will make a particular acknowledgment of some of the organisations that did so much to help ensure that this bill got through. Above all, I would like to pay my respects to two particular trade unions, the National Distribution Union and my own union, Unite!, which both put a huge effort in people power and resources into mobilising against discriminatory youth rates. Right from the start both the National Distribution Union and Unite! organised on the job, on the streets, in the union movement, and with MPs to demand an end to unequal pay for young workers. Along with other groups like students associations, the Council of Trade Unions youth union movement, and Radical Youth, they organised some of the loudest and most colourful rallies and demonstrations we have seen on the streets of Auckland and Wellington for some years.

Young workers told their own stories of exploitation, naming and shaming youth rates employers, as well as placing this struggle well and truly within the broader struggle for youth and worker rights. They not only took to the streets, they also came to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and made far more perceptive and intelligent submissions than did some of those people who opposed the bill.

Young workers and their unions also included the issue in their bargaining claims. With some employers, such as Postie Plus and BP, they have succeeded in abolishing youth rates altogether. With others, such as Progressive Enterprises and Restaurant Brands, they have started the process to eliminate youth rates, which I am sure will soon be a total elimination, further assisted by this bill. Beyond this core of support, the Council of Trade Unions and the rest of the union movement pitched in, alongside groups like youth organisations, community law centres, church agencies, the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, the Human Rights Commission, and many others.

I will also make a brief comment on submissions that opposed the bill. I was surprised at the low level of opposition from the business sector. It was as if, in most cases, these submitters went through the motions of opposing the bill without their heart really being in it. In fact, I had to rely on some of the business submissions to negotiate the final compromises to allow the bill to go through. Perhaps I should not have been so surprised by the lack of opposition from that quarter. I have been interested to read a couple of employer polls over the last 2 years that showed the majority of employers in some places do not, in fact, support the continuation of youth rates. Also some major newspaper editorials have come out in full support of the bill.

These business and editorial comments have left the National Party completely exposed on this issue. Its opposition at the Committee stage was, I believe, purely token. The refrain seemed to be: “We do not believe in age-based wage discrimination, but we do not want Parliament to do anything to reduce or eliminate it.” What a cop-out! It is time the National Party turned its back on the knee-jerk, anti-worker attitudes that have infused that party for so long. Those members should, instead, support this and other progressive pro-worker legislation, rather than pandering to the predilections of some of its more reactionary backers.

Finally, I want to comment on the hand grenade that the Ministry of Justice tossed into the select committee proceedings in the form of its New Zealand Bill of Rights Act compliance report. This report stated that the way current regulations that provided for youth rates in the minimum wage could be considered ultra vires—[Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley): The member is just going over the top. I am sorry to interrupt the member.

Hon Tau Henare: What’s wrong with that?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley): I made a ruling, Mr Henare.

Hon Tau Henare: And that was?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley): I am on my feet, I am making a ruling—

Hon Tau Henare: About?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley): Oh look, the member will not argue with me while I am on my feet. The member will leave the Chamber now.

• Hon Tau Henare withdrew from the Chamber.

SUE BRADFORD: Like a hand grenade, that New Zealand Bill of Rights Act compliance report seemed to stun the rest of the select committee, which preferred not to deal with the issues raised in it, regardless of my attempts to put those issues back on the table. I still have a niggle that the compromise reached in this bill may not meet the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act compliance test. However, the amended bill does take us a long way down the path to completely removing discrimination based on age in our Minimum Wage Act.

I am pleased with what we have achieved today. I look forward to the time when youth wages discrimination will disappear completely, not only from the Minimum Wage Act but also from the Human Rights Act, and from every collective and individual employment agreement in this country.

KATE WILKINSON (National) : In speaking to this third reading of the Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill, we appreciate that the purpose is to provide for an adult minimum rate for new entrants, who are defined as being workers who are 16 or 17 and who have completed 3 months or 200 hours of employment, whichever is the shorter. We know that the bill originally started out to abolish youth rates for 16 and 17-year-olds, and then it became amended to provide for this new entrant criteria to “recognise the experience that they have gained” in that “very short time.” That experience is translated simplistically into 3 months or 200 hours of employment, but there is nothing stated about the position, or about the training given and received. In fact, there is no mention at all of the quality of the hours worked.

There is a limitation that the employment be with more than one employer. I still think that it should read “one or more employers”, because it simply does not make sense otherwise. If a young person happens to work for four different employers, doing 100 hours with one, 50 for one, 25 with two, the total is still 200 hours. That assumes that the skills and experience in all four of those jobs are transferable. Furthermore, the 90-days condition is silent, absolutely silent, on how much that work may actually be. Is it 1 day a month for 3 months? Is it full time for 90 days, or part time for 90 days? This is uncertain law, and uncertain law is not good law.

The bill may, indeed, be well-intentioned law, though. In fact, during the second reading debate, Government speakers acknowledged that this legislation is for workers who are vulnerable. Nobody condones the exploitation of vulnerable workers, whatever their age. I do not think there will be much disagreement that all workers, whatever their age, should be valued for the work they perform. But what will this bill actually achieve? Will it prevent and outlaw exploitation of vulnerable workers, or will it be a barrier to young persons getting a job? Will it be a perverse incentive for them to leave school and not complete their education? The Minister herself even acknowledged—and on this I have to agree—that “we do not want to send the message to young people that leaving school early with no qualifications is a good idea.” That is where our agreement ends. The Minister does not think this bill will drive that message. We have concerns that that is exactly what will happen.

I have to say that our view is backed by the research paper recently of Dr Gail Pacheco, and based on her thesis Minimum wages in New Zealand: An empirical inquiry, she says: “Policy-makers must consider the possible long-term harm of a rise in youth minimum wage. Given the option, employers may switch to hiring people with more skills and education or older people with more experience. Older workers, 20 or 25-plus, will be hired because if you’re going to pay workers the same you might as well pay for skill and experience.” What good does it do a young person to know that an employer must pay him or her the adult minimum wage if the fact that he or she must be paid that amount is what keeps him or her from getting a job? This bill, we fear, will be that barrier.

The Gisborne Herald—and I know the honourable member Sue Bradford mentioned some editorials—actually reinforces that view. I quote: “There are some aspects of the proposed move to increase youth wages to the same as adult rates that could be counterproductive. Instead of helping youngsters it could limit their job opportunities. What it boils down to is that the Government would be placing youngsters with little or no work experience in direct competition with people who have many years of work experience, well developed work ethics, and motivation. What employers don’t want is to be forced to pay a young person the same as an older person when they are not providing the same value. A business is only as good as its product. And productivity relies on the input of staff, managers, and owners. They are always on the lookout for people who want to work and bring their own special contribution to the workforce. They don’t need a bill.”

Dr Pacheco also found that where youth rates increase, enrolments at secondary and tertiary education institutions decrease. This bill has the potential to be a perverse incentive, encouraging young people out of the education system and to leave school early. We have already announced our significant trades training policy so that more of our young people can stay engaged in schools. We should be encouraging them to stay in education for as long as possible.

In a further research paper—this one was in the UK, and I know there is a tendency by this Government to try to model, if not replicate, some of the UK laws—in the September issue of the Industrial Relations Journal in the UK, Jason Heyes stated: “The Low Pay Commission … the body charged with making recommendations to the government on the level and extent of minimum wage protection, took the view that ‘16-17-year-olds form a distinct segment of the labour market, preparing for working life, rather than being full participants in the workforce … and ideally all 16-17-year-olds should be receiving education or good quality training.’ The exemption of young workers from the NMW”—national minimum wage—“was presented as a way of ‘supporting the training base’ by safeguarding opportunities for young people to gain qualifications, skills, and experience and ensuring that young workers would not ‘find themselves locked into low-skilled, low-paid jobs—or, even worse, the cycle of low-paid work and unemployment.’ ”

This bill, instead of providing safeguards for our young people, is removing those opportunities. Training is more than just 3 months, with no criteria as to how much work in that 3 months is required. It is more than 200 hours. It relates to experience, training, skills obtained, and qualification. This bill does not address that. The Minister herself admitted that we need to balance the positive impact that abolishing the lower rate of pay for 16 and 17-year-olds will have against the possible negative impact of an incentive for 16 and 17-year-olds to leave school earlier, with fewer qualifications. We do not believe this bill achieves that balance.

I can see no reason why a 16-year-old would not be paid the same or a similar rate to a 20-year-old, a 30-year-old, or even a 40-year-old, provided they do the same work and make the same contribution. I mentioned earlier that one submitter said: “Younger people tend to be paid at a lower rate than older workers because age is a proxy for experience and performance on the job, just as the age of 15 is a proxy for the minimum capacity and maturity required to drive a car on our roads.” Legislation like this—whatever its purpose; whatever its intention—cannot change overnight the amount of experience and performance capabilities of any worker, whatever his or her age.

We welcome a fair wage for fair work. We welcome the fact that many employers voluntarily pay above the adult minimum wage in any event, because they value their staff. Staff are valuable. Businesses rely on them, and productivity relies on them; they should be paid what they are worth. But this bill is not the right instrument. We do not want young people to be priced off the labour market. We do not want young people to leave education prematurely. I have asked before, what good does it do a young person to know that an employer must pay him or her the adult minimum wage if the fact that he or she must be paid that amount is what keeps him or her from getting a job? This bill, we fear, will be that barrier.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Minister of Labour) : It gives me great satisfaction to support the Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill at its third reading. I want to begin by acknowledging and thanking Sue Bradford from the Green Party for her introduction of this bill. I recognise that the bill we are considering today differs markedly from the approach that Sue initially took to this issue. But I believe that the bill achieves a balanced way forward for the 16 and 17-year-old New Zealand workers.

Balance is, in fact, the best way to describe the bill and the process that the bill has gone through. A balance was needed between those who wanted the abolition of youth rates and those who supported the status quo, or—in the case of the National Party—something even worse. A balance was needed between the rights of young workers, the perspective of the unions, and the perspective of the employers. But, perhaps most important, a balance was needed in this Parliament to gain support for the bill. That is the reality of an MMP environment.

Our Government is very proud of this achievement, which is another step forward in the steady progress towards ensuring all workers—including young workers—have fair minimum wage protection. The bill provides a 3-month maximum time limit for new entrants, in addition to the 200-hour maximum that the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee recommended. Those 16 and 17-year-olds who work full-time will now be able to reach the adult minimum wage in as little as 5 weeks, while those who work part-time while pursuing their education will receive the adult minimum wage after 3 months or 200 hours. Labour recognises that often employees who are aged 16 or 17 do the same work as adults. But we also recognise that time is needed for those workers to gain the socialisation skills necessary for working. We believe that the time frames that the new entrants rate will apply allows that learning of soft skills, while respecting the value of the work that young people do.

Clarification has been included in the bill that the new entrants minimum wage will not apply to young people who work as supervisors. I think that is a great step forward for our youth and I am particularly pleased that the bill specifically provides for this as it fairly reflects the value of supervisory skills. I am also pleased that the bill allows all employment undertaken once the young person turns 16 to be taken into account, even if it was undertaken before the commencement of this bill. That means that many thousands of 16 and 17-year-olds will have already completed their qualifying time when this bill comes into effect and will move immediately to the adult minimum wage, which our Government increased to $11.25 per hour on 1 April this year. That was an increase of a whole dollar an hour—the largest ever increase and something it took the previous National Government almost a decade to achieve. For 9 years the adult minimum wage stayed at nearly exactly the same rate under National, except for a pathetic increase of $1 an hour over the entire years. At that same time, young people were included at the youth minimum rate right up to the age of 20.

The bill comes into effect on 1 April next year and replaces the youth minimum wage rate, which is currently $9 an hour, with a new entrants minimum wage. The actual rate will depend on the outcome of the minimum wage review, which is already under way. Our Government has a commitment, confirmed in our confidence and supply agreement with both New Zealand First and the Green Party, to move the adult minimum wage to $12 an hour before the end of this term of Parliament, if economic conditions allow. So if the minimum wage does rise to $12 an hour on 1 April next year, the new entrants minimum wage would also rise to $9.60 an hour, in line with our intention that the new entrants minimum wage would remain at 80 percent of the adult minimum wage.

We will need to balance the positive impact that abolishing the lower rate of pay for 16 and 17-year-olds will have for thousands of young workers against the possible negative impact of an incentive for them to leave school earlier with fewer qualifications. I do not want to send the message to our young people that leaving school with minimal qualifications is an idea supported by our Parliament. In my view this bill will not give that message. Our increase in the youth minimum wage over the past years has shown negligible impact on the number of young people who are leaving school early. In fact, if anything, it has allowed people to stay at school longer as part-time jobs are better paid and they are more easily able to balance work and school without working long hours.

Under the National-led Government the youth minimum wage, which is at the point of this debate, applied to 16, 17, 18, and 19-year-olds. Under National a person did not become an adult in terms of the wage he or she earned until the age of 20. What is more, the youth rate was set at 60 percent of the adult rate, not the current 80 percent. It is new to increase the youth minimum wage; that has been happening only in the last 8 years under a Labour-led Government.

When National was last in Government there were 17,500 18 and 19-year-olds on the unemployment benefit, despite the fact that the youth rate then was so low that an employer could have employed 20 people in any business and it would have made hardly a little bump in his or her wage bill. The youth rates then under National were a pittance. What is that unemployment figure now? Under the National Government, which was last in office in 1999, 17,500 18 and 19-year-olds were on the unemployment benefit. The rate now is fewer than 1,000 people. There are fewer than 1,000 18 and 19-year-olds on the unemployment benefit now. Those are the statistics that National should think about before it comes into this Chamber and raises spurious arguments in opposition to improving the way that 16 and 17-year-olds are recognised through their wage packet. I am pleased we have been able to reach a position that is supported by the sponsor of the bill, because this bill has been promoted for the betterment of young people so that the contribution they make in the paid workforce is properly valued. The amendment applies to all employment, regardless of whether it is a first, second, third, or fourth job.

I am pleased about this great step forward that the bill represents for New Zealand young people. There is more debate to be had on these, and related, issues, but this bill is certainly a magnificent step forward. I conclude by acknowledging again the voices of young people, unions, and employers who submitted on the bill. I thank my colleagues in the House for the contribution they have made in strengthening and clarifying the intent behind the bill when it was debated during the Committee stage. I particularly acknowledge the hard work the select committee members have done towards the detail. This bill is another example of the Labour-led Government working with other parties in an MMP environment to achieve the best solution for the diverse interests of all those affected by the changes. I commend the speedy passage of this bill.

PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) : The sponsor of the Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill, Sue Bradford, must feel very flattered. This afternoon’s proceedings started with a message from the Governor-General. We could not work out why the Governor-General had sent a message about the bill. New Zealand First members were mystified. We concluded that the Crown must have been underpaying Prince William and Prince Harry for some time and did not want to get caught by the net. But the mundane reason was given to us in due course. We would still like to compliment Sue Bradford. She stuck to this issue and was determined to deliver. She wanted to go a bit further than this bill goes, but she has accepted it—finally, because I know that at one time she was going to reject it. She has accepted the bill as a reasonable compromise. I think it reflects her efforts very well and is a very reasonable compromise.

I have to say that I am disappointed with the National Party. Those guys could, and should, be doing better. [Interruption] They should be doing better. There is a new member over there, David Bennett; if he sat and listened for a little while, then he would understand that the National Party is putting itself in a terrible predicament when it comes to dealing with young people, or indeed people generally, in the workforce. Wayne Mapp understands that. The National Party has never been supportive of a minimum wage in concept.

Dr Wayne Mapp: We have never opposed it.

PETER BROWN: Well, the National Party has never opposed a minimum wage, but when National was in power between 1990 and 1996 the minimum wage went up—members should listen to this—by 25c. The minimum wage went up by 25c in 6 years! But to ensure that it was distributed fairly they introduced the youth minimum wage at 60 percent in 1994. Then New Zealand First came on the scene in 1997 and we increased the minimum wage by a relatively massive 62.5c. We are talking about a minimum wage of $7 after we had increased it. It went up under Labour to $9.50 in 2005, and by 2008 it will be $12. By and large, young people will be on this minimum wage. It will be a significant help to young people, and particularly to the young people whom I know that Sue Bradford is concerned about who actually work to help their family.

The concern we have—and I want to be absolutely honest about it; that is why this intermediary step of a new entrants rate is acceptable to New Zealand First—is that we do not want a wage that will discourage people from staying at school and advancing their education. If we could give three assets to a young person on the verge of leaving school, they would be education, education, education. [Interruption] The member over there, David Bennett, thinks that that is a joke. I bet he stayed at school and got his education. He probably got it free on the taxpayer.

Hon Mark Gosche: He’s a lawyer.

PETER BROWN: He’s a lawyer, is he?

Hon Mark Gosche: It was a waste of time educating him.

PETER BROWN: Yes. The National Party should also understand this issue, because just about every other party understands it. Most employers are quite happy to see the minimum wage go up—maybe not for the early stages of a career but certainly very quickly. They do not see it as a restriction they want on age. In fact, I think Kate Wilkinson told us last time she spoke on this bill in the Chamber that 85 percent of employers are quite happy to pay the minimum wage to young people across the board. The National Party does not even give credence to the employers.

It is fair to say that some small employers will be upset by the passage of this bill, because they like to think they give youngsters a chance, and after 200 hours or 3 months—whichever comes first—they will be compelled to pay the full adult minimum wage. They tell us—and there is a degree of truth in this and it is a worrying degree of truth—that young people, when they first go into the workforce, do not place a priority on the business or on the work in hand; they place it more on their lifestyle and on their after-work activities. As a result, some of the young people are unreliable and some of them are not as well dressed as perhaps they are required to be when they come to work. A lady made a submission to the select committee along those lines. I thought it was very well put. Hers was a concern that certainly registered with me.

