Peachey Allan: Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Peachey Allan: Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:654;Page:2987] 
ALLAN PEACHEY (National—Tamaki) 
: 
 I appreciate getting the call to speak on Part 1 of the Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill. 
Mr Chairperson can I seek your guidance based on your long experience in this House and ask you whether use of the term “hypocrisy” is unparliamentary. It seems to me that hypocrisy is what we have had to listen to from the previous two Labour speakers Trevor Mallard and Carol Beaumont. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I think you were asked a question inappropriately. You could have intervened at that point but I take exception to the comment that followed. The approach is clearly proscribed. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I make the point that the word itself is not prohibited. Members may use the words “hypocrite” and “hypocrisy” but may not associate the words directly with members or parties. To accuse a member or a party of hypocrisy is out of order but the use of the word itself in certain contexts is OK. The answer to the member’s question is that a member is out of order to accuse another party of hypocrisy. The member may continue. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I am not happy about that comment being left on the record. If you are not going to ask the member to apologise then I ask that the comment be withdrawn. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: The member will withdraw. 
ALLAN PEACHEY 
: I withdraw and I apologise for any offence I might have caused the other side. 
The point needs to be made very very strongly that this legislation was first introduced in from memory 2006 during those long dark days of miserable socialism. We have almost forgotten those long dark days after 6 months of the positivity of a National Government. Let us not forget what it was really like. 
Neither Mr Mallard nor Ms Beaumont addressed the critical issue and I invite the member in the chair Darien Fenton to take a call and address it. If this issue was so important to Labour members during the previous Parliament—we have seen crocodile tears shed tonight—why did they not use their majority in this House to adopt it as Government policy and put a Government bill before this House? Why did they not do that? It is now too late for crocodile tears and I invite the member in the chair to stand up and explain that. 
But of course Mr Chairman—as I try to speak on Part 1—the Labour Party has a major problem. Within weeks of National taking office the minimum wage was raised. The last time the minimum wage was raised in this country was by a National Government shortly after taking office. What was the previous Labour Government doing for 9 years? Let us not go back 9 years; let us go back to just 2006 when the New Zealand electorate finally woke up and realised what a dark grim place this country was becoming. I invite the member in the chair to answer another question I have: why is the House still spending its time—somebody less kind might say it is wasting its time—on this legislation which has been on the floor of the House for over 3 years is it? The electorate has spoken. The electorate has acknowledged that it was a National Government that increased the minimum wage. Perhaps the member in the chair might like to explain to New Zealand why its workers had to wait for the election of a National Government to have the minimum wage raised. National has nothing to apologise for and it has everything to be proud of. 
Members opposite use words like “Tory exploiter” and all that sort of nonsense but nobody is listening. New Zealand has stopped listening. New Zealand does not want does not seek this sort of legislation. It seeks a bit of honesty from its Government and it gets that from National.