Twyford Phil: Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Twyford Phil: Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 14 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8591. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatu) 
: 
 We took the mickey out of the Hon Maurice Williamson earlier this afternoon for bringing the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Amendment Bill to the House. A number of us commented then that it was a curious use of the House’s time to be dealing with the minutiae of plumbers gasfitters and drainlayers when there are so many pressing economic social and environmental problems facing the country. But to be honest compared with that bill this bill the Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill is the work of an intellectual midget. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: Pygmy. 
PHIL TWYFORD 
: Pygmy—midget—pygmy. Chris Auchinvole would have us believe that the choice facing this country is between no work and work on reduced wages. Is that really what John Key’s brighter future has come to? This is the choice we face as a country: our young people either should be paid to stay at home all day or they should be prepared to take a cut in wages and be paid less than the next person for doing exactly the same work. 
That is the kind of vision that Chris Auchinvole has for this country and that is where John Key’s brighter future has got to. It is depressing. It is depressing to be standing in this House on a Thursday afternoon debating a bill brought to this House by a political party that is so bankrupt of ideas. National is so utterly lacking in any kind of creative thinking about this country’s future how we build prosperity how we increase productivity and how we unleash the potential of our young people that this is the best—this is the best—it can do. 
If this is Simon Bridges’ attempt at a career-advancing move then I hope he has got some other ideas in his back pocket because this bill is based on the flimsiest of logic the flimsiest of policy. The idea that if you cut the wages down from $13.75 to $11 for 16 17 18 and 19-year-olds who have been on the dole for 6 months somehow you will create new jobs is what this bill is based on. It is pretty simple for the folks at home who are listening to this. If they have just tuned in that is really all they need to know. The National Party is cutting the take-home wages down to $11 an hour for young people between the ages of 16 and 19 who have been on the unemployment benefit for 6 months. That is National’s solution to the unemployment crisis that is facing this country. What a depressing depressing thing—to create a financial incentive for employers to hire one group of workers over another. It will not create a single new job. It will simply displace employment from one group to another. This is the extent of the National Party’s vision for tackling the jobs crisis. 
The other thing that I find really dispiriting about this bill is that people in this country need hope. They need hope that there is a place for them and that there is a future for them and their families in this country. The fact that so many people are heading to the airport and heading off to Australia and further afield looking for opportunity and looking for hope is surely a wake-up call. One hundred and eighty thousand people have left this country under the National Party’s policies of the last 4 years. It cannot find a stadium big enough to fit in the equivalent number of people to signify how many people have gone to Australia. 
Interestingly we do not hear much from John Key these days about how many New Zealanders are heading to Australia but 5 years ago that was all he wanted to talk about. Now we see a bill that comes to this House to cut the wages of our young people. What will be the result? Surely they will save up their $11 an hour so that they can buy an airfare to get to Australia. 
It should not surprise us that the National Party’s first response to any major problem is to cut wages. It is what the National Party has always done. If you go back through the history of this country to the predecessors of the National Party you will see that their idea for a Depression-busting policy was to create work camps in the countryside and they shipped unemployed men and women off to those camps to work at starvation wages. That was their idea of a policy to deal with the Depression. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: Now they’re paying fringe benefit tax on accommodation. 
PHIL TWYFORD 
: Yes that is right. As Mr Cunliffe says now workers are paying fringe benefit tax on the accommodation—exactly. 
It was the National Party that was responsible for the policies of the 1990s to smash the trade union movement of this country to get rid of the minimum wage and to drive down wages. And my God it succeeded and we are dealing today with the legacy of those policies that made a low-wage economy. Yet when the election campaign came around in 2008 the National Party of the time under John Key campaigned on the idea of closing the wage and salary gap with Australia. Yet time after time after time National members do whatever they possibly can to drive down wages. We have seen the pathetic increases to the minimum wage that this Government has presided over. We have seen the 90-day bill which surely has one objective in mind and that is to create insecurity for New Zealand workers to make them fear for their jobs and in so doing to drive down the cost of labour. 
This bill is another example in that great National Party tradition to lower the cost of wages because National has only one tool in the tool box: “Whatever the problem—whatever the problem—let’s cut the cost of labour.” That is all National members know how to do. What an irony that they campaigned so hard about closing the wage gap with Australia! We have been hearing day after day in the House that the wage and salary gap under National—the gap between New Zealand and Australia—has actually increased. 
What we need is bold leadership in this country to tackle the jobs crisis and I am going to tell you some of the policies that National would be contemplating if it had any kind of curiosity about the policies that would solve the jobs crisis. For example it would be restoring the research and development tax credits so that New Zealand companies had the incentive to lift their game and invest in innovation and productivity through research and development. The members on that side of the House would be considering reform to monetary policy that would stop the endless round of squeezing the lifeblood out of our exporters every time the economy showed some kind of life. 
Instead of the Reserve Bank Governor having this single focus on controlling inflation the National MPs would be considering a monetary policy that took into account economic growth jobs and exports. But no they will not consider that. They would be considering skills and apprenticeships that would invest in our young people—not cutting their wages and taking away their employment rights but actually investing in skills and apprenticeships. There is no reason in today’s world that young people should only either be paid to stay at home or go to work and have their wages cut. 
We have seen an increase in the number of young people who are not in education employment or training: 30000 under-20-year-olds are not in education employment or training and that is 4000 more than when this Government took office. If this Government was interested in a jobs policy it would be far more wholehearted about tackling the procurement policy that sees jobs shipped offshore constantly and the gutting of New Zealand’s high-value manufacturing industry. It would consider a capital gains tax that would tilt the playing field back in favour of the productive economy away from wasteful investment in rental real estate and into businesses that will produce jobs and livelihoods for New Zealanders. But no National members are not interested. 
National members are not interested in industry policy that would look at how the State can actively partner with New Zealand firms and exporters to grow jobs and grow productivity in this country. Their idea of an industry policy is getting problem gamblers to fund Auckland’s new convention centre. That is their idea. Selling out employment law to Hollywood corporations and taking away the work rights of New Zealand workers at the behest of Hollywood is this Government’s idea of a jobs policy. It is not good enough and New Zealanders demand something better.