At the end of the day, we have to make sure that youngsters get a fair go. We recognise that there should be adult wages for adult work. I think that is the term Sue Bradford used in her address. We accept that. If a young person goes and performs the work to the same degree as an adult, to the same time frame and with the same degree of effort and skill or whatever, then he or she should get the same wage. We are quite receptive to that idea.

We have the worry—as I indicated earlier—that youngsters will leave school and think they will be on the adult minimum wage and will sacrifice their career. Equally, we have the worry that some parents will say: “Well, now you can go out and in a relatively short period of time you can earn the adult minimum wage.”, and encourage their offspring to go into the workforce ahead of when they really should. Kids—youngsters—need an opportunity, and many of them will get a greater opportunity from staying at school. We do not want to see this bill as an incentive for walking away from education.

At least a couple of people whom I can recall coming to the select committee made a real impression on me. One was a young woman who worked in a hotel; the other was a young woman who worked in a cinema. They told us at length how long they had been in their jobs and what they did. Not only did they do the job that was in hand—and I am sure Mark Gosche will agree with this—they told us how they also took on new staff who were older than they were and who got paid more. These young people—and I have no doubt at all that they are very capable young people, because of the way they presented themselves and how they put their case across—indicated that not only did they do their job but they also supervised people coming into those workplaces.

Dr Jonathan Coleman: Where’s this all going, Peter?

PETER BROWN: The member thinks that young people should be discounted and disregarded.

Dr Jonathan Coleman: No; where is this story going?

PETER BROWN: I am simply telling—if the member will listen—

Dr Jonathan Coleman: I’ve been listening for about 14 minutes, but it seems like an hour.

PETER BROWN: Why does the member not take the advice of a very well-known former National Prime Minister, and close his mouth and breathe through his nose for just a few moments, and I will tell the member that these young people—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley): I think it is getting a bit raucous. Nobody can hear the member. Will members just desist, thank you.

PETER BROWN: I could not even hear myself, Madam Speaker. I just want to advocate for these young people who came before the select committee. They were in supervisory roles and training roles, and they were getting paid 80 percent of the minimum wage. Frankly, if those employers are concerned about this, then they are their own worst enemy.

There is an article here from the Dominion Post—[]—and maybe the National member, the man with the hollow mouth or the hollow head, should take note of it. The article states that the rise in the minimum wage is long overdue. I suggest to National members, as they are sitting there all looking dejected, upset, and totally appalled that we will give a wage rise to young people, that they read this article. They should take it home at night and read it. It is good bedtime reading for National members. It will tell them exactly why young people deserve a fairer go in this society.

New Zealand First is very pleased to support this bill. We think the Minister’s compromise solution is the way to go, and we congratulate Sue Bradford on being the proposer of the bill. I just say to National members, before I finally sit down, that if young people behaved the way that those members do, then they would not be paid anything.

TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki) : Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Kia ora tātou katoa. Kia ora tātou i tēnei pō. Four years ago Radio Waatea carried an interview with a passionate union activist, a veteran broadcaster, an employer, a board director, a Māori rights campaigner, a chief executive, a man of Ngāti Kahungunu and Ngāti Porou—the freedom fighter Syd Jackson. Syd issued a challenge that I believe has some relevance to the challenge of this Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill. He said: “You have to be prepared to put yourself on the line, to take to the streets, to act, to highlight and articulate your grievances. Simply get on and do the mahi …”. There is no better way to honour this leader than to honour today his lifelong campaign for justice through his standing up for our young people—standing up for our young people to get on to do the mahi without being discriminated against on the basis of their age. This bill purely and simply is about eradicating discrimination. It was a cause that Syd Jackson lived for: leaving nobody behind, caring for te pani me te rawa kore, and standing up for the poor and the impoverished.

The Māori Party was proud to stand with Sue Bradford at the first reading on the bill, to stand for the chance for young people to benefit from adequate employment protection. We argued that rangatahi should not be vulnerable to arbitrary dismissal or unilateral changes to their terms and conditions of employment. They had the right to freedom from discrimination—as in the Human Rights Act 1993. They had the right to benefit from the anti-age discrimination provisions set out in theNew Zealand Bill of Rights Act. They had the right to enjoy freedom of discrimination as the most fundamental freedom. They had the right to enjoy freedom from elitism, sexism, religious intolerance, racism, and ageism. They had the right to enjoy freedom from discrimination against beliefs, and against cultural values. And they had the right to enjoy freedom from discrimination as manifest in slavery, in racial profiling, in hate crimes, and in ethnic cleansing.

Discrimination is not, of course, a novelty in Aotearoa. We recall, as most members might remember, a shameful history in the 1950s when it was not unheard of for landlords to erect signs saying “No Dogs or Maoris” outside accommodation. We had thought that there was sufficient progression in legislation to seriously challenge the systematic oppression and mistreatment of particular sectors of our community: Māori, Pasifika, the young, the old, and the vulnerable. The original bill convinced us that the discrimination that was being experienced by young New Zealanders would stop—the discrimination revealed the fact that currently 16 and 17-year-olds can be paid a minimum wage of a mere $8.20 per hour compared with the adult minimum of $10.25 per hour. So we voted to end age discrimination, to end adultism: the bias towards adults that is seen in the ugly combination of prejudice married with power.

The Youth Advisory Council of the Child Welfare League of America concluded that the end result of adults practising adultism is that young people become disempowered and disenfranchised. Surely a Parliament that values an investment in our future, our growing young population, would not want that. Except this is where it all became unstuck, for at the select committee suddenly the Greens’ bill became renamed. The term “discrimination” was deleted, the term “abolition” was abolished, and a new vocabulary was created introducing the “new entrant” to the workforce. Or, as my colleague Hone Harawira said, the name is just another name for the Young Slave Bill.

The select committee recommended that for the first 200 hours worked by a young worker after he or she turns 16 he or she will be paid at the “new entrant” rate. This is a new term, as Darien Fenton explained during the Committee stage: “It is quite a strange term, particularly as it is used to describe schoolchildren who are entering school for the first time.” It is a strange term, and a misleading term, to make discrimination acceptable—the ongoing discrimination that these new entrants will be paid a lesser rate than even the minimum wage of adults. It is a term of pretence, because it does not actually describe “new” entrants to the workforce—not 50-year-old new entrants, not 30-year-old new entrants—only 16 and 17-year-olds will be entitled to this measure of divide and rule. We were repeatedly told during the Committee stage of this bill, as I understand from my colleague, that this strange new version of the original bill was—if I may quote the proverbial—better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. We were scolded and were asked how we could object to progress. But the Māori Party is not prepared to settle for the watered-down version of justice. We are not about to meekly comply with a second-rate version of the truth.

Another bizarre piece of persuasive political posturing that came out during the Committee stage was the concept that what was really wonderful about this bill was that thousands and thousands of 16 and 17-year-olds will get a pay increase after they have done 200 hours of work. Union workforce statistics, however, show that 50 percent of the 16 and 17-year-olds who are working currently work 10 hours or fewer each week. So we are looking at the minimum of 5 or 6 months as a base before young people are considered worthy enough to earn the basic minimum wage—before they are entitled to that wonderful pay rise! What does it do to a community to legalise adult privilege in legislation in such a way as to mean that young people will not be paid equally for work of equal value? What does it do to young people to be paid less simply because they are not deemed adults by the country’s lawmakers? What message does it send about the worth of our young people? What further abuse is made more likely as a result?

The Human Rights Commission told the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee that the youth minimum wage has a significant impact on the earnings of young workers; that it perpetuates stereotypes about their capabilities and that they are worth less because they are young; and that paying 16 and 17-year-olds less than other workers breaches fundamental principles of fairness and equity. So you see, it is about fairness, justice, and decent wages for decent work, and it could have been so different. We have a saying that demonstrates how it could have been: “E ngaki ana ā mua, e toto mai ana ā muri”—while people go ahead and weed, others follow behind and plant.” The meaning is that if the first group do their work properly, then those following can accomplish their task, and everybody gets together to get the job done. What we are doing tonight is not about doing our work properly. What message is this bill giving to our children and our grandchildren—to put up with injustice, that second-best is good enough, and that they should be grateful for their lot?

What do the Minister of Māori Affairs, the Minister of Youth Affairs, and the Minister of Pacific Island Affairs have to say? How can they defend this tangled plot of weeds that is left behind to constrain our young? I would remind the House that a massive 35 percent of the Māori population is aged under 15 years, and that the median age of both the Māori and Pasifika populations is a mere 21 years compared with a median age of 36 years for the total New Zealand population. We are a very young population, and we in the Māori Party must stand here tonight with the interests of that population at heart. Those young people deserve to be treated by the system in a way that is tied unreservedly to their skills. We should be united in calling to abolish any differential wage based on age. It is unfair, it is discriminatory, and it is exploitation.

Voting to support a new entrant sub-minimum wage will worsen youth poverty and it will make it harder for young people just to meet basic living expenses. It perpetuates a low-wage climate by allowing wage standards to be lower than the minimum rates of acceptability. New Zealanders need far greater employment protections. Ending youth rates is just one part of the picture. The Syd Jackson we knew, as a union champion, activist, and freedom fighter, would never have compromised his principles. He would never live on his knees, he would die fighting for the things that he believed in, and he would say to us right now that we have to be prepared to put ourselves on the line, to take to the streets, and to act to highlight and articulate our grievances. Our young people deserve nothing less.

JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) : I stand on behalf of United Future to support the third reading of the Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill. If the bill was a blanket provision covering all young people, then I think the fears that have been expressed in the House this afternoon—that it would disenfranchise those in their early teens and younger who seek after-school work—may have been a point worthy of consideration. However, the bill recognises those young people who are able to be in full employment, yet subject to age discrimination. I think some aspects of this bill could well do with being reviewed in a couple of years’ time, particularly the provisional 200 hours, which may well be excessive. The House may be negligent if it leaves it too long before it examines how that aspect is working.

I want to commend several people. First of all I commend the sponsor of the bill, Sue Bradford. I commend the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee for the work it has done, and the Minister and the Department of Labour officials, who have worked well together to find an achievable outcome. Politics in an MMP environment is very much the art of the achievable. For the sponsor of this bill, incremental change may not satisfy the ideal she holds to, but progress is often a journey, not an event. As members of a party that approached this bill fairly cautiously, we are pleased to be able to support this final reading.

Recent concerns expressed in the media that secondary school students are increasingly trying to balance long hours in paid employment alongside full-time study need to be further considered. At 16 and 17, education is still the preferred path, and it is United Future’s hope that with improved wage rates students will be able to reduce the hours they work after school, so that they can focus on their study. For those 16 and 17-year-olds who have opted out of school, employment remuneration needs to be such that unemployment is unattractive.

I also bring to this debate what is probably a very provincial view of these matters for 16 and 17-year-olds. For those who are 16 or 17 and who live in provincial areas, often work and leaving home are bedfellows. To be able to live independently on the youth rate is nigh impossible for them, because youth rates assume that young employees are still living at home and that this is pocket money to be spent in their spare time, supporting their extracurricular activities. The truth is that for a large number of New Zealand 16 and 17-year-olds, the youth rate is now what they are reliant on to live and to make a future for themselves.

We are very pleased at the way this bill has progressed. It has certainly addressed our early concerns. I think that it is a first, cautious step, and that if these measures prove to bed down well and there are no unforeseen or unintended consequences, then maybe some of the aspirations of the sponsor of this bill may be recognised at a later date. We would certainly be open, having seen how this legislation beds down, to considering where we go from here with youth rates. However, we are very happy that we still have some youth rates and that they apply where they do. I think it has been a very sensible first step, and I commend the sponsor and everybody who has worked on this bill for the work they have done.

Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) : A bill like this Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill is, I acknowledge, always put forward with the best of intentions. I appreciate that the Green Party has put forward a range of legislation, as indeed has the Government, and those members always preface it with good intentions. They say that it will rectify some aspect of injustice or it will elevate the advantages of someone.

I notice that we always see United Future and New Zealand First sort of moving along in the slipstream, as we heard in the previous speech made by Judy Turner, saying how wonderful it is. I would ask those parties to pause and think, because this country faces a deep-seated crisis. I do not mean it is a crisis that is an instant crisis. It will not break over us tomorrow, but we are seeing a deep-seated decline—a malaise, if you will—as this country just progressively slips back relative to other countries. Yes, we have some growth. That has been well acknowledged, but this Government has squandered that growth. It has squandered some of the best economic opportunities we have seen for years.

I want to go through the legislative programme, and this is the point I am trying to make, because each of these measures acts as an impediment to productivity growth. None of them are huge impediments in their own right, but their cumulative effect is very serious. In the year 2000, when the Government won the Treasury benches, New Zealand had high productivity growth as well as high economic growth, and there is a difference.

Today productivity growth is low—there is no growth, in fact. It is actually flat. The Government is now relying on three things for growth. One is commodity increases, which have gone up. Growth in the total size of the employment has increased; there is no question about that. But there has been no productivity growth. Do members know what that means? It means that the living standards of New Zealanders relative to that of people in other countries is declining. The Government says that it is only a small decline and that it does not matter year to year, but New Zealanders look forward. They understand these things and they make their own choices. [Interruption] That number is accelerating—600 per week are now travelling to Australia. Why do they do that? They do it fundamentally because there are better economic opportunities there. Why are there better economic opportunities there? It is not because Australia, to quote a former Prime Minister, digs itself up. It is actually because Australia has a more competitive economic system. It has higher productivity growth. It has a lower level of taxation. In fact, the current Government in Australia each and every year has had a planned programme of tax reductions—not gigantic one-off reductions, but planned and progressive reductions. All that builds confidence and security in people about their opportunities. So New Zealanders, young New Zealanders especially, see that fact and make their own choice. They see greater opportunities and greater prospects, and they vote with their feet.

I will go through the range of legislation, of which this bill is a part, that has hindered productivity growth. I emphasise that point for Government speakers: productivity growth. Today the particular measure that is being debated is the Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill. I emphasise the term “new entrants”. Yes, that was a change. I know that the Māori Party thinks it is a terrible thing and that even the 200 hours of employment set out in the bill is discrimination, but the truth is that we are talking about 16 and 17-year-olds; we are not talking about 16 to 25-year-olds, and we are not talking about 60 percent. The gap is only 20 percent and for only 2 years. Actually, it is a time when young people should be at school in any event. Countries that are much higher up the income scale than New Zealand—the United States, Australia, and so forth—actually do have youth rates. Are those countries in crisis? The answer is no.

So this legislation will be just one more impediment to productivity growth. What is another one? Well, the Green Party—also with good intentions, no doubt—has put forward the concept of flexible working hours. That is another thing that just adds cost and complexity to the way that business is undertaken. The Labour Government even wants independent contractors to be subject to employment legislation. What an oxymoron that would have to be! I guess it was some sort of crazy token to one of their more—let us be charitable—inexperienced members of Parliament, Darien Fenton. But one can only imagine that someone like the Minister of Finance was wiping his brow and thinking: “Christ Almighty, why on earth is this happening in a party I’m a senior member of?”

Now, of course, we can refer to the Employment Relations Act, and particularly to the amendments of 2004. I acknowledge that many of the changes from the Employment Relations Act of 2000 were relatively smoothly adapted into employment law, but the changes from 2004 have caused significant problems. There has been a lot more litigation in front of the Employment Court, and a higher level of strikes than this country has hitherto had, all of which adds to the costs across the workforce.

Then there is the Resource Management Act. At every public meeting I go to someone is bound to raise their direct experience with the complexities of the Resource Management Act. Did this Government do anything at all meaningful to relieve that burden? The answer is no.

Labour’s very first move in Government was to remove competition in accident compensation. I want to dwell on that point for a moment. When National introduced competition we had an iron-cast rule that there would be 24-hour, 7-day, no-fault coverage. That was never denied by Labour. The full rate of coverage was always there and the treatment was always there. People who suffered injuries were not adversely affected, but employers had dramatic reductions in the size of their premiums—that is, their costs went down and their productivity went up. Then we had the complexity of the Land Transport Management Act. Now it is sought to have the minimum wage set at $12 an hour. There is the local government legislation, and so on and so forth. Each one of these measures has hurt productivity. It is now zero.

The legislation that is being promoted today, well-intentioned though it might be, will be just another little thing that will harm productivity. But if we add it to all those other things, we have quite a serious impact. So whereas 9 years ago this country had productivity growth of about 1.5 percent—still less than Australia or the United States, but it was 1.5 percent of GDP—there was actually a chance that we could go up the OECD ladder in terms of growth. Today it has inexorably declined to zero. I am not talking about economic growth—let us not confuse these points—but about productivity growth. Real wealth ultimately comes from productivity growth.

National is saying as a party that we have to take stock. We have to be careful in the nature of the compliance costs we load on to business. That does not mean to say we cannot deal with real injustices, and it does not mean to say we cannot improve the situation, but there is no point in just adding on each of these little measures and imposts that ultimately harm the growth of this country. I have to say to the Government and the parties that support the Government that the effect of this legislation will be to drive more New Zealanders out of this country, and it will be the very people the Government wants to help, because the people who go will be the young people. They will go to Australia for a better future, and that is an indictment on this Government.

Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) : It is a widely held view that dinosaurs are extinct, but we sit every day and look at them across the House. The last speaker was the “Mapposaurus”. I want to comment on a couple of his points. Do members remember the National Party leader—

Darren Hughes: Which one?

Hon MARK GOSCHE: Probably all of them. They have had so many, I cannot remember. They wail and gnash their teeth about the low wages in New Zealand compared to Australia, and they worry about the low-paid and the underclass. We just heard about that from the “Mapposaurus”. Let us have a look at the truth. Who was the Government in 1994? I think it was National. I say to Dr Mapp that the youth minimum wage—and one had to be 20 to earn the adult wage in 1994—was $3.68 an hour under that National Government. Adults were really well off; they got $6.12.5!

