Parker David: Minimum Wage (Contractor Remuneration) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParker David: Minimum Wage (Contractor Remuneration) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 12 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5752. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Can I thank members for their contributions can I encourage members to vote for this bill to go to the select committee and can I take the time to deal with some of the issues that have been raised. Before I do that can I say to the National members that if this bill does pass its first reading and goes to the select committee why not try to make it work rather than try to demolish it? There are many countries that have a minimum rate of remuneration rather than a minimum wage. If you only have a minimum wage people can get around it and can abuse the most vulnerable in society by not paying them fairly. That is all this bill tries to do. It does not apply to everyone in society. It applies to a discrete list of occupations where these problems are most prevalent.Mr Clayton Mitchell said that we need a Zimmer amendment for people who are over 90 who cannot deliver pamphlets fast enough. There are already provisions in the law that say that if people cannot work in a way that would enable them to work as people normally work as a minimum they can get a special rate of pay. That is already provided for. That for example is how people who have a disability are paid lower than the minimum wage if they are not of normal capacity.I have already noted that the world is becoming a more ruthless place. This bill contrary to what the last speaker Parmjeet Parmar said does not give contractors a rate of pay that would include holiday pay or sick pay or ACC levies. It just says that the minimum hourly rate can be no lower than the minimum wage.I thought that Clayton Mitchell raised a good issue in respect of what you do with this interface with something that is almost volunteering when compared with work—like people who are putting on an amateur dramatic production. Well of course if they are just getting their expenses recovered that is not actually getting paid so that is not a complication. But if there is a complication around that and it is too hard to fix in this bill strike it from the list. I am not actually trying to cure all of the world’s problems here but I am trying to make things better.The reference to young people under the age of 16 is mistaken by people. People who are under the age of 16 do not get the minimum wage. This bill would not change that. This bill would not affect kids who are out doing milk runs or paper runs. It is aimed at adults who because of the increasingly competitive and ruthless world that we live in are being abused by being paid less than the minimum wage. Why is that fair?Newspapers compete against people who are selling advertising services. Newspapers are generally large organisations. They actually do not employ people through these arrangements. They are either employing kids or they are employing people properly and paying them the minimum wage. If they are competing against other advertisers who are not paying the minimum wage that is not fair to them. It is undermining their competitiveness and that is just too tough.Can I deal with one of the speeches earlier that said if someone offers to paint a fence and then it gets washed off in the rain or something and they have got to do it again and it takes them twice as long and they drop under the minimum wage—look this is not intended to address that sort of situation. This is intended to address the situation of people who are getting around the minimum wage by employing people on something that is similar to a wage and similar to an employment relationship. These sorts of things are more frequent now in part because the Government passed poor legislation relating to The Hobbit. It deemed employment relationships to be contractual relationships even when they were employment relationships which is bad law. The Government should not have done that; it has actually made this problem worse by doing so.I do not know what the outcome of this vote will be. I know it will be close. I think this bill is worthy of consideration by the select committee. I do not accept the assertions from the other side that I am somehow being doctrinaire in trying to drive up the minimum wage. I am not. I readily concede there is a proper argument to be had as to whether the minimum wage should go up or not. That is a separate argument. This does not increase the minimum wage for everything. It just means that some people in New Zealand who are currently being abused and not even being paid the minimum wage would get it.