Ryall Tony: Minimum Wage Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Ryall Tony: Minimum Wage Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:608;Page:5158] 
Hon TONY RYALL (NZ National—Bay of Plenty) 
: 
 The National Party in Opposition is strongly opposed to the proposals in clause 4 as we are opposed to this bill in general. The Minimum Wage Amendment Bill will remove the exemption that young people on training have from the youth minimum wage. The reason that they are exempted is that part of their remuneration is the training they are receiving from their employers. The Government’s own advisers and in turn the Government itself have advised the Parliament through the explanatory note to the bill that there will be an impact on the Government’s finances as a result of this bill by dint of the fact that a number of young people will lose their jobs and move on to the unemployment benefit. The Government has further advised that the amount of training that will be provided by employers in the economy will reduce and we have been advised further that there will be added compliance costs. 
Clause 4 removes those previous categories of workers to whom the Act did not apply. In the past the minimum wage never applied to apprentices who were employed under the Apprenticeship Act. It never applied to people who were being employed as apprentices under the Maori Housing Amendment Act under the Railways Corporation the Defence Act the Post Office or the State services nor to anybody else who was under a contract for training instruction or examination or to the inmates of any charitable institution. With this bill we are removing all those exemptions. The National Party says that this will cost young people their jobs. We know that about 26000 young New Zealanders are affected by those agreements and the concern the National Party Opposition has is that not only will we cost a number of young people their jobs we will also deny the opportunity for more young people to enter into those sorts of training contracts. 
 We think this is symptomatic of the fact that this is a Government that does not understand business and does not appreciate the pressures on those running business; nor does it appreciate what drives job growth in the economy. What drives job growth in the economy is flexible labour markets and strong consumer demand lower interest rates and lower taxes. Those are the prescriptions that the economic recovery that we saw in the country in the early 2000s has been based on. It has been based on sound economic policies that were put in place by the previous Government and this Government has to realise that bit by bit it has been unpicking the formula that has been delivering the goods for this economy. 
I say to this Government that there is always a time lag with economic policy and legislation and the costs of the decisions that this Government has made tying up the labour market with added flexibility and setting much higher minimum wages than is necessary will be visited upon the economy over the next 3 or 4 years. There is always a time lag and the costs will be visited upon the economy in the next 3 or 4 years. It will be the responsibility of the incoming National Government to tidy up the mess that this Government is giving New Zealand by simply hamstringing the New Zealand economy the producers the people whom we rely on to generate wealth in this country. 
This Government is undermining every opportunity for that and it is undermining the opportunity for young people to get jobs. We know that that is the truth because the Government has told us that in its own explanatory note on the bill and that is why the National Party has strongly opposed this bill from day one. We know that it will cost jobs. A number of those 26000 young New Zealanders will lose their jobs as a result of this bill and we know that because the Government has told us. The Government has told us that some of those 26000 young New Zealanders will lose their jobs and go on the dole. This Government has told us that more young people will lose that opportunity