Sabin Mike: Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Sabin Mike: Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 19 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8648. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
MIKE SABIN (National—Northland) 
: 
 I will pick up on the point from the previous member Sue Moroney immediately. It is quite the opposite actually. This Minimum Wage (Starting-Out Wage) Amendment Bill is about a Government that actually backs these young people and is prepared to ensure that the environment exists for them to be given a chance. I want to come to Part 2 the transitional provisions. There is one important point I want to make there but I want to just comment briefly on some of the points that have been lobbed across the floor. People would think that this bill is according to the Opposition nothing more than rich capitalist bosses exploiting poor workers and displacing them. That is entirely inappropriate and simply not the case. 
The point was raised by Opposition member Darien Fenton around what the incentives for young people are in this equation or that if the incentive is that somehow the boss will be pocketing this extra money where are the incentives for the young people. Well the incentives for the young people are that the opportunity that they have been looking for will be presented to them more actively. This was something that was related to me by a constituent last week when I was out working on a kumara farm harvesting a few kumaras being taken through the packing shed and packing some of those sweet delights. I was talking with that employer who employs up to 1000 people on a casual basis through the cropping season about the importance of the right settings for him to be able to employ casual workers who would otherwise be sitting on a benefit and not have that opportunity. At $15 an hour he said he would not be making a dollar. At $16 an hour he would be out of business. Ninety percent of the country’s kumara are grown in Dargaville. That is a very good example of the reality versus the sort of socialist ideology that employers are out there to get rich at the expense of the poor worker. This is about getting those settings right. 
This is not a bill about creating jobs. This is a bill that provides the appropriate economic settings around the relationship between the employer and the employee. What we are doing to create jobs—because that seems to be something that has entertained the Opposition—is providing a range of economic strategies and policies through a Business Growth Agenda which I think is quite unprecedented. 
Dr Rajen Prasad 
: Come on mate—evidence. 
MIKE SABIN 
: It is a language that Opposition members do not really understand; I am probably wasting my breath for those across on the other side of the Chamber. Quite simply they cannot stand there and oppose all those moves and then turn around and say: “Oh but there’s no jobs.” 
Sue Moroney 
: It doesn’t create jobs. It actually reduces jobs Mike. 
MIKE SABIN 
: Members on the other side of the Chamber can rest assured that the jobs are there and this is about meeting employers and employees in the middle with the opportunities. 
In coming to Part 2 in terms of the transitional provisions I think it is important to note that where someone is captured in their entry into the workforce in the transitional part of this bill becoming an Act those who are caught in the middle if you like will get the higher of the two positions which ensures that they are not penalised through that transition period. Obviously there will be a transition because this is a bill that would have employees working at this rate for 6 months. So there will be that period and Part 2 simply covers off the importance of getting that transitional balance and the ingredients right. I think in clauses 7(2)(a) and 7(2)(b) it quite clearly states that the better of the two rates will be available to the employee. 
Many people—certainly in my electorate and for the constituents both employers and employees—have raised with me the real anxiety that they feel in a tight labour market that the opportunities are not there. This bill provides a platform to ensure that they are given a chance. The idea that a 16-year-old will somehow displace someone in their mid-twenties who has been in the workforce for 8 or 10 years who has developed a good work ethic and who has developed skills and experience in that business is an absolute nonsense.