van Velden BrookeHon BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Thank you Madam Chair. I wish to speak to a number of questions that members of this House have raised speaking firstly to the Hon Kieran McAnulty's questions regarding why I haven't specifically spelt out alternatives and different approaches going forward and that is because my first focus has been to fulfil the Government's commitment on our 100-day plan and our coalition commitment and then I will consider what else will be effective at improving wages. I wanted to touch on the Hon Carmel Sepuloni's questions of which there were a number so please bear with me. The cover sheet does not have analysis or evidence to make decisions about what system is preferred which is what the member was referring to but of course what the member is not taking into consideration is that this cover sheet is not the only evidence that's provided to the member. There was an exemption from the regulatory impact statement requirements that was provided and you can find this in the cover sheet on page 2. It says because there is an existing regulatory impact statement from 2021 already providing analysis on the status quo we would essentially be carrying out the exact same replica of analysis so there was no need to replicate what we already had in the original regulatory impact statement. All of that evidence is still valid for the member to read. She mentioned about a lot of the work having been undertaken by parties to the fair pay agreements already under the bargaining process but forgot to mention that the agreements are all in their very early stages. So while this law has been in place for about a year many of the bargaining sides have yet to actually meet. This is why we consider it's quite important to repeal at this stage because we can repeal it quickly and save a lot of time resource energy from the bargaining process when the law would be repealed. It's important for us to repeal this law before Christmas so people who may be involved in an elongated process don't need to be because it will be repealed. There was a question here about the percentage of women for example that are in coverage in specific sectors throughout the different types of bargaining process. Now on the face of it that sounds like quite a simple question but it is actually very complex. And that's because the law is not actually clear who is and is not within coverage within different sectors; which types of employees can and cannot be covered. While I acknowledge it's a nice question it is actually very difficult and it would have been difficult for any Government to even find the data for this statistical analysis. A good example for this is if you have a lodge in a very remote area where you have one worker that might be a receptionist but then they also might be a cleaner and then they also might do waitering in a small restaurant at night they might be captured by three different agreements under three different industries and the employer might actually also be covered by a range of different processes too. So that statistical information isn't available and it might not ever be. Then there was another specific question there about how much expenditure we had spent on this process. To date there has been $481250 in funding been provided to bargaining sides that have initiated fair pay agreements and there has been $750000 provided to the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions. Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment and the Employment Relations Authority received funding through Budget 2021 and Budget 2022 to operationalise and deliver the fair pay agreement system. That funding was $6.33 million in Budget 2021 and $9.226 million in Budget 2022 and for 23/24 the funding is approximately $16.209 million in operating expenditure. To Kahurangi Carter; she raised some concerns about the gender pay gap—Hon Carmel Sepuloni: What's the productivity loss to not having fair pay agreements is my other part of it.Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: Coming back to the member: because she's asked for it to be specifically about statistical data in relation to those specific areas that we'd already touched on that does not actually exist that question is not possible to answer. Kahurangi Carter raised concerns about gender pay gap. I want to note for the member that the Equal Pay Act already creates a framework for inequalities between gender if you are in an equivalent role but I very much enjoyed her contribution.