Let us go forward a bit to 1997. There was, as we heard, influence from New Zealand First, and they put it up to $7 in 1997. So it languished at $6.25, or $6.37.5. Then it leapt up to $7, because, as Peter Brown told us, New Zealand First put the National Party’s arm up its back. In 1998 it was $7. In 1999 it was $7. What were those under-20-year-olds—they could have been 19 years and 9 months—earning under the National Government? They were earning $4.20 an hour. In 1999 if one was a 19-year-old working in a factory, a shop, or a fast-food chain, one was earning $4.20 an hour. That is what the National Government did to this country. Alongside that was the Employment Contracts Act. Now National members are wailing and gnashing their teeth and saying the wages in New Zealand are too low compared with Australia. Well, we have done a lot about that during our time in Government.

We have seen the age for the adult minimum wage come down to 18. Did the National Party members support that? No, they voted against it. They wailed and gnashed their teeth every time we put the minimum wage up. They are still doing so today. They do not support the minimum wage going up to $12, as we have heard from speakers in the National Party, and they certainly do not support young workers getting a decent wage, either. But they will continue to tell people they are concerned about low wages and the underclass, and they will try to pretend they would do something about it. We know what they would do. They would reverse this measure, would they not, I ask Dr Mapp. Or would it be a case of “me too”, like John Key does with everything else. National members wail and say there will be displacement if young workers get the same pay as adults, and they will not get jobs. Well, those members should look back at what happened when we changed that law to make the age for the adult minimum wage 18 years of age. Did it happen? No, it did not. The statistics heard by the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, which National members might choose to ignore, showed that there was actually no displacement for 18 and 19-year-olds. In fact, the number of hours they worked went up.

The National Party hates facts getting in the way of its dinosaur views, but the select committee that dealt with this legislation was interested in listening to the views of employers and unions, and, as a result, the bill was amended. I listened particularly to small employers, because small employers came along in their droves and said they actually ended up paying their workers above the minimum wage fairly quickly after they started work, because they wanted to reward them for the extra effort and the knowledge they picked up in the first few months of employment. A lot of small employers said that. Small employer after small employer from around New Zealand said: “We do not always keep our people on the minimum wage as the law allows us to, because we think they should get paid for the work they do and the skills they acquire.” That is exactly what this bill actually picks up on.

It is interesting that many of the large employers—the fast-food chains, etc—simply pay it because the law allows them to. They can afford to pay more because a number of them, we were told by submitters, do not pay youth rates at all, regardless of age. They are the large employers. They said they rejected that and would pay those people as the law allows them to. The vast majority of those large employers in the fast-food and hospitality sector pay it because they can; not because they need to but because the law allows it.

So I think this is a very important bill and a very important step forward for workers in this country, as are the increases to the minimum wage that this Government has put through every year since we became Government. I just remind members again that $4.20 was the youth rate for a 19-year-old under National back in 1999, and the adult rate, which had sat still for 3 years, was $7 an hour.

Dr Wayne Mapp: So why is everyone going to Australia? Answer that!

Hon MARK GOSCHE: Dr Mapp and his mates, if they had the chance, would do it all over again. They would revert to that sort of dinosaur thinking of not liking workers and of not liking unions, and they have always passed laws that prove that. That is why National is voting against the bill today.

I want to talk to another party that is also saying it will vote against the bill, the Māori Party. We have heard today the name of Syd Jackson, and I send my condolences to his whānau. I worked with Syd for many years in the trade union movement. In fact, the union that I represented before coming here amalgamated the Clerical Workers Union into our organisation as a result of the ravages that the Employment Contracts Act wreaked upon the membership of that union. I say to members of the Māori Party that if they had been able to talk to Syd now—and obviously they cannot do so—he would have told them one thing that he learnt as a trade union official and practised every day of the week in representing clerical workers who were not industrially strong and were the types of workers who worked in very small workplaces. The job he did every day required compromise, and Syd would have been able to tell members of the Māori Party that, if he were here today, and I will say it to them on his behalf. There are times when one demands 100 percent, and when one cannot get it, as he would have known and as I knew, 95 percent becomes the reality, and one grabs it with both hands.

Young Māori and Pacific people who go to the local schools in my community of South Auckland are walking around wearing badges celebrating the passing of this bill, and the Māori Party will be on record as having voted against it. I ask members of the Māori party to rethink that position tonight, because there will be a vote fairly shortly, and I would rather see that party, which is voting against the bill, coming over to the side voting for it, because the Māori Party stands for the principles of the bill, and it would be a shame not to have that on record. I understand all about trying to be 100 percent on this issue, and I sometimes wish that that could happen too, but we have a very workable compromise, and it is one that should be celebrated—and it is being celebrated on the streets of South Auckland by young Māori and Pacific workers, and by other young workers, as well. I really would like to see the Māori Party change its position tonight and vote with the rest of us on this. I understand the desire to have 100 percent on this issue, but Syd would tell the members of the Māori Party that that was not something he achieved very often as a representative of clerical workers. It was the same for me when I represented service workers who had very little industrial power. It is something we learn a lot about in the industrial relations world, particularly if we are representing the weak, the vulnerable, and the hard to organise, which I have done for just about all of my working life.

I congratulate Sue Bradford, and I congratulate all of the parties who are supporting the bill. The bill has, in my belief, listened to the views of New Zealand, and that includes the small employers who said they would pay more but who wanted a little bit of time upfront to train those workers in the soft skills of customer relations, etc. The bill recognises that, but fundamentally it very much shows the divide in this House between those who are here to seek justice on behalf of working people and make sure they get a fair deal and a fair wage for the work they do, and that lot over there—the dinosaurs who still remain, running around this earth—called the National Party.

National members will always oppose this sort of legislation, because at the end of the day they could not care less about the exploitation of young workers, old workers, Māori workers, Pacific workers—any workers. They actually stand for that exploitation. Every bit of legislation National has ever passed in this House, in terms of industrial relations, tells us that, and those members oppose every bit of legislation we put up to turn the clock back on their stuff, as well. They will always be the same. That is why they are the dinosaurs of this nation, and that is why they will not support this bill. But Labour will proudly support it, alongside the Greens, New Zealand First, United Future, and others, and I would really be keen to see the Māori Party vote with us on this one, as well.

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) : If we wanted to hear from a dinosaur, we have just heard from one. If we wanted to hear a blast from the past, that is what we have heard from Labour and the Greens in respect of the Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill, because this is communism. This is saying that everybody is equal and everybody is the same. Those parties, if they had half a chance, would have everybody in this room sitting at the same level. They say there is no difference between someone who has just started working and someone who has been working for 30 years. They say there is no difference between the person in the front row and the person in the back row, and there is no difference between someone who is leading a party and someone who is sitting at the back. Well, there is a difference. There are differences when it comes to everything we do in our society. We have a hierarchical society. It is based on success and it is based on positioning, and one has to get a start. This bill is hurting those people who need to get a start. If we want to go back to the past and talk about communism, dinosaurs, and blasts from the past, then we should look at Labour and the Green Party, because that is what is happening in this legislation.

It is not helping the people who need assistance. The young people who will make this country strong are not being helped by this legislation. All we are doing through this legislation is making sure those people will not get that first chance. They will never get a start. They will not get the chance to go out there and prove themselves, to develop those skills, and to make a go of themselves.

We have one of the highest rates of youth unemployment, especially Māori youth unemployment. Will this bill help that? Forget it! If an employer has a choice between somebody who has 20 years of life experience and somebody who is just coming into the workplace, whom the employer has to pay 12 bucks an hour, I ask who that employer would choose. I would like to see Labour pay all its staff, and all the people who have ever worked for it, in any capacity, on the full rate. I bet members that Labour does not do so. I bet Labour has been rich enough to take advantage of this legislation in the past. I bet Labour’s funders have been rich enough to take advantage of this legislation in the past. It is good enough for Labour to vote for it, but its members will not come in here and do the opposite; they will use that legislation to pay people at a minimum rate, then come in here, say they are holier than thou and will pay everyone $12 an hour, and then see how the employers get on.

That is a recognition of a Government that is out of touch with the people, and that is why it is polling at the current rate. The Government has no idea of what the employers want, it has no idea of what the community wants, and, more important, it has no idea of what young people want. Young people want a start; they want a future. That is why they are going to Australia. It is not the old people leaving and going to Australia; it is the young people who want a future who are doing so.

They are going because they can see they will be able to earn more and be taxed less, and they can see there is economic growth. Economic growth is the thing these guys have stymied. Economic growth in Australia today is at 4 percent. What are we at? We are struggling to be at 1 percent. That is the difference between our countries. If the Government wants to do something for our young people, then it should have policies that will get us up to an economic growth of 4 percent. If it keeps us down at 1 percent, then it will not be able to pay the $12 per hour minimum wage rate. There will never be an ability to pay that $12 to young people going into the workforce if our economic growth is kept at those low levels.

This is not an argument about justice for young people, as the Green Party has tried to put out. Even if it were, that party’s members got shafted in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee by the Labour Party. They went in there with the philosophy that this is better than anything else, that this is what they wanted to do to have equality across the board in New Zealand. That is true Green policy, which is fine; that is what the Greens believe in. But they got slammed by the Labour Party. The Labour Party went in there and said “No”. In fact, the Labour Party did not actually say no; the Labour Party did what it normally does: it took the Greens right to the altar. It took them right up there and said it would back them, that it would be there, and that it would be the one to go to bed with them. And what did Labour do? At the last minute it said “No”. It said it wanted 200 hours as a new entrants scheme. What did that do? It meant that those beautiful people from New Zealand First, who have no ability to change their minds, had to come in behind, because once the Labour Party does something, New Zealand First also has to do it.

That is what has happened in this case. The Green Party went into the select committee with the emotional intent and the pure ideology of what they wanted to portray, but it got shafted by the big, bad, red party, and New Zealand First had to come in behind it and back it up. That is the reality of what has happened with this legislation. It is nothing about helping young people. It is not about the new generation of New Zealanders getting a chance. This legislation shows politics at its worst. It shows an idea that has been transformed and mutated by a Government that wishes to stay in power and wants to put its spin on something but not actually change the rules. That is what has happened in this case.

When the members of the Green Party walk out of this Chamber they will try to have some face, hold their heads high, and say that they achieved this. But the reality is that the legislation we are passing is not what they really wanted. It is not what they went after in the first place. This is a Labour Party jaunt on top of what they tried to do. At some stage the Greens will have to stand up and say what they actually believe in, not what those guys tell them they have to believe in to get something through this Parliament. It will be an interesting day when that actually happens.

When we look forward we have to look at a tight labour market in the New Zealand economy. In any Western country it is tough for employers to get good staff, and they will pay people what they deserve. There is nothing discriminatory in what the National Party is saying. We are not saying that this is a maximum rate; we are saying that this is a minimum rate. There is a big difference. Employers can actually pay more than the minimum rate if they want to. They can go out there and say they want a person who they think is a good employee. They will not care what age that person is, and they will pay that person at the right rate. There is nothing discriminatory about that. If we said there was a maximum rate, then fair enough: that is discriminatory. But we are not doing that. We are talking about a minimum rate. That is not discriminatory. That is the big difference that I think these political parties need to look at.

It is not about saying that one party is against youth, against minimum rates, or against employees. It is not about that. This is a purely philosophical argument about a party that said what it believed in, and a party that overrode it. The National Party has been constant in saying throughout the whole time of this debate that it believes that employers have the ability to pay more than that rate. We say that employers can pick the right people and pay them the right rate. We do not see this debate as being about young people not getting paid for what their value is; this is a debate about how we send the signals out there. Our signals through our community are ones of hierarchy. [Interruption] No, our signals are of hierarchy. We sit in a building that is based on hierarchy, our questions are based on hierarchy, and our votes are based on the hierarchy that comes from an election every 3 years. Then we expect everyone to live by different rules. We cannot do that. There is only one way to go—that is, to achieve success through building up from having a start. That is what we are denying our young people. We are denying them that step through the door.

How many people in this room have had to give in order to get where they are now? I bet everyone would say that they have. David Cunliffe, a Minister, actually said in the second reading of the bill that he had to give to the Labour Party in order to get into this building. When one is a young person starting out in a job, one has to give something to get the experience in order to get that step through the door to make a start. I bet that all those people opposite gave something. They would have given to a union, which is not a very good choice. But they gave something. Now they have moved up and are sitting on those benches without having any idea of what it is like to be an employer. They would have no idea what it is like for young people out there now who want to take a step, who want a chance, and who want a dream. This legislation denies them that chance and that dream, and the shame is on Labour, on the Green Party, and on the New Zealand First Party for doing it in this way.

KEITH LOCKE (Green) : On behalf of the Green Party I thank the different parties, particularly the parties that support the Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill. But I also respect Kate Wilkinson, who seemed to accept the moral basis of the bill. She said that people should be valued for the work they perform, and that there should be a fair wage for fair work. Her objections to the bill seemed to be practical, but had she listened to the young people who mobilised around the country—Sue Bradford and I were part of various demonstrations, and even student strikes—she would have heard them saying that they needed this money not to stop them from going on to higher education but to help them to achieve it. Those people were driven to advance their careers. So I think we can knock out that practical argument that National came up with.

National’s other argument—its only other leg to stand on—was that in some ways people have to be rewarded for skills, and that employers will hire older people because they have more skills and experience. In actual fact, the most skilled jobs in the economy do not have youth rates; it is the least skilled jobs in the areas of fast food and retail that have youth rates. Contrary to what Wayne Mapp said, the economy will not collapse if these young people are paid a couple of extra dollars to take them to the adult minimum wage. That view is just stupid, in my opinion.

I think that the effort from all parties, including the Māori Party, has been tremendous. Even though the Māori Party is not supporting this bill, it has been part of the campaign to get this legislation through for young people and for justice. The Green Party is totally in support of what we have achieved tonight. I particularly thank my colleague Sue Bradford for bringing this legislation forward. We can live with a position of compromise, even though we have some reservations about it. But we have to recognise the great achievement that this bill is and celebrate it together. Thank you.

MARTIN GALLAGHER (Labour—Hamilton West) : If I recall, before the adjournment we were talking about information and openness in our hospital system. I was reflecting on what I felt was the distinct lack of historical knowledge shown by some new National members of the House. Although I was complimentary to the author of the bill on the work done, I could not believe that the author had worked in the health system yet seemed so incredibly ignorant of what had actually happened in the 1990s. I could not believe that the author of the bill appeared totally ignorant that in the 1990s the National Government had got rid of democratically elected health boards, had got rid of openness in decisionmaking in the health system, and had sent the media and public away. I recall that we had a creation called Crown health enterprises—

Anne Tolley: Just address the bill.

MARTIN GALLAGHER: —and I know that there is interjection from the other side, because I am hitting a very raw nerve. I am hitting a very raw nerve. I find it difficult to listen to the simpering feelings expressed by members opposite who say they want to be for the consumer, they want to be for the patient, and they want to be advocates. Yet there is this Stalinist ignorance of their party’s history—this failure to recognise what their Government did in the 1990s.

Well, excuse me! Anyone who worked in the health system in the 1990s knows exactly what happened. That Government got rid of democratically elected health boards. That Government brought us a thing called a “CHE”—or was it a cheese, or a double cheese? It was called a Crown health enterprise.

That Government also changed the word “patient”. What did a patient become known as?

Sue Moroney: Probably a client.

MARTIN GALLAGHER: Was it a client; was it a consumer? There was nothing at all about patients having a right to know, or about the public having a right to information. I find that really difficult.

I compliment the author of this bill, because I think her intentions are sincere, but I find it very, very difficult that there is no honesty on the other side in terms of members opposite acknowledging what their Government did in the 1990s. There is no acknowledgement of their hstory. At least one of them could be honest enough to say: “We made a mistake. We are sorry.” How can they come back into this House, so many years later, and suddenly say they believe in the flow of information and they believe in accountability, without acknowledging the actions of their Government in the 1990s around that flow of information.

Can I repeat slowly, so that those people opposite who have collective amnesia can be reminded, what their Government did in the 1990s?

Russell Fairbrother: What was that?

MARTIN GALLAGHER: The National Government closed down democratically—

Anne Tolley: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. We on this side of the House have been relatively patient, waiting for the member on his feet to address the bill before the House. We have had a very interesting, and selective, history lesson, but surely after several minutes it is time to ask the member to address the bill before the House.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley): The member has been addressing the matter of district health boards, which is what the bill is about.

MARTIN GALLAGHER: Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I am addressing the bill because, as I understand it, the bill is about empowering patients, and it is about information. If we talk about “selective history”, I ask what is selective about the previous National Government getting rid of democratically elected health boards. What is selective about closed-door meetings? What is selective about replacing a health board with a thing called a CHE—a Crown health enterprise—which was run on a company model by Government appointees? Those appointees ran our health services around the country, and community-elected representatives were sent packing. What is selective about that practice? That is history, and all I am asking is that new National members of the House, including National’s senior whip, recognise that. Indeed, the senior whip was on the Napier City Council. She knows all about confidential meetings and the whole principle of democratically elected meetings. She understands, totally, that process. I cannot use the “h” word, but all I am asking is that newer members of the National Party at least have the honesty to stand up in this Chamber and say: “Yes, in the 1990s our Government of the day got it wrong. We were in error, and that now informs us—

Anne Tolley: We did not.

MARTIN GALLAGHER: Oh, they did not! So it is OK now? How can members opposite support this bill, yet support the closure of democratically elected health boards and support closing the doors to the media and the public? I do not understand that; it is a disconnection of logic. I think that it is worse than a flip-flop. It is far worse than a flip-flop. I actually think it is speaking with a forked tongue. They say one thing, over on that side, and believe something totally different.

