Woodhouse Michael; Tisch LindsayHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister of Immigration): Can I wish members of the House and those listening a happy Valentine's Day. All of those romantics amongst us I am sure have sent their cards and flowers. There are a few shakes of the head—that is a bit sad. Romance is clearly dying in Invercargill. Actually I do not send flowers on Valentine's Day because I was married on the 13th of February and that means flowers are very expensive at this time so I do not do it twice. My wife—to whom I have been happily and blissfully married for 24 years—yesterday got a big bunch of white roses.But there are a few people who are not feeling the love as much as I was. I do not think Poto Williams was feeling the love for Andrew Little and she certainly was not feeling the love for Willie Jackson. And Young Labour members well they were not feeling the love for any of the Labour Party leadership last week. Meanwhile on this side of the House there is harmony there is energy and there are new ideas. As we head into the year—an election year—that is going to be really important. I contrast that—and I am going to elaborate on a few of the areas for which I have responsibility as Minister—with a campaign strategy from Labour that looks like this: We don't like the Government so nor should the public. We are not going to actually campaign on any policies." That is what Mr Little said on Breakfast last week—"We might raise one or two more things."Apparently Labour thinks all of its policy is out in the public domain whereas this Government has not even started. We have already made a number of announcements around regional and rural broadband initiatives and the half a billion dollars for police which I can tell you went down extremely well in Dunedin—in my area—where people are confident that not only will every single district get extra police but also that there will be expectations around burglary-resolution rates call outs 24/7 non-emergency lines and so on.While we are talking about police I note that my friend former president of the Police Association and a former rugby colleague at Western Suburbs Greg O'Connor has been selected as the candidate for Ōhāriu for Labour—good luck to him he is going to need it. But he clearly got the Labour memo because I have not seen a flip-flop as fast as what Greg O'Connor showed this week. After years and years and years of saying the police should be armed the first time he was asked as a Labour candidate "Should police be armed?" he said no. He is going to toe the Labour Party's line which is that police should not be armed. As a former Minister of Police I happen to agree with him. I happen to agree with him firstly that it is the Commissioner of Police and his—or her in the future—team's decision on what ordinance police would use and deploy. But here is the thing: at the least one should be consistent and have the conviction to say even something like this: "Well I don't agree with the Labour Party line on this but clearly it is a caucus collective responsibility." No he could not do that. He just flipped—he just rolled.I think we will be seeing a little bit more of that from a party that is so desperate to get back into power its slogan will be: "We don't like the Government so nor should the public." I do not think that is going to get it very far because it is going to need the sorts of ideas that this National-led Government has been coming up with for years and that it will continue to come up with.I want to start in my capacity as Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety by actually expanding on comments that Jan Logie had made her in her contribution. I think this was one of the single-largest important policy announcements last year the legislative process for which will be introduced into the House I hope in the next couple of months—that is the issue of finding a legislative solution to the recommendations of the pay equity working group.The Court of Appeal in the case of Kristine Bartlett and TerraNova Homes and Care handed down what I thought and still think is an extremely well-considered and intelligent judgment. It took the 43-year-old Equal Pay Act which was never written or designed for the sorts of things it is now being considered to do and made a compelling case that the Equal Pay Act 1972 is designed to provide not only equal pay for the same work but equal pay for work of equal value. The Government accepted that recommendation and set up the Joint Working Group on Pay Equity Principles which was very well chaired by Dame Patsy Reddy now our Governor-General and comprised representatives from business unions and ministry officials. It came up with excellent recommendations for the principles that should underpin a pay equity negotiation. I think everybody would agree that the goal is for bargaining between parties not to rely on the courts or on the Government to intervene—certainly not except in very rare circumstances. That is where we need to get back to. The Government has agreed to those recommendations and is presently framing legislation which I hope to bring into the House—certainly in the first half of this year. I think that will go an extraordinarily long way towards achieving the sort of equity that Ms Logie was talking about in her contribution.But in the meantime we are not waiting because I announced the increase in the minimum wage of about 3.3 percent to $15.75. I understand and appreciate the calls that many have for a living wage and if organisations can afford that that would be fine. We certainly augment the minimum wage for families with generous Working for Families support income-related rents child support and accommodation supplements. But the minimum wage that we will have on 1 April will be the highest in the world relative to the median wage—the highest in the world—and it will be the fourth-highest in the world in real terms. So I think that is going to be a significant closing of the gap that we continue to do. I think that the 31 percent increase in the minimum wage since we have come into office compared with a 14 percent increase in inflation over that time sends a clear signal that this Government is keen to ensure that our starting-out workers and our lower-wage staff are well looked after.Of course the TerraNova case has given rise to the negotiations which the Hon Jonathan Coleman and the Ministry of Health are leading for a settlement hopefully in the not-too-distant future. I am confident that when a settlement package is able to be achieved Cabinet will look at that extremely positively.I want to just end by touching on a new role that I have picked up since December and that is as Minister for ACC. I would love to take the credit for the $126 million reductions in levies this year which is part of a $2 billion per annum reduction that this Government has managed to introduce since 2012—$2 billion a year. That has come out of excellent work that ACC has done in combination with previous Ministers to ensure that those who suffer injury at work at play in treatment and on the roads are firstly cared for well are compensated for their loss of incomes and are then rehabilitated to ensure that they can return to work or independence as quickly as they can. Those rehabilitation rates are a very important indicator of scheme performance and I as Minister will be redoubling efforts to ensure that ACC continues to focus on rehabilitation rates—some people call them exit rates—and it is important that we do that because what we know is that people who stay on the scheme longer than about 9 months or so have very very significant difficulty in getting back to work. Although sometimes it can be seen like tough love it is really important that case managers and rehabilitation providers continue to work with claimants to ensure that they are made better.But in the meantime I am confident that we can do that and continue to deliver the levy reductions that we have been able to provide for employers for motor vehicle users and for earners when they are at leisure because only this Government—only this Government—pays that level of attention to the scheme which it introduced in 1972 under Jack Marshall after the royal commission report of 1967. It started on 1 April 1974 under Labour and of course it has had successive iterations of change but the fundamental principles remain. We will work hard to ensure that every stakeholder in ACC—levy payers health providers injured parties and so on—are treated well and fairly and I think that for me is symbolic of an energetic ideas-focused Government and we will continue to be that in 2017.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The next call is a split call. I call Poto Williams—5 minutes."