Menéndez March RicardoRICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green) (remote): Tēnā koe Madam Speaker. It's been quite a journey this evening listening to—I think all members from across the House recognise the value of care and support workers and the amazing contributions that they make to the long-term wellbeing of our families our communities and our country as a whole. This takes me back a bit to the rhetoric in 2020—during the pandemic—where instead of guaranteeing livable wages for all essential workers we kind of just said Thank you". I think we need to do far more than a 70c increase effectively.Throughout the process what I heard was both the National Party and ACT trying to trash the Government over the process while at the same time not really committing to further wage increases for care workers. And at the same time we have the Labour Party who was rightfully calling out the National Party for putting so many of these workers—back in 2017 and prior to that—through an arduous process in terms of getting that $2 billion pay increase. I think the reason we put in a tabled amendment to lift those wages of support workers was effectively to recognise that we needed to maintain the value of the 2017 settlement while pay equity is negotiated as it was based on the same calculations that were used to establish the rates in 2017. This would have basically seen an increase of around $7 instead of what we're seeing which is around 70c. I think if we're all going to be speaking about the amazing value and the contributions that care and support workers make I would have liked to see parties across the House support this tabled amendment which by the way—and this particularly goes to my Labour colleagues—this is the approach that has been endorsed by unions such as the Public Service Association E tū and New Zealand Nurses Organisation members and representatives. The truth is that care and support workers deserve so much better than the pay rates that Labour is pushing. We should have not been in a situation where the Government is rushing through legislation at the last minute effectively silencing caregiver and community voices just to increase their pay by a paltry amount. Unions have said that if the same rate calculations were used today as were used in the historic Kristine Bartlett 2017 settlement wages would be around—again as I said earlier—$7 higher. So it just feels like exploitation effectively and this is why the Green Party cannot be voting for the bill as it is. We would have loved to vote for a bill that had reflected the fight of so many people you know all the way to 2017. And it is worth noting that the workers who will disproportionately be impacted will be Pasifika Māori and migrant women. During the committee of the whole House in fact I was asking the Minister about the repercussions that he thinks this will have on migrant workers and the migrant women who are facing exploitation because many are on employer-bound visas. But the workers who effectively are having an exemption carved out when they're coming in to being paid the median wage so they can work as support workers—and I was surprised at the Minister not understanding the implications of how this plays and interacts with the immigration system because the immigration system itself identified that support workers aren't paid enough. Despite the Government's intent of having a so-called high-skill high-wage workforce we are accepting that we're going to continue paying our support workers below the median wage and below the aims that other Government departments are effectively trying to get in terms of the types of workers that we're bringing in. So if we want to stop our support workers from leaving their jobs overburdened tired exhausted and with ill physical and mental health as a result of those working conditions having higher pay rates would have been an excellent start to retain that workforce and address some of those shortfalls that we have that are creating massive pressure on the support workers that are out there at the moment. So again the Green Party is committed to achieving genuine pay equity for support workers as soon as possible and we will continue fighting for more substantive increases. I wanted to lastly reflect on some of the comments that the Minister made during committee of the whole House when I was asking him about why he didn't support our amendment. And one of the things that he said at the time was that fair pay agreements would hopefully help bring those workers to a much higher pay rate. And I think it's worth basically noting though that fair pay agreements are a long-term fix to prevent pay equity gains eroding after pay resettlements are all sorted not really [Audio issue] of sorting pay equity settlements. So I just don't buy it that we can sort of hope that in many months' time maybe potentially pay agreements will lift those wages. We have an opportunity right now to lift the wages of support workers to a level that reflected their struggle back in 2017. So again I'm really really disappointed in the Labour Government for bringing in what I think is insufficient and a smack in the face for the many workers who've worked so hard to address this. I also noted that the Minister talked about revenue considerations as one of the barriers for not sort of putting the rates higher. And I want to say that the Green Party remains the only party with a credible revenue plan. So you know we really want Labour to adopt some of our ideas regarding tax reform so that they cannot keep using this issue of revenue as a barrier to guaranteeing workers the pay that they deserve. We look forward to pushing our Labour colleagues to do better and to genuinely be a movement for the working class. Kia ora."