Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): ACT supports the working class. We support carer support workers to get a decent wage. What we don't support is a Government majority—the Labour Government the Labour Party—legislating wage rates in the House and embedding them in statute. That's the kind of thing that third-world tin-pot democracies that we regard ourselves as being far ahead of—that's the kind of thing that goes on in countries that New Zealand would say We never want to be like them." In fact we don't want to be like countries that don't live up to our standard of democracy potentially like Fiji when they had a coup. We'd ostracised them for a decade.But what this Government has done is embedded in legislation wage rates and that's because rather than focus on fixing real problems with delivering services to the most vulnerable people—because that's what carer support workers do. They look after people who have dementia. They look after people in aged care homes nearing the end of their life and they look after people in families who have children or adult family members with disabilities. So these workers who ACT supports do a very important job but it's completely inappropriate to be legislating for their pay rates.Now there are some members of the Government ruling party—of the ruling party—who would like no more than to go around the country legislating wage and salary rates for all kinds of roles. They call those "fair pay agreements"—fair pay agreements. Now imagine every time a sector 1000 workers or 10 percent of a workforce wanted to get a pay settlement a fair pay agreement—this is what they'd get. It would be a legislated process to deliver a wage settlement.So if we think about the people who need carer support those people with physical and intellectual disabilities those people who are elderly and need care and the type of people who'd care for them—well I mean this is the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Bill and it recognised that there was a case that primarily women who worked in a sector were paid less and the evidence was given that in fact that was because it was mostly women who worked in this sector. Well it's now 2022. This legislation has been around for over half a decade and what we know about this sector is that actually it takes all types of people to look after all types of people.I have a family member with a disability a young man and he actually prefers blokes to look after him. He prefers blokes to take him and do blokey things to be there with him after school to get the hammer and nails out and to fix things and make things. So while this is a pay equity settlements amendment bill that essentially according to the Government targets a gender disparity actually what this bill doesn't recognise is that it takes all types to care for all types of people.Now my colleague Karen Chhour has visited over seven aged care facilities recently and what the operators told her was that it's not just the pay; it's also all the other things that are cramming down on this sector. So there'll be a pay rise that'll go through a legislated pay rise will go through—4.9 percent. The sector has been given a 1.9 percent uplift in their operating allowance by the Government. But if you think about all of the other things affecting them—the cost of feeding residents in aged-care facilities the cost of taking them to activities in vans and buses the cost of energy electricity gas and everything else—this is going to impose an additional cost on the sector which they're not funded for.They're actually struggling to get workers. Like 4.9 percent isn't really the problem. The problem is that it's very very difficult for people to come to New Zealand to immigrate to New Zealand to work in roles like carer support which are lower waged. They're lower paid. That's because these roles don't require a significant level of qualification. In many cases the experience required is minimal. The training is delivered on the job. In fact they're roles where actually some of the physical requirements of the job can be quite unpleasant. So these roles aren't that desirable.Now if the sector was able to pay people a lot more—and look I've worked in the waste industry. I know what it's like to go to a site to work at a rubbish tip to work in hazardous environments wearing a whole lot of personal protective equipment where things don't smell that great and you'd have to say that actually working in some facilities that care for people would have some similarities to that. Now that's not to say that those workers aren't valued because they are. But in fact those roles are just not as desirable as other roles in society which people do aspire to become qualified at and to move on. In fact a lot of these roles have a high degree of flexibility. Caring people is sometimes only a few hours at the beginning or end of the day or a few hours on a weekend to give a family respite particularly if they have a child or a person in their family with a disability. So one of the reasons that this sector is not particularly well paid is because actually there is a high degree of flexibility and it's very very difficult in some cases to deliver a career path that would lead to the typical progression in wages and salaries. But I want to come back to the problem with the bill. The main problem with the bill is that it legislates wage rates by statute. It's completely unacceptable to ACT to take that approach. However because the Government has left the sector with no choice and these workers otherwise would be left in limbo from 30 June ACT will reluctantly support this bill while we ask the Government to resolve this once and for all to give the responsibility back to the sector that employs support workers and to the workers themselves to negotiate an enduring settlement that actually means that the Government in future will not need to extend this beyond the end of 2023."