Dalziel Lianne: Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Dalziel Lianne: Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I have not had the opportunity to speak in the Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill debate at this stage so I think that it is appropriate that I do so under a number of roles I have formerly held—as a Minister responsible for the commerce portfolio and for small business but also as a former Minister of Women’s Affairs. This issue of the minimum wage not being met for those who are in contracting arrangements is very very common in a number of industries that women work in. I think that this bill goes a long way to addressing what has always been an anomaly which is that once individuals are outside the parameters of the Employment Relations Act because they are not employees they are very vulnerable to ending up in a situation where they are earning quite considerably less than the minimum wage when we take into account all of their travelling time. 
I will use the example of home-help workers because I have a constituent who is a home-help worker and who came to me about 4 years ago with a petition she had gathered from a number of her charges—people whose private homes she went into to look after them. The reason she had come to see me was that she had ended up that particular week facing a very horrendous bill with her petrol. So she came to see me because she had literally come to the end of her tether in terms of what she could afford to do. Essentially once the travelling costs had been taken off her weekly pay she was much worse off than she had been 7 years before when she worked in a condom factory. I think there was an ironic juxtaposition between somebody who 7 years ago had been working in a condom factory—making obviously a very worthy contribution to that particular area—and earning considerably more than she was earning when looking after some of the most vulnerable members in our community: the elderly and those with disabilities. I thought that her case was a very important case; therefore I assisted her to bring her petition to Parliament. 
The petition was heard by the select committee and reported back to the House in due course and changes were made to the funding arrangements for home-care workers in two major respects. The first was a requirement by district health boards that in their contracting arrangements they had to require that the home-care industry provided for a travel policy in its contracts. So that was one very good outcome that arose from her taking that case. The other was a straight wage increase which was funded by a major injection of funds by the previous Government into the sector as a result of the need to address what was a major anomaly. Although she was an employee her circumstances were such that she was paid from the minute she walked into the house until the minute she walked out and none of the time she spent travelling from place to place was taken into account—which is essentially what brought her earnings below the minimum wage. Let us wind that back into the situation for those considered in the legislation now to be vulnerable workers and put those workers into a contracting situation. That is even worse because not only do they get caught out by ultimately working for under the minimum wage but they have far fewer of the protections that exist to protect employees under the Employment Relations Act. 
So I think that this legislation is important legislation and I congratulate Darien Fenton on bringing it to the House. I think that we often overlook the intention of legislation when we are looking at applying standard legislation across the board which is what the Employment Relations Act does. Sometimes we think that people who are in individual contracts for services—rather than contracts of service—are in a stronger position and can negotiate their own conditions of those contracts and that there is somehow a more level playing field. I think the point that Darien Fenton has made in bringing this legislation to the House is that that is not the case when we are talking about a relatively vulnerable workforce. If members want to look a bit further I think that that point has been well made.