Kanongata'a AnahilaANAHILA KANONGATA'A (Labour): Kia ora e te Mana Whakawā. It's a huge honour and privilege to speak for the fourth time in this House today especially in this Employment Relations (Restraint of Trade) Amendment Bill. I want to acknowledge Helen White; often in this House we acknowledge people bringing in their lived experience of this House and we are fortunate that Helen an employment lawyer has brought her experience to this House. And as she had said in her opening remarks this is the why"; this is why that she came into Parliament just to sort out this unfairness. We also heard from Camilla Belich who is also an employment lawyer who also commends this bill to the House. The reason why I say that is because we are hearing from people who used to live this day in and day out and when they say "This is not fair" I tend to believe them as they're experts in that area. So we understand and we remember that Helen White had brought this to the House in 2022. What I take from it is that we've heard today what a restraint is that an employer—it's in the name of the bill "restraint of trade". We've heard from people on both sides of the House; all throughout the House talking about the restraint of trade in an employment agreement. And we've heard from Helen White herself that when people sign these contracts sometimes they don't get to that fine print. We've all experienced when we're too excited about receiving something that we just sign the contract and we forget to read the fine print.Helen White said that this bill prohibits the use of restraints of trade and employment agreement for lower and middle income employees. So what this bill does is that it provides that the restraints of trade that have no effect wherever an employee earns less than three times the minimum wage. I'd just like to remind the House that we increased the minimum wage and we're now at $22.70. So if you earn less than $68.10 this bill will apply to you. So it's talking about protecting low and middle income earners. We've heard from the Green member who used the example of Tova O'Brien—who probably earns more than $68.10 an hour. We heard that it does work. However this bill focuses on lower and middle income earners earning less than $68.10 an hour. What the bill also does is it limits the duration of restraints of trade to no more than six months—no more than six months. I think that's really fair because at the moment the current Employment Relations Act is silent on that; there is no income threshold on the current law. So that's what this will change. It also requires the employers to pay the employees who are subject to the restraint of the trade provision an amount equal to half of the employee's weekly earnings during the duration of restraint—I think that's fair. It is fair to provide an opportunity to provide an income for someone who has chosen to go and work for another employer. We want everyone to have an opportunity to upskill and if there's no opportunity for growth we're giving opportunity for lower and middle income earners to look elsewhere and whilst they're in that restraint period it's only fair that the employer contributes to that period of restraint. So that's where it says that it requires employers to pay employees who are subject to a restraint of trade provision an amount equal to half the employee's weekly earnings. This continues the Government's work on a fair day's work for a fair day's pay. We have increased the minimum wage since we came into Government in 2017. Currently the minimum wage is $22.70 and the living wage is currently $23.65 per hour: we are working away there. We are the party for the workers. We've got the experts on this side telling us that this is fair. Through their experience I agree with them and I commend this bill to the House. Mālō."