Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): On behalf of ACT I'd like to support the second reading of this bill. It's a very interesting debate. I think the facts remain that we're here because of a novel finding in a court case that the Government of the day had a choice about. They could either legislate over the top of it and say Actually that's not what Parliament intended." or they could kick for touch—and they kicked for touch. They said "You've got five years to figure it out. Make your settlements and then after that who knows?" Well we've got to the "who knows?" One side kicked for touch and now the other side is having to kick it even further into touch and buy more time because there's no enduring solution. The fact is that the Terranova case or at least the findings in it were unsustainable. They allowed judges to effectively set wages and when this legislation expires—and the part of it that extinguished that right will expire despite the pay rates being extended for another year and a half—we're going to be back to people taking cases where actually the judge can decide whether a whole group of people should be paid differently based on the judge's view of their identity and the work they do. That's not a good place to be. It doesn't work. It's interesting at the Auckland University of Technology specifically one of the researchers there Katherine Ravenswood has done a lot of work on what the outcome of the pay equity legislation has been for the people who are actually affected by it.Now remember fundamentally the Government decided to legislate minimum pay rates in exchange for extinguishing the right to go to court because they didn't like the findings of the court. What occurred according to surveys of people actually affected was that about half of them said that their job had stayed the same half of them said they had extra responsibilities added to their job and a quarter said that they had their workload increased. Others meanwhile said that they had had their hours reduced against their will. Actually it's all pretty understandable. Parliament stepped in and legislated what the wages should be and legislated them up and as a result what happened is that they found that the managers not having enough money to match it found people they didn't think were very useful and forcibly reduced their hours and the people they did think were doing a good job were given more to do and added responsibilities to them. You see one of the things that happened is that Parliament may have legislated the pay rates but that doesn't mean that it necessarily funded those pay rates in the Budget. So the managers who were surveyed by Katherine Ravenswood were forced to make economies like people are in every business up and down New Zealand. What they did is they said "OK we can't change the pay rates—that's been legislated by Parliament. We don't have enough money. We still need to get the work done so we'll cut down people's hours if we don't think they're very productive and we'll give more work to people we think are productive." Pretty simple and pretty predictable stuff and it's what happens when Parliament tries to interfere in wage setting across the rest of the economy.Governments and Parliament cannot solve problems. They cannot avoid costs but they can certainly shift problems and they can shift costs. That is fundamentally what's happened. And that's why the Government of the day should have responded not by kicking the can down the road but by actually saying "Yes OK. Parliament made the Equal Pay Act in 1972. Parliament the majority at that time no longer agrees with the way that the courts are interpreting it and constitutionally the elected Parliament has the right to legislate again and change what the rules are." Parliament didn't intend in 1972 that judges would decide that whole areas of the economy were overpaid or underpaid based on their gender. It was supposed to create equality between a man and a woman doing the same job. Parliament had every right to push back at the courts but instead it kicked for touch and said "Well you can't do any appeals for five years you can't bring any new cases for five years you can't settle any that have been brought so far unless they've already been settled and in five years' time who knows what will happen."Well of course what happened is that the Government changed. The new one came in filled with unionists and didn't we see a great performance from the cloth-capped leader of them Andrew Little just earlier—it was the Andrew that I miss as Leader of the Opposition—and what we found was that they actually weren't able to solve the problem. And they weren't able to solve the problem for the very simple reason that they didn't have enough money. This is the real issue that we're uncovering tonight. Productivity growth in New Zealand—and we hear this from the Green Party members; that we should have higher wages. Well that's great if only we could judge all policies by intentions. But the question is: what has the Green Party ever been prepared to do to try and focus on raising productivity in New Zealand? That's the debate that New Zealand really needs to have because if we're going to have a given number of people and they're going to be retiring and they're going to need extra care and support for a whole variety of reasons then we better have the productivity in the rest of our economy so we can put aside money to pay people to do that care and support work. It's pretty simple. The Green member says that in Australia the starting rates for people in the care and support sector are like a living wage in New Zealand. Well that sounds fantastic but you need to ask the question: why is that? Most of the things the Australian economy is based upon are things the Green Party completely opposes. Most of the things that would make New Zealand more productive making it easier to get foreign direct investment making it easier to develop natural resources making it easier to develop infrastructure such as expanding ports in the middle of a supply chain crisis—all of those resource management reforms foreign investment and trade reforms the things that actually bring in capital and ideas and make infrastructure more productive and actually raise productivity so we don't have to be in this situation are things the Green Party opposes. My great hope is that some of those Labour members—and I see them listening when I speak like this—are thinking "Actually this guy's got a point. I wish I could speak for more than one minute at a time." because unfortunately—and it's a shame—there's some talented members on the Labour backbench and I hope some of them get another term but I fear some of them may not. The problem is they've got a lot to say but on team orders they're only allowed to talk for a minute and that means for some of them that the best thing about their speeches is the length. I think it's a shame. I think they should be allowed to talk longer and say what they really feel. I think you might get some activism on the backbench of the Labour Party and they might say "Actually we do need to ask ourselves how we are going to grow New Zealand's productivity so that in a global labour market where we need people such as care and support workers and nurses and doctors just to name people in the healthcare sector who are pretty globally mobile and who can take their 350 bucks from the Labour Party"—and boy oh boy there's a good story in the New Zealand Herald about that tomorrow—"and go straight to Australia." They are part of that global mobilised workforce.We should be asking ourselves at the end of this whole debate "Why do we have to be here under urgency rushing this legislation through while fundamentally the Labour Party despite its deep union roots has not been able to settle agreements in time and they had to use the big sledgehammer and said to the unions 'If you guys don't agree then we'll just legislate it and your pay rates will be set in statute mate.' " That must be a terribly difficult conversation for them but nevertheless that's the conversation they've had to have and that's what's brought us here.But in some ways I don't blame the Labour Party for it because the real problem that we face as a country comes back to the fact that there just ain't enough money to meet the First World aspirations that we have which can be as simple as that when I retire there's actually going to be someone there to care for me and when my parents retire they'll be somebody to look after them at First World standards. That's the real problem that we're facing tonight and I think it's worth taking the time to spell it out because if our country doesn't start to think hard about the factors of productivity and why our productivity growth is low then we're going to be having more dismal debates late at night like this for a very long time to come whichever of Labour and National say they're leading the Government."