Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a real pleasure to rise and speak at the second reading of the Fair Pay Agreements Bill. I share the view of Labour colleagues around the significance of this for us as a country. It really is the most significant piece of legislation that I remember in my time in this place and before that goes towards undoing structural inequality in our country. We know that the level of inequality and struggle experienced by so many working people in this country is unjust and unfair and caused by the way we have set up our labour market to provide flexibility for the employer not the employee and that values employers at the expense of employees.I remember Helen Kelly talking about this about the way that so much of the narrative that we hear from the right is that working people should be grateful to their employers for their job as if their work is not and cannot speak for itself as if their contribution is nothing. This bill is about changing that. It's not this Parliament deciding what should be done. There are other jurisdictions that do that—right?—where the Parliaments set those baseline conditions. But this approach is actually one that brings communities together. That is a result in its essence of a tripartite working group that involved business and unions and Government who sat down together and looked at the degree of how our labour market was working and the inequality in it. And Jim Bolger recognised and has clearly articulated that the flexibility promoted by the National Party that he was part of introducing had gone too far that our communities and our families have suffered and are still suffering because of those laws introduced at that time and that are being defended staunchly by that side of the House—I'm going to pretend that I'm not on that side of the House right at this moment.I do just need to bring in too the recent report from the Human Rights Commission around the Pacific Pay Gap Inquiry that's shown Pacific people are experiencing just appalling unconscionable levels of structural discrimination every single day that Pacific men are being paid almost 20 percent less than Pākehā men in their workplaces and Pacific women are being paid about 25 percent less. And when the analysis is done about why—is it because they're less educated that actually their age distribution is different; any of those factors that might be explainable—the majority of the reason is not that. It is discrimination and unconscious bias in the way our labour market is set up.So fair pay agreements weren't one of the recommendations of that report. They were more specific but it is in my view part of the solution because we know that the numbers of Pacific people on minimum wage is the majority. And what we hear again and again from particularly marginalised communities is that they're spending their life on the minimum wage despite years of experience in the job. We've heard these submissions to the committee. It was a really compelling submission I think from E tū members talking about working for like 20-plus years for one employer. The loyalty: turning up to work every day back-breaking physical work and to still be on the minimum wage. That's just disrespectful. But it is a result of the existing current system that we need to change. That's why this legislation is part of that change because—I will speak for myself—I am not willing to accept that status quo anymore. I believe everybody in this House should be angry about what that status quo is doing to our people and our families and our communities and should be looking for solutions to that. This is a solution. I am yet to hear one from the National Party at all. I've heard from them that this bill had no one support it; yet the analysis of the submissions on the bill showed that almost 80 percent—75 percent—of people supported this bill. It came out of that tripartite working group that had the support of business unions and Government. There is a small group—and so often we see this with inequality right? That it's upheld by that small group who benefits from it. That's who we're hearing represented in this House from the National Party this afternoon. I am pleased not to be sharing that role. I am pleased to be in the Green Party supporting a commitment to eliminating inequality.I also do just want to bring up that point made by the previous speaker Camilla Belich around the benefit to employers who are wanting to do the right thing or are doing the right thing at the moment—that this evens up the playing field and prevents them from being undercut by dodgy employers. I would also say that it's quite well researched and evidenced that we have a management crisis in this country in many of our businesses and that is a key part of the productivity challenge we've got. A dynamic of that management deficit is an undervaluing of people—an under-investment in people and their ability to grow and help develop a business. So this is a solution to help those businesses change their culture. It's to provide some leadership for those businesses to get up to speed. The evidence that we see in other countries—where this is the norm can I just say. This is not some radical initiative. It just embarrasses me to hear it suggested as if it is when it really is just us catching up with most other countries that we like to compare ourselves to. It helps business as well as helping workers and communities and families. You know it is possible to have win win win but possibly not if you're the 1 percent that we're hearing represented by the National Party yet again.In the time I've got left I did just want to touch on a couple of changes in the bill and a couple of things that we might like to see progress further in the committee stage. I was really pleased to see that the mandatory to decide" aspects of the bill have been extended from wages and hours to include training and development and leave. If I think of the Kristine Bartlett settlement as our first exemplar of a fair pay agreement the training was absolutely essential to achieving equity for those workers. I'm not sure we've fully implemented it as intended on the ground and that will require I think a strengthening of our industrial relations system beyond this to ensure that these are enforced as well as agreed on. The Greens would like to see default union membership as well as more labour inspectors to help us realise the potential of these agreements. We know; we heard examples from submitters around the struggle in terms of hours of work and leave particularly in non-unionised workplaces where more and more was expected for just the same amount. So that was really good to see that extended. We would also love to see the right to strike—I keep on saying that. The Greens would like to see that back in there but we are happy to support this bill today."