Boyack RachelRACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): Thank you Mr Chair for the opportunity to take a call on the title and commencement clauses. I do have two amendments to speak to tonight. The first is on the title clause and I will speak to that amendment which is to replace Fair Pay Agreement Act Repeal Act 2023" with "Worker Protections Clawback Fair Pay Agreements Act Repeal Act 2023". This is a clawback bill. This bill to repeal the ground-breaking fair pay agreement legislation in New Zealand is a clawback for workers and I disagree wholeheartedly with the Minister's statement earlier that workers will not be worse off. We have from multiple submissions from evidence overseas—and I'm just noting that this Government has said it will be evidence based—and from the full impact statement that we saw when the first piece of legislation came through this House that workers will be better off with the protection of a fair pay agreement.Let me speak to that in terms of some of the processes that actually apply in order to do that. Through a fair pay agreement we have initiation from one of the bargaining parties—it would usually be the union to make that initiation—following which we agree terms and conditions through a bargaining process. There is a whole series of steps that occur prior to that in order to identify the coverage—to identify particular occupations that are covered. That work is undertaken and then finally there is bargaining between the parties—those who represent the workers and those who represent the employers. That bargaining occurs with support from Government officials as needed. This then leads to—hopefully; if things have gone well—an agreement between the parties. It then goes out to be ratified by both sets of parties to the agreement.If it doesn't result in a fair pay agreement one of the components of the fair pay agreement law is that it does ultimately have the opportunity to be fixed. Fixing an agreement already exists in employment law—so collective agreements can be fixed. Having been through that process myself I know there's a very long-winded process that requires facilitated bargaining a whole lot of tests to occur in order for an agreement to be fixed and I've seen that take years and years and years.What is so good about this legislation that the Labour Government was so very very proud to put in place to protect vulnerable low-paid and middle-income earners in New Zealand is that it would allow that fixing process to happen much faster than what we currently have in law. For example one of the agreements that I have been working on was with a supermarket in Nelson and it has taken eight years to get a collective agreement in place. It was ultimately going to lead to the point where there would need to be a case made—an expensive case made—to have that agreement fixed after years and years of delaying tactics by the employer.So this is a clawback bill. It takes away rights of workers. It takes away the opportunity for workers to bargain properly for sector-based agreements that set a minimum entitlement for wages and conditions in that sector. There are multiple examples that we can point to internationally that have sector-based bargaining. The closest one is Australia. Those on that side of the Chamber—and in fact many New Zealanders—love to make a lot of noise a lot of statements around the fact that if you go across the Ditch to Australia people will earn more money. The reason for that is that they have sector-based bargaining. It's called enterprise bargaining.Hon Member: No that's not true. They've got a stronger economy—they've got mining.RACHEL BOYACK: Oh they don't like that. Apparently it's only to do with productivity. Well it's actually both of those things because there's a connection between higher wages and productivity. Again having studied employment relations at university I like to look at the evidence. Coming back to the clause Mr Chair this is a clawback bill because it will take away the opportunity for workers to get decent wages and conditions in those sectors—sectors that are overrepresented by women by Māori and Pasifika and young workers. So my question to the Minister is: will she support a proper title for this bill that properly reflects what the Government is doing here which is a clawback. Will she admit that what this bill is doing is clawing back the rights and opportunities for working people in this country who are doing it tough. This Government has made many many statements about wanting to address the cost of living. Well this is the opportunity to address the cost of living. The biggest issue that we have in New Zealand in terms of the cost of living is inequality and it has lasted for decades. It is inequality that has gone back into the 1990s. That is why this is a clawback bill and why it is so important that the bill's title properly reflects what the legislation is actually doing. From my perspective this is clawing back those opportunities for workers.I'm going to talk now about the other amendment I'm putting forward which is to the commencement date. My amendment to clause 2 will replace "on the day after Royal assent" with "three years and one day after Royal assent". The reason for this is that I believe that the other side of the committee needs to see how this will operate in practice and understand it properly before they actually decide that the legislation needs to be repealed. They haven't had the evidence of it operating in practice and seeing the benefit it can make to workers.So giving the legislation three years to breathe three years to play its part in terms of delivering for workers means we would have three years to make sure that we introduce an agreement for supermarket workers. We would have three years to ensure that we could bring in a fair pay agreement for bus drivers. We would have three years to make sure that we could bring in a fair pay agreement for cleaners. We would have three years to make sure that we could bring in a fair pay agreement for early childhood workers.Again I spent time on Friday with early childhood workers who have been working through multiple processes. They've been working through pay parity with other teachers. They've been working on pay equity claims to ensure that their female dominated workforce is properly paid. Now they have a claim for a fair pay agreement and I think we need to give this legislation three years which is why I have put forward this amendment to replace "the day after Royal assent" with "three years and one day after Royal assent." It would give the opportunity for early childhood teachers to be able to properly negotiate a fair pay agreement.And I want to pay particular credit to these workers because they look after our youngest tamariki and they have struggled to attract people into the industry. For so many years we've said in our society that if you're a primary school teacher or a secondary school teacher your value is greater than those who work in early childhood education. But we know that those first thousand days leading into someone going to primary school are critical for a small child and to have quality education is critical for those young people.This is why I want to see this Government actually listen to the voice of workers which they haven't done by operating this legislation through an urgency process and listen to those workers around what they need to ensure they can continue to attract people into the early childhood sector. I predict that if this legislation passes and we don't allow the original legislation to have three years to operate fully so that perhaps we can convince them across the House through some evidence—and a little bit of evidence might get them to change their minds if they're going to be an evidence-based Government. The point of evidence is that you might have a position and you might see the evidence and you might just change your mind.I think that three years would give the other side of the House the opportunity to understand that evidence and to see the benefit of a fair pay agreement for early childhood workers so that they could attract more teachers to deliver quality education into that sector. Three years would give the opportunity to have a fair pay agreement for hospitality workers who as I think all of us can understand are often some of the lowest paid and vulnerable workers. It would give as I've already mentioned and as has been well spoken about tonight the opportunity for us to have a proper fair pay agreement for supermarket workers and bus drivers.So my question to the Minister is: will she support my amendment tonight? Thank you Mr Chair."