Belich CamillaCAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to speak about something I am very passionate about although it's absolutely not a pleasure to be speaking on the repeal bill for the Fair Pay Agreements Act that was brought in by the last Government.I'm quite surprised listening to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety's speech—and I know she's a new Minister and maybe she doesn't have her full staff on board yet but I actually participated in the select committee process and we received 1700 submissions. The majority of those submissions were in favour as I recall of the amendments. I can also read out the submissions of those in support of the legislation that we did indeed pass but I don't think that proves the Minister's point. I think the Minister needs to actually engage with the substance of what she is repealing because now with this longer call I have the time to go through what fair pay agreements actually do.Fair pay agreements are a form of industry-level bargaining. They're common across the world in countries that we would like to compare ourselves to: in Germany in France in Italy in Australia. They are common arrangements in these countries. These types of agreement create a floor and not a ceiling in relation to terms and conditions. If employers want to offer something above what is in the fair pay agreement there is absolutely nothing preventing them from doing that. They just create minimum standards which we are very used to in New Zealand—we have lots of minimum standards that apply to workers. We have the minimum wage we have minimum holidays we have parental leave we have sick leave—those kinds of things.The thing that is different—and beneficial—about fair pay agreements is that they allow employers and workers to come together whether they're in a union or not and discuss what works best for the industry—what they consider to be fair terms and conditions that will allow them to have secure work secure pay and be able to see a career moving forward. That is how they work. It is not a scary thing. It is something that actually allows New Zealand to move forward and allows us to become a high-wage productive economy—which I actually think most people on both sides of the House would like to see New Zealand become.That is what fair pay agreements are and my colleague Willie Jackson aptly referred to Jim Bolger coming right" and I just thought it would be apt to refer to the work that the Rt Hon Jim Bolger did actually do in relation to fair pay agreements. He chaired the working group that set the groundwork up for the Fair Pay Agreements Bill that was passed by our Government. And I quote from the Rt Hon Jim Bolger. He said "We believe we have designed a Fair Pay Agreements system which will be most useful in sectors or occupations where competition is driving a 'race to the bottom' in terms of wages and conditions. Fair Pay Agreements could also be useful where workers and employers identify scope to improve outcomes across a sector or occupation. In particular I consider that workers and employers will need to work together to find innovative ways to lift productivity." So someone who was in favour of what we introduced was the Rt Hon Jim Bolger and I respect and thank Jim Bolger for his work. It's disappointing to see it repealed like this.The other thing that I wanted to touch on are the people who will actually be affected by this repeal of the Fair Pay Agreements Act. It's not us in the Labour Party; it's not the unions that perhaps don't find favour with the other side of the House. The people on this side of the House as has been mentioned and unions have good terms and conditions. They're unlikely to be covered by a fair pay agreement. The people that this is really hurting are not in the majority union members; they're everyday New Zealanders who work in vulnerable industries who need fair pay. They are as in the Minister's own advice that she received in the regulatory impact statement more likely to be Māori they're more likely to be Pasifika they're more likely to be women and they're more likely to be young people. These are the people that removing fair pay agreements is actually hurting. It's not us; it's New Zealanders.I just wanted to refer back to the speech I gave on the first reading of the Fair Pay Agreements Bill when I quoted in the House at that time Morris a bus driver I spoke to. He said "Flat rates just mean drivers work more and more hours to make ends meet. They're on split shifts. They can be doing 14 hours a day but not getting paid for these hours. It leaves people with no time for their families and it creates fatigue." Morris was speaking in favour of fair pay agreements which he hoped would revolutionise the work of bus drivers. I know that this Government is intent on repealing this legislation but can I just put a plea out for these workers: no one deserves to be working 14-hour days and not getting paid for all those hours on split shifts. No one deserves to work in a job in New Zealand where they can't see their families or can't make enough to live on. These are serious issues that we need to address so we must actually be brave enough to look at the way we work in New Zealand.The other person I wanted to mention featured on the cover of The Post yesterday I think it was. This is Rosey; she's a security guard. She actually came along—she's a real person. To be honest she's very brave to be speaking out as a security guard and sharing her story. She said in the paper "Security guards often don't receive the proper training for things like health and safety and de-escalation. FPAs would help security guards get the training and upskilling they need to keep themselves and others safe. It's a stressful job and we deserve to feel valued in the work we do."One of the things that is interesting about being in this House is when we have the adjournment debate and I'm sure we'll see this again when we adjourn for this year. One of the groups of people we always want to thank are our security guards and our cleaners. They do incredible work here at Parliament and a lot of their work isn't valued. It is heart-breaking to be on the one hand thanking them in our words thanking them for the service that they do and that they provide and on the other hand passing laws in this House—with our actions—and showing that this Parliament does not value them. Because that is what this Government is doing.The other things that I wanted to cover in relation to fair pay agreements—and we will have a decent amount of time to I hope discuss this in the committee of the whole House stage as well—are some other issues that have arisen in our scrutiny of this legislation that has been proposed by the Government. We've seen perhaps in their haste to put out a press release saying they've achieved their 100-day goals the drafting of their legislation was amiss in some instances and I'm foreshadowing that we'll be putting some Amendment Papers—as they're now called—into the committee of the whole House stage to seek to address those.The other thing that I wanted to mention was some of the other concerns that have been raised during the very fast passage of this piece of legislation through the House. New Zealand has as all in this House will be aware an EU free-trade agreement. One of the conditions of that EU free-trade agreement is that countries don't deregulate their labour laws in order to give themselves a competitive advantage and I understand a complaint has been raised to that nature. So I would just caution members on the other side of the House that when they do seek to put legislation through urgency sometimes issues like this can arise which may be unintentional but can have serious implications for our trade relationships and serious implications for the very important trade deals that we have entered into.The other thing I wanted to raise is that there is an issue with some of the explanation that has been happening around whether this will actually impact workers. Well we know that this would have created fairer pay and conditions for workers and therefore they are impacted. But secondly to that we know that there is at least one application in the Employment Relations Authority for fixing the terms of a fair pay agreement. Now obviously that's before the authority; it's not for us to comment on how that will progress as is customary in this House. However I think we can comment to say that that particular group will be impacted by this decision. And I note in the departmental disclosure statement which was released with this bill that there was also an issue raised in relation to that under the Legislation Act 2021 which actually doesn't allow existing rights to be repealed if they're existing at the time of the repeal—so some interesting issues for the Government to have to address in this piece of legislation that they have moved through very very quickly.In conclusion I look forward to the committee stage when we can look through the legislation in detail but I just wanted to say that in the Labour Party we will always stand up for working people and this is not the end of this fight. We'll be back and fair pay agreements will be too."