Moroney Sue: Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Moroney Sue: Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 19 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8646. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 In rising to speak to Part 2 of the Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill I think we may be getting to the crux of what this bill might be about. What we are clear about and I think both sides are clear about this now—that side was not last week but we are clear now—is that this bill clearly is not about creating jobs. It does not create one job. I think the Government now accepts that. It did start out saying it was going to create something like 2000 jobs but that is clearly a nonsense because as we have clearly demonstrated on this side of the Chamber pieces of law do not create jobs. A piece of law like the 90-day bill did not create one job. Cutting wages under this bill does not create one job. I think the Government has clearly now got that because it has stopped using that argument. I think the Government has actually understood that it is a bit of a nonsense to say that this bill creates jobs. 
But what my colleague Darien Fenton just referred to with regard to the amendment to the Accident Compensation Act that we are considering under Part 2 of this bill is in fact correct. We are now debating paying young injured workers 80 percent of 80 percent of the adult minimum wage which I believe is what the amendment in this part does. I think we might have got to the real motivation for this bill from this Government. If this Government can get away with paying less in terms of ACC payments it will do exactly that. We may have got to the bottom really of what the Government’s motivation is here because this would reduce the money that the Government needs to pay out in ACC payments if the amendment in Part 2 is passed. This is a saving to the Government’s books. 
Why is this important? Because the Government is desperate to save money in all sorts of inappropriate ways to fulfil its promise that it made to get back into surplus by next year. One of the ways in which this Government is trying a smoke-and-mirrors approach to doing that is that it has kept ACC levies artificially high. It made an announcement at the beginning of this year—Judith Collins made the announcement—that despite the fact that both ACC and Treasury had advised her to reduce the ACC levies and that that would actually keep our very precious and important ACC system very well in place Judith Collins refused to do that. The John Key - led Government is keeping ACC levies artificially high and in doing that—Mr Chairperson this is with regard to Part 2 because Part 2 amends the Accident Compensation Act and I just want to explain to people the context of this because this is something that the Government is going after. It is trying to make the Government books look better by— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Order! This part is about the payments and consequential amendments to the Accident Compensation Act. It is not about levies. It is not about ACC levies; it is about payments. I will ask the member to come back on that. 
SUE MORONEY 
: The connection is that what the Government pays out in ACC payments—if it can save money on that at the same time that it is keeping levies artificially high then that increases the surplus that ACC makes. The reason why the Government is doing that is that it is trying to make it look like the entire Crown accounts are reaching surplus. But the nonsense of that is that the ACC surplus cannot be used for any other purpose but to pay for accidents and injuries. It cannot be used for any other purpose so it is a complete smoke-and-mirrors type of argument for the Government to make it look like the Government is getting back into surplus when in fact what it is doing is using bills like this to reduce its costs in terms of ACC in this instance with regard to 15 and 19-year-olds in order to create a bigger surplus in the ACC accounts in order to make it look like it is reaching surplus in the Crown accounts. 
It is actually those young people those young working people who will pay the cost. They will pay the cost for that Government’s smoke-and-mirrors approach because the young workers will be on 80 percent of the adult minimum wage to start off with and if injured at work they will be on 80 percent of 80 percent. I do not know what the experience of members opposite is like of living on the minimum wage—I would suspect that not many of them have had to do that—but here we are talking about an injured worker being on 80 percent of 80 percent of the minimum wage. 
I would ask the members opposite to reflect on how they think they could make ends meet if they were a 15 to 19-year-old and they were working and trying to live on $10.80 per hour and if they were that worker whom I was talking about earlier in the debate who has been forced really into accepting $10.80 to work for Wendy’s in Hamilton. They will not have an option. It will not be voluntary. They will be told: “Take it or leave it. The job is yours but only at the rate of $10.80.” There will not be a freedom of choice about that. They will be forced into that situation. They either say no to the job and then face sanctions by that very same Government or they accept $10.80 an hour. So there will not be a voluntary aspect in that at all. But if they are in that Wendy’s burger joint that is coming to Hamilton and they get forced into accepting the job for $10.80 an hour and they have an accident or an injury is suffered at work—it could be I do not know hot fat? Those are actually quite common sorts of injuries in that industry. I remember when I was working in that industry that hot fat from those fryers was unfortunately quite a regular sort of injury that was suffered by workers. If they actually suffer that type of injury they will be on 80 percent of $10.80 and that will be those workers—those 15 to 19-year-olds—paying the price for this Government’s promise to return the books to surplus by next year. They will be paying the price because the Government actually gets to save money here. 
So this is not about employers or workers or opportunity or job creation or any of those myths and legends that the Government opposite has tried to tell us about. It is actually about spending cuts from the Government’s perspective as well as cutting wages. And the folly of that whole strategy is that cutting wages will actually lead to fewer jobs—not job creation but fewer jobs—because if wages are cut in this way all of those 15 to 19-year-olds will have less money to spend and when they spend less money there is an effect on our entire economy. This bill demonstrates a complete lack of financial and economic management from this Government. It shows that it has not got a clue what it is doing. 
I hardly ever agree with David Bennett—we come across each other quite a lot in Hamilton and I hardly ever agree with him—but he said in 2010 in a speech on this very issue about youth rates: “We do not feel that it is helpful in keeping the focus on growth and growing the economy which is needed to create jobs and which this Government has made a top priority for this year.” That is what he said in 2010 about the prospect of cutting wages for young people. He actually said that it would not be good for the economy. He was right. I agreed with him then. But I do not agree with him now because what he is telling us now by the way that I expect he is going to cast his vote shortly in this Chamber is that it is no longer a top priority actually for the Government. He said back in 2010 that it was going to be a top priority—creating jobs was going to be a top priority—but he also said back in 2010 that it was “important that we do not set the bar too low in the sense that our young people who work hard must not find they get no reward for their efforts.” That was David Bennett in 2010. In 2012—2013 sorry; I am going into a bit of a time warp there. It is not even—actually it was on 21 April to be fair so almost 3 years later David Bennett now seems absolutely happy to sell those young people down the tubes. It is frightening that in not even 3 years he and his Government have lost faith in these young people. They have given up on them and—