Moroney Sue: Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Moroney Sue: Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 19 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8632. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 Labour is opposed to this bill the Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill and for all the right reasons. From the Labour Party’s perspective the vision we have for New Zealand is a high-wage high-skill economy not this race to the bottom that is promoted by this bill by that Government. 
The front page of the  
Waikato Times 
 yesterday I think said it all with its big banner headline “Jobless fight for work”. That was the headline on the front page of the  
Waikato Times  
yesterday and in there it documented the very real world—not the pretend one that we hear about from the other side from the Government but what is actually going on out there. The  
Waikato Times 
 documented that in Hamilton the Earthquake Commission has advertised 120 jobs at the Hamilton office since it opened last year. One thousand and thirteen people have applied for those 120 jobs. At the burger chain Wendy’s which is moving into Hamilton shortly it had 100 applications for just six management positions and it is expecting to have 500 or more people apply for just 50 minimum wage crew jobs. The Mexico Group is moving into Hamilton. These are not exciting jobs by the way. This is not the brighter future that that Government promised. These are all minimum wage jobs. Two hundred people had applied for 25 jobs at that restaurant in Hamilton. That restaurant is going to be opening next month. 
That is the real position that is happening out there. Small numbers of minimum wage jobs are becoming available and large numbers of people are lining up for them. It is in that environment that this National Government decides that the best thing to do for the future for New Zealand is to lower wages and to lower wages for 15 to 19-year-olds because it does not believe in that group. The Government has actually given up on 15 to 19-year-olds. It has given up on them in terms of their being able to do a good job at a decent rate of pay. What this bill says is that the Government does not believe that those people those 15 to 19-year-olds are up to a decent wage. It believes that those people need to have a law put in place that actually lowers their wages so that they can get an opportunity. It does not believe in young people. 
Government members have also given up on arguing as they did just last week in this House that this bill creates jobs. Of course it is ridiculous for them to even have pretended—as the Minister of Labour Simon Bridges did last week—that this piece of legislation somehow creates jobs. In fact it does the opposite. I want to go through that so that people understand why it does the opposite. When wages are lowered spending power in our communities is actually diminished. When spending power in our communities is diminished that actually means fewer jobs not more—fewer jobs—because jobs are created by work not by cutting wages. 
Jobs are created when there is work to be done because employers are not charitable organisations as Mike Sabin would have us believe. They are not going to just go out there and employ people when there is no work to do. Those employers who were supposedly sitting in his electorate office last week were not there saying: “Mike I’ve got no work that needs to be done but I would just really love to employ some young people to put some money in their pockets.” 
Mike Sabin 
: Trust me—they’ve got the work. 
SUE MORONEY 
: That is not what they were there saying. They were not there saying that at all. They were saying: “I’ve got work to do and I want to employ the cheapest people possible.” That is what they wanted from that member. 
The work is there. This legislation will not create one extra job. What it will do is lower wages. I warned New Zealanders last week and I will warn them again if they think that the lower wages agenda from that National Government is just going to be targeted at young workers they need to think again. This is the slippery slope. This is where lower wages start but it is not where they stop. In this environment which I just described before—that situation happening in Hamilton where there is a small number of minimum wage jobs available and large numbers of desperate unemployed people going for those jobs—it is a haven for employers if they wish to exploit people because that gives the employer all the cards. They hold all the cards in that situation. 
I want to go through—for the benefit of the members opposite because they do not seem to get this—the reality of what actually happens in this scenario. Mike Sabin and Chris Auchinvole both said: “Oh look it’s all right because it will be voluntary.” Voluntary for whom? I will go back to the burger chain Wendy’s. There were 100 applications for six jobs. What is going to happen in that situation? Let us apply this bill to that situation. The Wendy’s chain manager decides that they want to employ a person who is let us say for argument’s sake an 18-year-old and they fit the criteria set down in this bill. Is that Wendy’s burger chain manager really going to say to that young person: “Look by law I can pay you as low as $11 an hour. Would you like that or would you really rather be paid at $13.75 an hour? Your choice. You choose. You tell me.” Do members opposite really believe that that is the discussion that is going to happen when Wendy’s fills those six jobs that those 100 people applied for? They have all gone quiet opposite because they know the real answer. The real answer is that the Wendy’s burger chain manager is going to say: “Eleven dollars—take it or leave it.”. Take it or leave it. 
That is what the National Government believes is a voluntary situation. They believe that that is giving freedom of choice—remember that from Bill Birch—to that 18-year-old because they will be able to say: “No. Thanks very much but I’ll just leave your job.” They will have stood in that queue of 100 people and mysteriously the National Government members opposite believe that they are going to voluntarily say no to that job because they will not accept $11 an hour. That by anyone else’s standards is compulsory. It is not giving freedom of choice to those young people and it is certainly not going to bring about the high-wage high-skill economy that we need to get this economy going. That is what we need in this country not these endless bad pieces of legislation that this Government keeps bringing forward which actually get us in a downward economic spiral. 
This is yet another piece of legislation that will actually take our economy down. It will be felt in the regions. It will be felt in the provincial cities like Hamilton where those jobs—that small number of jobs—are driving those very long queues. And in those very long queues there will be people from a range of age groups. Andrew Little is right: it will be the bad employers who take advantage of this. The good employers do not need this legislation. They do not want this legislation because they will be prepared to pay a decent wage for a decent day’s work. 
What this bill is encouraging employers to do is to go below a decent wage. In New Zealand we have already determined that. The Government actually has determined what it thinks a minimum wage is. It thinks it is $17—$13.75. Gosh I wish it was $17 but it thinks it is $13.75. It thinks that is a minimum wage. But when it comes to young people it does not think they are worth even that. It thinks that they should not be getting a decent wage for a decent day’s work. That is fundamental to what I understand to be the sort of fairness that most Kiwis believe is right in this country—a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. This bill is undermining that very sacred Kiwi value. It is coming from the National Government because it has always come from the National Government. It has always been its solution. It does not matter what part of the economic cycle we are in—recession or not—whenever there has been a National Government in place—