Walker Holly: Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Walker Holly: Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 21 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8866. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
HOLLY WALKER (Green) 
: 
 I think we can probably agree in the House today that there is no doubt that we should be very worried about the rate of youth unemployment in New Zealand. We know that there are at least 90000 young people nationwide who are not in any kind of employment education or training. We know that in every region of the country more young people are claiming the unemployment benefit than 5 years ago. We know that youth unemployment for those aged 15 to 19 is at around 30 percent. That is a rate that rivals those of Spain of Greece and of all those countries in economic chaos at the moment. We do not want to be in that list of countries. As well as hurting our young people right now such high rates of youth unemployment will be disastrous for our country in the long term—for our long-term health education employment and justice spending and for the skills and sustainability of our future workforce. So this issue does deserve the highest priority of this House. 
However the Government claims that reintroducing youth rates is its answer to these high rates of youth unemployment—that reintroducing youth rates as it does in this bill the Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill will improve job opportunities for young people and will encourage employers to take on more young workers. So how did it arrive at this particular solution to the problem of youth unemployment? Did it conduct a detailed evaluation of all the different ways that you might address youth unemployment of all the different options to help young people into employment and training and have a look at those against some kind of robust criterion about which was the most likely to succeed? No it did not. It made an ideological commitment before the election to reintroduce youth rates—largely at the behest of that single-member irrelevant and unpopular support party that it has the ACT Party—and pursued it without even looking at any other options to reduce youth unemployment. 
How do we know it did not look at any other options? Because it says so in the regulatory impact statement for this bill. I quote: “The starting out wage proposal is a pre-election policy commitment. The Ministry’s analysis has therefore not considered other options for achieving the objectives of the proposed starting out wage package.” That is right: it did not even look at any other options to achieve the objective of reducing youth unemployment. This is not evidence-based policy. It is—to borrow a phrase that I learnt last week from my colleague who has just spoken Iain Lees-Galloway—policy-based evidence. Having come up with the policy it then got its officials to come up with some evidence to support it. That is no way to make policy and what is in this bill is no way to reduce youth unemployment. 
Before I go on to talk a bit about the provisions of the bill and how harmful and discriminatory they are I want to spend a little bit of time talking about some of the other things that the Government could do to assist more young people into employment education and training instead of what is in this bill. The reason I want to do that is that I am aware that there are probably quite a few young people following the debate today and they will have heard a lot if they are listening— 
Hon Simon Bridges 
: Really? Really? 
HOLLY WALKER 
: Yes because they are directly affected by it Mr Bridges. 
Hon Simon Bridges 
: I doubt it. 
HOLLY WALKER 
: They will have heard—and if they are not listening there is a reason for that. They will have heard how hopeless the youth unemployment situation is and how they should be satisfied with any paid job they can get—even if it is paid at less than subsistence wages. They will have heard a lot about how bad the bill is and it is very bad. But I do not want any young people listening to this debate to lose hope or lose faith in the ability of this Parliament and us as MPs to advocate for them and for policies that actually work for them. I would not blame them if having heard all that doom and gloom they switch off. And if indeed as the Minister of Labour says they are not watching—and he as the Minister responsible for this bill should be very concerned if they are not—it is because politics has become irrelevant and hostile to them. Indeed the voting statistics from the last election show that more and more young people are doing exactly that—turning away from Parliament and politics and disengaging from our political system. It is because of bills like this that they are doing that. 
I want to assure young people that some of us at least have ideas and solutions to put on the Table and a genuine commitment to engage with young people about what works best for them. Had the Government done that for this bill I think it would look very different. The Green Party for example is committed to better pathways to employment education and training for young people including more equitable access to student support for higher education; greater investment in apprenticeships—even more than the Government has recently made which is nowhere near enough—greater investment in job placements and partnerships with businesses and employers; and better financial support for young job seekers. The Transport and Industrial Relations Committee heard many practical ideas about how to achieve these things from the young people who submitted on this bill who were full of good ideas about how we could address the problem of youth unemployment. Sadly they were ignored by the select committee. They were ignored by the select committee like all but seven of the over 500 submissions that were received by the committee. Out of those over 500 submissions most of them—over 500 of them—were opposed and only seven submissions were in favour of the bill. Yet the Government went with the seven not with the 500. 
Why were those 500 submitters opposed to this bill? Well I will tell you. It is because it introduces unacceptable discrimination into our law. I have said this in the first reading and in my second reading speech. It is not acceptable in our country any more to pay women less than men for doing the same job. It is illegal to do that. It might still happen but if it does we do our best to find out about it and prosecute. Similarly it is not acceptable to pay people from ethnic minorities less than others for doing exactly the same job. It is illegal and when that happens we do our best to prosecute and report it. Similarly it is not acceptable to pay young people who are doing the exact same job as older workers less for the same job. Since 2008 thanks to a member’s bill in the name of the former Green MP Sue Bradford it has been illegal to do that too. But this bill reverses that change and reintroduces lower minimum wages for three categories of young people: 16 and 17-year-olds in their first 6 months with a new employer 18 and 19-year-olds who have been on a benefit for 6 months or more and 16 to 19-year-olds who are in industry training. 
Not only is it discriminatory and retrograde to do this it is nonsensical because where is the incentive for young people on a benefit to move into paid work if they will not get even the minimum wage when they do? How is it fair for a 16 or 17-year-old to have to go back to subsistence minimum wage rates if they move to a new employer even if they had been paid at the full adult minimum wage for months even years? If they start a new job they have to go back. How does that make sense? What we will actually see are young people who are taken on for 90 days under the 90-day trial period. When they finish that 90 days they will be flicked on to a new employer and many of them will be locked into these low wages for much longer than 6 months because they cannot get a foot in the door. 
This bill reinforces New Zealand as a low-wage economy. It will help to keep wages down not just for young people but actually for all workers and subsidise employers. But worst of all I think it sends a terrible message to young people about the value that we in this Parliament place on them. It says that they are not worth as much as older New Zealanders that their skills and their labour are less valuable that their expenses and their costs are not as important and essentially that they as human beings are simply not as important as older New Zealanders. It is no wonder that with a Parliament that sends that message young people are turning away from us in droves Mr Bridges. As I said in the second reading last week there was a glimmer of hope last week when we passed the second reading of the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill. We threatened to look relevant and interesting to young people for about 5 minutes and the galleries were full of young people but we have completely undermined that message this week with the passage of this bill. It tells young people they are not worthy of our respect and as I said last week in Parliament I am ashamed of this House for passing it.