Walker Holly: Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Walker Holly: Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 18 October 2012. Volume:684;Page:6011. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
HOLLY WALKER (Green) 
: 
 I am sure it will come as no surprise to you Mr Deputy Speaker or to anyone else in this House that the Green Party is very proud to stand opposed to this detestable legislation the Minimum Wage (Starting-out Wage) Amendment Bill to lower the minimum wage for young people in New Zealand. As the party responsible for the legislation that removed youth rates in 2008 we are rightly proud in the Green Party of our track record of standing up in this Parliament against discrimination and against driving down wages to subsidise big business and standing up for young people and their right to a good life and a fair future including fair employment conditions and fair pay. 
The reintroduction of youth rates for 18 and 19-year-olds and the unjustified extension of the training period for 16 and 17-year-old workers is a massive step backwards. We have already heard from some of our Labour colleagues some of the compelling arguments against the reintroduction of youth rates. But why should we listen to just the Opposition on this? Why should we rely only on the arguments from this side of the House when there are plenty of Government MPs who put the case against youth rates incredibly well themselves when the House last considered this issue 2 years ago? I thought perhaps we should hear from one of them. 
David Bennett who spoke earlier in this debate has actually given one of the best speeches against youth rates that I have ever seen. He said: “The fundamental proposition this bill puts up is that we need to pay people less to get them into their first job so that they can have an unskilled future. That is what this bill essentially will do to New Zealanders. We see a different future for New Zealanders. We want those young people to get into training and skills so that they are not talking about getting the lowest-paid job they possibly can but instead are looking to get the best-paid job they possibly can. If we can achieve that we can make the dynamic change in our economic base that will give New Zealand the growth potential we need.” 
Hon Member 
: Who says that? 
HOLLY WALKER 
: I am still quoting—he is talking about the ACT Party which introduced the last legislation: “I think that is the fundamental point that the ACT Party has not grasped. It is looking at things in a historical perspective. Well the world has moved on.” That was David Bennett in 2010. He is right; the world has moved on. 
I want to quote another Government member one for whom I have got a lot of respect actually. Dr Jackie Blue in the same debate said: “National has not seen any evidence to show that young people are losing their jobs because of youth rates. We are not convinced that this bill will reduce youth unemployment. We should be focused on growing the economy and providing opportunities and jobs for young workers.” That was Jackie Blue in 2010. That is why the Government members oppose youth rates. I will leave it to them to explain if they can without tying themselves into rhetorical knots what has changed since they made those statements. 
At the heart of the Green Party’s opposition to this legislation is the issue of discrimination. I would imagine that there is not one member of this House who would today stand up and say that we should have a lower minimum wage for women than we do for men in order to make it easier and help them find work. I would imagine that not one member of this House would stand up today and say that we should have a lower minimum wage for Maori than we do for non-Maori to make it easier for them to get into work. Some of them might think it but I do not think there is one member in this House who would get up and say it because it is ethically legally morally and politically repugnant to this House and to New Zealanders. 
We used to hear those exact arguments. We have rehearsed them in this Parliament. But thanks to some very brave courageous and passionate people who stood up and argued for what was right we have finished those debates and we have moved on. Ours is a society that understands and accepts and agrees that sexual and racial discrimination in employment is not acceptable. I thought that we had taken another step forward in 2008 when we abolished age discrimination in the workplace by removing youth rates. So did David Bennett obviously when he told the ACT Party in 2010 that the world had moved on. Apparently some members of the House are living in the past and they want to take New Zealand backwards. 
It is no longer acceptable to argue for sexist and racist employment policies and it should be equally unacceptable to discriminate against young workers. Let us remember here that we are talking about young people who are doing the same jobs the same work as their older counterparts. These are people who are employed to do exactly the same jobs as somebody else who is older than them but who will be paid 20 percent less for doing that same job because of their age. 
It has been illegal to pay men and women different rates for doing the same job since 1972 under the Equal Pay Act and it should remain illegal to pay young people differently for doing exactly the same job as older people. Their work is worth the same. They are equally valuable as employees. Really as far as I am concerned the argument should go no further than that. We reject illegal discrimination in New Zealand. That should be the end of the story. But unfortunately we have a Government that is pretty relaxed about discrimination and is even willing to overturn the views of its own members just a few short years ago to take us back down the path of youth rates and it is using the economy as an excuse. 
Let us have a look at some of the economic arguments. I start firstly with the regulatory impact statement prepared by the Department of Labour which gives you a flavour of just how much intellectual rigour has gone into the formation of this policy. The officials note that the ministry has “not considered other options for achieving the objectives of the proposed starting out wage package.” The reason that they did not look at any other options is that it was a pre-election policy commitment so “The analysis has focused primarily on how to implement decisions that have already been signalled by Government.” There is no analysis of whether they are actually a good idea no analysis of whether there might be better ways to address the problem of youth unemployment. It was a preordained conclusion. 
The regulatory impact statement also notes that “Consultation on the proposal has been limited. The Ministry has not consulted with external groups such as the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions and Business New Zealand. The analysis has also been constrained by the relatively short period of time in which to undertake the analysis.” So there you go. That is the intellectual rigour. That is the economic analysis behind this proposal. It was a preordained conclusion with pretty much no basis. But what we do know from the unrelenting and unpalatable rhetoric from the Government side of the House is that the Government has an unrelenting focus on work and it wants to see young people off welfare and into work or training. We know this. We have heard it time and time again. 
The solution you would imagine if you wanted to get people off welfare and into training would be to create jobs and training opportunities for young people. But that is not what this Government has done. Oh no. It has decided instead to give businesses a massive subsidy in the form of absurdly low wages in an attempt to make young people more attractive to employers. So how is it going to do that? Well it is easy. It has made young people incredibly cheap to employ. On the poisonous starting wage of $10.80 an hour it makes young people very cheap indeed to employ. They can employ them for 3 months and pay them $10.80. And then what are they going to do after that? Well that is easy too because they have a 90-day trial period they can take advantage of—another attack on young workers by this Government. So they can simply replace young people with another cheap young person on $10.80 an hour. 
As Kay Brereton from the Beneficiary Advocacy Federation of New Zealand has pointed out the result of this is going to be that taxpayers end up subsidising young people’s low wages and instead of creating new jobs employers are going to have an incentive to churn through young employees to keep the wage bills low. So they will not be creating new jobs in fact they will be creating the same job every 400 hours or every 6 months whichever comes first over and over again. 
As this Government so eloquently argued in 2010 the solution to youth unemployment is not to scapegoat young workers. It is not to pay them less or to discriminate against them and worsen their prospects. The solution is education skills training and job creation. But what kind of incentive is it to pay young people including independent 18-year-olds and 19-year-olds so little? Every young New Zealander deserves a good life in a fair future but you cannot have a good life on $10.80 an hour. You just cannot and you cannot have a fair future when you are discriminated against from the moment you enter paid work. That brighter future which this Government is so fond of referring to is clearly not intended for young people.