Willis Nicola; Genter Julie AnneNICOLA WILLIS (National): I want to ask the Minister some questions—well a specific question relating to Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 548. That SOP does in many ways change the bill that emerged from select committee. I sat on the Education and Workforce Committee which analysed the Equal Pay Amendment Bill. I think we did some good work together. We took a lot of advice from officials and changes were made to this bill. So I am somewhat surprised at how significant this SOP is and I would appreciate some background as to why such significant changes were required. It seems to me that one of the themes of the changes is about providing for union involvement and union joining of claims but I'd invite the Minister to comment on that. But most specifically I'm interested in the removal in terms of matters to be assessed.If we go to proposed new section 13L on page 35 of the SOP we have the removal of what was going to be the ability for those involved in a pay equity claim to settle following an alternative process. So that is there was an allowance within the bill that parties to a pay equity claim could enter a written agreement setting out an alternative process for agreeing to settle that claim. If you think about that in a practical sense it's not impossible to imagine an employer having a claim come before them; the employee and the employer sharing a view that the process set out in this bill is very heavy is cumbersome involves multiple steps and that they may themselves say Well let's simplify things. Let's think of an alternative way of doing it." It is possible that those two parties could agree on a simpler way of doing things. This section of the bill had simply provided that they could enter a written agreement to do this in an alternative and one would presume simpler way.So that was in the bill that emerged from select committee. This SOP specifically removes that. It seems to me like an extremely inflexible approach. Why wouldn't we allow employers and employees or unions to agree on a different process to follow if they believe that it would be a quicker and more efficient way of reaching a resolution? Our goal here with this bill is to have pay equity claims fairly addressed and it doesn't seem to me that that section is a barrier to that. In fact it could expedite it. So I'd invite the Minister's comments.Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Minister for Women): Thank you for the questions. In response to the first as I laid out in my opening statements there were substantial changes made following the select committee process due to requests from our two key social partners: the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions and BusinessNZ. Now I want to acknowledge the work of the select committee. I think the select committee did a very good job but the view was taken following that by the social partners that it would make a lot more sense to have the bill more aligned with the Employment Relations Act and that's why we took the time to make those substantive changes but in very close consultation with BusinessNZ and the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions.In response to the second question I have a lot of sympathy for the view that an alternative process would just allow more flexibility; however after much discussion the reason that it was removed is because there was the potential for it to undermine the very process that we're setting out and potentially an unscrupulous employer might approach a small group of employees and propose a different process that was not as robust that would not achieve the good pay equity claims and then would make it more difficult for the women or the people working in those jobs to achieve good pay equity outcomes. So what has been done is—and we have looked at this—there are a lot of ways in which the process can be streamlined and the work that's done can be built upon throughout the bargaining process so that once certain pay equity claims have been taken other workforces in a similar position can take what has been learned from a settlement and apply it to their own claim."