Moroney Sue: Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Moroney Sue: Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:641;Page:11163] 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 I take the opportunity to speak in the Committee stage on clause 1 the title clause of the Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill. The title was the subject of some change at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and I was pleased to be a member of that select committee. The title of the bill is one of the things that the committee made an amendment to and a fact that many other speakers have alluded to. 
I want to talk about some of the reasons behind that change to the title. I differ from the previous speaker in that I believe that the New Zealand public understands exactly what the phrase “new entrants” means. It is the perfect description of what this bill does. The term describes people who are newly entered into the workplace in New Zealand. It is a very common term that we use for children entering the school system. We do not for example say when someone is in year 7 and changes schools that that child is a new entrant. No we do not say that. We say that new entrants are those who are new to the education system. They are newly learning the processes and structures involved in the education system. So the concept of a new entrant is one that is well understood in the New Zealand environment and is very appropriate to use for what this bill does. 
At the select committee we did not talk just about people who are new to a particular work environment because that would be discriminatory. People change jobs all the time and become new to the work environment but that is not what we are talking about in this bill. In this bill we are referring to those people who are having the experience of paid employment for the first time in their working lives. 
I am sure that many members in this Chamber can still reflect for themselves on what it felt like to be a new entrant into the workforce. Certainly for myself as a new entrant it was a bit of a shock to the system. My first job on leaving school was working in horse racing stables and that entailed getting up at 4 o’clock in the morning. It felt very much like a completely different scenario from getting up at 8 o’clock in the morning preparing my school lunch getting on the school bus going to school and really being the recipient of information coming towards me. 
Obviously when people move into paid employment they are not the passive recipients of information coming towards them; they are often required to be producing and to be producing every hour of their working day. That is quite a shift and quite an adjustment that new entrants into the work environment need to make. 
So I support the title that the select committee came up with: the Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill. We could have called it the “Minimum Wage (Put our Money Where our Mouth is When it Comes to Low Pay) Amendment Bill” also because I think that that is one of the things that this bill does. Those parties that will be supporting this bill can proudly stand up and say: “Yes when it comes to low pay we are prepared to do something practical and something real to deal with low pay; it is not just a bumper slogan that we reel out during an election year.” In conclusion I tell the Committee that I support clause 1 the title: the Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill.