Andersen GinnyHon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): That was the biggest load of rubbish I've heard in a really long time and there's been quite a lot of rubbish spoken in this House. So what I'd like to speak to is the words of Brooke van Velden that have been haunting this House and have made me recall back actually right back into the 1990s and those words were that no workers will be any worse off without fair pay agreements. What that reminded me of was back to the Employment Contracts Act 1991 when I was a supermarket worker. In those days my hourly rate was $4.20 an hour which doesn't sound like much but when you're 16 and you get paid penal rates at the weekend—double time—$8.40 is not a bad wage. On top of that you would get an allowance for a meal break so that actually made it worth turning up to work and it gave you a bit of money. But when the Employment Contracts Act came in when they asked us to sign they said those same words—that no worker would be worse off if they sign this contract—and do you know what? We bloody well were because each time I got a pay increase there was something in my pay called a personalised difference and when my hourly rate went up my penal rates disappeared and my allowances disappeared and it took me three years until I was 19 years old to earn the same amount of money I was earning as a 16-year-old. That is the same mentality that is being applied to our workers here in New Zealand. It won't be any worse off but it damned well won't be any better either and who benefits from that? It's those people creaming it at the top while our essential workers are slogging their guts out every day teaching our kids cleaning our floors driving our buses. They want to skim that money off and keep it in their own pockets and that's what I say is unfair and damn right shameful and selfish.So when the Employment Contracts Act came in we have taken a long time to make gains in it and I want to correct a couple of misinformation points that have been put across in this House today. The number one that's really important is productivity—what the last speaker Grant McCallum has said which was that this piece of legislation before it was repealed would hamper or impede productivity. Well the OECD and a lot of those people who have done research—including the Rt Hon Jim Bolger—have been on the page of saying that this would be good for New Zealand's productivity. The key reason for that is it stops the race to the bottom. It stops those bad employers and disincentivises bad employment conditions and poor wages and it rewards those good employers who care about their employees who pay them a decent wage. They get benefits for that—they get benefits for that—because they get good quality products and they get higher intellectual property. We get great products that we can sell and have innovation across the world and be known for our number eight wire mentality that distinguishes New Zealand from other countries.But those opposite want to take us back to 1991. They're not interested in being cutting edge. They're not interested in using our brains and our smarts to put ourselves further. They're going to take us back and they're going to take the money off those people who were essential workers when we needed them the most. That's what really disappoints me because if we incentivise our employers to be good employers then the competition is who's got the best—who's got the best product who's got the most innovative way of doing it—not who can be the quickest one to race to the bottom to pay workers the least to be giving them poorer conditions in order to be making your profit margin larger. That's the kind of playing field that this Government has drawn up for New Zealand workers and that is what is so unfair about repealing something that would actually increase productivity and reward those employers that take good hard-working New Zealanders for what they are—that they're an asset to their business not a detriment.So I would like to just round off by saying that during the times of COVID I heard so many speeches from the National Party about how important our essential workers were thanking them for their hours thanking them for the difficulties and thanking them for how they went above and beyond to serve us when we needed it and now they turn their back on those workers by giving them less right before Christmas. It's an absolute bloody disgrace and I hope that they live to see what will happen and that will be workers of New Zealand who stand up and fight back for behaviour that is selfish and self-serving.