Twyford Phil: Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Twyford Phil: Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 19 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8649. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatu) 
: 
 I want to start by commenting on clause 7(2) which includes the transitional provisions that Mike Sabin was just referring to. My comment is that actually clause 7(2) is probably the only sensible clause in the entire Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill because it offers a modicum of reasonableness in allowing workers who are caught between two stools if they have already started on the old new entrant rate a kind of grace period of 3 months or 200 hours to be paid “as if this Act had not been passed”. Well I have got an idea for a new amendment that we could put on the Table: how about we treat the whole damn bill as if it had not been passed? 
This odious pathetic bill brought to Parliament by the National Government illustrates the poverty of failure. It is not the poverty of failure that is a blight on communities all up and down this country—the youth unemployment crisis—it is the poverty of failure that this Government demonstrates by the fact that it is bereft of ideas it is bereft of vision and it has no ideas about what to do about the job crisis. The best it can do for young people in this country is to bring to this House a bill that cuts their wages. 
Whichever way you slice it this bill is unfair. It is discriminatory. I ask Mike Sabin who loves to stand up and say that the Opposition is obsessed with all this socialist ideology and is demonising employers why he does not bring to this House a bill that would actually provide a step up into the employment market for a group of people in this country who disproportionately suffer high rates of unemployment. I am talking about the people who live in the far north. The people in Northland suffer very high unemployment so I challenge Mike Sabin to bring to this House a bill that cuts the wages of people in Northland. Why not do that? It is exactly the same principle. If that member is consistent and he cares about unemployment in Northland then he should bring to this House a bill that cuts the wages of people in Northland. Let us have a starting-out rate for people who live in Northland Kawerau Murupara or Gisborne. Let us cut the wages of people who live in high-unemployment areas. There is no reason under the logic of the National Government that we should not cut the wages of the people who live in Northland. 
How about another group of people who suffer high rates of unemployment and find it very hard to get into the labour market? How about people who have physical disabilities and mental disabilities? They find it really hard to get a job because an employer will not take a chance on them. I say to members on that side of the Chamber: let us cut their wages to $11. Actually why not cut the rate lower than $11? Let us cut it to $10 or $9 an hour because that would give people with disabilities a leg-up into the labour market and that is what they need. So let us cut the wages of people with disabilities. 
There are other groups around in society who suffer high rates of unemployment: Maori people Pacific people new migrants and refugees. They all find it really hard to get into the job market. They all suffer disproportionate rates of unemployment. So following the logic of the National Government let us cut their wages. There is no earthly reason why the same logic that underlies this bill should not be applied to disabled people ethnic minorities or people who live in Northland Murupara Bluff or the West Coast of the South Island. There are lots of people who are disadvantaged in this labour market and why should they not be the beneficiaries of the same Tory charity that is cutting the wages of young people in this country? The members on that side of the Chamber are silent because they know that that analogy illustrates the absolute poverty of imagination and vision that is behind this bill. 
Simon O’Connor got up and talked about the fact that there is a sort of fundamentalism on the Labour benches that is behind our opposition to this bill. Well it is not fundamentalism Mr O’Connor. It is a belief in basic ideas of human dignity decency and the equality of all citizens in our democracy—basic ideas that that member and his colleagues do not seem to have any idea about. Secondly—