Kedgley Sue: Budget Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Kedgley Sue: Budget Debate 
[Sitting date: 16 June 2004. Volume:618;Page:13664. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party was particularly pleased when the Government set up a pay equity task force. Then when it released the pay equity task force recommendations and said that it was committed to setting up an office to take seriously the issue of pay equity in New Zealand we were absolutely delighted. So when we picked up the Budget we looked for signs that the Government was taking a lead in implementing pay equity in New Zealand—in particular in the State sector. We looked carefully for the provisions for money to be set aside to introduce pay equity in the State sector and in particular for a pay equity settlement for nurses. But alas we could find nothing except a very odd little sentence on upcoming bargaining rounds in the health sector which could result in increases that could decrease the operating balances of the district health boards. It stated that the risk had been updated and the Minister of Finance had yet to fully consider the quantum of that risk. The question we ask is what does that gobbledygook mean? Is it in some way a hint that the Government will be looking at a pay equity settlement for nurses or is it not? Let the Government come clean and tell us whether or not it will set aside funding for a pay equity settlement for nurses and whether it will provide leadership by providing pay equity in the State sector. 
We all know that nursing shortages are at the heart of the crisis in the health sector. We know that nurses are stretched to breaking point; we read it in the headlines daily. We know that they are leaving the profession in droves. We know we are short of about a thousand nurses and that literally hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent on trying to recruit nurses from all around the world to fill the vacancies caused by nurses leaving the profession in droves. The nursing shortage is at crisis point; it is at the heart of the crisis in the health sector. We look to the Government to make good on its commitment to doing something about pay equity in the State sector by negotiating a pay equity settlement with nurses. We sincerely hope that if the Government does sit down to negotiate with nurses it will not try to do as it has done in other areas and spread the settlement over many years with an implicit election bribe that if nurses want pay equity they will have to vote for the Government and pay equity will be slowly introduced over a number of years. I do not think that the nurses would accept that. As we know they are highly focused on finally demanding proper wages and a proper pay equity settlement. 
I will turn now to food safety. There was nothing in the Budget unfortunately to address the issues of concern that ordinary New Zealanders have about our food supply. We all know that there are hundreds of GE ingredients in our food and none of them are labelled in the supermarket. There is no provision though in the Budget for even monitoring GE food to see whether there are illegal or undeclared GE ingredients in our food. The Minister confirmed that the Government has no intention of doing any monitoring of that nor does it have any intention of introducing proper GE labelling despite the fact that there is overwhelming consumer support and demand for it. There is no provision for country-of-origin labelling. It is quite bizarre that a Government that presents itself as being democratic and open is actually denying our right to know what is in the food that we eat. It opposes an international forum’s mandatory country-of-origin labelling. That seems quite bizarre. Neither is there provision in the Budget for the monitoring of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in our food or for stopping antibiotics that we know are significant in human medicine being fed to literally millions of factory-farmed animals despite the fact that Government officials warned well over 5 years ago that feeding antibiotics that are significant to human medicine such as the macrolides is causing resistance in humans and is risking human health.