Fenton Darien: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Fenton Darien: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Sitting date: 29 January 2013. Volume:687;Page:7576. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 It is my great pleasure to wish everybody a happy New Year. 
Hon Members 
: Happy New Year. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Thank you thank you. I also want firstly to congratulate the new whips in the National Party the Government party and the promotion of course of Louise Upston. I am looking forward to working with you all. I also want to congratulate the incoming Ministers and commiserate with those who have been told “Don’t come Monday.” 
There is only one word to describe the Prime Minister’s statement today and that is— 
Hon Member 
: Brilliant. Brilliant. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: —yes I will get there—“disappointment”. It was such a disappointing statement—not that I have high expectations of this Prime Minister or this Government but Kiwis are increasingly disappointed. What we heard today was more of the same. Especially disappointed will be those forgotten New Zealanders who are working harder than ever doing their fair share and playing their part but struggling to get ahead. They are feeling let down and who can blame them? The Government has turned its back on them. It has turned its back on those thrown on the jobless scrap heap in the last 4 years or the last 5 years. It has turned its back on those struggling to find a job except to blame them for being jobless in the first place. Let us be clear: people want to work. They want to work and this idea that they do not and that they are a bunch of skivers is just disgraceful. 
After 5 years of a John Key - National Government there is a lot to be disappointed about. The Government has even taken in the last few days to mocking businesses in our manufacturing sector because they have had the gall to come forward in public to tell the truth about the manufacturing crisis in this country; the crisis that exists in what is a very important sector that helps create good jobs and good quality jobs. 
So we need a hands-on Government—a Government that is going to do something. But the biggest disappointment for me in his speech today and I am sure for many others was the lack of a mention of jobs. Not a word—not a word—about jobs; not a heading not a single thing about employment. We heard lots of excuses and we heard an awful lot of blame but the only job creation programme in John Key’s speech today was to increase prison labour—creating workplaces in prisons where there are no rights no difficult workers of course who insist that they should be safe at work and healthy and no workers actually wanting to negotiate over pay and conditions because of course prisoners do not have rights. 
Do not get me wrong. Labour supports prisoners having the right to work but this is not a job creation programme. Coming across on top of the Government’s other job creation programme of building a prison in Wiri you do have to ask whether this is the grand economic plan that we can expect from this Government. The good news I suppose for the prisoners who are going to be working in prisons is that they will have a 40-hour week according to John Key. So in that sense they are going to have something that no other New Zealander has any more: the 40-hour week has disappeared—it is gone. It disappeared a long time ago. The 8-hour day is long forgotten. 
New Zealanders as we all know and we say often are working longer and harder than ever. We have an issue of long working hours. We have an issue of underemployment as well but we also work some of the longest hours in the OECD. These forgotten New Zealanders are trying to do their bit they are trying to do the right thing by their families and the best the Government has come up with today is jobs in prisons. 
There is a sinister little paragraph in the Prime Minister’s statement. I had to look quite hard to find it. On page 7 John Key says in his statement that the “Government will this year introduce legislation to boost labour market flexibility including improvements to collective bargaining rules and extended flexible working arrangements. It will also progress legislation to introduce a new starting-out wage to prevent young people being shut out of the labour market.” 
Let us translate what that means. Translated this little paragraph means that the Government intends to go ahead with pay cuts for young workers. What it means is that the Government plans to cut the pay for all New Zealand workers by making it impossible for collective bargaining. I have been hearing some whispers of the nasty little plans that it has got up its sleeve when it introduces that legislation. What it means is that our most vulnerable workers will lose their protection when their jobs are sold off to other employers. What it means is that this Government persists in its belief that reducing workplace rights substitutes for an economic plan. 
In the next couple of weeks the Government will decide on the pay of our lowest-income workers in its annual review of the minimum wage. The minimum wage is not the only tool for building quality jobs and decent pay but it has become increasingly important as more and more workers are reliant on it. It is a tool that a hands-on Government will use and should use proactively because it affects so many low-income families. 
Dr David Clark 
: They hands-on voted down the $15 minimum wage. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Yes that is what I am getting to that is right—and we have repeatedly called for a $15 minimum wage. This Government had the chance to do something about it last year with David Clark’s Minimum Wage Amendment Bill but of course it said no. 
Since John Key took office the value of the minimum wage in real terms has declined. So those who are dependent on it are worse off. These are the lowest-paid people in New Zealand who are trying to feed their families on $13.50 an hour and in fact less given its real terms. A decent minimum wage let alone a living wage is not in the lexicon of this Government. It was not mentioned along with jobs in this speech. The Government has abandoned its promise to catch up with Australia along with a whole raft of other broken promises. I mean that just seems like such a joke. We never hear the Prime Minister talking about catching up with Australia. In fact he has changed his language with that too. The brain drain has now become the brain exchange. So that is now the excuse. It is all right that thousands of people are going to Australia for better wages and better jobs because we are getting brains back from all around the world. 
Sue Moroney 
: Really? 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Yes. So you know that is the new language that is the new excuse that we are having from this Government and from their Prime Minister. 
The incoming Minister of Labour Simon Bridges could be extremely brave and make a significant mark as a new Minister by showing his sympathy to low-income workers and their families by lifting the minimum wage to $15 an hour. He could do that. He could show that he has influence in Cabinet when he sits around that Cabinet table not that he is just a green Minister who knows nothing and hears nothing. He could do that. His influence as a new Minister will be tested by the decision he makes in the next 2 or 3 weeks around the minimum wage for 2013. 
I hope that he is brave enough to take the minimum wage to $15 an hour because if he does it will help address the issue not only of New Zealand’s low pay—it is a disgraceful level of low pay—but widening inequality and poverty. We need a decent minimum wage to provide a safety net for vulnerable workers but also to improve the lot of many people including Maori and Pacific workers. 
Unfortunately and it is not Simon Bridge’s fault acting Ministers made a bad start to this whole minimum wage process by slashing the comprehensive review and limiting the submissions to just two organisations this year. They gave those organisations just 6 days to get their submissions in. That was the Council of Trade Unions and Business New Zealand which are representative organisations. The Council of Trade Unions I know has 32 affiliates that it needs to consult with. They were given 6 days to make a submission on the minimum wage. That just shows an arrogant approach. I know both those organisations take this process very seriously and they would have required much more time than that. 
There are some big challenges for the new Minister in this portfolio not least the challenge of stopping the carnage in our workplaces. There has been a lot of talk about health and safety. There is a health and safety task force—and I do credit the former Minister with setting that up—but people are dying every week. There is an urgent job for him to do. I am happy to help the Minister with that very very urgent job. The former Minister was prepared to work collaboratively with Labour on that. It is an issue for 2013 that must be addressed. 
Labour wants to see quality jobs well-paid jobs and safe jobs not the increasing drive that we are seeing towards precarious work towards McJobs towards driving our sons and daughters overseas to other parts of the world where they can be so much better off.