Fenton Darien: General Debate 
Fenton Darien: General Debate 
[Volume:670;Page:17276] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 I join with the House in expressing my sadness and condolences for the people of Japan who have faced a horrific earthquake an unbelievable tsunami and now a nuclear threat the likes of which we have not seen since 1986 with Chernobyl. It is just unbelievable horror. All we can do is try to pass on our support to the Japanese people send whatever help we can fundraise for those people and give the Japanese families in New Zealand whatever support we can provide. 
Of course we have our own ongoing disaster to contend with in Christchurch. I acknowledge that life has not returned to normal for most people and that there is a way to go. As we said in the House last week when we were debating the Canterbury Earthquake Commemoration Day Bill which gives a day off on Friday Labour will stand with the Government and the people of Christchurch to help them get through this. 
I note also that yesterday 220 workers lost their jobs at Canterbury Spinners. Sadly that is in addition to some job losses that have happened already. There will be more. There is a call out today for the Government to provide a clearer direction about what support redundant workers are entitled to and I ask the Minister of Labour to look at that— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: They’re employed by an international firm. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: They are employed by a national firm that is still operating so there is some lack of clarity about—[ 
Interruption 
] They are Australian owned—is that right? There is definitely a lack of clarity and the workers are very concerned about signing up for individual entitlement because they may have to pay it back if it is incorrectly allocated to them. 
Today I will talk about another group of people who are not doing so well in our country. Although it is important that we give our attention to Christchurch a large group of people in our country rely on the State to set their wages: workers on the minimum wage. They are the poorest paid workers in the country and they are struggling because the Government has put the interests of big business ahead of those people and their families. In a couple of weeks’ time on 1 April their pay will go up by 25c an hour. The Minister was told by her own department that a 25c an hour increase was not an increase in real terms. Under her miserly 25c an hour 53000 workers will get an increase of—actually—nothing. 
We want to see the minimum wage increase to $15 an hour at the earliest opportunity. If that had been the increase this year half a billion dollars could have been put into the economy this year. That has to be good for everyone. However we do not have high expectations for this Government because when it comes to minimum wage workers it is so out of touch with ordinary Kiwi families who are struggling to make ends meet. I do not think it knows how to consider their needs. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Are you going to pay for it? Who’s going to pay for it? Shane Jones? I don’t think so. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: There was an alternative that goes past the arguments that the Hon Tau Henare is yelling out across the House. The Minister could have opted for another 50c an hour taking the minimum wage to $13.50 an hour. Her own department’s advice was that this increase would put $76 million in the pockets of 108000 workers and would have had negligible impact on total employment. Her own department’s advice showed that increasing the minimum wage to $13.50 an hour would have a negligible impact on employment; in fact no jobs would be lost and there would be a marginal reduction in the number of newly available positions in the labour market. 
That $76 million would have been pumped into the economy because we all know that minimum wage workers and low-paid workers spend whatever they earn. That $76 million would have helped them cope with rising petrol costs and increases in rent and food prices. They would have had that money to take their kids to the general practitioner. That little bit of extra money might have helped them deal with the increasing costs in early childhood education. Maybe it would have been enough to cover the increases in car registration this year help pay the power bill or perhaps help pay the phone bill next month rather than just be cut off. These families would have had a little bit extra to cope with but the truth is that the increase to the weekly minimum wage will not pay for even a block of cheese or a litre of milk.