Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): I just want to state again as I did in the first reading on this bill that there are some times when I am really conscious of the privilege of this job. This is one of those moments. This is a historic settlement. These mostly women workers have been exploited for so long doing lifesaving work engaging in the most intimate relationship with people and in just such complex work for almost the minimum wage. It has been an absolute embarrassment. So to be able to stand in this House in support of their dignity and the dignity of their clients is a really wonderful thing.I want to again along with everyone else acknowledge my hero Kristine Bartlett and one of my unions E tū which took this case for the amazing achievement that this is to get us to this point. I acknowledge that this is a $2 billion package and while that boggles my mind in terms of the amount of money—this is over 55000 women and some men—it is a settlement of a longstanding case of exploitation which the Government knowingly continued until it was forced by Kristine and her unions to have to front up to that and bring this piece of legislation and the settlement through. So it is also a privilege to stand and honour the power of collective organising and bargaining. It is amazing what it can achieve for people and this is amazing.I do want to acknowledge though that this is a settlement—a little bit like a Treaty settlement—and while we celebrate this just for the achievement the process is not necessarily what the Greens would have engaged with in an ideal world. We understand that the Crown came to this process of negotiation with a set amount of money that had been signed off by Cabinet—we were told this by Crown Law. I am not sure that that is in the spirit of actually establishing genuine pay equity. I also understand that the cost—that set amount of money—had to cover the funding for the providers in terms of the interim arrangements and the funding for the workers. So upfront we were told that basically back-pay was taken off the table and was not up for negotiation.For the Green Party that is not the spirit in which we would wish to enter into a pay equity negotiation. I understand that the unions are OK with taking back-pay off because if you have got a limited pool of money you are going to want to make sure that out of a set amount of money you maximise what will carry forward into the future. That makes sense in a negotiating sense but in terms of whether it is right that that was taken off the table actually I want to stand here and say that I do not think it was right that the Crown took it off the table.I am bringing this up particularly because I note that the draft legislation that the Government introduced about rewriting the Equal Pay Act into a pay equity Act also ruled out the right to back-pay in court-determined pay equity settlements. I want to make sure—and have it written into this piece of legislation—that this settlement will in no way set a precedent for other cases because we do not want it to be a starting point that back-pay is off the table.I do want to point out my particular concern around this in relation to the response from the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety when I asked him in the House about why back-pay was taken off the table in court-determined settings in the Government's planned bill. His response was that back-pay is a vexed" issue and that pay equity employment agreements "have been agreed. To then relitigate those would be very difficult." Those were his words and he noted that it was certainly the agreement of TerraNova and the Ministry of Health to start from a point where pay equity was agreed to occur—therefore not considering back-pay.That was the Crown's position as I understood it and it was agreed to in the context of a set amount of money. But we must not let that be a precedent because that is a denial of rights. I do want to say that I did show that response to an expert around pay equity in New Zealand from the Campaign for Equal Value Equal Pay and her response was: "He is talking complete nonsense." The issue of back-pay is a vexed one when it comes to pay equity only because taking away that entitlement is gender discrimination. So I want to be very clear in this House that the select committee was of the same mind—that we did not want this to be a precedent and that there should not be any legislative response that signals that it is okay to take away the right to back-pay. I want to be clear on that.I also do just want to go from some of the complex issues to—actually no there is one other thing I want to put back on the table around that. It is just to point out to people that for the Greens it was very disturbing that the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet that went through on this bill—as already mentioned by the member Poto Williams—identified that potentially there were issues regarding freedom of expression and the right to bring civil proceedings but I cannot understand how there was no consideration of discrimination when it related to an issue of pay equity. I think it is pretty fair to assume that the officials overlooked the context of this legislation in addressing discrimination which is surely the core purpose of our pay equity legislation. So in terms of these processes the public does need to be mindful and I do think we need to be pushing and making our intent very clear to Government that as a country we want to end discrimination. That should be our clear commitment and I am very happy that this settlement and this agreement is a step towards it that we can all embrace.Now to finish the last few minutes just to kind of go back to the joys of this. I know I have talked about some of my concerns and I have to put those on record but I do just want to go back to the real joy of this: 55000 workers mostly women who have been paid the minimum wage for doing this incredibly important work will—many of them—from 1 July get paid as much as $23.50 an hour which is just a fair reflection of the difficulty and the importance of that job.I was incredibly lucky to spend a little bit of time with some caregivers and some of the people whom they worked with in an Enliven residence out in Johnsonville last year. It did boggle my mind the challenge of having to juggle all of the very small tasks and stay present and be lovely to these people who are really completely dependent on you and need you and be able to go there and take them to the toilet and then be able to talk to their family and reassure their family that they are okay and then be able to help the occupational therapist in terms of their exercises. The complexity of it is enormous and for us to acknowledge that and for them to be recognised for that is so important for every single one of us in this country. Again kudos to them for pulling this off."