Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Madam Chair. I'm just responding to the Minister's reply again where he said that the fair pay agreement was about terms and conditions and that productivity was an outcome and therefore it's something that shouldn't be considered directly through the legislation as a mandatory topic. Then I'm looking at clause 115 where it says (1) When bargaining for a proposed agreement the bargaining sides must discuss whether the proposed agreement will specify the following topics: (a) the objectives of the proposed agreement:". That's not the terms and the conditions; it's the objectives and I would have thought that one of the objectives would be to make it a happier workplace as he referred to—perhaps. One of them might be to make it a more productive workplace another one might be just to get higher wages another one might be to have longer holidays—I don't know. There could be a whole lot of objectives but I would have thought that given that clause a more productive workforce may be something that was coming. Now the only point that I was trying to make with my amendment was to highlight further the question of productivity because it is so critical. We have a bit of a disagreement with this current Government about how we improve wages as a country. Fundamentally in our view on that side the Government seems to think that there are two primary levers that they can pull. One is to legislate for higher wages through higher minimum wages or longer holidays or fair pay agreements and aggrandisements like that—so firstly legislate for them—and then secondly starve off immigration and that forces up higher wages. That seems to be their approach. Our argument is that actually yes you can do that but long term the only sustainable way to improve wages in the country is to have more productive businesses that are more internationally competitive that can compete with the best in the world and that can deliver more product for the number of workers and the capital employed. So that is why it is so important and I would have thought that if clause 115 refers to the objectives of the proposed agreement as being something that must be discussed it's perfectly rational and it follows logically that that discussion should include a discussion around the productivity of the workforce and the impact of the decisions made in the workplace agreement. The most obvious one would be a shift to hourly rates rather than piece rates—that is the number of apples picked versus an hourly rate. A shift in the balance between those two things can have a very significant impact on productivity. The ability to pay excellent workers who are highly motivated and very hard-working differently to other workers is also related to productivity and the Minister will say "Oh well this is only a floor. You can add higher rates to whoever you like." But if the floor is so high that that is all that the business can afford to pay and it's really at the margins there is less flexibility because you don't have the extra resources available to pay the higher rates to those who you want to pay more. The higher the floor goes the less flexibility there is for most businesses—not all businesses. So I can't quite see the logic for his dismissal of that point and I'd like him to maybe just see if he could reassure us more on that topic."