Salesa JennyHon JENNY SALESA (Minister for Building and Construction): Fakalofa lahi atu Fakatonu Fono Taane. [Much greetings Mr Speaker.]It's language week for Niueans and it is a great opportunity to celebrate Niuean language here in the House of Parliament. Fakalofa lahi atu kia mutolu oti. [Much greetings to you all.]Thank you for this call on the Equal Pay Amendment Bill Mr Speaker. I would first of all like to acknowledge and thank Kristine Bartlett and her union E tū for her courage and perseverance and thank the union for supporting Kristine to ensure that we get to this day and that we address equal pay. I'm humbled to be a woman who is a Minister in this Government and really honoured to be speaking in support of this historic legislation today. The Equal Pay Amendment Bill will establish a fair and accessible process to address the historic pay inequities that women in Aotearoa New Zealand are currently facing.One of the things that we've heard from the previous speaker Parmjeet Parmar as well as the Hon Nikki Kaye was about how slow our Government has been to address this issue. We haven't even been here 12 months. The previous speaker spoke about how they had a bill that was ready in 2017. The previous Government had nine very long years. If they were as committed to addressing equal pay as the previous speaker said they were they should have addressed it within those nine long years. They shouldn't have left it right until the end of their tenure of nine years before addressing it if indeed they were committed to addressing equal pay.SPEAKER: Order! I'm now going to call the member to address the bill. I think that theme has got to the point of being tedious repetition.Hon JENNY SALESA: The Equal Pay Amendment Bill provides clarity on what equal pay should be what the process should be for addressing pay equity. We know that discrimination has led to lower pay for many of our female-dominated industries. We also know that this is despite having similar qualifications having the same skill requirements and in many instances for some women it's despite having higher qualifications or many more years of work experience. They are still not being paid comparable pay to folks in a male-dominated occupation.As a Government we are committed to growing and sharing prosperity in a fair way. Taking action to close the gender pay gap as well as to address this issue of historical undervaluation of work that is predominantly performed by our women is one of things that our Government is doing with the introduction of this legislation.It is of note that the Equal Pay Amendment Bill was indeed introduced to this House on 19 September—125 years to the day since the fight for women's right to vote was won. The suffragettes that took the cause of pay equity in the 1800s understood the huge significance of equal pay. They saw the battle that would follow. After winning the vote for women that was going to be their next fight. I don't think they could predict that 125 years later we would still be having this discussion. I don't think they foresaw that 125 years later we would still not be there.New Zealand women over the years pressed hard for pay equity and they achieved the Equal Pay Act of 1972. However we're still not there yet in terms of pay parity. This Equal Pay Amendment Bill will make it easier for workers to make a pay equity claim. It will allow workers to use accessible processes to raise their claim within New Zealand's existing bargaining framework setting negotiation rather than court processes at its core.Poverty and inequality are real issues that are facing too many of our women nowadays. I wish to acknowledge that when we talk of equal pay there are many of our women—especially Māori women Pacific women and ethnic communities women—who are bearing the brunt of this burden in many instances. The hourly wage rates for men and women already show women at a disadvantage of 9.2 percent but when we look into further details of that disparity we know that many Māori Pacific and women of ethnic communities tend to earn sometimes $6 per hour less than women of other ethnic groups. This is not right. It is not fair. It is not equitable and this bill is one way this Government is taking action to ensure that we address that.My colleague the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway has already outlined the history and the approach for this bill but I must note that the bill before us does not include any of the hurdles that were planned by the previous Government that would have made it too hard for many working women to raise pay equity claims in reality. The previous National Government's bill took a limiting approach to pay equity claims. It was criticised by stakeholders hence our decision to rework it with the assistance of the reconvened joint working group. This has resulted in a much better bill and a much more balanced and practical bill. I strongly support this bill and I commend it to the House.