I think that what happened in the 1990s was a disgrace. I just ask for one member opposite to say that they got it wrong, and that that is the reason now why this legislation has informed them, in terms of wanting to improve systems whereby patients and the community can have access to information. But to support a bill without making reference to the lesson this country should have learnt in the 1990s astounds me, quite frankly.

I have commended the author of this bill, but what, if you like, deeply saddened and amazed me, in witnessing the debate earlier in the Chamber, was the apparent total ignorance of what did happen in the 1990s. I believe that one has to be honest, and that it is very important to address history. Heaven forbid that that other lot ever becomes the Government again, but are they saying that a National Government would not go back to those dark old days? Their silence in that area speaks volumes. There is a stunning silence around the concept of retaining democratically elected health boards. I think they have an open mind about health reforms. I think their open mind will include, potentially—if we are not careful—getting rid of community participation. We need to watch those words and listen very carefully. If we think about it, we realise that that stunning silence speaks volumes.

In closing, I again commend the author of this bill, because I think her intentions are genuine, but I do not commend the lack of ability of National members to learn from history, or their stunning silence as to what they would do, should they ever regain the Treasury benches. Do they guarantee that we would retain this Government’s present structure of democratically elected health boards? Believe you me, National’s record in the 1990s speaks volumes, and some of us on this side of the House do not forget.

KATRINA SHANKS (National) : I rise tonight to speak to the second reading of the Official Information (Openness of District Health Boards New Zealand) Amendment Bill—for those who are listening out there and who are not quite aware of what we are talking about. I also give a special “Good evening!” to Sam, Annabelle, and Lachlan, who are listening tonight—and watching, I do believe.

First of all, I would like to congratulate Dr Jackie Blue on this bill, which triggered action by the Government to bring District Health Boards New Zealand under the Official Information Act and to ensure that all of its work is subject to the complaints jurisdiction of the Ombudsman. Why is this bill so important? It is important because it brings openness, transparency, and accountability to district health boards. Why have they not had that before? Why has it taken until 2007 to get that? I could go back in history. I could go back to the 1900s, I could go back to 1910, I could go back to 1920, 1930, 1940, 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, and to 1990. The previous speaker just spoke to 1990. What year are we in now? 2007! No, no, but let us spend 10 minutes addressing 1990, because that is historical.

National is looking forward, and Dr Jackie Blue in 2006 brought a member’s bill to this Parliament. Yet Labour has been on those Government benches for the last 8 years, and has not even managed to address the simple issue of the Official Information Act. So why is this so important? Why is transparency important? It is because a lot of money—millions and millions, billions and billions of dollars—is going into district health boards, but up until now we have not had the transparency we need in talking about these big bucks that go into those health boards without accountability, without openness, and without the transparency that the Crown health enterprises had had. Why is that? It is because they are incorporated societies and they have not been caught in the net of the legislation. This is simple legislation to change that, thanks to Dr Jackie Blue, who has had the insight to bring that change herself with a member’s bill.

But not only that. There are millions and millions, and billions and billions of dollars going into the health sector. In fact, I believe that this Government has brought in another—I think—$6 billion to the health sector since 1999. That is a huge amount of money for district health boards to account for. But what has it bought us? What has this accountability shown us? What has transparency shown us? It has shown that no more services have been offered.

Let us talk for a moment about neonatal care in Wellington in 2007—today, not 1990. What has the Government done about the neonatal unit in Wellington, or the units in New Zealand? Why are pregnant women being threatened with having to be flown all around New Zealand to get this care? Why are they being threatened with having to fly to Australia to have their babies delivered when they cannot be delivered in New Zealand? Why cannot New Zealand deliver babies in New Zealand any more? Why have we got these shortages? Why are the services not there, when another $6 billion has gone into district health boards? Where is the accountability? Where is the transparency? Where is the openness? Where is it?

Let us go back to 1990, because that is much more relevant, according to members on the other side of the House. They should go and tell those pregnant women in Wellington why 1990 is so much more important than now. They should go and live back there, because we are living now and we are looking to the future. We are not living in the past like members opposite. We are the party of vision. But let us talk about section 88 of the Primary Maternity Services Notice 2007, shall we, because all that funding is going into the district health boards.

Sue Moroney: What is the policy now?

KATRINA SHANKS: That funding is going into district health boards in 2007—the policy of that member’s party—so in 2007 the funding will go to district health boards. That is why it is important that as more money is put in there, we need this transparency and openness in moving forward. It is thanks to Dr Jackie Blue, who has brought this to our attention once again, and got it through, which the Government has not been able to do in the last 8 years. So let us talk about section 88, and maternity, and the services that are being offered out there.

Sue Moroney: This bill is being voted down. Did no one tell you?

KATRINA SHANKS: And why is it being voted down? It is because Dr Jackie Blue has brought this to the attention of this Government, and then others have got it passed. That is why we are here today.

So let us talk about services to these women in New Zealand, shall we, in 1990—no, in 2007, because National is looking forward; we have a vision for New Zealand, unlike the tired Labour members opposite.

Sue Moroney: What is your policy?

Russell Fairbrother: What’s your policy?

KATRINA SHANKS: Well, let me talk to those members about the additional funding that is going into district health boards, because that is what we want to talk about. This funding is going into the workforce of midwives, general practitioner obstetricians, and the obstetricians around New Zealand to deliver babies in New Zealand. But no—let me get it right. With this money that is going into this midwife sector, this maternity sector, why is there no retention? Why is there a workforce shortage?

Let me give members a little story that will tell them why transparency needs to be in there, and how the Government is underperforming in the health sector. Just let me tell them. If a woman is pregnant in Wellington she goes along to her general practitioner. When she goes along to her general practitioner and says she is pregnant, he says: “Very good. Here is the 0800 MUM 2 BE number.” So she picks up the phone, rings that number, and gets someone on the end of the phone, who says: “Here is a list of six people. You can ring these midwives. Ring any one of them.” But the only problem is that if that woman is more than 8 weeks pregnant, if she has had a complicated pregnancy in the past, or if this is her first baby, her chances of getting a midwife are slim to none. That is after 8 weeks. This is New Zealand; this is Wellington we are talking about. So what do these women do? Well, they cannot go to a general practitioner obstetrician because there are no general practitioner obstetricians. They have been driven—

Sue Moroney: Oh, there are so!

KATRINA SHANKS: There is not one general practitioner obstetrician in Wellington.

Darien Fenton: Oh, rubbish!

KATRINA SHANKS: Are you denying there is no—

Sue Moroney: The Speaker hasn’t said anything, actually.

KATRINA SHANKS: Sorry—is the member on the Government benches denying there is no general practitioner obstetrician in Wellington, because there is not one. If a woman cannot get a midwife, what does she do? She pays $2,500 to go to an obstetrician, but that is a lot of money for many, many people. Believe it or not, and those members may not believe it, but National appreciates the value of money and how expensive that $2,500 is to a family. Even to my own family that is a lot of money. So if the woman cannot afford that $2,500 and does not go to an obstetrician, what happens to her? She is a pregnant woman who cannot get a midwife, and as there is no general practitioner obstetrician, and she cannot afford an obstetrician, she defaults to the tertiary health system—to a district health board. They are not designed to take healthy women and healthy babies—

Tariana Turia: They are so.

KATRINA SHANKS: A hospital is not.

Tariana Turia: They are so!

KATRINA SHANKS: It is not the purpose of the tertiary health sector to take healthy women and healthy babies. It would much prefer women to have a midwife, a general practitioner obstetrician, or an obstetrician than to deliver their babies in a hospital. That is what it is about in Wellington, and that is what it is about all through New Zealand. That is why it is important we get accountability and transparency in district health boards, and thanks to Dr Jackie Blue that is what we will have today.

• Motion not agreed to.

SUE KEDGLEY (Green) : I move, That the Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. This bill addresses a huge but largely invisible and unspoken problem in our society—namely, the constant stress that many people experience as they try to cope with the competing claims of paid employment, raising a family, and other demands in their lives. Nobody is out in the streets marching about it yet—they are probably too exhausted—but the fact is that the chronic pressure many people experience as they seek to combine paid work and parenting has become one of the greatest sources of stress on families today.

Only a few decades ago, just one parent in a family was typically in the workforce working a regular 40-hour week, but these days it has become the norm for both parents to be in paid work in order to provide an income for their family, and many couples are each working 45 or more hours a week. New Zealand has one of the longest and most inflexible working hours cultures in the world. We work longer than the Japanese, for heaven’s sake, and we are on a par with Australia and America. Forty percent of us work more than 45 hours a week, 21 percent work more than 50 hours a week, and all of us, on average, work far longer than European workers. It is no wonder that many New Zealanders are suffering from chronic stress, chronic fatigue, and overload, and that this is having a debilitating effect on family life.

A recent Australian study found that Australia’s long and inflexible working hours culture is causing relationship breakdown, family dysfunction, hostile and ineffective parenting, and reduced child well-being. I am sure we would find exactly the same situation here. So that is why so many employees are calling for more flexible working arrangements that give them more say over where and when they work, and allow them to adjust their paid work to better suit their family and their other responsibilities, while still getting the job done.

The aim of the bill is to help to make this happen, and to encourage flexible working practices that help people strike a balance between work and family life. It will enshrine in law the right of employees with caring responsibilities to request flexible working hours, to place an obligation on employers to consider any such request seriously, and to provide a framework for negotiating that request in a way that does not undermine a business. Under the bill, fathers, mothers, guardians, grandparents, and people looking after a dependent adult will be able to apply for flexible working hours. They can apply to change the hours, the times, or the days they are required to work—to work part-time or compressed hours, or to just have some say over start and finishing times.

The bill is unashamedly based on UK legislation that has been so successful that it is supported by parties across the political spectrum. Eighty percent of requests made under the UK law have been granted, and a compromise has been reached in a further 10 percent of cases. The UK Children’s Minister is calling for the right to be extended to all employees, and the Conservative leader, David Cameron, is calling for it to be extended to all parents, and eventually even wider.

It speaks volumes that the Conservative Party in the UK, in stark contrast to the National Party here, strongly supports this legislation. Indeed, David Cameron is one of the leading champions of the legislation in the United Kingdom, and he argues that flexible working is good not only for employees and families but for business, and that this is the key to increasing productivity and modernising workplaces. He says: “The vital thing to understand is that flexible working should not be seen as a burden on business but as a powerful tool which, used intelligently, offers a route to competitive advantage and commercial success. Far from being a threat or some new corporate fad, it’s a hard headed response to new realities.”

Before the legislation was introduced in the United Kingdom it was vehemently opposed by the business community, for the same reason that some employers are opposing it here. They were worried it would be difficult to implement and would cause additional compliance costs. But in a recent survey 90 percent of employers reported no significant problems in complying with the new right.

I will quote from a recent report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, an organisation with 127,000 members representing employers involved in management and personnel. The report states: “The existing right to request flexible working has been well received by employers, and has successfully encouraged rather than compelled employers to experiment with flexible working practices. Employers who are willing to accommodate … the lives their employees lead outside work … are finding they can fish in a wider pool for labour,”. Indeed, the institute is finding that the people they recruit are more motivated and stay longer. The report goes on to state: “Our research shows that most employers are happy to agree to the majority of such requests and that two in five employers have already extended the right to request further than the legislation requires.” As a result of that, even the employers are supporting an extension to what they call the “light touch” approach to employment law.

It is not just the United Kingdom that has embraced flexible working. Germany, Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands all provide employees with a legal right to request flexible working or to reduce their working hours, and 90 percent of the 8,000 companies surveyed in Europe recently said that flexitime was available to their employees. The reason so many overseas companies are embracing this is that the benefits to business are tangible and real. Employees who are treated with respect and given more control over their hours of work are more motivated and productive. All the research bears this out. It shows that workplaces that offer flexibility are more attractive to employees, so it is easier to recruit and retain staff. There is less absenteeism, sick leave, and staff turnover, and, of course, there are reduced recruitment and training costs. Also, the recruitment pool is widened, particularly the return rate of employees with young children, which helps to ease skill shortages.

There are conflicting reports on how widely available flexible working arrangements are in New Zealand. Some say these arrangements are widely available, but most employees will say that despite all the rhetoric and lip-service, little has changed. Some organisations, such as EziBuy and Harrison Grierson, genuinely offer flexible working arrangements to their staff, and I say good on them. But in many cases claimed flexible working arrangements turn out to be little more than the ability to sometimes adjust a lunch break or go to the dentist.

Paul Callister, an employment expert, sums up the situation when he says: “Employers say they’re family friendly, and they probably believe it, but employees are grinding their teeth.” Many workers are reluctant even to broach the subject with employers for fear of being penalised in some way. As the Families Commission has pointed out, flexible working arrangements, where they do exist, are more common among white-collar workers and managers than they are for ordinary low-paid workers. That is why we need legislation to ensure that the right to request flexible working practices is extended to all workers with caring responsibilities, not just to a privileged few.

In supporting this bill we are making it clear that we believe that a request to adjust a work schedule to accommodate family or other requests is a legitimate request that a business should seek to accommodate, providing it will not be to the detriment of the business. We are also sending a signal that we want to reduce the stress and pressure on families, and encourage innovative workplaces that are more responsive to their employees’ needs.

Consensus is building around the need for more flexible working hours. Ninety percent of submissions to the Department of Labour called for more flexible working arrangements. A coalition comprising more than 50 legal, community, professional, and union organisations support the bill. Grey Power, the International Federation of Business and Professional Women, women lawyers associations, and the Council of Trade Unions all want the right to request that flexible working be extended to all parents with children under 18—rather than to parents with children under 5, as it states in the bill at present—and to all employees, and I do too. That is where things are heading in the UK, and we should be heading there, too.

I want to thank Mark Gosche, the chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, Peter Brown, Darien Fenton, and Sue Moroney for their work and for the positive changes they have made to the bill. In particular, I thank the Minister of Labour, Ruth Dyson, for her support and, indeed, for her leadership on the bill. She proposed laying the bill on the Table while we conducted further research, which was an extremely positive initiative. That has been invaluable. I want to thank Labour, New Zealand First, United Future, the Māori Party, the Progressive party, Taito Phillip Field, and Gordon Copeland for supporting the bill.

I am confident that the bill will help employees find working arrangements that make striking a balance between work and life less stressful, and in so doing will address a major social problem in New Zealand. I am confident too that employers in New Zealand, as in the United Kingdom, will find that flexible working patterns are not something to fear or avoid, but rather something to embrace, because flexible working will make them more attractive to employees and enhance their workplaces. This, of course, will help to relieve congestion on our roads, because every person who has a flexible start time helps to reduce congestion. Thank you very much, and thank you to all the parties that are supporting the bill.

KATE WILKINSON (National) : In speaking to the second reading of the Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill I would like to preface my comments by saying that National believes that flexible working hours are a good idea in principle. We acknowledge the benefits of flexible working arrangements where possible, and we acknowledge that good employers who wish to keep their good employees may do so by offering such flexible working arrangements. We believe in flexible working arrangements. We are not debating here the desirability of flexibility; we are debating the necessity of prescriptive legislation. Good flexible working practices, however, should not be enshrined in inflexible, rigid, unworkable legislated processes and procedures. Good flexible working practices should be encouraged to position employers as more competitive employers, attractive to prospective employees.

I was interested to read recently the words of the Law Commission in its statement of intent. It stated: “the Commission continues to be concerned that there is insufficient questioning of whether legislation is the most appropriate vehicle for giving effect to policy. Proliferation of forms of law making may result in unnecessary legislation and over-regulation, resulting in a body of legislation that lacks coherence and may work against the need for law which is both understandable and accessible.” This is a classic example of the warning of the Law Commission. Can I also, however, congratulate the Law Commission, which has as one of its policies for 2007 and 2008 a policy to develop and implement a flexible working practices policy—not to legislate, but to develop and implement a flexible working practices policy. We applaud that. It is to “position the Commission as a more competitive employer,”. It is not to legislate, but to position the commission as a more competitive employer. That is what flexibility in the workplace should be about, not about putting in place a mass of rigid processes and procedures that both the employer and the employee have to wade through.

We think that common sense should be able to prevail. We have heard that this bill seeks to provide a statutory right to certain employees—not to all, but to those working over 10 hours a week or 40 hours a month—and they can request a variation to certain terms and conditions of their working arrangements, and place duties on their employers who receive such requests. Those employees who will be entitled to make such a request are those who have the care of children under 5, or disabled or dependent relatives. This is not a bill for everyone and in fact it could lead to employers employing those not caught by this legislation—not because they do not believe in flexibility but because that flexibility should not be at the expense of rigid processes and procedures.

An employer under this bill must deal with such a request as soon as possible but within 3 months, by advising whether the request is approved or refused, and if refused by explaining the reasons for that refusal. The grounds for refusal—and I admit they are reasonably sensible—are an inability to reorganise work among existing staff, an inability to recruit additional staff, a detrimental impact on quality, a detrimental impact on performance, an insufficiency of work during the periods the employee proposes to work, some planned structural changes, a burden of additional costs, a detrimental effect on the ability to meet customer demand, and an undermining—interestingly—of the terms of a collective agreement where the work done by the employee making the request comes within the coverage clause.

Employees at the moment can ask for flexibility and for a change in their working arrangements at any time. Employees have a duty under the good faith provisions of our existing legislation to reasonably consider that. Under this bill, the employee who has made such a request may not do so again for 12 months. Now, employees can do it whenever they like, and it has to be listened to. Under this bill, the time is limited to being within 12 months of the request. That is rigid, inflexible, and does not make sense.

If the request under this bill is refused, then we have processes and procedures. If the employee is dissatisfied, he or she may refer the refusal to a labour inspector, then it can go to mediation. If mediation does not resolve it, it can go to the Employment Relations Authority, which may order the employer to reconsider and may also order compensation of up to 8 weeks’ pay. There is also recourse, of course, from the Employment Court right up to the Supreme Court. This is all because an employee and an employer are not being accorded the common sense to organise their own working arrangements for the mutual benefit of both.

