Little Andrew: Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Little Andrew: Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 19 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8631. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANDREW LITTLE (Labour) 
: 
 You know the most disappointing thing about that speech from Chris Auchinvole is that at the end of last week thousands of young gay men and women who had never before heard of him were uttering the name Chris Auchinvole as somebody who had offered a progressive vision. This was a member who unbeknownst to him had trended on Twitter when he did not even know what that meant because of such a fantastic address that he gave. He gave hope to many young people in this country last week. And now he has shattered the illusion because now we have seen the truth. 
If there is one thing that this bill the Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill does it is that it very accurately and very emphatically explains the difference between the National Party on the one hand and the Labour Party on the other. National is a party that does not recognise the opportunity for exploitation when it sees it does not see it in the laws that it enacts and creates and does not understand how the labour market in this country and indeed most free countries properly works. It does not understand that changing laws does not create work and does not understand that to create work of value—of value not only to the employer but to the worker—it needs active investment understanding and innovation. It does not happen when you cheapen the price of labour and there is only one thing that this bill will do and that is cheapen the price of labour. It so happens that it will cheapen the price of the most vulnerable labour our youngest and the new entrants to our workforce and those who have had difficulty finding work and who even at their tender teenage years have perhaps had a period in the workforce then out of it for a 6-month or longer period and are then trying to get back into it. They are the ones who will be badly affected. 
It will not create work. Phil Goff is absolutely correct. Measures like this do not create work. What it does is give an opportunity to employers to say: “Aha! Here we go. I don’t have to pay $13.75. I can get away with $11.80.” or whatever it is. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: $11. 
ANDREW LITTLE 
: Eleven dollars. It is not even $11.80—$11. “I can get away with paying even less so I will.” Actually that is the way many employers think. If Mr Auchinvole is right when he asks why employers would do this because they value their workers—well they will not be looking to this law. The good employers in this country do not look at laws like this because they respect working people— 
Mike Sabin 
: It’s an option; it’s not compulsory. 
ANDREW LITTLE 
: —they want to pay the best and they want to do the best. But there are employers—and it might be a surprise to Mr Sabin to know this—who will work at the edges of the law because they know they can get away with it. That is how they run their businesses and that is the nature of their business. They are marginal businesses of low value and they do not actually value the work people do. It may come as a surprise but there are employers like that. I know. I have met them. I met one of them once with Max Bradford just after the Employment Contracts Act was passed. Max Bradford was shocked to find that there was an employer who told a young worker that he would sign him up on an apprenticeship if he could pay him $50 a week. I might remind members that even in 1993 $50 a week was an absolutely paltry sum. This young worker never got his apprenticeship never got his training but was paid $50 a week. When Max Bradford found out about that employer with me we visited him. He was absolutely shocked. There are employers like that. They will exploit this law and they will make it worse. 
This law will do no good. It will do no good for working people—young working people. It will actually do no good for the labour market at all. It will do no good for the good employers who are looking for good young people and who want to offer them the best but who are competing with the exploitative the underminers and the employers who have nothing to offer. That is the National Party approach. It is not interested in creating work. It is interested in reducing the cost of labour because that is what its mates tell it they want. That is what its mates tell it they want. They said: “Make it easier for us. We will employ young people. Just make it cheaper for us.” Actually the truth is that the people who talk like that and who talk to their National Party mates in Parliament are not interested in young people. They are interested just in getting a job done as cheaply as possible and that is what this bill will do. That is why we are opposed to it. That is why we will support Darien Fenton’s Supplementary Order Papers to provide for a minimum wage of $15 and to at least take the 18 and 19-year-olds out of it because by that time if you are not fit for school if you are trying to look for something different and you are in the workforce why—by the time you get to 18 and 19—should you go backwards?