Lees-Galloway IainIAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Today is certainly a day to celebrate. Like others have done I want to acknowledge Kristine Bartlett. I want to acknowledge the leadership of the unions that were involved in this: E tū its precursor union the Service and Food Workers Union the New Zealand Nurses Organisation the Public Service Association the Council of Trade Unions and the entire union movement which threw its weight behind this campaign which has been going on for a number of years. In particular I want to acknowledge the thousands of unionised care and support workers who have held the line year after year after year and stuck to this campaign.Before I came into Parliament I had the privilege of working for the Nurses Organisation and my first job for it was as an organiser. I met—and it was a real privilege to do so—hundreds of care and support workers who were trying to build this movement within their industry amongst their co-workers. It can be a real challenge to convince people who are already on incredibly low wages to pay that union fee in the hope that one day the campaign will be successful. For thousands of people that was too much of a challenge but so many of them did. They stayed in—they stayed part of the union. Now that they have got the win—now that they have got the victory—they are sharing it with everybody. That is a wonderful thing to do and they should be congratulated and acknowledged for doing it.People have talked about the 20 months of negotiation and they have talked about the 5 years of court battles but no one has yet mentioned the years and years and years and years of campaigning that went on and the struggle that has gone on. So I want to say to those who did stay in the movement who stayed firm and who held the line: congratulations. The day has finally come and it is not long now before the money will be in your bank account.I know that is not what it is all about; it is actually about recognition because the other thing that I discovered when I met these incredible women—incredible people; predominantly women of course—was their commitment and dedication to what they did and to the people whom they cared for. It is not a job that I think most people in this House could do. It is an incredibly intimate job. It is caring for another human being and providing incredibly intimate services. It takes a certain disposition it takes an incredible amount of empathy it takes love and it takes dedication. For too long we relied on that love and dedication to keep people in the profession even though they could earn more pulling veges out of the ground stacking shelves or even looking after animals at the city pound. All those jobs paid more than being a care and support worker and yet women carried on doing what they did because of their commitment to the people whom they cared for.Today in this settlement it is not just about the money. It is about acknowledging what a tremendous job it is that they do and how lost we would be as a society if we did not have those wonderful care and support workers doing the job that they do. It is also an acknowledgment that we are finally recognising the place of our elderly. I always found it—well I thought it was poor form that we considered caring for our elder people such a low priority that we paid the minimum wage or barely more than that to the people who were responsible for caring for them. So it is not just an acknowledgment of the workers themselves; it is an acknowledgment of the elderly people.We have heard a lot about the package—$2 billion. We have heard a lot about what is going to happen on average to people. I just want to share one story about one worker who is going to be affected by this. Her name is Amor Taite and she is from Palmerston North. She works in home support so she is one of the people who goes into people's homes to care for them in their own home. Again it is an incredibly intimate relationship she has with her clients. She has been a home support worker for 20 years and because she wants to provide the very best care she has become qualified—she has a level 3 qualification. Despite two decades of experience and despite being qualified in her role she currently earns $16.22—barely above the minimum wage. As a result of this settlement her hourly rate will rise to $21 an hour—finally some decent recognition of her experience her qualification and her commitment to the people whom she cares for.Amor said: It'll just make things so much easier. You can do so much more. You can buy more things have a social life. It'll all go back into the economy." and she is absolutely right. One of the best things we can do to stimulate our economy is actually to put more money in the back pockets of low-income workers. And you can save a bit. It will just ease things right across the board. It is as simple as that. It is about giving people real freedom and real choices.So I want to congratulate all those workers and the movement on getting to this position and look I want to congratulate the Government for getting around the table. I want to say this gently but honestly: it got around the table because if it did not then the court settlement was actually going to result in a much greater much more expensive exercise for the Government. Good on the unions and good on the workers for being prepared actually to give up on back-pay claims and to come to a settlement that the Government was prepared to pay out on because if it was stuck with a court decision it would have cost an awful lot more. But again this is the practicality of the unionised workforce: it is actually prepared to get around the table and do what is right and do what is in the national interest as well as in its own interest.I want to say this: I think the model of workers employers and the Government getting around the table and saying "We have a real problem in this industry. Wages are not high enough conditions are not good enough we're struggling to retain and attract workers and we're not actually recognising the role of those workers properly." is an incredibly good model. I want to acknowledge that in a way the Government has set I think a wonderful precedent here. This is an industry-level agreement that sets minimum standards right across the care and support industry regardless of whether workers are unionised or not in which any employer—in this case tendering to district health boards to use public money to provide a service—has to meet these minimum standards of pay and conditions for their workforce. They cannot undercut each other on those standards. I think that is a brilliant precedent and I want to congratulate the National Government on bringing that precedent forward and working with that precedent—that tripartite approach of employers workers and the Government working together to get good conditions and good outcomes for working people.I say to the Government do not make this the end. Do not cut off the future pay equity settlements. I know that is not part of this bill but there is another piece of legislation and we are going to have to negotiate a little bit in this House about what the future holds. It is not just for pay equity settlements and equal pay but actually for other industries where people are low-paid and other industries were workers are vulnerable. This is an incredibly good model—the idea of having an industry-standard agreement that is negotiated and sets standards for everybody working in that industry. It is a wonderful idea. We really like it on this side of the House and we are really pleased that the National Government is on board with that concept as well.So I want to say congratulations to everybody involved in this. This is a good settlement. This is a victory for working people. It has been incredibly hard fought and it just demonstrates that when working people work together and when they organise under the banner of unions then the victory does come. It sometimes seems a very long way off and 12 years ago when I was an organiser it did seem a long way off but victory does come when we work together. Let us continue this legislation in that spirit. Let us work together to get this bill passed as quickly as possible and get that money in the pockets of those care and support workers."