Williams ArenaARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you Mr Chair and congratulations on your elevation to the role. It is good to see you there and congratulations also to the Minister on taking up this role in this Cabinet. It is a pleasure to be able to ask these questions of you today. I want to build on some of the questions that the Hon Marama Davidson has asked in the committee because I am considering an amendment to clause 4 which would be relevant to you. But before I take the committee through what those amendments would be I need some further clarity from the Minister on how youth will be considered in these regime changes.Because the Minister has presented to this committee—she has said that fair pay agreements (FPAs) were never about being fair which is something that I disagree with. But perhaps putting myself in her shoes and appreciating the world through her ideology I can see that she is trying to advance something which is beneficial to New Zealanders. So for young New Zealanders—I know this is something that she's passionate about and would not be enacting legislation which impacted poorly on young New Zealanders. That begs the question of what amendments this committee needs to make to make sure that young workers are protected because young workers are amongst the most vulnerable and the least able to represent themselves in these situations. Further the purpose of the fair pay agreements legislation when it was enacted in 2022 was about creating an industry floor for many of these industries which are dominated by young workers who move between different employers doing very similar kinds of work. We've heard from my colleagues on this side of the Chamber about the example of baristas fast-food workers other sorts of hospitality—these are all industries where often young New Zealanders get their first start in life. That kind of work experience that they have is really important to the way that they experience not only their education their lives but they also get the first start in their employment journey which we hope is a really positive one here. I want to turn the committee's attention to some of the submissions made by young people in the passage of the Fair Pay Agreements Act 2022 because we don't have the opportunity for young people to present to the select committee about the kinds of changes that they would want to see in the legislation here. So it is important that the committee give some consideration to what those submissions were. So first I'll start with the submission of Stand Up. It was made by Dr Zoe Port and Moniqua Reid. The comments of Dr Port are really useful for us but it was Moniqua's story of her own experience as a young person in the workforce who would have benefited from an industry-wide agreement that I want to focus on. She said We know fair pay agreements will halt the race to the bottom in wages improve job security and put our members on a path to better jobs with fair pay. I'm 28 and I was born to young parents. Only my dad worked in our family for the minimum wage of $7 in 1997. With this one minimum wage income my young family was able to get their first mortgage on their $70000 home that still stands in good condition today. It was still a struggle to live on one income but it was manageable and there was always food on the table. With the inflation rate of 74 percent between then and now that $70000 house should be worth $122000 today. Even if we consider that the $7 minimum wage from 1997 today would be worth just over $12 and the 2022 minimum wage is a lot higher at $21.20. In proportion we would double the cost of what that house should be worth to $244000 to keep in line with the current minimum wage. That house today is almost worth double what it should be at 440000". The point she's making here is that for someone like her who's 28 and earning a minimum wage she's in a really different position because minimum wage and wages for people working the kinds of jobs that her family worked and the kind of job that she could work are not keeping up with the generation of her family. That's the position that many young people find themselves in today where a race to the bottom in New Zealand and the kind of economic settings that we have had have meant that young people are not able to earn what their parents earned—and their parents before them—in relation to the price of other things. It's really important that young people get a good start on decent wages and can experience the kind of conditions that not only protect their pay across industries like the ones that Moniqua's family were working in but also their conditions so that they experience the economy in a way which is insulated somewhat from the vagaries and fluctuations of it and they have the ability to hold down their work as well. So that once they have a job they can keep it because the conditions of their employment are such that they are given the skills and the kinds of opportunities that they need to thrive in those roles and to continue in their education. The comments of Dr Port are really useful for the Chamber to also consider. She said that the FPAs in that context seeks for a generational reset and a chance to make work and wages fair and stop the race to the bottom which defines our current industrial relations framework. Young people in this country—[Time expired]"