van Velden BrookeHon BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Thank you Mr Chair. I'll take the opportunity to respond to a few questions starting with the Hon Marama Davidson. Her questions touched on how we can protect youth and younger people in our workforce and I'm delighted to tell the Hon Marama Davidson that we already have quite strong minimum entitlements with the minimum wage which affects not just youth but also all employees within our employment relations framework. She also asked and touched on what evidence do we have for repealing the fair pay agreement system. There is no evidence for the fair pay agreement system itself. I note the regulatory impact statement for the instatement of this law—for the Fair Pay Agreements Act—actually recommended against the fair pay agreement system.She also touched on how Māori workers will be protected with the onus on them being able to negotiate their own terms. It's also quite possible that there are employment groups that members in this House will touch on that could have been negatively affected. We're talking about youth we're talking about Māori Pasifika disabled—there are many people who could have been negatively impacted by disemployment effects. I once again look to the regulatory impact statement that was produced for the previous Government which says It is possible that [fair pay agreements] could lead to employers choosing to hire fewer people or reducing hours of work. Any disemployment effects could also disproportionately impact these population groups." So it is not the case that these population groups would be better off under a fair pay agreement; it is also quite possible that they could be worse off as is stated within the regulatory impact statement.I want to touch on questions from Debbie Ngarewa-Packer talking about two of her Amendment Papers. The first is asking for there to be a review of the repeal of this Act after three years considering the impact of this review and the repeal especially in areas where Māori are overrepresented. My response to that is it's not possible to have a review of a law that would be repealed because there would be nothing to review after three years so the whole point of that paper is null and void.The second Amendment Paper that she put forward was asking for there to be fair pay agreements allowed to be initiated for sectors where Māori workers are disproportionately impacted; however the six areas that she has listed wishing to allow those particular areas to increase are the areas which we as a Government are repealing under the law. They don't affect just Māori workers; they affect all people within all of the collective bargaining under that fair pay agreement so we would be keeping in effect all areas of the law. That is against what this Government wishes to achieve which is to repeal the fair pay agreements law. So once again I thank the member for her paper but this Government will not be supporting that.The member Rachel Boyack talked about why it is that we want an individual framework and why do we believe that would be better than having collective bargaining. I'm also delighted to tell the member that we do have ability for collective bargaining outside of the fair pay agreement system. This Government has not repealed that law. We are repealing a fair pay agreement law. The Employment Relations Act sets out a framework for both individual and collective bargaining processes which has worked quite well for the past 30 years and in fact my entire life. So we're going back to what that was."