Roche Denise: Address in ReplyText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoche Denise: Address in Reply[Sitting date: 29 October 2014. Volume:701;Page:357. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENISE ROCHE (Green):Mr Assistant Speaker I join with previous speakers in congratulating you on your appointment as Assistant Speaker. It is the first time I have spoken in the House while you have been in the Speaker’s Chair although last week I was pleased to see you in that novel role of being in the Chair for the Committee of the whole House. It is a novelty for me.The Government has stated that its priorities this term are going to be around child poverty. Although in their address it was useful for Government members to determine child poverty as one of their priorities it lacked any detail. I have not heard as yet any solutions. So far apart from a determination to reduce the number of those families who are receiving welfare support that is the only kind of comment I have heard from the Government about how it wants to address child poverty.Today we had the latest report from Unicef called Children of the Recession: The impact of the economic crisis on child well-being in rich countries. It shows that in the period during the global financial crisis the welfare of New Zealand children went backwards in three out of the four indicators that were used. Here in New Zealand our kids were not as well protected from the impacts of the recession as children in other countries—countries like Australia for example.Why is this? One reason is that when the global financial recession started to bite the Australian Government introduced poverty-busting relief such as cash payments to low-income families. What happened here was that the Government gave tax cuts to the well-off. In case anyone has not noticed yet the tax cuts did not alleviate poverty. They did not alleviate the problems of our poorest families because the trickle-down theory is actually a myth and it has certainly not worked here. The Unicef report highlights the fact that the National Government’s tax cuts did nothing to improve the lives of our poorest children while the smarter Australian move helped to stimulate the economy as well as significantly reduce the impacts of child poverty.We know what needs to happen to improve our woeful child poverty statistics. The simple answer is that we need to increase the incomes of our families which as we have seen in Australia helps to stimulate the economy. I agree with the Government that the most constructive way to do this is to get more people into jobs and off State support. But I have to say that although we absolutely oppose the move by this Government to vilify those who access the safety net of our social welfare system we must remember that one of the biggest beneficiaries of State support is employers. I am referring here to Working for Families. We maintain that as it applies currently it is unfair because those who need it the most are families with children who are accessing State support already. It is currently used to differentiate between the working and the non-working poor—the worthy and the unworthy poor. It invites judgment on those families that are not in work as a result.However at the moment Working for Families is actually an employer subsidy. There are around 380000 families accessing Working for Families at the moment. They get their pay from their jobs but then they are reliant on the tax credit to top up their wages so that they can survive and many cannot. We have got around 265000 children living in poverty in New Zealand—that is about a fifth of all the kids in New Zealand who do not have enough of what they need. About two out of five of those children come from families where there is at least one parent in the paid workforce.So what does that say about the pay rates in our country where a worker can work all hours of the day and the week and still not be able to provide enough for their family to live on? A couple of weeks ago I met Tusi a lovely man a family man in his 30s. He works as a maintenance contractor for the council. When I was talking to him I realised that he was on a break and it was something like 8 o’clock at night on a Thursday. He works 60 hours a week. He only ever has Sunday off and he uses that day to spend time with his family and to go to church.We have just celebrated Labour Day. That is the day when we commemorate the 8-hour working day but sadly that is not a reality for many many New Zealanders and I think Samuel Duncan Parnell who is credited as being the father of the 8-hour working day would be turning in his grave. He is the one who is quoted as saying: “There are twenty-four hours in the day given us; eight of these should be for work eight for sleep and the remaining eight for recreation and in which for men to do what little things they want for themselves.” One day a week is what Tusi has as a man to do the little things that he wants for himself and his family and it is not good enough. What happens to a family that has one or both of its parents working such long hours that they cannot make ends meet? What kind of stress are they under? What happens to their kids? What happens to the kids who are actually working alongside their parents on evening shifts cleaning the schools to help with their family’s income?We must lift wages and create well-paid jobs if we want to address child poverty. I am alarmed that this Government pays lip service to this issue and yet its first piece of legislation in the House will simply force wages down and make matters worse. I am referring of course to the Employment Relations Amendment Bill which will be read for its final time tomorrow I believe. That bill will force wages down and that was actually the advice that the Government received in its Cabinet briefing paper before the bill was introduced—that it would force wages down.The bill signals a return to individual-based bargaining and the ability for employers to just simply walk away from collective employment agreement negotiations. It enables employers to opt out of multi-employer bargaining so there goes any kind of industry standards which we have fought so hard to achieve in the last few years. It removes the right for new workers to have the same terms and conditions as other staff when there is a collective employment agreement in place and in doing so it means that new workers can be used to undercut the wages of the longer-term employees. Worryingly the Employment Relations Amendment Bill also removes the small protections for a whole section of vulnerable employees who are employed by contractors when their contracts change hands. This bill even removes the right for workers to have a meal break or a rest break during their shift and in so doing it cuts right across the health and safety legislation that this Government is keen to enact.This bill tips the balance of power in the employer-employee relationship sharply towards the employer and works hand in hand with some of the Government’s previous legislation—most notably the 90-day trial fire-at-will legislation—to create a situation of less and less job security for working families and an environment that deliberately enables employers to push the pay down. We must oppose this kind of industrial relations environment which allows bullies to flourish.We cannot continue to rely on poverty wages as the method for increasing the profits of New Zealand’s economy because in the long run we are all poorer for it. We believe in investment and I was pleased to hear the Minister for Economic Development say that the investment method is what works. So investing in our workforce investing in our employees and investing in a situation that ensures that workers can negotiate collectively is what will increase wages and that will be the mechanism by which we can entice our young people back to New Zealand because they are not going to leave Australia when the only jobs they can get here are paid at $14.65 an hour.We want to see child poverty seriously tackled by this Government. We would like to see a cross-party approach to that and the first step is to introduce targets. We look forward to a time when this Government and this Parliament can do that. Thank you.