Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. It's with great pleasure that I get to offer the Green Party's support for this piece of legislation the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill. Having spoken and been involved in the consideration of the previous legislation—and having had a very keen interest as a woman in this country in this area of work—I would just like to in the context that there's been a lot of discussion about the history go into a little bit of the detail around why some people may consider the last Government was brought kicking and screaming to the Terranova settlement.Some of the reasons would be that one of the very first actions of the National Government in 2009 when they came into power was to disestablish the pay and employment equity unit that existed within Government which had identified areas where there was a gap or a significant underpayment of women's work in the public sector. That was one of their very first actions: to disestablish that unit and stop any action towards addressing the known underpayment of some women within the public sector. That doesn't seem to me like they were enthusiastic in this work. Actually they took actions to stop this work happening. It was not a priority for them.Then also while we hear that the Government kind of short-circuited what could have been a lengthy legal process by coming to the table I think there's a point around this that people probably need to know which is that the Crown supported the employers in the court processing. They intervened on their behalf opposing Kristine Bartlett's and the union's case that the legislation could be used for pay equity. So again I don't think we're misrepresenting history by saying those actions add up to an obstruction of women's claims for pay equity.It was a significant moment when this House passed that first piece of legislation after such a long battle with Kristine Bartlett out front supported by E tū the New Zealand Public Service Association and the New Zealand Nurses Organisation. They did a phenomenal job of helping New Zealanders understand the size of the problem and making their case in court to the point that actually the Government had to come to the table. It cannot be said enough the profound benefit to this country of their work because part of this discussion is about properly valuing women's traditional work and ensuring that women feel valued for that work and are able to get the justified financial recompense for it. That benefits all of us as a country because predominantly that work is caring work. When we don't value that we in some ways lose the heart of our society because that is the work that links us all together and holds us all up.So again in this piece of legislation we are acknowledging the value of that caring work. We heard in some of the debate that on this side of the House we're revising history in saying that the mental health workers in particular were cruelly left out of that initial settlement in the legislation because nobody mentioned it in their speeches through that time. I would like to say that in my speech I did say I was looking forward to seeing the next legislation and the celebration that was in this room at the time extended to the next cases of social workers and support workers and hospital administrators as examples knowing that actually the legislation was a specific implementation of bargaining that had happened between Government. That's what it was but prior to that the Government had made a decision that the bargaining was just with the aged-care sector—that it was not to include the mental health workers or those disability support workers.They had told us that this provided a real risk because as we increased the pay for aged-care workers it would make it harder for mental health workers to keep their staff because they would be likely to transfer across into the aged-care sector because there the caring would be recognised in their pay cheque and through the legislation. We heard that there was no way to rectify that at that point because when considering legislation that is an outcome of negotiations you can't reopen the negotiations to a whole 'nother group. That had to go through that process but it was a failure of the previous Government where they decided to exclude them and go for the narrow group. So it is really great to see this House rectifying that this evening.I do want to just spend a moment to recognise what important work these people—mostly women—do. As has been acknowledged today there are significant announcements around this Government's commitment to the mental health of New Zealanders and for us to actually step up to acknowledge that we have much much more work to do as a country to help all of us flourish and acknowledging how very many of us in this country have had or do have mental health challenges that we can all benefit from support with that we need to do better and that the staff doing this work covered by this bill today are central to ensuring a group of people's wellbeing. I really want to acknowledge all of those workers—most of whom are women—for that work and the critical role they play in our collective wellbeing.I would also just like to take a moment as well to acknowledge the next legislation that is due to come which is about establishing a process for making pay equity claims that moves the process from the courtroom to the bargaining table making it more accessible. I'm really looking forward to the momentum that we're seeing with this piece of legislation continuing and gaining pace. When we do talk about the history and I talk about the National Government I would also like to note that with the previous Labour Government it took until the very end of their nine years for the pay and employment equity unit to get established. How encouraging it is to—Hon Ruth Dyson: Actually that's not quite true.JAN LOGIE: Well near the end. We only got the settlements in terms of the pay cases identified near the end. So it's really encouraging to me to see this work happening so early in the term of this Government making the very clear commitment to see that progress roll out and gain momentum over the next decade of this Government—or the forms of this Government's time in this House—because New Zealand women deserve to be appropriately recognised for their work and as a country we all benefit when people are appropriately paid and when caring work is properly recognised.