Locke Keith: Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Locke Keith: Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:641;Page:11176] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 As we have heard from Sue Bradford who has been the driving force behind the Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill—and it is good that she has had all the commendations from around the House; even from National members who say it is a well-intentioned bill even if they do not support the content—the Green Party will be supporting this bill this clause and Supplementary Order Paper 137. 
I would like to put to rest Kate Wilkinson’s idea that somehow this bill will stop employers from employing people who are not getting youth rates. In fact I think a lot of the evidence she has provided argues the other way. As she pointed out 85 percent of people at that age are not paid youth rates at present and most of the people on youth rates are in either the retail or the fast-food industry. We have had Progressive Enterprises a big chain coming out and saying that it can quite easily do away with youth rates even for 15-year-olds so I think the idea that any of these firms will go bust if they do not give the odd extra dollar to make up the full minimum rate for workers is not particularly apt. Doing away with youth rates is no great sacrifice for the employers but they are a huge sacrifice for young people entering the workforce. 
I think it is great the way Progressive Enterprises has come out and responded to the concerns of the general population and of young people in particular in the same way that their competitor Foodstuffs has come out recently and supported the labelling of fresh fruit vegetables and meat in supermarkets as a response to popular concern about that issue. The way that these companies are getting ahead of the play is fantastic. 
There was a bit of an argument about people being paid $4 an hour and whether that is below what they should be paid on youth rates. I will not get into the particular argument or the figures but I will say that young workers are often duped to some extent about what rate they are owed. The existence of youth rates makes it more difficult because they know they will get a lesser rate as a result of these youth rates and anyhow they are all a bit scared in their first time in employment. Often they do not want to talk back to the employer and a lot of them are not unionised. Unite! and the National Distribution Union are gaining members in the industries that employ young people but a lot of those young people are still not unionised. Unknowingly they sometimes take a lower rate than they should have to legally. The very fact that we have clear legislation will give those young workers more confidence. 
The move to complement the requirement of 200 hours’ work with a minimum 3-month period will help a lot of workers to work out where they stand too because it might be a little hard for them to shuffle around bits of paper about how many hours they have done for this employer and for that employer and add it up to 200. It will be a bit complicated but hopefully they will be able to do it if they are getting their 200 hours up in less than 3 months. At least they can work back to the date that they started work and figure out when they qualify for the full rates so it will be easier in that respect. 
I think there was a misunderstanding over whether the requirement is 200 hours with one or more employers. I looked at the explanatory note on the back of Supplementary Order Paper 137 and it states that “employment” includes more than one employer. If we were to apply that explanatory note to the definition then clearly it is employment with one or more employers. 
Of course the Greens would like this bill to go a little further. We are not really in favour of youth rates in any form for 16 and 17-year-olds but this bill is a great step forward and we will definitely be supporting it. Thank you.