We are not convinced that this legislation is necessary, or that this addition of yet another piece of prescriptive legislation will increase the number of persons getting flexible working arrangements, because it does nothing. It does nothing to increase the ability of businesses actually to provide these arrangements.

It is also important, when considering legislation to be passed, that some consideration is given to the effect it will have, to the problem it is supposed to be addressing, to the solution it proposes, and to the question of whether that solution will actually work, may work, or may in fact do the exact opposite of what it is trying to achieve. Do we actually have a problem of lack of flexibility in our workplace? It was noted during the select committee process—in fact, I think by the Families Commission itself—that this bill was to educate, but that legislation was not necessarily the best way to educate and that no other alternative was being considered. No other alternative, other than legislation in relation to flexibility, has even been considered. This bill is not necessary. National does believe, however, in education on mutual benefits, and we do believe that education on the benefits of flexibility is necessary.

I want to refer to what the author of the bill stated before—that much of the support for this bill seems to rely on UK legislation. In fact, the commentary on the bill states: “Our consideration was influenced by legislation introduced in the United Kingdom in 2003, upon which this bill is based,”. But there is a word of caution, because the advice also included: “There are questions as to the extent of the impact of the UK flexibility legislation because there are methodological inconsistencies in DTI-sponsored research on the impact. The DTI results are not necessarily supported by research from other organisations. There is no accurate pre-legislation baseline of information to measure from, and often the surveys do not distinguish between those eligible to request and those not eligible.” We were further advised that the current set of labour, market, economic, and social conditions in New Zealand does not present a close enough match to any of the countries considered in this analysis for that country’s solution to be the obvious choice. I think it is dangerous, therefore, to rely solely on UK legislation as a precedent for our country. We should be making laws that are suitable for our employees and our employers.

I have to ask what the problem is. What is the mischief that this bill sets out to fix? We have heard—and some of the figures differ a wee bit, but I am not going to dispute those—that a survey of around 500 employers showed that flexibility in the workplace was implemented by 83 percent of companies—83 percent of companies already implemented flexibility in the workplace.

Hon Member: How many?

KATE WILKINSON: It was 83 percent. Some of that was through reduced work hours, some was through working from home, and some was study time. There was a New Zealand Herald survey, which members will know. The questionnaire asked: “Do you agree to flexible working hours?”. Eighty-six percent said yes, they did agree to flexible working hours—so do we. To the question: “Should flexible working hours be voluntary or mandatory?”, 98 percent said that flexible working hours should be voluntary, and that is what National agrees with.

I will quote from an example, because I have had a lot of traffic in mail opposing this bill. One employer said: “Put simply, I do not believe this amendment is necessary for our company or the great majority of companies in New Zealand. In our workplace any requests for changed workplace arrangements are considered carefully and we always go out of our way to assist whenever we can, and we do this voluntarily. We do not need a law to tell us to do this. We recognise our business could not operate without happy and valued employees. Many of our staff have young families and over the past few years I have strived for work/life balance for our staff.” Flexibility may be the way forward; legislating for it is not.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Minister of Labour) : That was an extraordinary contribution. I am absolutely convinced that Kate Wilkinson has not yet read the bill as introduced or amended. There is no proposal to make flexible working hours compulsory—people actually have to want them before they request them. The proposal that the Green Party member Sue Kedgley has put before Parliament is the right to request and the employer’s fair consideration of that request.

I commend Sue Kedgley not only for introducing the bill but also for stimulating debate within this Parliament and throughout the country. I also acknowledge the considerable amount of effort that both the member herself and other members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee have put into rigorous consideration of this issue. Clearly, the National members on the committee are the exception.

It has been more than a year—14 months, in fact—since the committee first reported back to Parliament. The committee recommended that the Department of Labour take a year to do some research and to look at the issues facing New Zealand employers and employees that this bill was proposing to address. The result of that work has been very interesting. It showed clearly the significance of the issue of quality flexible work for business and unions. It also showed us how flexible work arrangements can benefit our communities, our economy, and our environment.

The Government has taken the opportunity during those 14 months to work with Business New Zealand and the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions in order to explore the issue of workplace flexibility in greater depth. I thank both Business New Zealand and the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions for their commitment to educating their respective constituencies and promoting the benefits of workplace flexibility. I also acknowledge the other groups that have been party to that debate and education.

It is clear that New Zealanders want, need, and deserve a better work-life balance than they currently have. Flexible work arrangements are a key part of that. Work-life balance is not just about delivering for employees, though; it is about our overall quality of life and our living standards. It is about quality flexible work being good for employers, because if they have an attractive workplace then they will be able to better attract and retain staff. As we know, in New Zealand’s labour market that is one of the biggest challenges for our employers. Flexible, responsive workplaces deliver productivity benefits and ease our skills shortages. They help New Zealand to compete globally for skilled workers, and enable more New Zealanders who want to be in a paid job to be so.

The results of the surveys of employees and employers that the Department of Labour instigated showed that flexible work arrangements, including flexible start and finish times, were consistently ranked among the most helpful initiatives for people to balance paid work with the rest of their life. The majority of employers do not see major barriers to improving flexibility. That is a good thing. In support of that, employees understand the business imperatives facing their organisations. In fact, we know that many New Zealand employers already offer their staff flexible working arrangements. But we know—and it was backed up by the research—that many do not.

Almost all of the respondents agreed that this issue was an important one. Eight-four percent of respondents to the survey supported legislating for the right to request flexible working arrangements. Many supported legislation on the basis that it would legitimise the issue and provide a clear, fair, and transparent process for requesting flexible working arrangements and for the consideration of that request. One-third of respondents felt that a combination of approaches would work best—that is, education, promotion, and legislation. That is why it is important that the Department of Labour, Business New Zealand, and the Council of Trade Unions continue to provide information and resources to our respective constituencies.

The bill provides certain groups of employees with the right to request flexible working arrangements—that is, a change to their hours of work, days of work, or place of work. The bill requires employers to consider the request, and provides specific grounds on which they can refuse. The bill also has a process for making and considering requests, including a requirement that an employee must explain what changes may be required to the employer’s arrangements. That aspect of the bill supports what we have heard during the consultation process, which is that, to be successful, flexible work arrangements need to suit the needs of all parties: the individual concerned, his or her colleagues, and the employer.

As Sue Kedgley mentioned in her earlier contribution, the bill is based on similar UK legislation. That legislation has been very successful. Eighty percent of requests in the UK for flexible working arrangements have been accepted—the majority accepted in whole and a smaller number accepted with compromise. Studies into the effect of the legislation in the UK show that employers are now very positive about it. Seventy-six percent said the impact on their business was negligible. Ninety percent said they had no problems at all complying with the new requirements. Almost as important is that the majority of employers showed that the legislation has had a positive impact on employee attitudes and overall morale.

The legislation in the UK has helped to change workplace cultures. The vast majority of UK employers now consider requests from employees that are not covered by the legislation. They have moved to a broader consideration. That finding shows how legislation can be a catalyst for positive change beyond the groups immediately affected. I am confident that New Zealand workplaces will be just as responsive to the need for flexibility and work-life balance.

There are many issues to be considered in legislation like this, including whether workers would have the right to revert to the original hours once their need, if it were a specific need for flexible hours, was considered. The committee has addressed that concern by amending the bill to require that a request must state whether the arrangements are to be permanent or temporary, and, if temporary, how long they would last. There is also the possibility that consideration will need to be given to possible impacts on collective agreements, where unions have specifically sought to regulate hours in order to prevent casualisation. Many collective agreements have specific full-time hours spelt out, and unions have fought hard to hold on to those provisions against the increasing tide of part-time and casual work.

The exclusion of some groups—for example, those who have the responsibility of caring for dependent family members such as elderly parents—was also a concern during earlier debate on this bill. I am pleased to note that this concern has also been addressed by the amendment of the committee to extend the provisions of the bill to include workers with dependent relatives.

A further issue is that of making the bill work in practice so that all workers are treated fairly. The system would not operate on a “first in, first served” basis. The select committee has stimulated a healthy and incisive debate, but there is still more work to be done. I welcome that. We want to be very confident that we can successfully implement the type of flexible work that the bill’s author envisaged.

I again thank the members of the committee for their considered deliberations on this bill. I particularly acknowledge the positive outcome of the committee’s earlier recommendation that research and consultation should be carried out before decisions were made on progressing the bill. That work, and the very useful submissions received from business, unions, and other interested parties, has helped make for a more robust bill that reflects the importance of flexibility in New Zealand workplaces. This member’s bill is another good example of our Labour-led Government working with other parties in an MMP environment to achieve the best solution for the diverse interests of all those affected by the proposed changes. Again, I thank Sue Kedgley for bringing this bill forward. I wish the next stages of the bill speedy progress.

PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) : It is a worrying time tonight. In the relatively short period of a couple of hours, we have had two bills from the Greens—and they both make common sense. Surprisingly still, New Zealand First is supporting them both. I do not know what is going wrong, but we might be in for some big problems.

I want to say to Sue Kedgley that I admire her attitude and her approach to the Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill, because when she presented it to this House it did not have anything going for it. In my view, she had got it wrong. The purpose clause in the original bill—I will read it out—stated: “The purpose of this Act is to grant qualifying employees the right to change their working hours where they have full-time care of—…”.She admitted that there was a drafting error there. She also admitted at select committee—and this takes some guts, I have to say—that there were limited reasons for the employers to decline such a request. It seemed to us that the original bill, had it passed, had justifications for arguments between employees and employers. I compliment Mark Gosche on coming up with the idea to have a year’s grace period, when employers, unions, and what have you spoke about the bill, and the bill has been significantly amended.

I compliment not only Sue Kedgley on that change but all the members of the select committee, including the National members. Kate Wilkinson comes across to me as a straight talker, but tonight what she said was a little bit round the bend. What did she say today? She said that a person must not make a request for flexible hours more than once a year, or something along those lines. But she sat in the select committee when New Zealand First said that provision was not adequate and not fair and that we had to change it—and we did change it. Clause 69AAD(2) states: “The employee is not entitled to make another request under this Part to his or her employer earlier than 12 months after the date on which the previous request was made.” That is quite different from saying “must not” make another request.

When I was an employer I took the attitude that if my guys wanted a bit of flexibility, I would listen to them and go along with it. Indeed, one of my guys was heavily involved in a particular sport. He was such a pain in the backside that when he requested to go off, I said that he could go and play the sport to his heart’s content but that he had to make up the difference when he came back—and he did, in more ways than one. He proved to be a great asset, and I let him go to play his sport. Some employers have got the impression—and it is quite a wrong impression—that this bill stops people going along to their employer to ask whether they can have flexible working hours for any reason under the sun. There is nothing in this bill that prohibits that—and I see that Sue Kedgley is nodding. They can go along any time, any day, and say that they have a commitment and ask whether they can have a bit of flexibility in their hours of work, for whatever reason—and that might be a social reason, or whatever.

Let us be absolutely clear, all this bill does is give the statutory right for people to go along to their employer to request, or request in writing, flexible hours for a particular reason—and they are all reasons around care. Let me give those reasons. Those reasons, as stated in clause 69AA(a) are if the person has the care of “(i) a child or children under 5 years: (ii) a disabled child or children: (iii) a dependent relative or relatives:”. It is reasonable to have the statutory right to request flexible working hours, for goodness’ sake! That is pretty basic stuff, is it not? The members are nodding in agreement.

There are a number of reasons why those particular requests can be denied. Clause 69AAE(3) states that the employer can refuse on the grounds of (a) inability to reorganise work among existing staff: (b) inability to recruit additional staff: (c) detrimental impact on quality: (d) detrimental impact on performance: (e) insufficiency of work during the periods the employee proposes to work: (f) planned structural changes: (g) burden of additional costs: (h) detrimental effect on ability to meet customer demand:”. Those are some of the reasons why the employer can refuse to grant the request. Is this not perfect common sense? It saddens me that apparently there are some employers in this country to whom the employee with a disabled child, a child under 5, or a dependent relative can say that he or she needs a bit of flexible working time for a period of months, or whatever, and the employer says “No, go take a running jump.” If that is what National wants this society to turn into, then I say that I am sorry to hear it.

It is quite reasonable to give people in those circumstances a statutory right to ask formally for this sort of flexible working arrangement. That is quite a reasonable request. When I hear Kate Wilkinson tell me that 86 percent of employers agree to flexible working hours, I ask what the problem is. [Interruption] The member says there is a problem. I wait to hear the next speaker tell me what the problem is, because if 14 percent do not accept flexible working hours—

Paula Bennett: Why use a sledgehammer approach when it’s already enacted?

PETER BROWN: I did not quite catch that. If the member puts the question to me, I will answer it.

Paula Bennett: Why use a sledgehammer approach when it’s already enacted?

PETER BROWN: This is a sledgehammer? Oh, my goodness! Let me acquaint the member with another clause in this bill, again as a result of New Zealand First intervention, and again with the agreement of Sue Kedgley. This whole thing will be reviewed in 2 years. If the member calls that a sledgehammer—well then!

Let me just talk about what the review is likely to turn up. It could highlight some problems. It could highlight working arrangements that are not working. It could highlight the need for the legislation to be amended and restrict it. Equally so, it could highlight the need for the legislation to be expanded. A review after 2 years is quite a reasonable approach to this type of legislation. How dare National members say this is a sledgehammer approach. They would not know a sledgehammer if they saw one.

I have heard people refer to the UK legislation. I know that the select committee was informed of various things about the UK legislation. Sue Kedgley has told us how well the UK legislation is working. I have to say that if it is working that well over there, we do not need to copy it but we could follow it by example. I am nervous of saying too much, because whenever I talk highly of the UK or what happens there, people tend to sing in unison “Well, go back there then”.

Hon Member: No, no, we want you here.

PETER BROWN: Thank you. I have to say that I will disappoint a few members. I have no intention of going back there—only for a holiday, or to watch Arsenal play a game from time to time. I am here in this country, and I am asking employers in this country to be fair to their employees.

This is reasonable legislation, it will not put employers out of business, it will not add to the bureaucracy. The labour inspector—[Interruption] The member over there laughs. I bet she has never employed anybody in her life. The labour inspector will solve the problem 99 percent of the time on the shop floor. Everything has been made convenient. This gives people with children and dependent relatives the advantage of formally requesting flexible working hours.

In conclusion, this legislation does not go far enough. New Zealand First will also be supporting an amendment for parents of sick children under the age of 18 who request flexible working hours. Thank you very much, Madam Assistant Speaker.

• Debate interrupted.

TARIANA TURIA (Co-Leader—Māori Party) : Tēnā tātou katoa. I think, after that exchange in the House, I might go into business myself and provide a bit of training for transformation in terms of less violent ways of speaking.

First of all, I want to commend and congratulate Sue Kedgley and the Green Party on this bill. Albert Einstein once said that not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted, and such might be a great subtitle for the Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill. I want to make it clear that our support is not based on the UK legislation. Our support is based on quality of life for whānau. How do we count the value of nurturing children, the vital role of parenting, and the significance of family life? How do we account for the status we give to the health and safety of our children, and to their sense of being loved, valued, and actively participating in the families and societies into which they are born?

Well, the Unicef Innocenti Research Centre’s international league tables published earlier this year give us a pretty good clue of how much family life means to New Zealanders. Asked how often their parents eat a main meal with them around the table, only 64.4 percent of 15-year-olds in this fine land answered “several times a week”, compared with an OECD average of 79.4 percent. Asked how often their parents spend time just talking to them, only 51.9 percent of our 15-year-olds said “several times a week”, compared with an average of 62.8 percent. How sad is that? For eating a meal and talking with one’s parents, we are scoring in the lower half of the league tables. It is like that Tegel chicken ad, where the only way that the dad can be identified is by the name tag that he wears on his shirt.

This House must face up to the reality of people’s lives, where poverty has confronted our families in levels of severity that make every day difficult. We must face up to a reality where domestic violence has become normalised, where our health is compromised, and where the addictions of gambling, alcohol abuse, and drug abuse are crippling. But we have been there before, and we can—and we will—overcome. Our transformation depends on all of us stepping up to the mark and restoring to our whānau the capacity for making a difference in our own homes. It will not come from the hand of Government and it will not come from the directive of the Minister, but it will come from us.

That is the first clear reason why we in the Māori Party support the Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill. The central importance of whānau, and our responsibilities and rights to care for our own, must be preserved. Another reality of today’s profile is that working families are now the norm; the single-largest family type is couples where both parents work. But it is also clear that many, many parents find it difficult to juggle paid work and parenting. I can certainly relate to that as a young mother who had to go to work—not because I wanted to but because I had to. The Ministry of Social Development’s Work, Family and Parenting study in 2006 looked at work-to-home spillover effects. The vast majority of people surveyed—61 percent—felt that they had missed out on some of the rewarding aspects of being a parent because of work, and I can relate to that too. You know, I would love to have seen the first time my children walked and the first time they did a whole lot of things that, unfortunately, they did while I was at work, and one of the rare downsides in my life as an MP today is missing out on the wonderful richness of being a day-to-day nanny to my mokopuna.

This sadness is something I share with all my colleagues in the Māori Party, MPs and staff alike; our choice to be doing the work that we are doing now comes with an enormous cost, day in and day out. The centre for midwifery and women’s health research stated the other view, in one submission from a part-time working mum with young children. She said: “I feel very privileged … and it would be great for other parents to have the same open-minded, guilt-free opportunity. As they say … they’re not young for ever, and the greatest gift we can ever give to our kids is time.” That is the greatest gift indeed.

