Fenton Darien: General Debate 
Fenton Darien: General Debate 
[Volume:642;Page:12019] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 First of all I must say I am very disappointed at National’s contribution today. It is a very important day today and I noticed that some National members turned up to the Suffrage Day breakfast this morning to show that Suffrage Day is something that is important. But who do we have in the House today? We have mostly male speakers. There was one woman speaker who probably does not count because she is opposed to anything to do with women and with women making advances. This is a day when we pay homage to those who fought in our country and around the world for women to have the right to vote— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Tell us about your Government stopping creches in schools and gyms. Tell us about Herceptin. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. This barracking that is going on is making it very difficult for me to hear myself. I ask that you— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Well this is a place for robust debate. The member is entitled to make comments across the House but not a commentary under Speakers’ ruling 57/3. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: This is a day when women take stock of the progress of women in our own country and I am delighted to say that under this Labour-led Government with the assistance of other like-minded parties women have made real progress. 
Paid parental leave which other speakers have mentioned was only a dream for women until Labour became the Government and I want to acknowledge those women who campaigned for more than 10 years to make today’s 14-weeks’ paid parental leave a reality. It is very interesting that National has discovered paid parental leave quite recently. It has discovered that New Zealanders actually like it so—guess what—it has flip-flopped on that and now it is trying to pretend it has never voted against it but has really supported it all along. 
Steve Chadwick 
: Well we’re telling women what they voted. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: That is right—we are telling women how National voted and that is what we are doing today. 
I acknowledge that women still have some catching up to do particularly in relation to the gender pay gap. But I can only imagine what the differential would be like today if we had not had the increases to the minimum wage that this Labour Government has brought in over the last few years. Members can just imagine if women were still being paid $7 an hour or if they were under 20 just $4.20 an hour. In the debate last week on the youth minimum wage it was interesting that David Bennett called that bill communist and he called all of us communists. I wonder whether he still thinks that the minimum wage is communism. 
Other members have mentioned the nurses’ pay jolt and the difference that that has made to nurses’ pay but I want to talk particularly today about caregivers. I have noticed National’s rather bizarre aged-care discussion document. If the document is to be summed up it says first of all that it will help for-profit privately owned—and in many cases multinational—residential care facilities to make more money by giving them more Government-funded increases. National says that it will contribute Government-owned land—public land—for private companies to develop residential care facilities. I wonder what taxpayers will say about that. But National’s plans for workers are very clear. It is so keen to give its mates large profits that it is prepared to let for-profit organisations pocket Government-funded increases at the expense of decent wages in the sector. 
In the last month New Zealand’s aged-care residential employers including some of the largest like Guardian Healthcare Metlifecare Qualcare Northern and Presbyterian Support Central have concluded collective agreements with aged-care unions covering approximately 4000 nursing care and support workers. These collective employment agreements have all established a minimum rate of pay of $12.55 an hour and have given all caregivers and service workers a pay increase of a dollar an hour. Caregivers employed by these organisations are now paid between $12.55 and $16 an hour. This is the biggest single one-off increase these workers have received in 20 years and the unions directly attribute it to the increased Government funding targeted to these low-paid workers. 
Around $400 million in this year’s Budget was to be spent over the next 4 years on residential and home-based care and that sum was targeted to the workers. National voted against it; it took a Labour Government to make it happen. Of course National is saying that this is compulsory unionism by stealth and its discussion document says that it will get rid of it. We have been determined to make sure that increased funding in the sector goes directly into the pockets of caregivers but you know the union-averse National Party just cannot help itself even though history proves that aged-care employers have not been good at passing on additional funding through wages. 
Last year when aged-care workers came to Parliament to petition us about problem wages National MPs lined up outside all sympathy but failed to understand the basic problem—that is the market will not deliver. If National members want to improve standards in the industry they have to improve pay in the industry and there has to be intervention to make sure that happens. Under National’s watch rest home workers went on hunger strikes to convince their employers not to cut their pay and workers were locked out to force them to sign individual contracts that stripped all their rights away except for the most basic of pay rates. That is what will happen again if National has its way. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.