Turner Judy: Minimum Wage (Abolition of Age Discrimination)Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Turner Judy: Minimum Wage (Abolition of Age Discrimination)Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:640;Page:10716] 
JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I spoke at the first reading of the Minimum Wage (Abolition of Age Discrimination) Amendment Bill and United Future supported its first reading. We felt there were some very good intentions contained in the bill and we wanted to see what the select committee would do with the raw material that was in the first draft. I would like to congratulate the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee on what has come out of that process. It certainly has addressed some of the concerns that United Future signalled at that first stage. Our concern was that we could end up disenfranchising the very people whom this bill intends to help; that is we would price young people out of the labour market so that if employers had a choice they would go for the more mature workers in the belief that they would be employing people with a better work ethic. We think that this new entrants provision improves the bill immensely. 
One of the things that has always amazed me particularly since I moved to Wellington for part of the week is the huge difference between the life experiences of young people in the city and young people in the provinces. We raised our children in the provinces. What is quite typical out in the provinces is that when young people leave school either to go into training or to go into work they often have to leave home; that is not uncommon. Smaller towns do not always provide work or training opportunities. So it is quite possible for someone to be 16 and leaving home for a work opportunity that he or she really wants—that person has weighed up the options and feels that for his or her life this is the best way forward—but somehow that person has to survive independently on youth rates which is extremely difficult. This bill provides the opportunity for young people who are working to capacity and doing a good job to have that work recognised. 
I do not agree that this new provision is in any way similar to Mr Wayne Mapp’s bill. This provision does not mean that a person can be let go at the end of the 200 hours if he or she has not met the standards. It is only a training period where the skills that a person needs are put into place. 
As a parent who has raised three children I often look with appreciation on some of those early jobs that my children had as teenagers such as working at McDonald’s working at all sorts of little restaurants and labouring on worksites. They learnt so much from having good bosses in those situations. They had a lot of skills to learn. They had to learn how to fill downtime when there was not an obvious job facing them. They had to find that secondary level of activity on a worksite. These are all skills that they did not necessarily have coming out of the home environment. They had to pick up a lot of skills and they became extremely employable young people. 
I think there is a real need for a training period. Certainly employers will tell us that it costs them a lot to employ somebody who has a low skills set and low employment experience. That is why for instance we have support for disabled people where we help them to come up to speed. We understand that for an employer to take on disabled people he or she will have to spend some considerable additional time training them. It is a very similar situation here. 
United Future is pleased with the work that the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and the Government have done. We think that the additional provisions have improved the bill and it means that we can continue to support it at its second reading. I do want to signal though that I heard a few rumours about amendments that could be floating around at the Committee stage. We will be watching those very carefully to make sure that any further amendments made at the Committee stage do not disqualify us from giving further support to what we believe to be right. We would like to be able to support this bill right through to its third reading and with the bill in its current form we would be able to do that. We are very happy to support the second reading.