Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise to speak on the Fair Pay Agreements Bill a bill that National opposes and eventually an Act that we will repeal.Can I start by also giving my thanks to the submitters and also the officials on this bill. It was a long and complex and difficult bill with many changes because of all of the different scenarios and the unexpected and unintended problems with the bill. As my colleague across the way Chris Baillie pointed out there were many changes because of these unexpected problems.At a time of skyrocketing and stubbornly high inflation—and I don't think anyone expected today the number 7.2 to come out—despite the predictions that this would drop we still see it stubbornly high and yet we get this bill. At a time when we should be focused on driving down inflation on making our workforce more flexible on making our employers have more agility and on improving compliance all that this bill does is the opposite of all of this. The bill allows a very small minority of workers to force a whole sector into negotiations.Now I think it's worth pointing out at this stage the numbers that will force negotiations—and eventually a fair pay agreement because there is no turning back: 10 percent of the workforce 1000 employees or a public interest test which technically would require no employees. Now I want to put this to the other side of the House because all we've heard today is how much people want this how important it is for workers how desperately they need this and how it's going to be so important for them and they were overwhelmingly supportive of it: if that was the case what is wrong with making it 50 percent of the workforce—if they so desperately want it and they're so desperately supporting this? Why make it 10 percent or only 1000 workers or even have a public interest test? Why do we have a need for a public interest test if the workers are so desperately calling for this? Well they can't answer that and they won't and they haven't. Helen White: I just did.ERICA STANFORD: Well get up and take a call.Helen White: I will.ERICA STANFORD: Excellent. Can't wait for it. The member for Auckland Central Helen White is going to get up and take a call. We can't wait for those bits of information.As I mentioned this will force the sector into bargaining and there is no coming back from it—10 percent of the workforce or in fact none of the workforce if indeed it meets the public interest test. So this will set a base pay rate for a company in Auckland a company in Gore and a company in Invercargill regardless of the costs that that business faces in that particular town.As always in this bill the Government confuses wage rates and increasing wage rates with an increase in productivity. They've done exactly the same with immigration settings pushing up wages believing that it will push up productivity and yet how has that worked out so far for immigration? All we've seen is businesses closing their doors because they don't have workers. Interestingly despite their constant claims of productivity improvement nowhere as my colleague Paul Goldsmith pointed out is productivity mentioned as something that must be discussed when putting together an agreement—and yet we have this productivity disease. Nowhere is it mentioned. And as my colleague Paul Goldsmith mentioned this favours those large employers. It was interesting with Rachel Boyack before making those claims about the supermarkets and how this was going to make it fair for everyone but as we've already pointed out in this bill this will favour large employers who can set wages and conditions to suit them and not their smaller competitors. We made that point at the Education and Workforce Committee and we've made it again today.One of the problems that have not been ironed out that I mentioned at the select committee—and the Minister couldn't answer—is how will the wage floor for migrant workers affect this bargaining? Because effectively the floor for a migrant is the median wage which next year in February will be almost $30 an hour. Now no one at the select committee—not the Minister or the officials or anyone—was able to say well how will that affect the bargaining when setting a price floor because effectively you've got two price floors and surely that will raise the floor to whatever the floor is for the migrant worker. No one in the select committee was able to explain how that potentially would work.As I've mentioned when we need flexibility we're getting the opposite. We will repeal the bill as soon as we have the opportunity to do so.