Reti ShaneDr SHANE RETI (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to speak to this bill. I'll start by making an observation that this is the second time in a week that we're doing a health bill under urgency with truncated processes. I'll speak more to that.I want to briefly talk to the history that brings us here today re-examining the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Amendment Bill. In 2017 I think Jonathan Coleman was the Minister leading this then under a National Government. We enabled the Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlements Bill also known as the TerraNova or Kristine Bartlett bill sometimes. A number of us sat on that select committee and grappled with complex issues such as cost pass-through and pay relativity. But we got to the end and enabled a bill. It was interesting actually—during that process the comparator for care and support workers was actually Corrections staff at that point in time. We go through and the result was a scaled tiered framework for an increase in wage rates that for the 65000 caregivers was actually quite significant. Those 65000 caregivers were mostly healthcare assistants (HCAs) and support workers across four funded sectors: the aged residential care sector home and community disability and mental health and addiction. Now the bill had a sunset clause five years after commencement 30 June 2022 in eight days' time which is what brings us here. What was required over these five years was a framework for wage bargaining to incorporate the pay equity principles so that ordinary normal wage bargaining could occur when this bill disabled on 30 June in eight days' time. Clearly that hasn't happened and that's what brings us here today.The background of what's actually happened over those five years is substantively nothing. Nothing happened—five years to progress this. There was no epiphany that on 30 June the pay equity bill was going to expire. What actually happened here was in August 2021 the New Zealand Aged Care Association (NZACA) reminded officials of the expiry date. It was raised through the regular ARC or the Aged Residential Care steering group which has district health boards and Ministry of Health officials on it. Nothing was done. So that was August last year—the first flag in the sand that I want to put.On 21 December a letter was sent to the interim chair of Health New Zealand bringing again to his attention that this Act was going to expire on 30 June. Nothing was done. On 28 January a letter was sent to the Minister who did convene a meeting quite quickly I understand. He brought in his officials. I understand he was unhappy with them as well and gave them the hurry-along was how it was explained to me. In April however it appeared there was some suggestions from officials that maybe the best way to manage this was just to let the Act expire and that would have been a disaster. To go back to the pre-2017 conditions—that was unacceptable to the unions.E tū PSA and a number of other key stakeholders were present and they expressed their vehement opposition to that plan. So in May the ministry and the Government flip-flopped and said Look what we'll do is we'll put $300 million over four years. That is $75 million per annum is what the agreement will be." There was no bargaining with this. It was a mandate as has been the mandate for the rest of the sector—"This is what you will get." Fundamentally it relates to 70c per hour for those on the lowest wages and about 3 percent per annum is what that $300 million over four years equates to. What then happened was that the unions and other stakeholders other organisations said "No that's not going to cut it." and they walked away from negotiations. That's actually what's happened; that's what brings us here today. Amongst other things it's been pointed out to me that the lowest rate under this bill at $22.49 is less than the living wage of $23.65.Here are the consequences of this late and lazy bill that after five years is coming to us under urgency. Several things: first of all 65000 care and support workers will not have standard wage bargaining. Instead they get told in primary legislation what their wages will be. This is a dangerous practice. Secondly care and support workers are locked in for 18 months. This goes through to the end of next year. Thirdly there is no opportunity for the voices of care and support workers to be heard through the standard legislative process—more particularly through select committee—because today we're going to pass all of this through urgency and they wanted their voices to be heard.We learnt an awful lot when we did the TerraNova bill. We learnt an awful lot from submitters things we hadn't thought about and that's the nature of the select committee process. None of us have got a franchise on all the good ideas in the world and we learnt a lot from those submitters and the bill was shaped appropriately—Jan Logie had a key role in that as I recall. And yet we're never going to get that opportunity because today we're going to do it all at once and they are angry. E tū is angry. PSA is angry. NZACA is angry. They are all angry that their voices will not be heard.Five years to get this ready but no. All the attention has been on health reforms. All the money has been on health reforms. Five years—eight days out from when this bill expires here we are doing this under urgency. Aged and residential care workers HCAs and support workers rightly feel that they're being thrown under the bus and there are many precedents here when the Government will legislate instead of incorporate fair bargaining practices. That's a very worrying precedent.So we want to send a signal here. Our position here will be: we will be supporting this bill because we want to support and continue to send that signal that we understand and support the principles of pay equity in women-dominated careers. That's how we came to be doing the pay equity legislation in 2017 in the first place. We need people to be paid but we're putting flags in the sand for the many issues we have got not the least of which that under urgency after five years—five years when this could have been done—we're here today and we're going to rush this through without the voices of those concerned being substantively taken into account.So I've established our position established the history and established the three main concerns we've got. Again I will conclude by saying we will be supporting this bill because we support the 65000 care and support workers that it applies to. Like them we are very unhappy with the process that forces us into this position. Thank you Madam Speaker."