For whānau Māori, the option of work flexibility would be a huge advance. For so many of our families, the pressure of inadequate income and the challenge to meet basic requirements such as decent housing, sufficient clothing, adequate furniture, medical expenses, dental care, electricity, and an ample food supply gives very little choice about the concept of work and life balance. Three particular points must be emphasised here. Firstly, the New Zealand Living Standards report alerts us to a reality in which 27 percent of all Pasifika families and 17 percent of all Māori families are reported as suffering severe hardship, and we know that many of those families work two or three jobs just to survive. Choice and relative bargaining power are luxuries in such a life. The second reality is that of all two-parent families in which one parent is working, 28 percent are in poverty. The third reality is to emphasise the advice from the Children’s Commissioner, Cindy Kiro, that although employers and employees benefit from the flexibility of working hours, so too do the children. This bill is about support for their rights, their needs, and their well-being. Flexible working times can assist in the relentless juggling of work, family, and financial pressures. An environment in which home life is valued and flexibility is freely negotiated will result in more productive and healthy outcomes for all.

I want also to focus on the benefits that businesses can achieve from this change. From the flood of letters that has swamped our offices, one would think that every New Zealander lived to work, loved to work, and longed to work without having another thought for children or family life. It seems a long way off from the everyday lot of my constituency, who tell me about being constantly overloaded and tired, with drooping morale, sick kids, and chronic stress. I do not hear a lot of joy expressed about the freedom to work from home, the opportunity to vary start and finish times, or even the unspoken luxury of study leave. What I hear about is the sheer hard work of doing everything on a shoestring and taking on the double shift of parenting and full-time work, and how, when something has to give, well, it will not be the children or the whānau who are given up.

So it seems to us in the Māori Party that the offer of flexible hours is a win-win situation for everybody. I want to just mention the support of the National Party, which is conditional on flexibility happening without the mechanism of legislation to make it so. For the constituents in my electorate—for our people—the reality is that the power and control of working hours is simply not an equal, negotiable agreement. It does not cut both ways. Assisting parents to balance work and family life has not been achievable, and it will not be achievable, by the wistful hope of good-faith bargaining. We support this bill, therefore, because it is most clearly a worker-friendly initiative that can give more weight to the intentions of the Employment Relations Act. One cannot simply assume that employers will be automatically fair-minded and family friendly. Although we would hope that employers could recognise benefits such as increased productivity, improved morale, decreased absenteeism, enhanced staff retention, and improved profitability, the bulk of the lobbying that came into our offices does not give us much hope.

Finally, I will share the results of a recent Australian study called An Unexpected Tragedy. That report concluded that long working hours led to strained family relationships—a high social cost that impacts heavily on parents and that results in reduced child well-being. Will this Parliament be the one to stand in the way of a brighter future for our children? Kia ora.

JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) : I stand on behalf of United Future to speak to the Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill. United Future did not support the first reading of this bill. We had some serious concerns about the impact that this legislation would have on employers, and we were particularly mindful of the large number of small businesses that characterise the New Zealand employment environment. However, the substantial work done by both the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, and the willingness of the sponsor to delay the passage of this bill to allow Department of Labour officials to do some additional work, has in our opinion paid off.

This bill establishes a fair process that allows employees with family responsibilities to discuss flexible arrangements with their employers without fear of consequence. The number of reasons that an employer can use to decline a request are comprehensive. As an employer who has always negotiated flexible arrangements with employees, I have found that the benefits far outweigh any compromise I have to make. However, we do acknowledge that not every business has a work schedule that makes possible this flexibility, and the new and additional provisions give plenty of room for employers who cannot make this marker.

The British experience is very compelling, and the fact that the criteria that determines who can apply for flexible employment has been expanded seems to suggest the success that we can expect here in New Zealand. In the United Kingdom 90 percent of employers reported no significant problems complying, and 66 percent of managers considered the new provisions to be cost-effective.

If anyone has kept up with New Zealand research on the issues of workplace stress, they will know that the greatest stress factor that reduces worker productivity is family-based stress. The mum who has to prise a distraught toddler from her at a day-care centre is generally less focused than the worker who can take an extra 10 minutes to settle her child and make up the time in her lunchtime.

This bill is not about short-changing employers but about identifying where flexibility can be easily accommodated. United Future congratulates those employers who have already pioneered flexible family-friendly work environments. These employers understand that staff turnover is a costly exercise and that employment innovation is proving to be a winning approach to a sustainable workforce. Establishing a process that protects both employers and employees is more than useful; it is absolutely essential.

The Minister for Employment Relations and Consumer Affairs, Gerry Sutcliffe, in Britain says the UK legislation has been a tremendous success. He says that employers know that in a tight labour market it makes business sense to provide flexible working opportunities for their staff. Flexible working arrangements enable employers to raise their staff morale and decrease unplanned absenteeism, retain skilled staff, and reduce recruitment costs.

United Future is very pleased to support the second reading of this bill. We congratulate its sponsor Sue Kedgley on the fine work that has gone on since the first reading debate, and we remind the House that no one on their deathbed has ever regretted not spending more time at work.

PAULA BENNETT (National) : It is something to be speaking tonight about flexible working conditions! I suppose the first thing I would acknowledge about the Green Party, and about Sue Kedgley who has put this bill forward, is that it has raised the debate to a different level in our society. In the last 14 months we have certainly heard employers in particular talking a bit more about flexible working hours, what it means for them, and how they can deliver it to their employees. There are obviously things that we think are fundamentally wrong with the bill, but I would like to start by discussing flexible working hours and what the National Party believes they mean for employees out there, and for employers as well.

We believe that a change toward flexible working hours is already happening. We have seen that in the research data coming out—that up to 83 percent of employers are actually giving flexible working hours to their employees at the current time. I have personal experience, having worked in the recruitment field before coming into Parliament. I was in a situation of negotiating contracts and conditions for people going into employment, and I would certainly agree that the issue that constantly came up was not the issue of getting more money. More often than not, particularly for women, the issue was of the hours they were going to work. If people had young children, they were looking for something that gave them the opportunity to spend time with them. That was vitally important to those people. Equally, people without children were looking for a block of time off—half a day every fortnight—which would mean more to them for whatever reason they wanted to spend that time on. I never saw the reason as being what was important, but I saw the work-life balance as being what was vital.

So in all fairness there was constant negotiation. Employers who were smart enough to know they were living in a tight labour market knew that if they wanted to have good people on board, or if they had good people already working for them and wanted to keep them, the best thing to do was to recognise what their employees’ concerns and issues were, and to adjust the workplace to the best of their ability to accommodate them. We see that on a day-to-day basis, and we heard stories about it at the select committee from the submitters who came forward. What I found amusing in the submission process was that we often heard people say: “Well, I’m OK, but I’m worried about other people.”, and that is where it came from. We heard a lot of people talk about how they had been able to negotiate flexible working hours for themselves.

I want to keep on this issue a little bit, because I do not think we are all really grasping how absolutely important it is and just what the effects are. A lot of lip-service is going on, certainly from Labour, but it is about time we saw some serious action. What we hear time and time again is that the Government wants to see more women get into productive work. We certainly heard it from the Prime Minister; it is what she wants. We remember that from the Speech from the Throne. So that means, by definition, that women who choose to raise their families are not seen as being in productive work. We would like to see more research about the long-term effects on women who are going into paid work and the time that that takes them away from their families. We need to start asking some of the questions we have about what the long-term effects will be on those families, and what that means for them. So when we have such a push towards that—when we see children going into childcare and early childhood education at a younger age, and when we see women in situations where they feel they have no choice but to go into paid work and so make that choice—we wonder about the point of this legislation, which we feel is legislation for the sake of it and not legislation that will solve some of those problems. We can deal with the rhetoric, but until we deal with the facts I think there should be some huge concern going on there.

Awareness is good, and it has stimulated debate. I suppose if this were a different debate I would be asking the Minister of Labour to give us an account of the work-life balance project that she has initiated and has been running. It would certainly be of interest to us in the National Party, because we obviously have equal concerns about the flexibility of hours and people’s ability to get that work-life balance. The Minster has certainly recognised that and put a project in place. She has been going around to try to educate employers, but we are not seeing what sort of results have come from that. So one presumes that that project must have failed if we now need to legislate; it is as simple as that. Perhaps we should have stuck with a programme of educating employers, and talking to employees more often about their rights. Time and time again we have heard from employers that they would allow more flexibility if they knew what each individual really wanted, but that they are not hearing that. I certainly agree with a previous speaker from the Māori Party who spoke about that inequality, and about people feeling they cannot stand up and actually ask for it. Legislating will not fix that, quite frankly, but educating would have.

I find it quite amusing to hear members on the other side of the House bleating on. Those members should talk a bit more about the role of the unions in relation to the most vulnerable workers, because we wonder how well they are educating those vulnerable workers they say they speak for, time and time again. The unions need to let workers know that any one of them, at any time, can step up and ask for flexible working hours. Anyone can ask for flexible working hours at any time, and that is a really important fact for this House to take note of. It is quite easy for a member to stand up on that side of the House and paint us as the ogres who do not care about workers and who do not understand the pressures people live with on a day-to-day basis. The reality is that we are dealing with legislation that will be more arbitrary, create more bureaucracy, and make it more difficult for those people to stand up and ask.

So do we need an education programme for employees in order for them to understand what their rights are, and to give them an understanding of how they can step up and approach people and know what they can do? Without a doubt, they should stand up. The work-life balance project was not an absolutely bad idea. It was a reasonably good one, but we are not seeing it through to its full conclusion. Instead, it is being interrupted halfway through with legislation that will make this process a lot more arduous, and there will be many times when it will not get the results for those people that the Government really wants.

One of the concerns we have—and it is quite a tough one—is that someone can apply for flexible hours only once every 12 months. So there is a 12-month clause in the bill, and although members may say that people can do it in other ways, if we go by this legislation—and one presumes that people will abide by the rules and regulations—we see that they can apply only once every 12 months. Get in the real world! Things change—that is the reality of it. So people who have arrangements with their partners to work certain hours one week and to share childcare issues together, will all of a sudden find themselves in a situation where they cannot ask again in that 12-month period, because every one else has.

What happens at present? Actually, we find that employees negotiate amongst themselves, and that is happening more and more. We heard that from people who came forward to the select committee with submissions. Those people said that time and time again employees were working out their own negotiations, then taking them forward to the employer in terms of how they would job-swap, who would fill which shifts, and what hours they would work. It has been proven time and time again that this is the kind of thing that really works. So if we accept that flexible working hours are already happening, and if we accept that people have the right to ask for them and can ask for them, on any given day at any given time, then this bill is really just another form of a grievance process that will be used by some employees who are aggrieved by their employers and want to take them through the process.

I will talk through this process quickly, in the last minute that I have. Aggrieved employees can firstly go to a labour inspector, so that is another level of bureaucracy that has been put in since the bill was first introduced 14 months ago. If the labour inspector does not go for that, the employee then can go to mediation at the Employment Relations Authority. Appeals by the losing party will then be heard successively by the Employment Court and the Court of Appeal, and, ultimately, there is the possibility of going to the Supreme Court. Obviously, there was a concern that this process might happen, because a clause was put in to say that the most anyone can go for in compensation is an amount equal to the employee’s pay for 8 weeks, if it is found that through this process the employee should have been given those flexible hours. However, according to this bill the judicial system is not permitted to overturn an employer’s decision, which seems absolutely ludicrous in itself. Thank you.

Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) : I really relish the opportunity to speak in this debate on a very important bill, which is actually very light in its requirements of employers. I will talk about the process first; I think it was a very good one. The Transport and Industrial Relations Committee took a 1 year gap with the Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill, so that employers could live up to the claims they made to the select committee that they would prove that the issue could be dealt with by education rather than by legislation. That year was wasted, in my view, by employers, who did not pick up the challenge. So the select committee then worked on improving the bill, and we have done a very good job. I think it is very fair legislation, and, as I said, very light legislation in terms of its requirements of employers.

I would like those who oppose the bill to consider these few facts. In the 2006 census, 420,000 New Zealanders reported providing support for an individual with ill health or a disability within the previous 4 weeks. This information comes from the very good document that Ruth Dyson has put out, Caring for New Zealand Carers. This document also reports the fact that women are more likely to be carers than men. Around 63 percent of carers in New Zealand are women. Thirty-eight percent of carers in New Zealand are between the ages of 45 and 64, with a further 31 percent between the ages of 30 and 44. Māori and Pacific peoples are more likely to provide unpaid support. Why is that important? Well, it tells us that a huge number of people, just in terms of the community, care for relatives, friends, or whomever, in their homes or in other people’s homes. Many of those people also have to try to balance that caregiving with work.

I will talk a little bit about my own personal experience, which I am not wont to do in this House on members’ day, but this is an appropriate debate in which to do it. Maybe my doing so will get home to the people who oppose this bill the sort of life that many New Zealanders lead, and I am one of them. Tomorrow evening, if I do not get home by 9.30—if the aeroplane from Wellington to Auckland is late—my 75-year-old mother-in-law will be required to wait at my home, because the paid caregiver will have gone. When I come to Wellington I have to worry about that problem every Thursday night. Every Friday night, from 9 o’clock until 8.30 the next morning, I am the caregiver for my wife. My wife cannot do anything for herself. She is completely dependent on everybody else for everything: being dressed, being fed, being moved. She cannot get out of bed; she is hoisted out of bed. We cannot leave her at home. I cannot go out on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday night without finding somebody in the wider family to sit with her. That is a familiar story to many, many people in New Zealand.

I am lucky. I am in a job where I can juggle my hours—just—to fit in with those demands. We get paid caregiver time, but we have to cover over 50 hours ourselves—that is, me and my 75-year-old mother-in-law. My children are all working. They are in their 20s, and one of them has a child. Both parents of that child have to be off to work at 7 o’clock in the morning; school does not start until 9 o’clock. One of my other daughters has to take that little boy to school, and at the end of the day one of my nieces looks after him after school. That, again, is a common story in New Zealand families. It is not unique to me. It is the reality for hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders.

People who say it should be left to the voluntarist system need to think again. I do as close as I can to a full-time MP’s hours—and we all know that down here we work more than 40 hours on just the 3 days of Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday—and I do at least 40 hours of unpaid caregiver time at home, because the State is unable to provide full-time caregiver hours. That is a reality we have to face up to. I do not hear anybody saying we should increase taxes in order to relieve those people. No, I hear people who are opposed to this bill saying we should cut taxes because we are spending too much on health.

In the last census, 420,000 people reported that they were responsible for providing caregiver time in their families or in their communities. What is the multiplier effect of that? There is the person whom they are caring for; that doubles the figure. Then there are all the other family members. So the vast majority of New Zealanders, at some time in their lives, have those types of pressures placed upon them, as well as trying to get on with their careers or their jobs, and trying to put food on the table and pay the mortgage or pay the rent. So I find it absolutely incredible that anybody could oppose this very light legislation.

We should think about the demand in New Zealand for a workforce. We have record levels of employment and record low levels of unemployment, but we still have a labour market crying out for more people. Why would people oppose this measure? It is one of the ways of solving that problem, of saying to people like me: “We can work around the constraints that you have in your life. We recognise that you have caregiver responsibilities for your child, your disabled relative, or your elderly mum and dad.” In fact, the bill should go further, and I hope we are able to amend it further so that even more people are captured by it. I lay down that challenge to members of the employer community. They should think about it. They always turn up at select committee hearings and say people are our most valuable resource, so why would they oppose this legislation?

Why would the National Party say it could all be done by voluntarism? I heard about the voluntary approach that the hospitality sector said it took. It said there were lots of restaurants in each street, and if one did not offer employees the hours they wanted, they should leave that restaurant and go to the next one. I am afraid that that is just not good enough. That is not the sort of flexibility that goes both ways; that is the sort of flexibility that goes only one way—the employer decides what the flexibility is, and employees either meet it or they do not.

The select committee heard from many, many people. I remember the women from the women’s division of the Law Society—we did not hear from the men. They talked about the difficulties of trying to make their way in a career where the glass ceiling has been there for a very long time. Women from the Federation of Business and Professional Women talked about the difficulties of women with children being told by employers that a breakfast meeting was being held in the morning, and although it was not compulsory, they would really like all the team to turn up. Well, how can women do that when the childcare centre does not open in time for them to be able to attend? All of us know the pressure to attend after-work drinks. It is all about bonding and team work, and being part of the team, and that is how one gets ahead in life. Of course, the childcare centre is not going to look after the kid after 5.30 p.m. How can anybody in the National Party ignore that and sit there with a straight face? How can the employer community ignore that and say it is taking care of it voluntarily, when we heard evidence from people from all walks of life who said that was not the case?

This bill is very personal to me. It is not legislation that anybody should be frightened of. It will start to take care of the problems experienced by many of the people I come across because my wife has a disability, and many of them are not as lucky as I am. They have had to give up their jobs and their careers, to sell their houses, and to become full-time carers. They have had to live with all the stresses and strains, the sickness, and all the things that, as Tariana Turia said, come with being a carer, and they have had to put aside their aspirations in life. This bill could make a small step towards making New Zealand a better place, and that is why I support it so strongly.

Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) : It is ironic, is it not, that in one evening we are debating two bills promoted by the Green Party? I know perfectly well that both bills are well intentioned. The Green Party wants to do these things for the good of people. It wants to extend the power of the law to make things easier for people. The bills are—typically, but not exclusively—for young people and for women in the workforce who would prefer to have more flexible working hours. I do not question the Green Party’s good intentions. That is not the point of the National Party criticism. Our concern, fundamentally, is that this situation is like the drip, drip, drip of compliance costs on the stone. No one drip makes us particularly wet, and no one drip makes things awkward or wears away the stone, but if we just add these legislative components bit by bit, piece by piece—

Dr Jackie Blue: Drip by drip.

Dr WAYNE MAPP:—drip by drip, then pretty soon there will be a whole flood of legislation to deal with, a whole impenetrable wall of legislation that just cripples and hurts this country.

