Turia Tariana: Minimum Wage (Abolition of Age Discrimination) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Turia Tariana: Minimum Wage (Abolition of Age Discrimination) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:629;Page:1413] 
TARIANA TURIA (Co-Leader—Maori Party) 
: 
 The Maori Party will be supporting the Minimum Wage (Abolition of Age Discrimination) Amendment Bill before this House in its direction to abolish age discrimination. In our world view to arbitrarily single out any one age group and discriminate against it is entirely contrary to the recognition that it is the breadth and collective strength of the people that is our wealth. I thank Sue Bradford and the Green Party for introducing this legislation. Others now want to take the credit for it but no one has stood up for 16 and 17-year-olds. I have not heard anybody talk about that before so I thank the Greens for doing that. 
We can appreciate what employers are saying and understand their concerns that their ability to select their preferred workforce is being constrained by another intervention by the Government—even when it is a Government with good intentions such as this one. Having been an employer myself however I know that I would not expect young trainee employees to carry out complex duties that I would expect more experienced employees to carry out. I would expect that those I employed on the minimum wage would be performing at the level of the basic skills that we would expect to see at the lower end of the salary range. No matter how old a person in a new job is that person needs training. I cannot see the difference between training a 16 or 17-year-old and training a 20 to 60-year-old. Frankly when I see young people pushing trolleys around car-parks I think not very many 60-year-olds would want to perform that job and certainly not for a minimal wage. 
The central concept in this bill is the word “discrimination”. The Minimum Wage Act 1983 discriminates against those rangatahi who are aged 16 to 17 by dropping the minimum rates to $7.60 an hour. Those rangatahi are tomorrow’s parents workers leaders helpers spokespeople and mentors. In order to ensure that rangatahi have the ability confidence and support to fulfil those roles to the very best of their ability we need to ensure that nothing we are doing as part of the Government as whanau and as a community limits or impedes their development. They are tomorrow’s managers. It is a question of justice. We must remove the discriminatory aspects of the current Act in the interests of our young people. In the end those are the interests of our nation. We have heard some shocking stories from right around the country about youth rates. We have heard about 15-year-olds working long hours and being paid $5 an hour to stack supermarket shelves. That is legal. 
The Maori Party has a particular concern about the injustice currently permitted by the legislation given the demographics of our population. Almost half of the Maori population is under 18 years of age—43 percent compared with 24 percent of the non-Maori population. In real numbers when we look at the age range of 10 to 18 years the figure is 103158. That is a lot of young people on youth rates. We know that for far too many of our young people the crisis of poverty that racks this nation has pushed them literally out of the door—out of their homes—and into the workplace. The House needs no reminding of the reality that the Maori poverty rate is over 50 percent higher than the non-Maori rate. We must also consider the reality that one in five children live in low-income families which is nearly twice the level of the late 1980s. Alongside that the employment security that previous generations enjoyed has mostly disappeared with many training and education options being too costly to pursue to the level of obtaining employment and income security. 
I heard a member from National say that youth rates are how one gets ahead and moves on to higher wages at a later stage in life. Well that is fine talk if one has money. Some people do not know what it is like to have no money and just to focus on living from day to day. 
Finally I return to the issue of discrimination and I raise the obvious anomaly of this bill. It is to do with disabled workers. During our discussions with our constituents about this bill we have heard about intellectually disabled employees who know that they are being exploited and know that they are being abused and that it is legal. Yet this bill does nothing to change the current law. 
We will support this bill going to the select committee to remove the current discrimination against 16 and 17-year-olds. Members of this House will be familiar with the whakatauki “ma pango ma whero ka oti te mahi” interpreted in this context to mean that old and young—in fact all peoples—can work together and be rewarded equally for that work. It is a worthy goal to work towards.