King Annette: Home and Community Support (Payment for Travel Between Clients) Settlement Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKing Annette: Home and Community Support (Payment for Travel Between Clients) Settlement Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 18 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:9159. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): I am very pleased to be able to rise and speak to the third reading of the Home and Community Support (Payment for Travel Between Clients) Settlement Bill. I have to say I am a little disappointed that the Minister’s contribution was so brief in view of the fact that this bill is so historic and so life-changing for many of those who are going to be the beneficiaries of it.I want to begin by congratulating those who had the courage to bring this bill to the House because of the battles they fought to ensure there was a test case on behalf of hundreds of home-care workers in New Zealand. I particularly want to acknowledge Jenny Goodman and the Public Service Association with the support of the Council of Trade Unions and others who backed her to bring case—a test case—to ensure that our home-care workers were going to be able to receive payment when they travelled from one job to the next. I think that if it does nothing else it shows the value of belonging to a union. A union can take up on behalf of a vulnerable worker and workers the situation that they face and can put forward the fight for them and that is exactly what happened in this particular case. We have a number of other cases that are being settled and they have been driven by the unions that could see the unfairness of what was happening to their membership.In fact this bill has come about also because of a ruling by the Human Rights Commission. It has taken a long time to get to this point but what I was pleased about was that once an agreement had been reached between the employers the unions the Crown and those who are providing the services then there was a rapid action here within the Parliament. The bill was introduced on 24 September 2015. It received its first reading on 13 October 2015 and was referred to the Health Committee. We reported the bill back on 15 December just before Christmas as one of the last actions of the Health Committee.The Health Committee worked very hard on this bill and made sure it was reported back before Christmas because there had been agreement on what should be in this bill and we wanted it out of the committee ready for debate and passage in this Parliament when Parliament resumed. So here we are debating the third reading of this bill on 18 February. That is fast in terms of what this House can do. We are very pleased that we are going to be able to finish this bill today. It will receive the Governor-General’s assent in the next few days and will become law.There were not a lot of submissions to the select committee. That is because agreement had been reached—it had been thrashed out as to what this bill would achieve. But I did think it was important that these major submissions from the employers from the companies and from the organisations that employ our home-care workers were in unison in terms of what they said in their submissions. Access Homehealth’s submission said: “We support the Bill and believe it provides major benefits to both our and the Home and Community Support Services (HCSS) sector clients and employees.” Healthcare of New Zealand Holdings Ltd said: “We are supportive of the Bill due to the benefit it will bring to our employees (and clients). This Bill represents a significant positive change for the Home and Community Support Services (HCSS) sector.”The New Zealand Federation of Business and Professional Women also made a submission. It had a wider interest. In fact it said it supports the bill because: “we are committed to representing the interests of working women and advancing and empowering women in the workplace.” It liked the fact that this bill was going through but it also said it wants to see: “[an increase in] funding to Aged Care Providers to provide pay equity for all aged care workers in accordance with the Equal Pay Act 1972.” That is something that has not yet been achieved. So when we are talking about this bill we are part-way there; we are not fully there because we do not yet have pay equity for these workers.These workers are vulnerable workers. These are overwhelmingly women workers and these are women who work for the minimum wage—the minimum hourly rate. They go out and they work on behalf of our families: our old mums and dads our grandparents and people who are in need of care in their home and in the community. That is how we are able to keep so many people within the community—because of this army of women who go out and support them.They support them in many ways. You know for some people—and I am sure you will be aware of this Mr Deputy Speaker—having a person come to your home to do some home help for you or just to talk to you can mean more to your overall health than anything else. Many older people are lonely in their own homes. They do not have a lot of contact with people but when their home-care worker their community worker comes into their home and does work for them talks to them and becomes a friend to them it has a double whammy for that person. So we need to value these workers who do such a magnificent job for us.So what does this bill mean? It means that those workers are going get payment when they travel between one job and another. What is interesting is that we have never ever doubted that those who travel from one job fixing your plumbing to the next job fixing the plumbing up the road should not include in the cost of travel in what they are paid. But we have not thought that it was important that those on low incomes on the minimum wage travelling in their old car and filling it up using their money should be paid to go from one job to the next. This bill will ensure that they are paid at least the minimum wage when travelling between clients. They will be paid the minimum allowance of at least 50c per kilometre for that travel.This bill does have a number of things in it. It removes the ability for employees to return this issue to the Crown. It also removes the right to claim back-pay. That was not decided by this Parliament; it was decided by the settlement between those who were the parties to it. They sat down and said: “How can we be fair to the taxpayer but also fair to those women who are providing this service and paying for their travel?”. So they came to an agreement. They could I suppose have gone and argued that there ought to be years of back-pay for the work they had done and it would have amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars I suspect. But they came to an agreement that the right to claim back-pay would be removed.The bill also means that the definition of “employee” is to be covered. So we now are pretty clear what an employee is. It also does something that we have not done before and it is that we also included in the amendments that we made—and we made a number of amendments to the bill at the select committee—an amendment to include ACC in this legislation. Many of those who provide home services in the health sector also provide home services for ACC. That came from changes that the Health Committee made and I am very pleased with that change as well.This is a red-letter day for those who have been fighting for years for fairness for our home-care and support workers in respect of payment for travel. Let us not think though that this is the end of the story. I too would like to see pay equity for those many many women providing this service. They are just as important to us as those we say are important in trades and in professions. They are the backbone of the type of health service we are going to be able to afford in the future.I commend this bill to the House. It has the full support of the Labour Party.