Menéndez March RicardoRICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green) (remote): Tēnā koe Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to speak on the second reading of the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill.I want to begin by giving the absolute biggest shout-out to support workers around the country who have long fought for liveable wages and safe working conditions. You guys do essential work to support countless people in our communities and help them lead fulfilling and independent lives and your pay needs to reflect this. You work long hours often without breaks and you do some of the hardest work there is dealing with complex needs complex behavioural issues hazardous waste always on your feet caring for some of our most vulnerable members of our communities.As many speakers have noted there is a history of this bill and it's a history that I think resembles a really long and hard-earned win by workers and particularly Kristine Bartlett who secured a really important win via the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Act in 2017. She ended up lodging an application with the Employment Relations Authority against the National-led Government when she wasn't receiving equal pay per the Equal Pay Act of 1972. And this was a long fight. Basically after a lot of back and forth and court action and it did end up delivering $2 billion worth of wage rises. I think it's been interesting watching and hearing the National Party members trash the Labour Party for not reflecting their working-class values. I want to just remind the National Party members that they themselves put up many hurdles at the time for the workers fighting for these livable wages.I also want to remind the Labour members that via this bill they have missed an opportunity to ensure that the wage increases of support workers reflected the work that they do and the cost of living pressures that people are facing right now. The Government had the opportunity as the 2017 bill was coming to expire to ensure that workers had their pay increases reflected properly. There were five years for the Labour Government to take action on this and at the 11th hour effectively what we are seeing is a bill that will effectively be giving support workers a 70c an hour increase which as my previous Green Party speaker Teanau Tuiono noted is effectively a Chupa Chup. I think when we know that so many support workers are getting burnt out when people are leaving the profession shortly after entering it just because they cannot make ends meet and they're so short staffed that the pressure is too high I think we need to do far more.I've also noted that today in the House and actually over the past few weeks Labour and National have had a bit of a back and forth about migrant workers and particularly about pathways to residence. I want to note that migrant workers make a pretty substantive proportion of support workers particularly in the aged-care sector. And it was interesting that on the one hand National was advocating for quicker pathways to residency for migrant workers and particularly nurses and Labour was pushing back against it because they were arguing that if we gave them pathways to residency they would leave the profession and neither of those parties were acknowledging that the reason many workers whether it's nurses or in this case support workers end up leaving the profession is the low pay and poor working conditions and the massive pressure they are facing. I think this bill is again not acknowledging that the reason why we continue having such a shortfall of support workers around the country is because of that poor pay and those poor working conditions. So if we're going to be bringing migrant workers with the hope of staying in the profession—and in this case not so much the hope but the fact that we're putting them on employer-bound visas because they have no other option but to work for the employer that they came in with effectively—I think we need to acknowledge that there's a better solution which is to give these workers liveable wages and to actually then give them the freedom to move around. Because support workers who enter this profession they do it out of the love and care they have for the communities that they serve. But when we put them into the impossible situation of not being able to make ends meet we're doing a disservice to the many people that we've talked about being essential during the pandemic.I want to just briefly mention that this is why for us we can't support the bill in its current state. This is also why we've put an amendment which we're looking forward to discussing in the committee of the whole House to basically lift the wages of these workers to much more substantive levels and to also reflect for example some of the pay levels that support workers see in Australia where they have far higher wages. Compared to New Zealand they just start at a rate that would be the equivalent of the New Zealand living wage. I think it's a disservice that we can't even guarantee these workers a starting living wage which should be the barest absolute minimum.It's about time that we start valuing care work and workers that prop up our whole healthcare system. And it's absolutely not OK to keep their wages low and keep our support workers from achieving fair pay because it's predominantly work that is done by women; and not just women but migrant Māori and Pasifika women. Many of the groups we now have are completely overrepresented in wage gaps across the country. So if we're again serious about addressing these inequities this bill would be amended the Government would have committed to engaging with unions at a much earlier stage so that we're not discussing this bill in urgency at the last moment. And we look forward to continue advocating at all stages of this bill tonight for the Government to increase the pay of support workers and to actually reflect the working-class values the Labour Party particularly talks about. So I'll continue campaigning on this issue and ask for my colleagues to get Labour to support this amendment across the line. Kia ora.