Fenton Darien: General Debate 
Fenton Darien: General Debate 
[Volume:638;Page:8847] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 Yesterday the Minister of Health announced the largest ever investment in the aged residential care and home support sectors. This most significant of announcements builds on multiple injections of funding into aged care by this Labour-led Government. Pete Hodgson’s announcement of a very large boost of $405 million over 4 years into the sector has been met with accolades from Grey Power unions aged-care workers and providers. I wonder whether the member who spoke previously Jo Goodhew thinks that this is wrong too given that she has made comments about National wanting to work with the aged-care sector and other stakeholders to address the situation to fund a trained and skilled workforce and so on. This sort of announcement makes me very proud to be a Labour MP. It confirms our commitment towards securing a safe environment for our older adults so that they can live in dignity and it confirms our commitment to decent work and respect for the workers who provide that care. 
I acknowledge the Minister of Health and the Minister for Disability Issues Ruth Dyson for the work they have done on this sector over many years as well as our support partner New Zealand First which shares the Government’s concern about the poor wages and conditions for carers in the aged-care industry. Over several years this Labour-led Government has injected funding into this sector—in fact in several Budgets in a row. By the end of the 1990s the sector was in such a mess that it was always going to take significant amounts of money to fix the problem. It has also been a great concern to the Government that although it has increased the funding to the sector the caregivers who provide the care have not been on the receiving end of much of that funding. Caregivers today in many cases are still not being paid much more than the minimum wage. If it were not for this Government’s commitment to increasing the minimum wage caregivers would still be on the $8.50 or so per hour they were on at the end of the 1990s. 
So why was the sector in such a mess? Well I know the Opposition does not want to hear about the old days but it does have to take some responsibility. Prior to 1990 and the election of a National Government aged residential care was doing well and workers were making good progress. Workers won their first award in the mid-1980s setting minimum pay and conditions. Pay doubled between 1985 and 1990 the National Certificate in Rest Home Care was introduced and we had a new funding system with yearly adjustments. But the election of National changed that. The weapons of the Employment Contracts Act were embraced with vigour by many rest home employers and used to slash wages and conditions. Judging by the question from Kate Wilkinson today I do not have any confidence that National will own up to that being a bad idea. 
 The national rest home award was among the first of the national awards to be targeted for destruction and by the end of the 1990s aged-care workers were earning less than they had 10 years before. Training courses were moved to a basis of user-pays aged-care funding became competitive and prices for the care of older adults were driven downwards along with workers’ pay and conditions. I remember some workers being grateful for receiving a nil pay increase in their bargaining round because it meant that something else would not be cut that year. Meanwhile throughout that period increases in dependency exacerbated the situation as the industry increasingly catered for high-needs high-demand residents. Being a caregiver is not a matter of giving cups of tea to nice grannies; it means dealing with dementia with residents who are sometimes violent and with very disabled people who need lifting toileting medicating and a range of therapies. It became a highly skilled job but the pay did not match. 
I often wonder whether some of the National members who were there during that period—and they are still sitting on the front bench over there—ever feel guilty about what they did to this industry and to the caregivers involved. Mr Bill English was the Minister of Health during that period and presided over a funding freeze in the industry from 1997 until National was thrown out of Government. Despite years of effort by unions in the aged-care industry and multi-year funding by this Government an experienced caregiver today is most likely to earn less than $12 an hour. 
Employers in the industry have resisted passing on Government increases to workers and it is even worse in the home support sector. That is why this funding must come with mechanisms to ensure that workers are paid properly. Provider contracts with district health boards and collective agreements with unions are the most effective means of ensuring not only that caregivers and nurses receive better pay but that pay rates can be effectively enforced. The concentration of mainly women workers in low-paid jobs in the caring industries contributes to the gender pay gap and low wages. Our agenda as the Government is to promote opportunities for women and men to attain decent and productive work in conditions of equity security and dignity. Thank you.