SpeechIBRAHIM OMER (Labour): Salaam alaikum Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to take a final call on this historic bill but boy the hatred and the disrespect for working people. When you trash unions you're talking about 300000 workers Mr Simpson across the country—Hon Todd McClay: Point of order. I know it's not for me to say but I didn't hear you as the Speaker say that once to this member.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): I apologise to the speaker.IBRAHIM OMER: But none the less for us on this side of the House it's an historic day—we will be celebrating it.There is an old Māori whakataukī which says: He rākau wāhi rua he kai nā te ahi." [A tree split in two is food for the fire: unity is strength.] which means if workers are united they will win improving working conditions. If they are split into a number of small groups they will lose working conditions. And this brings us to why collective bargaining in this country is so slow and ineffective. Why is the Government forced to do the heavy lifting around lifting minimum wage when historically this country has relied on collective bargaining to carry out the role of the wage distribution. The answer is in the report of the Fair Pay Agreement Working Group chaired by the Rt Hon Jim Bolger who said "New Zealand sits at the far end of the decentralised spectrum. Although our current system permits voluntary sector bargaining in practice most bargaining takes place at the enterprise level although there is some bargaining among groups of employers within a sector through a MECA." multi-employer collective agreements (MECA) are mainly found within the public sector—mainly in health and education. Workers have tried consistently over and over again to bargain but they failed. They failed but this bill is going to improve that.The introduction of this bill makes the same point as Mr Bolger did. While New Zealand's labour market has some strengths it also has a systematic weakness. This includes a significant prevalence of jobs in inadequate working conditions low wages and low labour productivity. The leader of the National Party has publicly spoken about how low-paid workers are having it tough but he won't say whether he supports the minimum wage increase and he doesn't have any plans on whether he allows workers to be able to negotiate fair wages. The National Party considers low-paid workers who clean our toilets our offices keep us safe drive our buses look after our elders bottom feeders—what a shame. The National Party have been beating drums about the cost of living in the last few weeks over and over yet they are opposing any major step that's designed to help make low-paid workers lives easy. What a hypocrisy. The National Party has no plans.Labour supports the regular increase in the minimum wage and through our fair pay agreement system is taking pressure off large minimum wage increases by getting industry employers and unions to negotiate their minimum working conditions in low-paid industries. Fair pay agreements will allow employers and unions to be able to negotiate minimum conditions that are appropriate for their industry and to help good quality employers from being undermined by ratbags who pay as low as they can and treat their workers as expendable. Our workers are not expendable; they're valuable.At the heart of this bill are people—real people hard-working people but yet for years and years undervalued underpaid and overlooked. Our security guards our cleaners our bus drivers supermarket workers—these are some of the hardest-working people. Every day they go on doing 50 60 70 hours just to make ends meet yet they fail because they're not getting paid fairly.Competitive tendering is driving down wages. This was stopped by Part 6A but then companies started tendering on the basis of putting more work into the same hours. Malia I'm going to quote her. Malia to me is not just any worker that I have seen her story on the media we have worked together. Malia myself and Mele have taken a plane to Auckland to negotiate and bargain with employers. After three weeks of hard negotiation the only thing we got was 18c—18c. Malia said "Every time we change the contract it will always be our hours that will be cut down. Hours cut down still more work to do." And Mele: "When a contract is tendered the new company comes in. They all come with their price. They have to cut something to make a margin of profit in there and they look at who? At cleaners. They cut our hours yet the work remains the same even sometimes more."Malia Mele and many other friends today—my colleagues and the Minister mentioned many names—they are real people. They are not just a number. They are not just numbers to be dismissed or to just muck around with. They are real workers who are making a difference in this country every day and the last two years have showed us that. While all of us stayed home keeping safe Malia Mele and their friends would go on every day and get their work done and often putting their lives at risk and the lives of their families at risk.And today the Labour Party and this Government has recognised their hard work and we have decided to put an end to the misery and the unfairness. Today these people have a new hero. We're talking about thousands of people throughout this country and that hero is called the Hon Michael Wood who in the last few months went out through the country and virtually engaged with them he listened to them he respected them and to them Michael is their hero.Finally what I wanted to say is that it's OK to disagree on things. It's OK to say no to things but the disrespect we have seen today towards our hard-working cleaners bus drivers supermarket workers and the many more—300000 people today have been disrespected over and over again by various speakers in this House and that is not OK. We can do better. We can disagree we can be political we can disagree on things but disrespecting the hard-working people and their only wrongdoing is they're hard workers—nothing more nothing less.Today is a good day and I look forward to having this bill through the select committee process which I will be fortunate enough to be sitting on with my colleagues and our hard-working chair Marja Lubeck. And we will be looking forward to engaging with the public with submitters and we will be making amendments if needed—if needed. But this bill as it is is a good bill—it's good enough. And finally I'd like to thank everyone who contributed today including those who shamefully insulted the hard-working people. I appreciate you. I'm not going to call you names just like you did but today is a good day. I highly highly highly commend this bill to the House."