Fenton Darien: Address in Reply 
Fenton Darien: Address in Reply 
[Volume:652;Page:1248] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 It is a real pleasure to follow that quite strange and crazy speech. I will take a moment if I may Mr Assistant Speaker Barker to congratulate you on your elevation to the role of Assistant Speaker. I offer my congratulations to the Speaker—the Hon Dr Lockwood Smith—the Deputy Speaker and Assistant Speaker Roy as well. 
I also congratulate the new members of Parliament from all sides. I listened to their speeches with great interest and I was struck by the conviction and motivation of so many of them. I am impressed with and very excited about our new Labour colleagues who are now part of the team and I welcome them. May I say to the new MPs on the other side of the House that we will disagree often but please do not take it personally. I have no doubt that every MP— 
Paul Quinn 
: Not a problem. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: —comes to this House for a purpose— 
Moana Mackey 
: Except for you. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: —yes; except for maybe that member over there—and I believe that they sincerely and genuinely want to make a difference. I am looking forward to those new members finding out that doing that is not as easy as they think. 
That is why the Opposition will be keeping the Government accountable for the many many promises made during the election campaign by those new members and the members from National who were re-elected. The promises just rolled off their lips. The Leader of the Opposition’s very reasonable amendment that he is suggesting be added to the motion on the Order Paper today spells out the things that New Zealanders have been led to expect under this National-led Government. It sets a benchmark for the Government to measure itself by and I tell the House that Labour will be vigorously monitoring it. As many of my colleagues have said Labour will work constructively with the Government where it acts in a positive way on behalf of all New Zealanders. Where it does not the Labour Party will be forceful in its opposition. 
As we all know New Zealanders are not immune to the global downturn and they deserve some real leadership in these unprecedented economic times. But I fear that the Government is clueless in a crisis. We are all hoping that National knows what it is doing; well I have not seen much sign of that yet. It made a really bad start before Christmas by cutting workers’ rights increasing tax for low-paid workers and slashing KiwiSaver as well as “retro-charging” research and development and climate change initiatives. 
I heard Chris Finlayson’s snobby comments yesterday about some of my new colleagues—those who have advocated for working people for most of their lives. His disparaging comments about unionists show the underlying prejudices that the National Party members still have and their failure to understand the modern union movement. That was demonstrated so clearly by National’s contemptuous process in rushing through the 90-day fire-at-will bill before Christmas. Now National members expect unions to sit down with them at the Job Summit and help solve all their problems. Actually calling a Job Summit is not a plan. It says to the country that the Government has used up all its big ideas already and is struggling to find more. I hope the summit is more than a talkfest but I am not holding my breath. 
However we in the Opposition like to be helpful so let me offer some suggestions. When it comes to jobs the priority must be to retain and reskill because if we do not do this not only will the economy nosedive further than it needs to but we will find that our country has the same problem of skills shortages that it had after the gutting of the labour market in the 1990s. It means supporting firms to hang on to workers not retrench them and providing training funds—as indeed Labour had proposed to do prior to the election—so that workers can spend downtime on upskilling while not losing income. It means creating green jobs as Barack Obama has done and heeding Ban Ki-moon’s call to the world’s business and other leaders to use the current economic crisis to launch a global “Green New Deal” that creates jobs and that fights climate change at the same time by investing in renewable energy and technological development. 
What it is not about is pay freezes. Yes maybe it is for the higher paid including the chief executive officers of private companies who have had a bonanza in recent years but not for those who rely on their incomes to feed their families. One of the reasons that New Zealand pay is so far behind that of Australia is the pay freezes and pay cuts during the 1990s during the two recessions we had under the last National Government. That money has never been recovered. It is never spent it is removed from the economy it disappears offshore in profits and it is not invested in New Zealand. Everyone at home pays and workers still lose their jobs. 
Yesterday’s infrastructure package falls well short of the mega-boost we need to protect New Zealanders from the fall-out of the global economic crisis. New Zealanders are looking for leadership from this National Government but all we are seeing are timid and weak actions. I have noticed that it is almost fashionable to have been a State house kid—I was one of them—but I suppose it depends which side one is on. I am not so sure about Hobsonville in John Key’s electorate. It is so unfashionable there that John Key will ditch a progressive-model mixed housing development. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: Didn’t he have one? 
DARIEN FENTON 
: He had one but he does not want anyone else to have one. He does not want modest-income families in his electorate to live in pride and dignity among the better-off with access to good facilities and with a view of our beautiful harbour. The poor do not deserve views! National’s State housing announcement was really disappointing. It is as my colleague Maryan Street has pointed out a cut not an increase. I also noticed the seven new State houses being built in the west and north and there is need there but I find that quite contemptuous. [ 
Interruption 
] That is right. 
I come now to the minimum wage increase. In hard times like these it is the lowest paid who should take precedence. It is unconscionable that the highest paid in the country will be getting a huge boost with tax cuts on April 1 while those on the lowest incomes will get almost nothing. National’s gifts to workers before Christmas were tax increases and the right to be sacked in the first 90 days. Where is the compensation for those vulnerable workers? It is a $3.78 a week pay rise if they are full-time workers as the Minister confirmed yesterday—the lowest increase to the minimum wage in many years. 
I take the opportunity to acknowledge the Maori Party’s attempts to gain a bigger increase for lower-paid workers. What a frustrating exercise that must have been. After all Tau Henare’s lovely words about a new dawn the Maori Party tried to get a better increase in the minimum wage and was ignored. I want to know how this measly minimum wage increase contributes to closing the wage gap with Australia. You know Australia’s minimum wage is $18 an hour. 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: How much? 
DARIEN FENTON 
: It is $18 an hour. So how are we closing the gap? [ 
Interruption 
] No it did not lose jobs during that period; it gained them. 
Moana Mackey 
: Why don’t they want to copy the Australians on that? 
DARIEN FENTON 
: I am not sure. They like to copy them on all sorts of things. As the Council of Trade Unions says the current crisis was not created by workers but boy are they paying for it under this National Government! We need to do better for those who are laid off. We need minimum redundancy entitlements to be introduced urgently. The pitiful $26 million ReStart package goes nowhere near helping those who are going to lose their jobs. 
People are better off and have been better off under Labour. Unlike the National Government Labour gave priority to ensuring that the low-paid workers of the country were not left behind when it came to sharing the prosperity and growth of the last 9 years. But that has been the way of Labour Governments ever since we were first elected. It seems to me that talking about an underclass in New Zealand—as National likes to do—is one thing but doing something about it is left to Labour. Thank you.