Goff Phil: Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Goff Phil: Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 19 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8625. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill) 
: 
 What a typical approach by this Government. It has got a problem with youth unemployment. We know why it has got a problem with youth unemployment. It is because it has got no vision for growing the New Zealand economy. John Key who decried 25000 teenagers being out of work in 2008 his big achievement has been to increase the rate of youth unemployment by a further 5000—to 30000. If you take the people who are 20 to 24 years old make that another 90000 young people out of work. And what is this Government’s answer? What is its vision to deal with unemployment? Its vision is to cut the starting rate for 16 and 17-year-olds and some 18 and 19-year-olds by 20 percent. You know what these people in the National Party are proposing. They are proposing that young people working at the same rate with the same productivity doing exactly the same job in exactly the same way as an older person can be paid $11 an hour—$11 an hour! 
Simon O’Connor 
: So experience means nothing? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: That is not even enough for the member over there to pay for his gin and tonic at a local bar and he wants young people to live on $11. Why I want to know from that member should a teenager making hamburgers in the same way at the same rate with the same efficiency as a 25-year-old be paid a whole lot less? Will that create new jobs? No it will not. The evidence is there that it will simply displace older workers who are currently doing the job. So the poor guy or woman who is older and working making those hamburgers is not going to have a chance because the boss is going to sack them or not employ them in the first place in order to get cheap labour at $11 an hour—$11 an hour! 
Will this work? Well let me quote the authority the Minister for Social Development if you can call her an authority. She opposed youth rates just 2 years ago. This is what she said: “we are not convinced it would reduce youth unemployment plus it would be a distraction from the really important work of improving productivity and growing the economy in order to create long-term jobs which will keep young people in New Zealand.” That is what Paula Bennett Minister for Social Development was saying 2 years ago about Roger Douglas’ bill. So what is with the change in mind? And Jackie Blue: “National has not seen any evidence to show that young people are losing their jobs because of youth rates. We are not convinced that this bill will reduce youth unemployment.” How is that for hypocrisy: against youth rates one day and for them the next? And why are National members for them? It is because they have run out of ideas. They have no vision for New Zealand other than it being a low-wage economy. 
What is the problem with New Zealand? Why did we lose 53000 New Zealanders to Australia last year? It was because the jobs are not in New Zealand and because we have low wages. So this Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill is a bill to increase the flow of Kiwis across the Tasman so they can put their energy and their taxation into the Australian economy. This is a Government that has no vision about creating jobs. This is a Government that has no vision about upskilling New Zealanders for high-paid jobs. Why is it that the number of apprenticeships is down 20 percent from when this Government got into office—down 20 percent? Why is it that in one Budget it slashed $53 million out of the skills training budget? Why is it that in Christchurch on Sunday on St Patrick’s Day the bars were full of Irish workers imported to do the work because this Government had no plan to upskill New Zealanders to rebuild Christchurch? That is an absolute disgrace—an absolute disgrace. This is not only counterproductive because it is not about increasing skills and increasing jobs but also unjust and unfair. 
What this Government is doing is saying that young people are out of work because it is their fault we are paying them too much; not that they are out of work because this Government has failed utterly in its economic management. So what does it say? It says: “We will put our young people on $11 an hour.” That is a bit rich coming from those people the Cabinet Ministers and MPs who gave themselves a big fat increase in income by cutting the tax rates for the top income earners. That is unfair. It is not on that this is a Government that will reward the most wealthy people in the country but will continue to hit the people who are at the bottom of the heap. 
Why is it that Lesley Longstone is getting $1000 in severance for each day she worked—$425000? That is what it will hand out to the people at the top: $425000 of New Zealand taxpayer money given to Lesley Longstone because Hekia Parata could not get on with her. So it will reward the rich. Why is it that Don Elder the former chief executive of Solid Energy right now retains his salary at a rate of $1.3 million a year while he is at home doing the garden? The Government will reward the rich but its answer is always to cut the income of people at the bottom. 
So the brave new world for the National Government is to have our young people leave school and go out to work at $11 an hour. That will not solve the unemployment problem amongst young people. They know that. The last speaker from the National side Cam Calder said that the bill will create 2000 jobs for 16 and 17-year-olds. What he forgot to tell the Chamber was that it takes 2000 jobs away from the people who are 20 25 35 or 45. This is about job displacement. This Government has no ideas about job creation. It brought in the Youth Guarantee scheme. That was going to get lots of people into jobs. I saw a withered pumpkin that was produced under one scheme. This Government wasted millions of dollars on a scheme it then scrapped. It talks loudly about the Limited Service Volunteer scheme. That has its good aspects but the truth of the matter is that 40 percent of the young people going on to that scheme go back on to the benefit and go back into unemployment. What this country needs is a genuine answer for upskilling our young people so that we can be an innovative high-growth high-skill and high-tech economy. It does not need a Government that says the answer is to force wages down to $11 an hour and that is what it is doing. 
This Government has no ideas. We had a job summit. Remember the jobs that were going to be created out of that? That was 4 years ago. Where are the jobs? [ 
Interruption 
] Let the next National speaker rise up on his or her hind legs and tell us how many jobs were actually created. Do you know Mr O’Connor what the answer is? Fewer than one in five of what John Key promised. It was a job summit that was about rhetoric. It was not about creating jobs. Now in desperation the Government comes to the Chamber and says: “If there’s youth unemployment it must be the young people’s fault and we will hammer them.” 
There is one thing in the legislation that I will support and that is Darien Fenton’s Supplementary Order Paper 193 which talks about lifting the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Why would I support that? Because it is wrong that 40 percent of the kids living in poverty in this country right now come from working families—40 percent of the kids living in poverty come from working families. I have got an electorate full of people where mums and dads take it in turns they do shift work one goes out during the day and one goes out at night and they cannot produce enough income on the minimum wage they get paid—including cleaning those members’ offices—to have a living wage. 
I grew up in a New Zealand where people said that if you do an honest week’s work you get a living wage for that week. I want one member—one member—of the National Government to stand up and say why people working hard doing an honest week’s work are not entitled to a living wage. I want one member to stand up and say that he or she could live on $13.75 an hour which is the minimum wage. It is not a living wage. Most particularly it is not a living wage in the city that I represent Auckland in Mt Roskill. That money does not give you enough money to feed your kids properly to clothe them and to give them the opportunities that most other kids have. Why is that at my low-income schools some of the kids have never got to the beach? They have never been away on a holiday—that is asking too much. Mum and dad cannot afford even to put shoes on their feet. And this Government says: “We’ll pay them $13.75 an hour—but hang on if you’re a young person we’ll pay you $11 an hour.” How generous! What a decent Government! What a Government which can reward itself with big fat tax cuts but cannot give people a living wage and which now says that the answer to youth unemployment is to cut the wages of those young people doing the same work as the people next to them—