The truth is that this country is over-governed. I know that that remark may seem a little trite, and I know that the left will say that such a remark is the usual answer from the right and that it is always going to come up with that kind of hoary old chestnut, but the facts actually confirm the view that we put forward.

I can point—as I did earlier in the day—not just to growth but to productivity. The Government crows about growth in this economy. We hear its members day by day saying that the farmers are doing exceptionally well, and so forth, and that we are not doing so bad with growth at 2 percent. Who can actually be proud of 2 percent growth in an economy? Why would Government members get up day by day and trumpet 2 percent growth as if it were some marvellous achievement? It is extraordinary that the best we can do in terms of growth is 2 percent, even though we have virtually full employment—and I acknowledge that we have virtually full employment. When we have full employment, we must be able to do better than 2 percent growth.

Surely that situation causes the Government and its allies, the Green Party, to ask some questions. Why is it, when we have virtually full employment, when we have virtually the most buoyant commodity prices for a generation—arguably, actually, for two generations—that the best we can do is 2 percent? Why can Government members not answer such a simple question? I will make a suggestion to the left—and I use that term broadly; it includes Labour and the Greens, because I have heard the two parties talk about the prospect of a Labour-Green coalition in the future. Actually, that is a pretty horrific thought, is it not? If that is the sort of spectre we face, I would have to say that instead of something like 600 people leaving New Zealand per week we will probably see 1,000 or 1,500 people leaving per week.

To come back to my point, I have to ask whether those Government members have ever considered the totality of the compliance costs they impose on the economy, because wealthier economies, more successful economies—places that are actually proving more attractive to New Zealanders—do not have this kind of legislation. Australia, our closest competitor, does not have this legislation. Australia does not have the legislation that was passed earlier today. That is our competition. You know, that is so blindingly obvious, I would have thought. It is all very well for Ms Kedgley to refer to Scandinavia and Europe, but we are not actually in competition with Scandinavia. Those countries are not our major international threat economically; Australia is. Australia may be our pals in so many other ways, but in this area we have to—we absolutely have to—ensure that our economy is competitive compared with that of Australia. Unless we do so, it is absolutely inevitable that more people will leave our country and go to Australia, because they can. It is not a difficult choice. So many New Zealanders are making that precise choice, and for the Green Party to protest about it indicates that its members are putting their heads in the sand, in that respect.

What is worse in respect of this legislation is that the Green Party came along with legislation that picked up the worst features of the European legislation. I would have to say that Europe is not a model that this country should want to follow, because Europe is actually in decline. When we look at the global competitive stakes, we see that the countries that are doing well economically—be they democratic administrations or republican administrations—are the United States, Canada, and Australia. Those are the countries we relate to. Australia, in particular, is the country that we have to benchmark ourselves against. So far, this Government and the Green Party have totally failed in that benchmarking test.

The income gap between our country, New Zealand, and Australia has grown substantially—in fact, by about 30 percent—in the last 6 years in after - income tax terms. Surely, that should give pause for thought for members on the other side of the House. Surely, it should make Government and Green members think that maybe they need to give this legislation a miss, that maybe we do not really need it, and that maybe the voluntary system works sufficiently well. OK, it will not work perfectly. Nothing will ever work perfectly, but maybe it works well enough, because there are bigger issues at stake. One of those bigger issues at stake is our overall competitiveness with Australia.

I say to the Government that it has had 8 years in office, and in that 8 years it has failed that competitive test. That is the simple truth of it, is it not? The Government has fundamentally failed that test. I remember back in 1999 and 2000 when the Prime Minister would proudly strut into the House and proclaim to the nation that she expected our country to get into the top half of the OECD. She genuinely believed it. I repeat: she genuinely believed it. She does not say that anymore, because she knows it is not deliverable. The one thing I would generally say about her is that, on one level at least, she tries to be true to herself. When she sees she is failing at something, she stops talking about it. She knows we will not be able to get into the top half of the OECD. She knows we will not be competitive with Australia. So she has stopped talking about it.

Well, New Zealanders have not forgotten. They know they have a choice: they can simply cross the Tasman and get another job. I predict that some members opposite who will be retiring will do precisely that. Some of them, I know for a fact—but I will not name them in here, because that would be inappropriate—will be going to Australia to live. They have made their choice that the grass is greener on the other side of the hill. What does that say about Helen, when some in her own team say: “Actually, Helen, you’ve failed.”? They say she has failed in the most basic test in terms of which country people would prefer to live in—Australia or New Zealand. Those people are making the choice to go to Australia.

I have to say to this Government that it should put some real thought into this sort of legislation. It should not go in for this policy of drip, drip, drip against the stone, building up that dam, because ultimately, I have to say, that policy will wash Labour away in 2008.

SUE BRADFORD (Green) : That was an extraordinary contribution from Dr Wayne Mapp, especially given that the National Party is supposed to be all in favour of families, and that I understand it is out to cultivate the women’s vote next year. I do not know how many women actually appreciate the National Party’s position on flexible working hours.

This is the second Green Party member’s bill on employment relations issues before the House today, highlighting the importance that we place on issues of fairness and sustainability when it comes to conditions of employment for workers—unlike certain other parties in this House. The significant improvements in the industrial relations arena that have occurred over the last 7 or 8 years, would not have happened without the Green Party’s support, and today we have two significant gains for employees being progressed at our initiative. I would like to congratulate my colleague Sue Kedgley on the enormous amount of work she has done in successfully getting the bill thus far. Also I thank and acknowledge colleagues from other political parties, including particularly Labour, but also New Zealand First and United Future for their support—

Barbara Stewart: And the Māori Party.

SUE BRADFORD: —the Māori Party, and also trade unions and community organisations—

Barbara Stewart: And Gordon Copeland.

SUE BRADFORD: And Gordon Copeland.

Barbara Stewart: And Taito Phillip Field.

SUE BRADFORD: Oh, good; even more. So I thank also Gordon Copeland, Taito Phillip Field, and all the trade unions and community groups that have also organised and worked so hard to get the bill through as far as this. According to the Department of Labour report, Quality Flexible Work: The New Zealand Experience, published last year, flexibility of working hours is currently something that is largely enjoyed by management and senior staff. Perhaps the National Party does support that part of the hierarchy. But many other New Zealanders of another sort are forced to work longer and longer hours, often in more than one job at a time. Indeed, 40 percent of New Zealand employees are in paid work more than 45 hours a week, and for 21 percent it is more than 50 hours a week. Often—especially in the retail, servicing, and caring industries—it is low wages that necessitate employees working such long hours. The legacy of 9 years of falling real wages under the National Government’s Employment Contracts Act is in no small part responsible for what has happened. The majority of workers in low-paid work are women, who so often carry the bulk of family responsibilities.

I would really like to acknowledge the contributions made just before, tonight, by Tariana Turia and Mark Gosche, in terms of their own personal experiences of what happens in any job when one has to make that sacrifice to look after one’s children, or for other dependants in the family. This is a sacrifice that an extraordinary number of New Zealand workers make every day of the working year. Parents in low-paid work usually cannot afford to reduce their hours, and, as a result, suffer stress as they attempt to fit in their family responsibilities around their paid work. Often enough, it is incredibly difficult to cope with juggling work and family, especially when one does not have the means to pay for outside assistance; and that is often enough to the detriment of the children. This is of particular significance, given that the level of participation of women in the paid workforce is now higher than ever, and that in so many families both parents are working. The Department of Labour report I have already mentioned, also showed that at any time around 38 percent of workers have responsibility for at least one child, 5 percent for an elderly or sick relative, and 3 percent for a sick partner. All up, it seems that over 40 percent of our workforce has caregiving responsibilities for someone.

Sue Kedgley’s bill seeks to address these issues by putting in place a framework under which such workers will be able to retain certainty of hours of work, while still fulfilling their family commitments. The Transport and Industrial Relations Committee has recommended some sensible amendments to the bill, including that requests for flexibility be extended to the place of employment. This recognises that in today’s electronic age, many types of employment can be carried out, either wholly or in part, from the employee’s home. The second significant change was to extend the categories of people who can request flexible working hours, to those who are caring for a dependent relative, other than a child. This is another very welcome improvement. Similar legislation in the UK, which my colleague Sue Kedgley has studied in depth, has been an overwhelming success. In the UK, 80 percent of requests for flexible working hours are granted, and a further 10 percent reach a mutually agreed compromise position. That is an outstanding success rate for any non-mandatory legislative provision. There is no reason to believe that a similar success rate will not occur here, when this bill comes into law.

This is a bill that New Zealanders clearly want. In a survey in 2005 by the Equal Employment Opportunities Trust, 93 percent of respondents identified flexible working hours and, in particular, flexibility of start and finish times, and the ability to occasionally change their working hours, as the change they would most like to see in their workplace. Flexible working hours was the most important requirement identified by that survey, regardless of gender, age, or ethnicity. In the face of the overwhelming evidence that this is a bill that is needed and wanted by New Zealand workers and their families, and in many different sectors of the workforce, I am astounded by the position the National Party has taken on the bill. National Party members purport to claim that flexible working arrangements are, in principle, a good idea, but they go on to not support the bill. In the face of all the evidence, they claim that the existing legislative framework is somehow sufficient to achieve the objective of greater flexibility. They are right out on a limb here, given that their colleagues in the Conservative Party in the UK are right behind flexible working hours. The National Party does not seem to have any communication with them.

Claims made by the National Party tonight have no credibility. The Employment Relations Act, which, incidentally, the Chicken Littles of the National Party claimed back in 2000 would cause the sky to fall, has been in force for 7 years now, and no sky has fallen. The working conditions of many employees have actually improved significantly since the demise of the Employment Contracts Act. But one thing the Employment Relations Act has not achieved for a large number of New Zealand workers is flexible working arrangements.

The other claim by the National Party about this bill is even more bizarre: it argues that it will somehow be counter-productive, and that employers may be dissuaded, because of the added procedures they could be subject to under the Act, from employing people who fit the profile of someone who may request flexible working arrangements. In case National Party members have not noticed, it has been unlawful for many years for employers to do what National claims employers may do in response to this legislation. That is unlawful discrimination under the Human Rights Act, under the Employment Relations Act, and it was even unlawful under the National Party’s own Employment Contracts Act. What employers are going to subject themselves to the potential proceedings for unlawful discrimination, by refusing to employ someone who fits the profile of a person who may request flexible working arrangements? It would be a very reckless employer, indeed, and one who, I would suggest, should think seriously about whether he or she should even be an employer.

The National Party also claims that this bill will be counter-productive because the legislative framework provided by the bill says that employees can ask for flexible working arrangements only once a year. That blatantly misrepresents the effect of new section 69AAD in clause 6A of the bill. That section will prevent an employee from making a new formal request for flexible arrangements under Part 6AA within 12 months of making a previous request. It does not prevent an employer from agreeing, within that period, to a less formal request, however. This section is in the bill for one purpose, and one purpose alone: to protect employers from having to deal with repeated, trivial, or vexatious formal requests by employees. I would have thought that that was a purpose that the National Party would agree with.

I suspect that as employers become acquainted with the actual provisions of the bill, the need for formal requests under the Act will diminish and employers will become more accustomed to the concept of flexibility, and more willing to agree to requests made in less formal ways. Contrary to the National Party’s claims, this bill does not prevent any employee from asking for flexible arrangements, or any employer from agreeing to them at any time.

So what is National’s real reason for opposing this bill? I think it is simply that the National Party does not understand employment relations. Those members still do not understand why their Employment Contracts Act was such a dismal disaster for New Zealand workers. They opposed the Employment Relations Act, yet they defended it when the Employment Relations Law Reform Bill came around. Now they appear to be defending it again, in trying to claim that it provides adequately for flexibility of employment arrangements when the evidence shows clearly that it does not.

We have also seen the National Party oppose 4 weeks’ minimum annual leave, but now it supports it. We have seen it promote Wayne Mapp’s Draconian amendment bill that would have stripped workers of almost all employment rights for the first 90 days on a new job, and just today we have seen it oppose my bill that will put almost to an end the ability of employers to pay exploitative wage rates to workers aged 16 and 17. However, unlike the National Party, the Green Party does understand employment relations, and does understand the need for a legislative framework that will help introduce more flexible working arrangements to improve the quality of life of all those workers who work long hours, who are often poorly paid, and who need this in their lives for the good of not only themselves but also their dependants and other family members. For that reason, all of us in the Green Party are delighted to see this bill successfully reach this stage in the parliamentary process, and I look forward to that process’s completion very shortly.

DARIEN FENTON (Labour) : It is a great pleasure to see the Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill return to the House for its second reading. I acknowledge many of the speakers and in particular my colleague Mark Gosche, who has reminded us that this is all about people and people’s lives. It is not about figures, charts, the OECD, and growth; it is about what is happening to real people. I want to read a quote from a woman: “I care for my husband, who has had multiple strokes, and also support my disabled mother, who lives in a nearby rest home. To keep sane I care for toddlers in the nursery of a day-care centre for 2 hours a day. That is my social and relaxation therapy.” What an amazing person she is. I think there are many people, as we have heard tonight, in that situation, to whom this bill will bring some relief.

This bill has had a very long gestation, having been introduced in 2005 and initially reported back, as some members have said, in mid-2006, with the recommendation that it be delayed for a year. I thank the member Sue Kedgley not only for bringing the issue to the House for debate but also for her patience and willingness to work with other parties to achieve a bill that the majority of parties in this House now support.

This bill is a very modest legislative step in confirming what we all like to say we support, which is that New Zealanders should have more balance between their working and family lives. As other speakers have mentioned, there is now a significant body of evidence to suggest that people who work long and unsocial hours are more likely to experience negative health outcomes, strained family relationships, and, in some cases, parenting and child difficulties. This Government is well aware of this and has had policies on work-life balance for a long time. With the help of other like-minded parties, it has introduced positive changes to help balance work and family life, such as paid parental leave, 4 weeks’ annual leave, Working for Families, 20 hours’ free early childhood education, cheaper doctors’ visits, and much, much more. Obviously, Labour is supporting this bill because we believe there is more work to be done.

I note with some amusement that the reinvented National Party said last week that it is supporting longer paid parental leave, claiming it only ever opposed it because it did not apply to the self-employed. Well, that is just rubbish—utter rubbish! The National Party vehemently opposed paid parental leave from the time it was introduced in 2001, and at every stage of the legislation in 2004, National members voted against extending the period of paid leave from 12 weeks to 14 weeks. In the recent debate about extending paid parental leave to the self-employed, National member Jo Goodhew said that paid parental leave was like a benefit and that, as such, the National Party was philosophically opposed to it because, really, those people would much rather have had a tax cut.

So what is it with the National Party? I would like to know, really. Are those members now telling us they were wrong, or is it just that Labour is so far ahead with its ideas and policy that National has decided it had better catch up?

Turning to the bill, I say that New Zealand’s long working hours culture is a problem we need to tackle. Other speakers, again, have mentioned the aggregate number of hours that are worked in New Zealand. Per head of population, they are the sixth highest in the OECD. Today’s New Zealanders are expected to work long hours, including week-nights and weekends, and put the firm before their families. Many workers work at more than one job to make ends meet. So despite all the talk about work-life balance and making some progress at the big end of town, not a lot has been happening for workers lower down the economic chain. That is having a real impact on our families. If mum and dad are both working shifts, then what is happening to the kids?

In my view, one of the core problems we face is the lack of working-time regulations in New Zealand. The 8-hour day, 40-hour week introduced by the first Labour Government as standard conditions for most workers has fallen foul of the relentless drive for economic competitiveness. We heard some of that silly stuff from the member Wayne Mapp earlier on. Although there are many benefits to having flexible working, it is a double-edged sword, and in New Zealand the flexibility has been going all one way. Employers have extended working, opening, and operating hours and extended shifts, and today they use more and more flexible work tools such as part-time work, casualisation, and temporary and contracted work.

So although I completely support this bill as part of a drive towards achieving a better work-life balance in New Zealand, I remain concerned that “flexible” in many employers’ minds simply means more part-time work, contracting, and casualisation. Therefore, today in this debate I am calling for a discussion on whether working hours or working times should be regulated in this country, with minimum and maximum hours of work.

One of the reasons that the flexible working hours legislation in the UK has worked well is that they have working-time regulations. So do many other countries. Indeed, Australia has a standard 38-hour week before overtime is paid, along with the ability to work flexitime—regardless of what the member Wayne Mapp said. The United States has a 40-hour work week for wage earners, and almost all European countries have a standard 40-hour week. Of course, there is France with its 35-hour week, and we all know the corresponding increase in productivity that has come from the 35-hour week. In our country we have few of these protections, except where unions have managed to negotiate for limits to working hours and the acceptance of recognised breaks.

Interestingly, those issues are often at the top of the agenda when it comes to negotiations. The international pattern is that countries with relatively limited or no regulation of working time tend to have a much higher incidence of excessive hours than other countries. Our problem—that 40 percent of New Zealand workers are working more than 45 hours a week and 21 percent are working more than 50 hours a week—is a big one, and it is no wonder that parents are under stress and families are suffering. Flexible working can deliver enormous benefits if it is done with everyone’s needs in mind, and that is why we need this legislation.

Although some have undoubtedly benefited from having flexible work practices, more have not. The workplace reforms that we saw in the 1990s during National’s “decade of shame” were driven by the imperative of business profitability, without there being any regard for the cost to families and communities. From what we have heard tonight, that is what National would like to see continue. The social effects are obvious.

This bill is very light-handed regulation; it just gives workers the right to ask for flexible hours. What is the big deal? But it gives employers many legitimate reasons to say no. Its real value will be to further the acceptability of flexible working, and to see benefits for both businesses and workers. It is very disappointing to hear of the opposition to this bill from Business New Zealand. I have to say that when it comes to work-life balance, that organisation talks the talk, but when it comes down to making the talk a reality for more people, it moves into its default position of opposing regulation.

