Gosche Mark: Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Gosche Mark: Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:647;Page:16175] 
Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 The previous speaker has never been in touch with the issue. There is no fear about his getting out of touch because he has never ever been in touch with the realities of what he was just talking about. He is advising these people who deliver pamphlets that they are really in it because they are business people and that they have to understand the risk they are taking in self-employment; that they have to line up and register for GST. Yeah right! Those people who earn 25c an hour from Reachmedia to deliver pamphlets into letterboxes really do need to be able to go and get a highly paid lawyer like Dr Wayne Mapp to challenge Reachmedia and prove that they are not actually contractors but employees. 
Dr Wayne Mapp says Labour members are out of touch with reality. Well anybody who just listened to that nonsense coming out of his mouth would be just astounded that the National Party thinks this bill is about self-employed business people getting out there to deliver Countdown supermarket leaflets into letterboxes or for the Warehouse or Farmers or Michael Hill Jeweller or Progressive Enterprises companies that use Reachmedia to deliver their pamphlets into my letterbox for a pay of 25c an hour because to quote the company’s chief executive: “We think our pay structures are appropriate for the work that’s undertaken … we believe the contract model works successfully for Reachmedia.”  
Of course it does! It is slave labour basically to pay somebody 25c an hour. That is not acceptable to this side of the House; it is not acceptable to the average New Zealander out there to think that people whatever their age should be made to work for 25c an hour. Members on this side of the House get out on the streets regularly and we notice that a huge number of these pamphlet deliverers are adults. They are not kids. At the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee we heard that they are quite often elderly people who look for a bit of income to supplement the pension. We heard a great deal about the people who do this work. We heard it from the industry itself which said that it would not be fair to reward a fit young 18-year-old who can get out and deliver the pamphlets in an hour less than the elderly person who took it easy had a stroll along met some of the people in the neighbourhood had a chat to them maybe stopped for a cup of coffee and took 4 hours to deliver the pamphlets whereas the fit young 18-year-old did it in an hour. 
So we listened to that and that is why my colleague Darien Fenton who has already spoken said we would change the bill to reflect that issue. We would make sure we could strike a reasonable rate between the deliverer and the principal and that would be what a person would be expected to be paid. So the 18-year-old who could do it in a reasonable time of say 2 hours would get paid 2 hours and the person who decided to stop along the way admire the view feed the ducks have a cup of coffee and a chat and took 4 hours would not get paid for 4 hours but for 2 hours which is the reasonable amount. So we listened to all of that and we think it is sensible. That is why there would have been changes made by the select committee to reflect that sort of thing. 
We heard also about a lot of people who get essentially put into the situation where they are on a contract rather than in an employment situation. That is not uncommon; it is not just pamphlet deliverers. We heard from people who are being employed in this city as security guards and being told they were contractors. In that way the employer could subvert the minimum wage provisions of the Act. Well we are just not prepared to cop that on this side of the House. The National Party might be prepared to; it might be able to say: “Good luck to them and if the workers don’t like it they can go and get some lawyer to prove that it’s wrong.” That is not how fair industrial law should operate. That is not how fair contracting should operate. All we are asking for is a fair contracting situation so that people do not get misused by being labelled as contractors so that the minimum wage legislation can be subverted. 
That is happening. I tell Dr Mapp to get out into the real world stop reading his textbooks and stop advising people that they are really entrepreneurs looking for a self-employed situation when they are actually young people or elderly people looking to supplement their income either at the beginning of their lives as they are wanting to study so they go out and get work of this nature or at the end of their working lives where they are wanting to get a bit of extra money to supplement their savings or their pension. They should be treated the same as anybody else who is out there trying to do that. They should not be used by way of some slippery practice in the law to say that they are a contractor and that we should be able to get them to work for as little as 25c an hour. 
Nobody on the other side of the House will be able to get up and convince any New Zealander that this sort of rort should be allowed in law. Nobody on that side of the House will be able to get up and convince anybody of that. What they are convincing them of is the fact that National supports that practice they condone it and they want the law to stay the way it is. Well thank goodness in this House there are people who say that the practice is not acceptable. During the Committee stage we expect to tidy up the bill so that we deal with some of the very valid issues that were raised by submitters and that the select committee or at least five of us felt would be able to be sorted out. So if members of the House would like to look at the committee’s report they will see the Labour Party’s view on this matter. 
In terms of the scope of the bill I say that no we do not want to get the people who are catering at the family wedding caught by this bill. No we do not want to get in the way of people who have a fixed-price contract to paint a house. We do not want to be able to force that sort of situation in law. Therefore we will alter the bill to take away those sorts of fears. We will put in a Supplementary Order Paper to make sure that that happens because any good select committee—and it was a good committee after Dr Mapp left—will do this sort of work. The National Party kicked out Paula Bennett because she was starting to agree with the members on this side of the House so National transferred her to another committee. But she knows in her own heart that this is good legislation. She would love to support it but she is not quite brave enough to do so. We will forgive her that because that is what happens to women in the National Party; it bullies them into submission. On this side of the House— 
Hon Members 
: Ha ha! 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: No that is what happens. On this side of the House we are not afraid of a good debate. So I am looking forward to Paula Bennett’s excuses as to why she has been whipped into line and I am waiting for David Bennett to tell us his perspective on this bill because that will be amusing as well. 
We have a number of changes that we would promote if the bill had been supported in the select committee to deal with who this bill would actually cover. There would be a schedule which my colleague Darien Fenton will table as a Supplementary Order Paper in the Committee stage. The other issues that were raised were very legitimate issues around the nature of work the type of situation that this would occur in and the types of people who would be deemed to be the contractor and the principal. 
It is a pleasure to take part in this debate as a Labour member of Parliament. This is the sort of thing we stand for on this side of the House—fairness not ripping people off and not misusing the elderly and the young to go out there to make massive profits for people who can get on national television and say they find it acceptable to pay somebody as little as 25c an hour. If National members on the other side of the House do not think that happens I tell them I got something in the mail today from Levin about employees getting paid $5 an hour under piece rates. We contemplated the idea of piece rates as well. The Minimum Wage Act does not allow that and this would not allow piece rates to be used as a rort either. 
We have looked at all the aspects. We believe that the types of changes that can be made in the Committee stage will sort out this bill make it very workable and most of all make it very fair. We know that the National Party members cannot support anything when it comes to the payment of workers that is fair. They would break out in an allergic reaction if they had to do that. That is why they will vote against this legislation and show the country yet again their real agenda for working people in this country. John Key said they want to knock down wages. Here is another example of how they would do that.