Flavell Te Ururoa: Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Flavell Te Ururoa: Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:641;Page:11601] 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
 Tena koe Madam Speaker. Kia ora tatou katoa. Kia ora tatou i tenei po. Four years ago Radio Waatea carried an interview with a passionate union activist a veteran broadcaster an employer a board director a Maori rights campaigner a chief executive a man of Ngati Kahungunu and Ngati Porou—the freedom fighter Syd Jackson. Syd issued a challenge that I believe has some relevance to the challenge of this Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill. He said: “You have to be prepared to put yourself on the line to take to the streets to act to highlight and articulate your grievances. Simply get on and do the mahi …”. There is no better way to honour this leader than to honour today his lifelong campaign for justice through his standing up for our young people—standing up for our young people to get on to do the mahi without being discriminated against on the basis of their age. This bill purely and simply is about eradicating discrimination. It was a cause that Syd Jackson lived for: leaving nobody behind caring for te pani me te rawa kore and standing up for the poor and the impoverished.  
The Maori Party was proud to stand with Sue Bradford at the first reading on the bill to stand for the chance for young people to benefit from adequate employment protection. We argued that rangatahi should not be vulnerable to arbitrary dismissal or unilateral changes to their terms and conditions of employment. They had the right to freedom from discrimination—as in the Human Rights Act 1993. They had the right to benefit from the anti-age discrimination provisions set out in theNew Zealand Bill of Rights Act. They had the right to enjoy freedom of discrimination as the most fundamental freedom. They had the right to enjoy freedom from elitism sexism religious intolerance racism and ageism. They had the right to enjoy freedom from discrimination against beliefs and against cultural values. And they had the right to enjoy freedom from discrimination as manifest in slavery in racial profiling in hate crimes and in ethnic cleansing.  
Discrimination is not of course a novelty in Aotearoa. We recall as most members might remember a shameful history in the 1950s when it was not unheard of for landlords to erect signs saying “No Dogs or Maoris” outside accommodation. We had thought that there was sufficient progression in legislation to seriously challenge the systematic oppression and mistreatment of particular sectors of our community: Maori Pasifika the young the old and the vulnerable. The original bill convinced us that the discrimination that was being experienced by young New Zealanders would stop—the discrimination revealed the fact that currently 16 and 17-year-olds can be paid a minimum wage of a mere $8.20 per hour compared with the adult minimum of $10.25 per hour. So we voted to end age discrimination to end adultism: the bias towards adults that is seen in the ugly combination of prejudice married with power.  
The Youth Advisory Council of the Child Welfare League of America concluded that the end result of adults practising adultism is that young people become disempowered and disenfranchised. Surely a Parliament that values an investment in our future our growing young population would not want that. Except this is where it all became unstuck for at the select committee suddenly the Greens’ bill became renamed. The term “discrimination” was deleted the term “abolition” was abolished and a new vocabulary was created introducing the “new entrant” to the workforce. Or as my colleague Hone Harawira said the name is just another name for the Young Slave Bill.  
The select committee recommended that for the first 200 hours worked by a young worker after he or she turns 16 he or she will be paid at the “new entrant” rate. This is a new term as Darien Fenton explained during the Committee stage: “It is quite a strange term particularly as it is used to describe schoolchildren who are entering school for the first time.” It is a strange term and a misleading term to make discrimination acceptable—the ongoing discrimination that these new entrants will be paid a lesser rate than even the minimum wage of adults. It is a term of pretence because it does not actually describe “new” entrants to the workforce—not 50-year-old new entrants not 30-year-old new entrants—only 16 and 17-year-olds will be entitled to this measure of divide and rule. We were repeatedly told during the Committee stage of this bill as I understand from my colleague that this strange new version of the original bill was—if I may quote the proverbial—better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. We were scolded and were asked how we could object to progress. But the Maori Party is not prepared to settle for the watered-down version of justice. We are not about to meekly comply with a second-rate version of the truth.  
Another bizarre piece of persuasive political posturing that came out during the Committee stage was the concept that what was really wonderful about this bill was that thousands and thousands of 16 and 17-year-olds will get a pay increase after they have done 200 hours of work. Union workforce statistics however show that 50 percent of the 16 and 17-year-olds who are working currently work 10 hours or fewer each week. So we are looking at the minimum of 5 or 6 months as a base before young people are considered worthy enough to earn the basic minimum wage—before they are entitled to that wonderful pay rise! What does it do to a community to legalise adult privilege in legislation in such a way as to mean that young people will not be paid equally for work of equal value? What does it do to young people to be paid less simply because they are not deemed adults by the country’s lawmakers? What message does it send about the worth of our young people? What further abuse is made more likely as a result?  
The Human Rights Commission told the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee that the youth minimum wage has a significant impact on the earnings of young workers; that it perpetuates stereotypes about their capabilities and that they are worth less because they are young; and that paying 16 and 17-year-olds less than other workers breaches fundamental principles of fairness and equity. So you see it is about fairness justice and decent wages for decent work and it could have been so different. We have a saying that demonstrates how it could have been: “E ngaki ana a mua e toto mai ana a muri”—while people go ahead and weed others follow behind and plant.” The meaning is that if the first group do their work properly then those following can accomplish their task and everybody gets together to get the job done. What we are doing tonight is not about doing our work properly. What message is this bill giving to our children and our grandchildren—to put up with injustice that second-best is good enough and that they should be grateful for their lot? 
What do the Minister of Maori Affairs the Minister of Youth Affairs and the Minister of Pacific Island Affairs have to say? How can they defend this tangled plot of weeds that is left behind to constrain our young? I would remind the House that a massive 35 percent of the Maori population is aged under 15 years and that the median age of both the Maori and Pasifika populations is a mere 21 years compared with a median age of 36 years for the total New Zealand population. We are a very young population and we in the Maori Party must stand here tonight with the interests of that population at heart. Those young people deserve to be treated by the system in a way that is tied unreservedly to their skills. We should be united in calling to abolish any differential wage based on age. It is unfair it is discriminatory and it is exploitation. 
Voting to support a new entrant sub-minimum wage will worsen youth poverty and it will make it harder for young people just to meet basic living expenses. It perpetuates a low-wage climate by allowing wage standards to be lower than the minimum rates of acceptability. New Zealanders need far greater employment protections. Ending youth rates is just one part of the picture. The Syd Jackson we knew as a union champion activist and freedom fighter would never have compromised his principles. He would never live on his knees he would die fighting for the things that he believed in and he would say to us right now that we have to be prepared to put ourselves on the line to take to the streets and to act to highlight and articulate our grievances. Our young people deserve nothing less.