Hughes Gareth: Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hughes Gareth: Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 21 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8875. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GARETH HUGHES (Green) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker. Nga mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. It is good that this House is looking at youth unemployment. It is the right question that we are asking but what we have in front of us the Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill is clearly the wrong answer. 
I am proud to stand to oppose this bill—this flawed ideological and discriminatory bill. It is flawed because the entire premise is wrong. Cutting wages does not create jobs. Cutting wages does not encourage people into work. I have not heard a single economic report or a single piece of economic research being quoted by the Government members. The fact is that there is limited research. In fact the research is strongly in the other side of the camp which says that higher wages do encourage work. We saw it in New Zealand when the Green Party ended discriminatory youth rates in the mid-2000s and it had no impact. If anything more young people were in work. So it is flawed the premise is wrong and it is ideological. 
We know it is plainly ideological because the regulatory impact statement says as much and because there were no alternatives canvassed by officials. It is ideological because it is 1990s thinking in 2013. The Government’s whole plan for the economy is to cut wages and to make us even more of a low-wage high-work economy. Mr English said as much on competitiveness. John Key said he would be fine with seeing wages drop. 
This is not the way to build our jobs and our economy. All it is doing is ideologically supporting a small—and I mean a very small—number of some employers who see their future in cutting wages and flicking workers off. It is flawed it is ideological and it is discriminatory. It is clearly discriminatory because it is picking on one group. This bill targets 16 to 17-year-olds and sets up two types of employment in New Zealand: those 16 and 17-year-olds who are paid a discriminatory rate and those 18 and 19-year-olds who have been on the benefit and will also get a discriminatory rate. So it is flawed ideological and discriminatory. 
In fact I would call it nasty. The Government did not look at the alternatives and now we know from an Official Information Act request as well that even the Ministry of Education advised against it because it is contrary to the Government’s own education goals. But I would also contend that from the Government’s perspective it is counter-productive because this sends a terrible message to young people that they are second-class citizens who should be earning less. It sends a message to employers to flick off young people after 90 days so that they can keep paying their workers at the discriminatory lower rate. But also for all New Zealand workers be they aged under 20 years or above it is driving down wages across the entire New Zealand economy. 
Again it goes back to that flawed approach to the economy. The way to build prosperity and growth in jobs is not about reducing wages and working conditions through 90-day trials and picking on paper boys and paper girls as in the last Budget and it is not about damaging the environment and racing other countries to see who can cram as many cows as possible in a paddock. That is not our future. That is not a way to provide solutions for the 90000 young people who are right now today not in employment or training—at similar rates to Spain and other countries. 
 What young Kiwis and our economy need is a plan for jobs a plan for sustainable prosperity. Every week we get bad news. We see Mainzeal Property and Construction and Solid Energy—and Telecom might be on the cusp of losing 1500 jobs. We have lost 30000-plus jobs in manufacturing. Kiwis want to hope. They want a vision. They want a plan. That is what we went with to the election in 2012: a plan to create 100000 green jobs. This is the way the future is going. This is where capital investment trends are going. It is what the influential business leaders are saying. They said we could see 50000 jobs in clean energy. 
I was at the Wind Energy Association conference last night. Its plan for 3500 megawatts of wind electricity would deliver 1500 jobs for New Zealand. What we know from the oil and gas report—the industry Minister Bridges was quite happy to subsidise to the tune of $130000—was that this industry could see in the most likely scenario 199 jobs. Yet this region lost 910 jobs in the first 3 years of this Government. 
Under National we are going backwards. Kiwis want real solutions. That is why we are working with Labour and the other parties on the manufacturing inquiry. That is why we are supporting employers and exporters. That is why we are promoting information and communications which was up 17 percent in the last year. It has grown $3 billion in the last 2 years. That is why we are putting forward our innovative proposals for a second cable greater training and education incentives sensible patent reform and better Government procurement. And that is why we are looking at clean energy options and the 50000 jobs we are seeing there and the $600 million we could be saving per annum and the Greenpeace report—