Beaumont Carol: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Beaumont Carol: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:661;Page:9508] 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 I will focus particularly on a couple of key issues in the financial review of the Department of Labour. I will look at the whole area of productive employment relations and I will look at the area of skills. I hope that during the course of this debate perhaps the Minister of Labour Kate Wilkinson will comment on these matters—I certainly hope so. 
One of the stated objectives of this Government is to reduce the gap between people’s incomes in Australia and New Zealand by 2025. One of the much talked about ways that we are to do this is by improving productivity. In my view productive employment relations are absolutely fundamental to doing that. What do we mean by productive employment relations? In my book it is about getting standards across industries. It is about having economic development that involves the workforce. It is about a recognition of the need to lift the quality of our workplaces. That includes the wage rates the work conditions and the quality of interaction within our workplaces—that is what I call productive employment relations. Unfortunately I believe that this Government sees workers and their rights as costs that need to be reduced. I say that with some sadness really but when I think about the Prime Minister’s statement I remember that he talked about the need for better regulation and then went on to talk about labour laws imposing excessive costs on this country and holding us back in taking advantage of opportunities to create jobs. 
When we look at what has been going on in the labour portfolio and look at the time line of the erosion of worker’s rights we can see a pattern. One of the first things that this Government did was to bring in the 90-day “no rights at work” provision so workers could not challenge unfair practices by their employers for the first 3 months. That was followed closely by the minimum wage increase in 2009 of 50c an hour although I do recall that the Minister of Labour was opposed to that. She was much keener on having a zero percent increase but I think she succumbed to what was understood to be the view of the population of New Zealand which was that perhaps that would not be very fair. I think we are starting to see an increasing clamour for a real lift to the minimum wage. There is a strong move now to see the minimum wage lifted to something more like $15 an hour. I think that would be a good step towards moving to close the income gap between Australia and New Zealand. But certainly lifting the minimum wage by 50c an hour in 2009 was not quite there. 
Then we saw the pay and employment equity unit disestablished and a number of pay equity reviews cancelled. That was done ignoring the fact that those were important mechanisms to lift the wages of predominantly women in industries where their very important work is undervalued. So that was another step in the erosion of worker’s rights. It was followed by the introduction in October 2009 of the Employment Relations (Rest Breaks and Meal Breaks) Amendment Bill. This bill will be one that members on the Labour side of the Chamber will be voting against. It will deny vulnerable workers basic rights to minimum breaks during their working day and is yet another backward step. So much for productive employment relations! Then there will be the changes to the Holidays Act which will get rid of people automatically having 4 weeks’ annual leave. Again that is another step in the wrong direction. This year we have seen the announcement of the very significant 25c an hour lift in the minimum wage which takes it to the grand sum of $12.75 per hour. Of course there are some members in this Chamber who would like to see that reduced—members like Roger Douglas from the ACT Party. The previous National Party leader Don Brash felt that was part of his productivity prescription to ensure that we closed the gap between Australia and New Zealand. I think those people have it all wrong. 
I will go on to look at the issue of skills. But just before I go off the topic of Don Brash’s task force I note that in the financial review of the Department of Labour we did talk about that. It was fair to say that it was acknowledged by the departmental officials that they were not once consulted on this matter.