Sage EugenieHon EUGENIE SAGE (Minister of Conservation): Fakaalofa atu Fakatonu Fono Taane. [Greetings Mr Speaker.]I am proud to speak here on the Equal Pay Amendment Bill as the Acting Minister for Women. I am here because our Minister for Women the Hon Julie Anne Genter is on maternity leave so I think it's a great reason to be speaking today. I like the Minister want to acknowledge the work that she has done on this bill.Ensuring that women are paid fairly is a key objective of this Government and of the Minister for Women and the ministry. The work that women in female-dominated industries do has long been undervalued because it's work that women do. It is administrative work and jobs involving people working with people: teachers nurses and support staff in those industries. It's all underpaid because it's predominantly women who have been doing those jobs.The gender pay gap this year is 9.2 percent which means that on average women are paid 9.2 percent less per hour than men for an hour's work. That gender pay gap has certainly reduced since Statistics New Zealand started measuring it in 1998 when it was 16.3 percent but it has been coming down too slowly particularly in the last decade. Some companies though are making good progress. I was really pleased to see Air New Zealand in its sustainability report out today—that company has a gender pay gap of 0.41 percent and the chief executive Christopher Luxon says that the company is continuing to drive a deeper understanding of the unconscious bias. So there I agree with the Hon Nikki Kaye—it's that cultural change that we need to make as well looking at gender bias looking at what this does.Of course we know that the gender pay gap is far worse for Māori women Pasifika women women with disabilities and trans women. So these multiple intersecting barriers must be addressed. It's in the Green Party's confidence and supply agreement with Labour that we have got a commitment to eliminate the gender pay gap within the core public sector and to make substantial progress on that within this parliamentary term. This legislation that we are introducing today is part of that. It's part of this Government's objective to ensuring that New Zealand women are paid fairly.But as others have said it's not just this bill that's going to do it. To eliminate the gender pay gap we need to do more have more employers do as Air New Zealand is doing to measure the pay data of their employees to understand the gender pay gap in their company and to understand those unconscious bias issues. We need to normalise flexible working hours for both women and men and we need more accessible and more affordable childcare. But we really need this bill because it's enshrining the principle that men and women should receive the same pay for doing jobs that are different but of equal value which require similar degrees of skill responsibility and effort. Enacting this pay equity legislation will help strengthen our economy in the longer term because it will be valuing people and the work that they do—women—which has traditionally been undervalued and it will improve the well-being of women and girls because those people often on low pay will be spending money in their communities so we all benefit.There've been 63000 working people who've now had a pay equity settlement or offer and that's all because of the work that they and unions have done in winning their cases. The Terranova case that Kristine Bartlett was the public face of—that Court of Appeal decision—was a landmark. It recognised that where it had been previously assumed that the Equal Pay Act gave protection against direct pay discrimination where a female staff member was paid less than a male staff member for doing the same job—that Terranova case opened up the possibility of a large number of pay equity claims in historically undervalued female-dominated industries such as obviously the aged-care sector.So what this bill does is it amends the Equal Pay Act 1972 to expressly provide processes that will allow parties to negotiate pay equity settlements. Certainly the previous Government did introduce legislation but it was a very complex process that relied on court cases and was full of barriers to claimants. This bill is a vast improvement on that. And can I congratulate and acknowledge the huge amount of work done by both the Joint Working Group on Pay Equity Principles and the reconvened joint working group and the contribution they have made as a tripartite forum for unions for businesses and for Government to discuss just how a pay equity process might work.There were three key issues that went back to the reconvened joint working group: how high the bar should be for filing a pay equity claim what comparators should be used and what legislative vehicle was appropriate. So this Government the Labour - New Zealand First - Green Government agrees with the findings of the reconvened joint working group because it provides for a pay equity claim to proceed if it is arguable rather than requiring that merit be proved which was a much higher threshold in the previous Government's legislation. The whole hierarchy of comparators was very contentious in the previous legislation. The reconvened working group looked at that and again we agree with their recommendation that the comparators should be considered as part of a bundle rather than as a hierarchy.So this legislation is much more straightforward because it relies on using the existing bargaining framework. It encourages employers and workers to negotiate in good faith with access to mediation and resolution services. The court process is still available but it's not the first option as was the case under the previous legislation. It's the process of bargaining rather than the court process which is where those first conversations take place. Good-faith bargaining is the opportunity to build productive relationships through collaborative processes and pushing parties into an adversarial court process making that the default setting would have been a way of undermining good employment relationships so the bill is a significant improvement here.Certainly this whole issue of back-pay is really important because parties will be free to discuss back-pay as part of the bargaining negotiations for pay equity. And they may also come to an agreement outside of the courts on their own which may include back-pay. But if they can't agree then the court is available to award back-pay for pay equity claims. This Government though—can I make that very clear—has not introduced the concept of back-pay. It already existed in the current law. And in the bill there's a process to guide the court's consideration of whether to award back-pay and what quantum should be awarded. So we haven't done what the previous Government did and limited back-pay for existing claims. In fact the way in which the bill deals with back-pay should provide an incentive for employers and workers to actually get on and deal with this.Why is back-pay there? The undervaluing of women's work has come about because of long-term structural discrimination that has suppressed the market rate in those occupations that are dominated by women. It's been a societal failing not just the failing of one single employer so the settlements must strike a balance between looking at that historic structural discrimination and ensuring that women have a right to back-pay. So we do expect that the provisions in the bill will provide an incentive to resolve claims quickly and fairly because the bill allows an increasing amount of back-pay after five years.I'm very proud of this bill and the fact that the Government has worked really hard to introduce it that we have the historic achievement of women winning the right to vote in Aotearoa New Zealand 125 years ago and now this bill being introduced on Suffrage Day in September and going now to select committee. I really look forward to the public making their submissions to improve the legislation if it can be improved and it being reported back and progressing through the Parliament. It is a significant piece of legislation and I commend it to the House.