Woodhouse Michael; Dean JacquiHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. Before I provide some reflective and concluding comments in my third reading contribution I want to briefly reflect on an interjection I made on the Minister of Health at the end of the committee of the whole House about not answering questions. There was one question that I thought was inadequate but I actually want to commend the Minister for his contribution to the committee of the whole House. There are I think unfortunately a small number of Ministers that I think really enter into the spirit of the committee of the whole House and the technical analysis of bills and Mr Little is one of them. To the degree that he could he attempted to address the very I think legitimate and quite important questions that the committee had especially given that we didn't have the opportunity to do so in a select committee. So I put that on the record.He is a hard-working Minister but that is really where the commendation ends in respect of this process and this bill because I think even if Mr Little was reflecting in his heart of hearts he knows that the process was poor by any measure. But the outcome is going to be deeply dissatisfying to all of the parties and probably to his own Cabinet actually in not being able to achieve a better outcome in the time frame—and I don't mean the time frame of the last six weeks; I mean the time frame in the last five years of which four years and eight months have been under a Labour-led Government. So there is still some work to do.A few weeks ago I had cause to dive back into my calendar for the second half of 2015 or early 2016 to try and ascertain the date of a meeting that I and my then ministerial colleague Amy Adams had with the Hon Peter Dutton who was then the home affairs Minister. We met in Sydney as the joint justice Ministers with Amy Adams as justice and I as Minister of Police—so it must have been 2015. I found the date but I had to pour through an absolute mountain of appointments and meetings in this diary and it reminded me of the tremendous workload that busy Ministers have and I know Mr Little is one of them.But in amongst all of those diary appointments was a plethora of meetings of what's called CMSSER or at least it was then: the Committee of Ministers for State Sector Employment Relations. I don't know if there's an equivalent committee. But the membership included and was chaired by the Hon Paula Bennett our Minister of State Services. It had the weather eye of the Minister of Finance the Hon Bill English; Dr Jonathan Coleman; myself; and one or two others.The two big health issues that were emerging at that time one of which remains unresolved was Holidays Act remediation across the State sector—and as Minister of Police I had the very uncomfortable role of going to Cabinet and saying the police had told me that they had an estimated $26 million of holiday pay arrears. That ended up being $33 million. The CMSSER basically went to the Ministry of Health—actually at my request based on my experience in the health sector—to say that well if police who have shift work and time in lieu and all of that sort of thing have got a $33 million problem I bet the district health boards have got a much much larger problem. The response was: No no nothing to see here." We had that response all the way through to the 2017 general election when we now know there was a billion-dollar problem—and it's still not solved five years later. Actually there's a pattern that emerges here about problems not being solved five years later.Then there was an emerging issue with the TerraNova case. We had a regular item on that agenda to consider as observers actually—interested observers to the case—about what was happening in the claim for section 9 of the Equal Pay Act 1972 applying to not only equal pay for the same work but pay equity for different work but of a similar nature and that's where the previous Government ended up with the 2017 Act.Now one of the things I think was revealed in the answers and in the speeches given by the Minister of Health today and tonight was—and this is the impression that he left me—that pay equity negotiations are somehow an iterative process that female-dominated professions are on this kind of wheel of inequity. That's not my perspective. It certainly wasn't the previous Government's perspective. The purpose of a pay equity settlement was to bring that occupation that sector or that role up to parity with occupations that were similar but were not female-dominated—a one-time thing that then remains equitable and the pay increase has come through the normal bargaining process.Now it is possible that over time some sectors may slip back and it might be necessary in years to come for there to be a subsequent pay equity claim. My sense and the way in which the pay equity bill that I introduced in 2017 was written was that that not be the case that that would be a very very rare exception. But the framework for achieving equity was a singular event—with a pretty big price tag but nevertheless that was it. That's what I believed and my Government in 2017 believed we were doing with the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Act that we are amending tonight. Indeed it would have been had the Labour Government done what was intended which was to actually get a framework in place for bargaining for increases past June 2022 and they didn't.As my colleague and friend Nicola Griggs said not one of the 1900 staff at the Ministry of Health put a diary note in the calendar and said "You know what in 2019 or 2020 we better get around the bargaining table." No one in the Ministry of Health was actually aware of and planning to do just that and I find that extraordinary in the extreme. Actually the unions have probably let their members down too—I say that gently but firmly—until the Aged Care Association actually approached the ministry and the Minister last year as was described by Dr Reti in his first reading speech.Clearly there wasn't enough time. We were talking weeks not years to get to bargain and we know that these things are very complicated with multi-employers and a number of variables. There wasn't a show of being able to get that sorted before this bill expired. So to kick the can down the road for another year and a half after a five-year hiatus where the Government did nothing really leaves a sour taste in my mouth and certainly in the 61000 workers who are not being well-enough remunerated by this piece of legislation. It's going to leave the business owners and the not-for-profits in that sector frankly mildly terrified if Penny Simmonds' calculation of one organisation is even remotely correct—and I think it's pretty damn accurate frankly—that the funding envelope to give effect to this piece of legislation will not be enough to cover even the wage increases much less the other cost increases and the deficits that the aged-care sector are already carrying.That is going to be the test over the next weeks and months and boy we will hear about it. My colleagues and I have got good connections into the aged-care sector. We understand it. We care about it. We're listening to it and we will highlight if we're right—and I really hope we're not—the degree to which the Government has underfunded this piece of legislation. We just don't know. We are literally flying blind despite the Minister's best efforts to quantify the financial impact of this on the Crown on the taxpayer and on the providers. We know easily what it's going to be for the workers because that's set in black letter law and they won't be happy. I fear that nobody will and that's what happens when bad law is rushed through without good process—in fact without any process. So we've done our best to highlight these issues tonight. I regret we're having to do it. We do support it reluctantly.My last comment is actually to the Greens. There's been in the past as I mentioned earlier from time to time a situation where the Greens will abstain. I respect the fact that they oppose this bill even though they support care and support workers. I get where they're coming from and we nearly did the same. But we will support it and we look forward to seeing what happens next.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is that the motion be agreed to."