Fenton Darien: Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Fenton Darien: Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:654;Page:2990] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 I am very happy to hear from my colleagues on all sides of the Chamber on the Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill but I thought I had better respond to some of the quite ridiculous things we have heard both tonight and in the previous debate on Part 1. I need to put the record straight because I am the person who sponsored this bill. I am one of the people on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. I heard the submissions on the bill and the majority of them were in favour of it. They said that the principle behind the bill is right although the mechanism maybe needs some work. 
Labour has supported the bill all the way through as have the Greens and the Maori Party. 
Michael Woodhouse 
: They haven’t. Read the report. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: I tell that member to do the numbers. We had some other issues that we needed to progress but I came into Parliament to advance issues for low-paid workers. If members look back to my maiden speech they will see that that is what I talked about. Low-paid workers are an issue that I have pursued for most of my adult working life. There is a real issue here. 
Labour Ministers in my time have been enormously supportive of this bill as have the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions and indeed Business New Zealand which got together with us to try to work out the bill. Unfortunately one of the former New Zealand First members Peter Brown—bless him; he is not here any more—did not quite understand the bill and could not quite get his head around it. However let me try to get through to some of the members on that side of the Chamber. When National members say that contractors should be free to set their price and terms of contracts we do not disagree with them. We agree with that approach provided that workers are not paid below the minimum wage. We are talking about $12.50 an hour. National members have gone on and on tonight about how National put up the minimum wage by 50c. 
Listening to them one might think that nothing had happened in the 9 years under Labour. What was the minimum wage when Labour became the Government? It was $7 an hour or $4.20 an hour if the worker was under 20 years of age. It has moved a long way. I say to National members “Big deal!”. Good on them for putting up the minimum wage by 50c! We want to have a debate about the level of that wage which is in Part 2 of the bill. 
I also heard Aaron Gilmore and David Bennett—who was on the select committee—arguing that the bill affects freedom and choice. Those are really good National Party words: freedom and choice. Labour agrees that there should be freedom for the self-employed contractors to choose how and when they get paid provided that they get a real choice about how and when they get paid. The problem is that many workers and many contractors do not have that choice. I am sure that many contractors would wish to be employees and have rights under various employment legislation but the reality is that that is not the case. 
I heard Mr Bakshi and some other members talking tonight about how one of the options is for workers to put forward a low price for their labour so they can get a job. I used to hear that argument in the 1990s from the then National Government about how any job is better than no job. Let us have slave labour! That is called slavery. I have heard some strange interventions from National members about plumbers and painters. Those workers are not included under this bill so let us get over that. Nor is this bill based on how fast or slow someone does a job I say to my cousin Tau Henare. In respect of the leaflet deliverers it is not about how fast or slow they are or whether they are young and can run fast or whether they are old and do it slowly—it is not about that. If one reads the mechanisms that have been designed which are in Supplementary Order Paper 4 one will see that there is a mechanism for agreeing on what is a reasonable time for doing the work which should then be based on the minimum wage. 
I heard Aaron Gilmore in the last session talking about how the self-employed are higher paid than employees. I have read that statistics report too. It actually states that self-employed contractors are up to four times more likely to remain low earners compared with wage and salary earners. 
Let us go back to what was said by Mr Peachey and other people about the length of time this bill has taken and to the various discussions on and insults about this bill. Members of Parliament have a right to put forward bills. It is a difficult process but we all have a right to put forward bills. It is difficult to get bills drawn out of the ballot—we all know that; it can take a long time. A bill can take a long time in the select committee. This bill took a long time in the select committee. It took a long time to come back to the House at the various stages and it is really unfortunate that it is back in a Parliament in which we have a National Government that does not care about workers who get paid below minimum wage.