Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Mr Speaker. I'm very pleased tonight to rise to take a call on the Equal Pay Amendment Bill at the second reading.I wasn't at that stage anyway a member of the Education and Workforce Committee the select committee that scrutinised this bill and did such a wonderful job. They had—what?—almost 600 submissions to read through many that they saw in person and I know that they did a lot of hard work. It's shame I couldn't be on that committee; I'm on it now. But I would like to just commend their hard work.On this side of the House we are delighted to finally have the chance to stand up and support this bill after it's sat on the Order Paper for more than a year. The reason this Government has scheduled the second reading of this bill tonight is not so much to address the gender pay gap as it is really to address the Lees-Galloway PR gap and that's a big gap cavernous some would say. That's what happens when you give residence to someone who's in jail for bringing in drugs. But despite this being an excellent bill that we support the purpose really that it serves is fluffing up this Government's image and I'll talk about that a little bit more later on.But firstly I would like to just say that I am disappointed that my very good friend and colleague Denise Lee isn't able to speak to on this bill tonight. Because Denise has done some excellent work in this area putting forward her member's bill the Employment (Pay Equity and Equal Pay) Bill back at the start of the term which built on the previous National Government's pay equity legislation. Unfortunately Denise's bill had a very short lifespan before it was defeated by the Government. Did they have a radical alternative plan for pay equity and equal pay policy? No they just wanted to play politics. Because this bill that we're here tonight to debate has had a long and winding journey. The new Labour-led Government when it came to the end of 2017 outrageously decided not to reinstate the previous National Government's pay equity bill. And when Denise Lee put up the same legislation as a member's bill at the start of 2018 they voted that legislation down.Dan Bidois: Lost opportunity.ERICA STANFORD: Yeah it was a lost opportunity. And the Government has had the gall to reconvene the Joint Working Group on Pay Equity Principles which largely reconfirmed the findings of the original Joint Working Group on Pay Equity Principles that we set up.So the Government have introduced their new bill. They introduced it on 19 September 2018 which by happy coincidence was also the 125th anniversary of women's suffrage which was a PR dream. There were some lovely news stories around the time written about Minister Lees-Galloway and Minister Genter about the wonderful work they were doing to close the gender pay gap. You might be thinking that 19 September 2018 sounds like an awfully long time ago and wondering what's happened between now and then.Well after going to the Education and Workforce Committee the bill was reported back to the House on 13 May 2019 and that was it. Since being reported to the House it's languished on the Order Paper for over a year. Late last year Minister Genter actually forgot that it had been reported back saying it was still in front of a select committee and actually it had been three months since that committee had finished dealing with it. Since then still nothing. Given that there has been cross-party agreement that the law around pay equity and equal pay needs to be changed the new Government could have carried over National's first bill. They could've voted for the second bill. But instead they dumped this issue on a second working group came up with a third bill which is a 90 percent carbon copy of the first one. And now we hear tonight that they've got a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP). They've had two working groups in over a year and an SOP. We don't know what that is I hope that it's something that we can support. But they've had plenty of time.Back in March I read a glowing op-ed by our Minister for Women the Hon Julie Anne Genter published in The Guardian for International Women's Day. The headline was In New Zealand we are starting to value women's work fairly. It's time for the world to follow". Well I can tell you where would the world be if they followed this Government's lead in closing the gender pay gap? They might as well give up and go home. At the time Minister Genter wrote her fluffy column no doubt earning her and the Government international plaudits this bill had been waiting for its second reading for 10 months. As much as I enjoyed reading her lovely column the reality is this Government has set pay equity progress back by at least two years because it wanted to play politics. It wanted publicity stunts. It wanted the credit because it suited their image.This is an excellent bill and I do applaud the Government for bringing it to the House so we can finally make some real progress on the issue after a farcical process. But I would like to finish with this point; while the Government fluffed around and used this bill for PR stunts and forgot how far along it was in the process the gender pay gap has remained exactly the same as it was in 2017 9.3 percent. This Government has talked big delivered nothing for pay equity in three years. Despite that I commend the bill to the House."