Bradford Sue: Minimum Wage (Abolition of Age Discrimination) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Bradford Sue: Minimum Wage (Abolition of Age Discrimination) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:629;Page:1419] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 First of all I would like to thank again the four parties that have shown their support for my bill tonight: Labour New Zealand First the Maori Party and United Future. I would particularly like to thank Judy Turner for her frankness and her courage in convincing her party to support a Green Party bill—that is quite novel. I would also like to compliment members on the quality of the debate from all sides. It is quite unusual in this House to hear every speaker actually addressing the issue. Even when we totally disagree with each other I think it is fantastic that we have opportunities for this kind of debate. I wish we had longer to go into some of the deeper economic issues behind this. 
In terms of the bill itself I would first like to discuss some of the things Dr Mapp mentioned. He talked about the perverse incentive that my bill would give to school students who are working after school and on weekends. As I pointed out earlier precisely the opposite is actually the case. I think it is a perverse incentive to pay people such low rates that they have to work longer hours than would be desirable and are spending far too much time working rather than studying resting or doing other things. I am not saying though that younger people have the same skills and experience as older workers as Dr Mapp seemed to imply. Young workers have different skills and attributes to offer their employers. It is simply a matter of difference and the attributes that young people bring to these jobs are different from those of a lot of mature workers. We need people to do this kind of work. We need people who are willing and able to run around in the back of a McDonald’s and are willing and able as Tariana Turia said to push trolleys back into supermarkets and to stand on their feet all day in a retail outlet and meet their sales targets. We depend on those workers to keep all sorts of businesses going and it is an insult to them to say that because that work does not require a university degree or an apprenticeship it is somehow worth less. The arguments that Dr Mapp and his colleague Mark Blumsky made do not counteract the fundamental principle that people doing the same work should get the same pay and I am sure that at some deep level even the National Party members may understand that. 
Finally on the question of productivity which Dr Mapp has talked about a lot and which is a really interesting issue he is saying that the most important thing is that these students can get a really good education. That is true but we believe that the National Party would really be putting its money where its mouth is if it supported our Green Party policies on education such as getting rid of the student loan scheme altogether providing a system to remit student debt and to reduce the level of fees that students have to pay so that we get rid of the whole system that is encumbering generation after generation of graduates. That would really help productivity and help keep our young graduates in this country and get them back from overseas. That would be a real contribution instead of penalising young people by paying them such low wages. 
I turn to Peter Brown’s arguments. He has said that abolishing youth rates totally may be doing young people a huge disservice. This bill does not actually abolish youth rates totally. Judy Turner mentioned that fact as well. In fact I have come in for quite a lot of criticism from colleagues in the union movement and from youth organisations because my bill does not get rid of youth rates altogether. My bill deals only with youth rates for workers aged 16 and 17. I acknowledge that that does a disservice to workers under 16 whose needs are deep—they are a very vulnerable and exploited group of workers—but I felt that it was sensible to take this one step at a time. I thought it would be great if we could achieve an end to at least one level of discrimination and I am sure there will be a lot of submissions to the select committee criticising my bill because it has not gone far enough. This bill is not extreme I say to Judy Turner. It is a very moderate piece of legislation. 
To Tariana Turia who talked about workers with disabilities I would like to say that I am very well aware of that issue and the extent to which people with intellectual disability for example are and continue to be exploited in some situations is deeply problematic. I hope the Maori Party will join with the Green Party in encouraging the Government to proceed with the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill with alacrity. 
In conclusion I would like once again to acknowledge and thank all the parties who are taking the progressive step of backing this bill tonight. I just hope that their commitment to fairness and equity to young workers will continue all the way through until this bill becomes law.