Moroney Sue: Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Moroney Sue: Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 21 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8872. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 This day sadly will go down in history as the day that the Government officially gave up on young people—the day that the National Government officially gave up on young people—and the day that the Government the National Government officially gave up on the brighter future. This bill the Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill does both of those things. It gives up on young people. It says that they are not worthy of a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. It says that this country is not going to have the brighter future that that Government promised in two consecutive elections and still has not delivered on. This bill is the reason why. Government members think that actually lowering wages is the way forward for this country. Lowering wages for whatever group in our society that may be is a downward economic spiral and it is going in the wrong direction to where this country needs to go. When wages are lowered—in this instance for those people aged 15 to 19—workers have less money to spend. If they have less money to spend then there is less work in our economy. When money is not being spent then we have fewer jobs in our economy not more. 
I think that that is where this Government has got it so wrong. It is a very basic economic theory. It is not hard to understand. It has been proven time and time again that a high-wage high-skill economy is the way forward for countries like New Zealand. When we have high wages in our country then spending occurs and the whole economy lifts up. That is how work is created—there is a demand driven up because people have money to spend. If people have their spending power reduced then that is the path to economic decline. That is exactly what this Government is up to. It has also given up pretending that this piece of legislation creates jobs. Even the Government itself when it started out on the first reading of this bill argued that this was going to create jobs. But Government members have all stopped arguing even that because it is plainly ridiculous—plainly ridiculous—to keep up the pretence that cutting wages creates jobs. It does no such thing. In fact as I have just demonstrated it actually reduces the number of jobs available in our economy. 
I want to give some very real information to the House about where the real problem exists. In the  
Waikato Times 
 2 days ago on the front page the banner headlines screamed out to people in the Waikato “Jobless fight for work”. That is the true reflection of where that Government has got this country. The jobless are indeed fighting for work. What that story detailed was that in the Waikato the number of people on the unemployment benefit increased by 33 percent between September and December last year alone—33 percent more unemployed people in the Waikato region just in the last 3 months of last year. If you compared those unemployment figures in the Waikato with December 2008 there is a massive 65.9 percent more people getting the unemployment benefit in the Waikato now than there were in December 2008. That is what the real problem is. It is not the amount of wages being paid to young people. It is the absolute dearth of jobs available in our economy. And until the Government gets real fixes the real problem stops blaming young people for their plight and starts looking at itself in the mirror about its lack of a plan we are going to continue to struggle as a country. It is sadly the day that the Government gave up on young people and the day that the Government gave up on a brighter future for New Zealand. 
I think that when the new Minister Simon Bridges came into his new role as Minister of Labour—it was a significant promotion for him—there was a lot of hope that he might bring a new young shiny approach to National Party policy in that portfolio. But what this shows is that he is just following the same tired old lazy policies of every National Government that has ever been in power in this country. Every time we have a National Government in power—it does not matter what part of the economic cycle we are in whether we are in a recession whether we are in good times or whether we are in the middle of that cycle—it always has the same tired old approach the same lazy answer to what it wants for New Zealanders. And what it wants for New Zealanders is low wages. It has proven that time and time again. Every single time that has been its formula. This time it thinks it can get away with it under the cover of a recession but if you look historically it shows that every single time we have had a National Government in place it has gone after workers’ wages. 
This time it is using the cover of high youth unemployment. It says that because young workers are overrepresented in the unemployment figures therefore the solution is to actually discriminate against them by having lower wages. Well what is to stop this Government from using exactly that same theory when it comes to Maori workers who are also overrepresented in the unemployment figures? Is it going to use the same justification? Is it going to say— 
Darien Fenton 
: They should. 
SUE MORONEY 
: That is right. That is where its argument leads us. Is it going to say that Maori should get only 80 percent of the minimum adult wage? Because that is exactly the argument that it is using for young people. Pacific Island workers are also overrepresented in the unemployment figures. Is Simon Bridges going to have the same solution for those workers as well? Because if National applies its failed thinking for young workers across the whole— 
Hon Simon Bridges 
: It’s very different. 
SUE MORONEY 
: Simon Bridges says that it is very different. I will be interested to know why it is very different because the only argument that this Government is putting forward is that it has failed young workers. They are overrepresented in the unemployment figures so therefore the Government has to actually lower their wages. The Government has also spent its time talking down young people. 
Hon Simon Bridges 
: Oh rubbish. 
SUE MORONEY 
: Well according to Mike Sabin—if the Minister listened to his contribution to this debate—they all lack skills. All 15 to 19-year-olds lack skills. 
Mike Sabin 
: I didn’t say “all”. 
SUE MORONEY 
: Well now he is saying that he didn’t say “all” but the only thing he had to say about young workers and their contribution to the workplace was to denigrate them say that they lack skills and say that they lack experience. 
The Government has no understanding of the value of young people. That is why it is quite happy for the youth of this country to be exported to places like Australia because it does not understand the value of young workers to this country to their families and to this economy. It is no wonder we are losing our brightest and best—our young bright future—to Australia. That is where they are headed under this Government. This piece of legislation will make that departure happen at much faster rates. Families will lose their young people to Australia because there is no brighter future for them in New Zealand under a National Government.