Research shows that similar legislation in the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands has not resulted in the opening of floodgates, with massive disputes around the right to request. Few requests have ended up in court. Fewer than 1 percent of all UK employers rejecting a request have had a claim made against them. Even the business organisation in England, the Confederation of British Industry, says it believes that the new right to request flexible working hours has made huge strides in promoting different ways of working.

Although I am not surprised about the National Party’s opposition to this bill, I will make a little prediction. In a year or so John Key, Kate Wilkinson, and others in the National Party will flip-flop and jump on to the bandwagon to support the right to request flexible work. They will figure out that it is actually a very, very popular thing—just like paid parental leave—and that it is a necessary thing. Just mark my words, that is what will happen.

There are many, many other amendments, and this is not the time to outline those, but I do look forward to debating them in the Committee stage of the bill. Once again I congratulate the member, and I also congratulate the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, which worked so hard on this bill.

MOANA MACKEY (Labour) : I am happy to take a call on the first reading of the Education (Establishment of Universities of Technology) Amendment Bill in the name of the Hon Brian Donnelly from New Zealand First. Labour will be supporting this bill going to the Education and Science Committee. Of course, it is part of our confidence and supply agreement with New Zealand First to further explore a university of technology, or non-university, class of institution, and I know that this is an issue that the member in charge of this bill has been interested in for a very, very long time through various bills in the House. I think this bill has come at a good time with the Education (Tertiary Reforms) Amendment Bill currently at the select committee. The Government will be looking very closely at the debate that occurs at the select committee, as we decide what to do beyond that.

The Education (Establishment of Universities of Technology) Amendment Bill is an interesting bill; it concerns an issue that has been around for a while. It looks to establish universities of technology, which are dual-sector institutions sitting between universities and polytechnics. They will provide teaching in applied and vocational education and training across a full range of levels, from foundation courses to higher degrees. The bill sets out a series of characteristics defining how such an institution would look, but it does not set out the criteria for judging when or how they should be established. Of course, if this bill is passed through the House, that issue would need to be urgently addressed, and policy would need to be developed to cover those questions. As I said, this bill has come at a very opportune time with the Education (Tertiary Reforms) Amendment Bill currently at the select committee.

The tertiary education strategy for 2007-12 includes priority outcomes. Part of that is a focus on the importance of increasing achievement of higher-level vocational skills. Members may be aware of the recent Leitch report from the UK, which suggests that intermediate level training—roughly our level 4 to 6 skills—has a significant impact on the productivity of the workforce, and I am sure that is something the select committee will be looking at. Increasing the capacity and the capability of the tertiary sector to meet this increased need for higher-level vocational skills has been identified by the Tertiary Education Commission and the groups working on benchmarking as a key area that needs to be developed.

But, of course, there are two different approaches that could be taken, given where we are with the tertiary reforms and the Education (Tertiary Reforms) Amendment Bill, which is at the select committee. One way to go—one end of the spectrum—is to create a distinctive university of technology class as this bill does. However, many of the benefits of such a class of tertiary education organisation could be realised in any case without the establishment of such a status, and without some of the disadvantages—and there are some—of the university of technology concept. Many of those disadvantages have been looked at in this House over a number of bills. They include transition costs, potential lack of focus on core business by institutions striving for a new status, and—of course—strong opposition from the university sector, although that may not be seen by some as a reason not to do it.

The alternative approach recognises that we can achieve major strategic change and the appropriate level of differentiation without the system being put in place through the tertiary reforms, without introducing a new class of institution, and focusing particularly on the polytechnic sector as a way of delivering this. Under this approach the Tertiary Education Commission would give positive encouragement to polytechnics that are developing high-level provision to meet a strategic need. This approach would fit well with the emerging distinctive contributions approach, while allowing for new thinking about the issue.

I think the select committee consideration of the bill is going to be very interesting. Establishing a university of technology category would bring us into line with overseas jurisdictions, where such a category is very common. That means that institutions that are interested in becoming universities of technology would find it easier to promote themselves accurately overseas in a way that they, perhaps, find difficult to do now, because the term “university” is protected and they are not allowed to use it. Under this bill the term “university of technology” would be protected, and it too would be used as a marketing tool under strict guidance. As I said before, we would need to see how that would work in terms of the policy development of those criteria.

In the 1990s, when effectively a market model was put in our tertiary institutions, and we moved to the “bums on seats” model, many universities did go into areas that polytechnics and institutes of technology traditionally work in. So it is not uncommon to see different sectors moving. Of course, that option was not open to institutions that were not universities. I think it is probably fair to say that the market value of the word “university” is still very high. That could be seen as a reason for allowing other institutions to use the term, in order to market themselves effectively overseas, just as it could be seen as a reason for keeping the term, in order to make sure we do not dilute that brand in any way. I am sure that will be a hotly contested issue at the select committee between the various interested groups.

I finish by looking at the situation in Australia. The Australians too have two kinds of universities. The term “university of technology” is commonly used in Australia. Those institutions are very well known for their professional skills, and that has developed quite well. I know there are many institutions that simply want to see a level playing field; they do not feel that there is a fair playing field. We will be looking at that issue at the select committee. As I said before, Labour will be supporting this bill at this stage.

METIRIA TUREI (Green) : I will take just a short call on the Education (Establishment of Universities of Technology) Amendment Bill to say the Green Party is very pleased to be supporting it going to the select committee.

We really appreciated the Hon Brian Donnelly’s clear discussion about the history of the tertiary sector, in his speech on this bill. It is very useful to understand the history of the tertiary sector and how it came about in the way it did, in order to look at ways of reforming it—and reforming it in quite serious ways, as this bill suggests we might.

The Greens recognise that the sector itself has real issues with this bill, and we are looking forward to hearing those issues come through at the select committee. Some institutions have worked very hard to achieve their status under the current regime, and they would understandably feel somewhat aggrieved that we will provide an alternative mechanism for other institutions to achieve the same status in a slightly easier way. The fact is that if reform is needed, we do need to look at it seriously. We will listen to the submissions from the tertiary sector so we can understand those concerns better, and see whether we can find the best possible way of dealing with those concerns.

We value the concept of an institution that elevates the trades and vocational education, and bridges the gap between the practical needs of a trade or a vocation and the opportunity for research and advanced skills in the area. I think Mr Donnelly is quite right when he says that the needs in the trades and vocations area have become increasingly complex over time, and require a higher level of educational engagement. That is perfectly reasonable. Technological changes and the developing needs of society are driving that change, so we need to have a tertiary sector that can readily meet those opportunities. This is especially so when we consider the nature of the global environment and the changes in it, the increasing understanding of peak oil and the need for energy alternatives, the impacts of climate change on all aspects of our society, and the need to be really prepared for the changes that are inevitably coming.

One obvious area where this is so is the building trade; it is the most obvious, and it is probably the most common. The very interesting Ministry for the Environment publication called Value Case for Sustainable Building in New Zealand states: “Internationally, government and other public bodies are increasingly asking for sustainable buildings, which are also being widely encouraged and implemented by a responsive property construction sector. This has led to increasingly sophisticated and innovative building designs and technologies that encourage both energy conservation and CO2 reduction.” It goes on to say: “We are in an excellent position”—in this country—“to become leaders in sustainable building.” The same opportunities that are reflected in that comment can be found in the energy sector, in transportation, in planning, and in many other areas that are traditional trades and vocations. But these opportunities can be pursued only if the trade and vocational educational institutions are able to provide a quality bridging opportunity from certificate to postgraduate courses, with the full capacity to also engage in high-level research in those areas. It is a perfectly understandable and reasonable extension of this area of the tertiary education sector.

I also believe that there is considerable advantage to Māori and Pacific Islanders in these kinds of institutions. Māori are still highly overrepresented in the lower levels of certificate and diploma courses. We know that 93 percent of Māori women in tertiary education are studying at that lower certificate level. But we also know that Māori women with postgraduate or higher degrees have the highest median income of all ethnicities. What this means, in effect, is that Māori women start a long way back when it comes to tertiary education, they are doing catch-up from a secondary school system that has failed them, but they work their way up systematically through the tertiary sector into the high level of degrees. If they can do it, they are very highly sought after in the workforce, and the outcomes for them and their whānau are exceptional. So institutions that can provide a seamless educational pathway, from the certificate level to postgraduate degrees, will provide Māori women, and others having to play catch-up, with very accessible pathways to a quality education, a quality income, and positive lifestyle outcomes at the end.

That is, effectively, the Green Party position; we do not need to expand on it too much more. As I say, the issues are complex; we understand that they are not simple. We will be looking forward to further investigation at the select committee, and we congratulate the Hon Brian Donnelly on having this bill brought out of the ballot and debated tonight. Kia ora.

TARIANA TURIA (Co-Leader—Māori Party) : Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā tātou katoa. The focus of the Education (Establishment of Universities of Technology) Amendment Bill is very much a topic of passion for the tertiary sector. Adding a new category of institution—“university of technology”—is a proposal that I know will generate much heat.

The central premise of the bill, which is that more flexibility is needed to better recognise dual-sector institutions, is an argument in which we have considerable interest, in terms of the argument for kotahitanga—our unity of purpose. In an environment that aspires to promote the growth of knowledge—as one would expect to find in education environments—we believe that we should value every contribution as part of the collective pursuit. We also believe that the expression of manaakitanga towards others requires us to work collaboratively in the spirit of mutual respect and harmonious relationships.

The central challenge confronting Parliament is that institutions with an exclusive focus such as those that the Education Act interprets for universities, polytechs, colleges of education, specialist colleges, or wānanga should not be threatened by the existence of a new category of institution—namely “university of technology”. However, this is not the first time that the question of definition has entered the tertiary sector. A paper given by Aroha Te Pareake Mead at the United Nations workshop on traditional knowledge, held in Panama City in 2005, chronicles a very similar journey for whare wānanga. Mead argues that although mainstream universities have translated their name into te reo Māori—for example, Victoria University being translated to Te Whare Wānanga o te Ūpoko o te Ika a Māui Aoteaora—they were vehemently opposed to the whare wānanga taking on the name “university”. The opposition to this became so intense that the New Zealand Vice-Chancellor’s Committee lodged a complaint with the Minister of Education and the Advertising Standards Authority that Te Whare Wānanga o Aotearoa was describing itself as a university of New Zealand. Yet, ironically, at no time did the universities ever acknowledge the inconsistency in their own use of a traditional Māori term.

Other aspects of interpretation and definition surround this bill. We have heard concerns that the bill is advancing the commodification of education—that is, in promoting a view that education should be exported as a commodity in the international market, the bill overlooks the importance of education as the transfer of knowledge. Another interpretation of the bill is that it is not just about Unitec but about the transformation of the tertiary sector. Such a view put forward by Unitec is that changing the categories may have a transformative effect on the very nature of learning. People will be more able to engage in education and will benefit from more diverse opportunities to research, design, develop, learn, and teach trades and vocations.

We know that a key concern for Māori is that the policy of strategic relevance that the Tertiary Education Commission believes to be the pathway forward may not necessarily connect with what Māori communities are looking for in education. As Te Wānanga o Raukawa recently told us, it is quite possible for the Government to hit the target but miss the point. What remains uppermost in our analysis of this bill is the need for the Crown to make a commitment to actively protect the taonga that is mātauranga Māori, as well as to ensure that there is an opportunity for all to make a distinctive contribution to the nation’s tertiary education sector. We believe in transformation and we believe in liberation. We most certainly believe in the revolutionary impact of education.

The Māori Party will therefore support this bill going to the select committee, in order to allow the tertiary sector and the public to have a say. I take this opportunity to congratulate Brian Donnelly on presenting this bill to the House. Kia ora.

JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) : I rise on behalf of United Future to speak in support of the first reading of the Education (Establishment of Universities of Technology) Amendment Bill. We support this first reading. We do not have representation on the select committee that will be responsible for working on this bill, but we plan to keep a keen eye on what submitters have to say, because this bill presents us with some very real tensions that we hope the select committee will be able to make sense of and resolve.

On one hand, we have career tracks that have progressed over the years from what may have been described in the early years as apprenticeship level training, through to, in this day and age with the development of technology, studies and disciplines that mirror in terms of complexity and standards of competency the commitment that academic disciplines demand. On the other hand, we have a growing disquiet about the possible perception that New Zealand universities are not of international standing due to a gradual process of dumbing down our definition of what constitutes a university. The tension is not about some sort of academic snobbery, but rather about how we categorise institutions that provide credible training with a clear career outcome in mind alongside institutions that produce quality research as well as the teaching of academic disciplines, in a way that still maintains New Zealand qualifications at an international standard that is well recognised and well understood.

The bill suggests, it seems, that universities of technology can straddle the divide between a university and a polytechnic, allowing students to progress through to doctoral studies, and to marry in a tidy fashion both practical and theoretical practice. United Future has had some very interesting discussions within our own caucus and separately with tertiary providers about the possibility that the sponsor of this bill is suggesting. We have not currently reached a fixed position on what should happen. So on that basis we are very happy to see the bill proceed to the select committee. We believe, however, that there is already some confusion in New Zealand within the tertiary education sector as to how to understand and differentiate between institutions. If this bill can bring greater clarity, we will be thrilled to continue to support it, but we are looking for that clarity. We congratulate the sponsor of the bill on putting it forward, and on being brave enough to take up the debate, which is probably long overdue.

BARBARA STEWART (NZ First) : On behalf of New Zealand First I rise to support the Education (Establishment of Universities of Technology) Amendment Bill. At present in New Zealand we have a university of technology that is not a university of technology. The reason is that within New Zealand there is no such thing as a university of technology. If we are to accept the information given by the president of the New Zealand Vice-Chancellors’ Committee, that institution is not a university either—or, at least, not yet. The Auckland University of Technology is, in fact, by classification a university. However, it would appear that, when measured by all the criteria of a university, it is not considered by its peers to be a university.

In 1990 the Education Amendment Act enabled institutions other than universities to confer degrees. This is notwithstanding the requirement within the Education Act 1989 that degrees be taught within a research-based environment. Society was experiencing an accelerating sophistication of technological skills and knowledge. I will give the House an example. In 1990 radiology was taught through Auckland Hospital. It was a 2-year course, resulting in a diploma qualification. Basically, it taught students how to deal with X-rays, the necessary safety measures, and the mechanisms for achieving images of bones. A very basic understanding of physics was required. Nowadays, students are required to understand magnetic resonance imaging, ultrasound, and a range of other technologies and therapies. One almost needs a degree in physics in order to understand the new technologies. No longer can we recognise the skills and the knowledge required with just a diploma. Indeed, not only have such skill levels been recognised with bachelor’s degrees; they are now recognised with master’s degrees.

As polytechnics have responded to the increasing sophistication of technological knowledge, some, particularly those that have had a significant body of PhDs being undertaken, raise questions about the concept of parity of esteem for their qualifications in relation to university qualifications. Whether or not we like it, the public perception is that the qualifications offered by traditional universities are somehow superior. However, if I can quote Joce Jesson: “What continually gets ignored in the public debate is that standards set by NZQA for the degrees conferred by the new institutions require higher levels of regulation, compliance, and oversight than many of those offered by the traditional university.”

In 1996, both the Auckland Institute of Technology and Unitec decided to make applications for university status. There is a very broad definition of what a university is in the Act. The problem was that nobody knew what this definition meant in detail. As a consequence, international panels were contracted to provide greater details. One of the criteria set was that the proportion of sub-degree students—that is, certificate and diploma students—compared with graduate and postgraduate students, had to be less than what both the Auckland Institute of Technology and Unitec were providing at the time. The imposition of this criterion meant that to become universities, both of these institutions would have to reduce the number of sub-degree programmes. However, the capacity of these institutions to range from sub-degree programmes to degree programmes was their very greatest strength.

At a time when there is a desperate shortage of technical and vocational skills, the last thing that we need is a situation where all of the incentives for our most successful vocational and technical institutions are to reduce their number of sub-degree programmes. Yet that is what the current environment does.

What this bill is trying to do is create a class of tertiary institution that is neither a university nor a polytechnic, but displays the characteristics of both. Such an institution would offer degree and postgraduate programmes equivalent to those of a university, but with the focus on the technical and the vocational. Research would be practically based, rather than being the blue-sky research of universities. Courses would be taught in a currency-based or scholarship-based environment, rather than in a research-based one. What this means is that teachers would have to be up to date with current knowledge in their areas, rather than being actively involved in research activities. At the same time, such institutions would have a heavy emphasis on sub-degree programmes in the technology areas, and would be able to ensure that students had diploma to degree programmes available.

ALLAN PEACHEY (National—Tamaki) : The Education (Establishment of Universities of Technology) Amendment Bill is intended to amend the Education Act of 1989 by establishing a new category of institution, a university of technology. The National Party will support this bill going to the select committee stage, because that will give an opportunity for those with a direct interest in the sector to express their views. I have to say that at this point in time the only person who has spoken to me and who is in favour of this bill is its sponsor, and I do congratulate the Hon Brian Donnelly on the work he has done and on his willingness to take up the cause.

I am also very conscious, of course, of the work that has been put in by Unitec and its chief executive, and of the interest that organisation has in this bill. However, I am also conscious that in supporting this bill going to a select committee, this House will be imposing a major obligation on tertiary institutions to come before the select committee and present their view either in favour or to the contrary of this proposal. That will be an expensive and a time-consuming operation, but I can assure those institutions that those of us who are on the Education and Science Committee will value their input and listen very, very carefully to what they have to say. The select committee will have a very significant role to play with regard to this bill, and my expectation would be that the way that the select committee goes will ultimately decide the fate of the bill.

Some very big claims are being made on behalf of the bill, and at the select committee those claims will be scrutinised very carefully. Four in particular stand out. One is the suggestion that more flexibility is needed in order to better recognise dual-sector institutions that provide pathways for both sub-degree and degree education.

• Debate interrupted.