Harawira Hone: Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Harawira Hone: Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:641;Page:11164] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 The name of this bill is a shame—the “New Entrants Bill”. Sue Moroney has just talked about new entrants going to school. There is a difference I tell her—we do not pay 5-year-olds to go to school. There is a big difference. We are talking about people going into the workforce here. 
The original bill was called the Minimum Wage (Abolition of Age Discrimination) Amendment Bill but we will not be able to call the bill by that name any longer because this bill will maintain discrimination against those people who are young. It has this new fancy kind of title because it continues to discriminate. I am ashamed to listen to these so-called tough unionists talking about workers’ rights etc. etc. when they are shafting the next generation of workers. They are from the party that talks about the working class—but let me take this back to the title of the bill. 
The Maori Party would like to call this bill the “Abolition of Age Discrimination Bill” because we are a tough unionised working class - type party. However in this bill we are about to reaffirm discrimination against young people so we cannot call it that. 
Darien Fenton 
: Oh rubbish! 
HONE HARAWIRA 
: But that is what you are doing Darien—you know that I am right. You are affirming discrimination against people on the basis of age. 
Sue Moroney 
: I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. The member was bringing the Chair into the debate— 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: He was not! 
Sue Moroney 
:—during that speech and he knows not to do that. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: OK. Dr Mapp you are lucky to be here. The member knows that that was a point of order and that he does not talk through a point of order. I gather that the member who had the call was using the word “you” and it is something we certainly want members to cease doing. Thank you. 
HONE HARAWIRA 
: My apologies—my apologies. There could be another title for this bill when the thinking was: “We the Labour Party did our best to oppose Wayne Mapp’s 90-day bill and we have decided to be really really radical and introduce a Supplementary Order Paper so that this one becomes a 3-month bill which just happens to be hello 90 days.” I am ashamed to say that there is hardly any difference there. 
Darien Fenton 
: Oh rubbish! 
HONE HARAWIRA 
: No no—we are talking about the title here. 
I want everybody to realise one other fact here. It is that discrimination on the basis of age is against human rights and Labour is pushing through Supplementary Order Papers and a bill to ensure that that discrimination will continue. 
I have been known to call this bill the “Young Slave Bill”. I will give a quote from Martin Luther King: “Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.” That is why I call this bill the “Young Slave Bill”. Young people have no option but to accept it when their so-called union and working-class protectors have affirmed that that is the way it will be. 
If it is true that it takes 8 hours to train a person then why do we need to have a 200-hour limit in the bill? If it is true that it takes 16 hours— 
Darien Fenton 
: Point of order— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: The member is straying again from the title. Please come back to the title. 
HONE HARAWIRA 
: I would like to wrap it up there but I will make the point that the bill is inconsistent with the philosophy of unionism and the rights of the working class. It is inconsistent for a Labour Government to be talking about the title of the bill as being about new entrants when in fact it is a “Continuation of Discrimination Against People on the Basis of Age Bill.”