Roche DeniseDENISE ROCHE (Green): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker and thank you. I rise to take a short call for the Greens on this the final and third reading of the Care and Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlement Bill and it is a privilege to do so. I want to start my short contribution by paying tribute to all those women who joined together to make this happen and that includes the women who are in the gallery today. That includes Kristine Bartlett who was the spearhead and the figurehead for the legal campaign that paved the way for this. Also I want to acknowledge the generations of women who have contributed to this over decades.I want to thank all these women and these women who are with us today. I want to thank them for joining together to get to this part to get to this success. By bringing their power together they have actually shown that when you work together and you look after each other you can achieve great things and that essentially you cannot really do that by yourself. What we have before us today this settlement will have an impact on the pay packets of 55000 women. Not all of those women got together to do it but the women who are in their unions the women who have paid their union fees the women who have worked for this and worked in this sector for years and years and years and the women before them and the unions that worked with them before that as well—all these people need to be acknowledged. We need to celebrate the fact that together this settlement—this marvellous settlement—is coming through.I also want to acknowledge that this settlement does not stop here that it paves a way forward as well. It is not just for the 55000 women; it is for our daughters and their daughters and women in other sectors as well who will be coming up. The social workers the education support workers—they will be coming through and our daughters and our daughters' daughters will benefit from that. So give Kristine Bartlett a Wonder Woman badge from us thank you.I said in my second reading speech that this settlement is very similar to a Treaty claims settlement. I just want to revisit that again because it is. What we always say with a Treaty claims settlement is that it is not a full and final settlement and in this case it is not because the issue of back-pay has been ignored. It has been deliberately put to one side in order for a payment to happen that will raise the pay rates for women workers in the care and support sector now and into the future. We are OK with that but we need to acknowledge that the back-pay is not happening. Actually it is the fact that back-pay would have been on the table if it had gone to court—that was the issue that brought the Government to these negotiations. I am sorry that we have not been able to have that conversation with the Minister.The other thing that we say in a Treaty settlement is that we need to acknowledge the generosity of the people who have been involved because of the work that they have put into achieving the settlement. That is the unions that is the workers that is Kristine Bartlett that is all the effort that has gone into that. So we need to accept the generosity and the labour that has gone into it and acknowledge it. The other thing is that we say that it is a deal. It is the best deal we can possibly get and we should also acknowledge that. We do but we also celebrate it in this case.The thing with Treaty settlement bills though is that there is usually an apology. I was listening very carefully. I was listening for that apology and I did not hear it. But there should be an apology because women workers have been ripped off for decades. They have been absolutely ripped off and employers have known this. They have known it. Judy McGregor's report Caring Counts expressed very clearly the exploitation of workers—the emotional and physical exploitation—that occurred in this sector. And we never heard Sorry." The unions never heard "Sorry." and Kristine never heard "Sorry." But do you know what? On 1 July in your pay packets women there will be a "Sorry." So we want to thank you. We will be supporting this bill."