Fenton Darien: General Debate 
Fenton Darien: General Debate 
[Volume:675;Page:14408] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 Firstly I would like to take a minute of the House’s time to say a few words about my wonderful colleague Ann Hartley who will be making her valedictory speech this afternoon. Ann is one of the most encouraging and supportive MPs in this Parliament. She has seen the best and the worst of this House not least in her role as Assistant Speaker and I admire her immensely for her courage and her integrity. She is a hard worker. She does the hard yards out in the community often behind the scenes and without fanfare or ego. She is a woman with great heart and great commitment and I will miss her sorely. 
We have seen an extraordinary event in the National Party—John Key has been caught telling the truth. He has been caught out owning up to his real views on the wages of ordinary working people. He wants to see them drop. National wants to cut their pay. There is a great election slogan: vote for National and vote for a pay cut! John Key has confirmed what we already know. National does not really believe in wages going up for ordinary workers. In fact those members quite despise workers and they have no idea what to do about it anyway. John Key says that National will cut taxes and hey presto wages will go up. Well no they will not. He says that National will lift wages by driving economic growth. What the heck does that mean? I want to know how National will make sure that the growth and the wealth that workers help to create is passed on to them in better wages. Are workers supposed to hope that economic growth will somehow trickle down into their pay packets? 
To increase wages requires real measures like those that this Labour-led Government has introduced—and may I say National has voted against those all the way through. I refer to such things as the annual increases to the minimum wage—and is it not wonderful that there will be a minimum wage of $12 an hour from 1 April—14 weeks’ paid parental leave 4 weeks’ annual leave and fair and decent compensation for working on public holidays. I am talking about such things as strengthening health and safety laws and labour laws and protecting vulnerable workers in situations of contracting out. That is why the gap between Australian wages and New Zealand wages has stopped sliding under this Government—it is due to active labour market policies not National’s approach of “anything goes” “take it or leave it” and “tough luck if you’re a low-paid worker with little bargaining power”. 
National has a shameful record on wages. It slashed Kiwis’ take-home pay in the 1990s and it made sure that its friends got richer at their expense. The gap between Australian and New Zealand wages grew by 50.4 percent between 1990 and 1999. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: How much? 
DARIEN FENTON 
: By 50.4 percent. But real wages grew by just 0.3 percent in 9 years. In 5 out of 9 years wages did not grow at all. That is disgraceful and that meant misery for the people John Key now pretends he cares about. In many cases lots of workers like caregivers—whom I hear him bleating on about—and hospital workers retail workers factory workers and many others were earning less than they were 10 years before. National cut their hourly rates their weekend rates their overtime pay their allowances their sick leave entitlements and their annual leave. It meant that the families of those workers struggled to make ends meet that they had to work two or three jobs and that they had to work longer faster and harder—and one will notice that the National Party is very sensitive about these figures. 
National seems to be very firmly committed to the same old low-wage low-skill “work until we drop” economic model we had back then. John Key has just confirmed it. Now we know what John Key would like to do about wages but what about the rest of National’s plan to do over New Zealander workers once again? When will National members come clean about the rest of it—their real agenda? They cannot soft-soap working people forever. Workers are asking questions such as these. When will the 90-day bill be reannounced? When will the minimum wage freeze be announced? When will the sale of annual leave be announced again? When will those members tell the people that they are going to privatise the Accident Compensation Corporation? When will those members tell people that they are going to scale back workers’ rights? John Key has been caught telling the truth about wages. It is time for him to tell the truth about the rest of it.