Hodgson Pete: Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Hodgson Pete: Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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Hon PETE HODGSON (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 I am not at all sure why anyone would oppose the Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill—I really am not. I do not think anyone in this Chamber would say— 
Hon Member 
: Why didn’t you vote for it last year? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: I will come to it. 
Hon Member 
: Oh yes! 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: It will be OK. I ask the member just to hang on because I will come to it. I do not think anyone in this Chamber would say poverty is a good idea. I do not think anyone in this Chamber would say the scourge of low pay does not need to be addressed. I do not think anyone in this Chamber wants there to be a huge rich-poor gap in this country; it is not part of our history and it is not the way that we think. So the minimum wage and other things that are attendant upon it is one of the ways that we have addressed those various issues over the years. We address them in other ways as well such as the benefit system our attention to superannuation and so on. But the minimum wage has always been a bottom line. 
The minimum wage has a function to it. It basically tells employers or business people that if they cannot make money unless they pay someone less than the minimum wage we do not really need their activity in the economy. That is the essential feature of a minimum wage. It says we are a First World nation and stuff that looks a bit like slave labour is not our way of moving forward. That is the essential feature of the minimum wage. 
It is also a matter of historic fact—though there is no particular surprise here and I will not make a great big partisan point of this—that Labour Governments generally raise the minimum wage quite a bit and National Governments generally do not. Chris Hipkins my colleague who spoke earlier gave us the figures. They showed that in the 9 years of a former National Government the adult minimum wage rose by 87.5 cents. It went up from $6.12.5c to $7 neat in 9 years. Those 9 years were a period of some inflation but the minimum wage moved by only that amount. In the 9 years that followed the minimum wage went up from $7 to $12. 
Someone has asked not unreasonably why that was done under the previous Labour Government. Let me explain precisely why it was done. As the minimum wage increased so too in some industries some employers—very few of them—sought to take the cost out of the hides of their workers in other ways. One of those ways for instance was to say to home-care workers that it was fine for them to get the minimum wage but they would not be paid for taking their car from one home to another. They would not be paid for the petrol or the other running costs—not for anything. The employers gave them the $12 per hour—or the $11 or whatever it was at the time—but they could not be recompensed for actual and reasonable travel costs. So Labour fixed that. 
Again this bill is about another instance of something that also needs to be fixed because as the minimum wage has risen some employers—not many; only a few—have said they will take it out of the hide of the workforce. And another way of taking it out of the hide of the workforce is to put someone on a contract. A contract says to employees that they are not paid by the hour but paid on the basis of the amount of work that they do. That is OK for some contracts; many people make a good living in that way. But in some areas of endeavour—and pamphlet delivery appears to be the one mentioned in the explanatory note of the bill so that example will do—people are being told yes they can deliver pamphlets and are being told the amount they will get per thousand pamphlets. If it takes people more time to deliver them than it would take them to earn $12 an hour they are told that is their problem and they need to move more quickly by somehow motorising themselves or getting around the area with a great deal more pace. 
On the face of it that might be all right too—what is wrong with walking quickly when one does a pamphlet delivery? But on the other hand we all know that some pamphlet deliverers are down to receiving $3 or $4 an hour. The question that then arises is why they would bother to deliver them. The answer is that if those employees are at home have a bit of time between the kids going to school and coming back home and the pamphlets are to be delivered in their own area they may as well do that work. But it still means that that activity approaches slave labour. It still means that that activity should not be part of our economy. Either one pays more for pamphlet delivery or one does not have it. Those are the two options. I do not honestly understand why anyone in the Chamber would get up and take a different view from that. I do not think anyone really wants a working mum perhaps on the domestic purposes benefit to be paid $3 or $4 or $5 an hour to stomp the streets putting pamphlets in our letterboxes. We are currently allowing that situation to occur.