Little Andrew: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 02 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19186. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW LITTLE (Labour):It is a great pleasure to take a call on this very important part of the estimates. It was frankly a bit rich when the various farming or former farming members opposite stood before the Committee under a different vote a short while ago to boast about the great achievements in the farming sector and the great wealth being generated in that sector for this great country of ours. But they did not mention one thing about the role that the Minister of Labour played in ensuring that farm workers on the minimum wage now get paid less than the minimum wage for 1 week out of every fortnight on their “12 and 2” work roster.What a disgraceful action by the Minister of Labour. What a shameful thing by this Government. Government members say they like the rural sector. They say they look after people in the rural sector and in the provinces. They do not give a damn about the hard-working people—the hard-working people who are out there early in the morning doing the milking doing the hard graft on the farms putting up the fences getting a tractor out doing the feeding-out in the bitter cold weather that we have at the moment. This Government does not care a toss about those people and it quite happily reduces their wages because it wants to please the big wealthy rich farm owners. Well it is shocking. It is shocking and it is the farm labourers who are turning up to the offices of Labour MPs saying: “What gives? What’s going on?”. What possible law could there be that allows a Minister at the stroke of a pen to take $100 a fortnight off hard-working farm labourers? What a shocking thing.Well the truth is this. We might have a Minister of Labour but we have an appallingly dysfunctional labour market at the moment—46 percent of hard-working New Zealanders cannot get a pay rise in a single year alone and 49 percent of employers in a survey last week said they will not give a pay rise to their staff this year. And yet members opposite sit in the chair they stand opposite and they crow about the great economic growth. It was 3.2 percent a year about 3 months ago. Now it is up to 3.8 percent. Who knows how big it will be in a couple of months’ time when they are on the hustings.But here is the catch. We have a great growing economy—some people are doing well; some people are doing extraordinarily well—but 46 percent of hard-working New Zealanders cannot get a pay rise and the Minister does not care. The Minister does not care. He is the Minister of Labour. One of his prime responsibilities is to make sure that we have a wage-setting system and that people are fairly rewarded. That is what we expect in a properly functioning labour market. But we have a Minister who does not care that half the workforce cannot get a decent pay rise and that half of employers are saying they are not going to pay any more. So we are in a pretty diabolical situation.We know that the income gap is getting worse. We know that inequality is getting worse in this country. We now have the lowest level of homeownership since 1951 because people cannot afford houses. Housing affordability is not just an issue about house pricing; it is about wages and incomes and wages and incomes in this country have been getting worse and worse for a larger and larger number of people. It is getting worse.We have a labour inspectorate under this Minister that with this Budget is stretched to breaking point trying to keep up with the breaches and the non-compliance amongst employers in this country. It tried to do a blitz on farms. It was a random blitz on various farms and do you know what it found? There was 93 percent non-compliance with the basic minimum statutory standards of employment—93 percent. Then we have a Minister who bends over backwards to encourage farming employers to pay $100 a fortnight less than they would otherwise have to pay. No wonder the farmers think they have got carte blanche to not comply with the basic minimum standards of our employment law. That is the culture of employment standards in this country today. We have a Government that cuddles up to that licks up and down farmers who want nothing more than to pay their farm labourers less and the Government wonders why it gets 93 percent non-compliance amongst the farming community.Everything this Government has done when it comes to employment and labour market regulation makes it harder and makes it worse for working people to get ahead and to get a decent pay rise. Every law that this Government has promoted and passed in the last 6 years has made it harder for working people to get ahead and to get a pay rise. It started with the silly 90-day law. One-third of employers have now signed up to it two-thirds cannot be bothered with it because they know it is bad law they know it is bad practice and they know it is dumb and there is no employer who can point to the fact as this Government claims that they have created a job as a result of it—not a one.Law changes like that do not create jobs; all they do is make life harder. There are good responsible and sensible employers saying: “Of course we want to be able to take people on a trial basis but we know that to do that responsibly we should do it under the probationary law that is still on our statute book.” We know that that law requires the employer—a responsible fair and sensible employer—to provide feedback to treat the worker as if they are actually a human being and to treat them with respect unlike the 90-day law which does not.When the Government surveyed workers who had been employed under the 90-day law it could not find a single one who said that they had got any feedback at all on their so-called trial period because what was blatantly obvious is that those workers were not being trialled in the job. They were not being trialled; they were just being manipulated and exploited and kicked out the door as soon as the employer decided they no longer wanted them or needed them. That is the standard that employment law has come to in this country.The Minister bends over backwards to make it easy for employers to rip off their workers. He is a Minister who does not care frankly about basic employment standards. He is a Minister who does not care about freedom of association. He is a Minister who does not care about freedom of choice—which workers are meant to have according to the international agreements we have signed up to—to belong to or form a trade union. This Minister and this Government do not care.So that is why things are getting worse for workers in this country. That is why they are looking around saying: “How on earth is it that this Government could get here and be allowed to mistreat so many workers for so long?”. It is time to bring that to an end.I want to turn briefly to health and safety because that is very important to this country as we all know. We have all learnt a terrible and tragic lesson with Pike River and this Government has taken on the task to reform and revamp our health and safety laws. It is a pity however that in the spirit of this Government bending over backwards to help employers it could not bring itself to make WorkSafe New Zealand a tripartite organisation. It is meant to be modelled on the similar organisation in the UK which is truly tripartite but this Government could not bring itself to do that. It was just one step too far. So when we look at WorkSafe New Zealand we know that it needs to be properly supported. It will need more inspectors if it is to do its job properly and it will need to work pretty hard to get employers on board to deal with worker participation making sure that workers have a proper and fulsome say on health and safety issues in the workplace. That is the only way they are going to get safe—working collaboratively cooperatively and sensibly with their employers even though some employers are resistant to it. Even though some employers do not want workers to have a real say on workplace health and safety we know that the only way to reduce the atrocious record that has built up in this country is to make sure that workers can have a say with impunity and without fear and have a real say on how health and safety is managed in their workplace and in their environs. That is absolutely essential.If there is any shortcoming in that regard then we will have to fix that up. The shorter answer is this: when it comes to labour market regulation and the institutions responsible for overseeing it we can do better—we can do better. Unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately; I do not know—it will not be with this Government. It will not be with this Government if we want to improve our performance lift wages for all New Zealanders and make sure that all people get treated fairly and properly at work so that they can have a good constructive relationship with their employer based on true collaboration and cooperation and on a genuine mutual respect so that their choices and the way they choose to bargain and negotiate with their employer have to be respected by that employer.That is what the legal framework must deliver so that we have a good fair system which fairly rewards and treats people fairly. New Zealanders expect nothing less neither do we and that is why we on this side of the Chamber will be delivering that. New Zealanders have been waiting 6 years for it.