Pugh MaureenMAUREEN PUGH (National): I can assure you that my presentation will not be a testosterone-fuelled speech for obvious reasons. This Government absolutely recognises the significance of this issue. There is no doubt in anyone's mind about the bias and the perceptions about women in the workplace and how that is driving the gender pay gap. We do agree across this House about that and we do want to close that gender pay gap but what we do differ on is how we get there. Although we are as everyone has said sympathetic to the aims of the bill we do not agree on the proposed changes and the detail within the bill. I am not quite sure how long the bill has actually been in the ballot but it may have been there for quite some time because things have moved on and there have been some significant changes made that perhaps make this bill obsolete.The Government already has its initiatives and legislation in place and they go well on the way to addressing some of the concerns that are already raised and are contributing to the gender pay gap. We have made legislation changes that will address some of the contributing factors. We are in fact in the process of making legislative changes to the Equal Pay Act and amending the Employment Relations Act 2000 and they will implement recommendations on pay equity providing a practical and fair process for employees to follow. We are leading the work to reduce the gender pay gap in the public sector and that is a massive piece of work with actual tangible results already.One of the aspects of the bill that is causing quite a lot of concern is the impact it will have on employers and the need to provide additional administrative cost and effort by providing so much detail about employees: sending their wage time and gender records to the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) for publication when already Statistics New Zealand can provide that data. So the irony is that we are discussing that during Privacy Week as my colleague Melissa Lee pointed out.As you will all be aware the Minister for Women is the Deputy Prime Minister the Hon Paula Bennett; that is the regard in which we hold this portfolio. This Minister and her ministry have commissioned work on the causes of the gap for women and that is helping the ministry to understand how we can implement further action. We know that 80 percent of the gap is unexplained—the research is telling us that and it does shed light on the drivers of the gender pay gap. There are things such as the behaviours and choices between men and women and the unconscious and conscious bias that drives the majority of those current gender pay gaps. The ministry is also running a project to profile 12 leading New Zealand companies working on gender-equity initiatives. There is no doubt—and the data is very clear on this—that boards of directors who have women perform better. There is no doubt.So we are leading by example. The Ministry for Women monitors the Government's own target of having 45 percent of women's representation on State-owned boards and their committees. It was very pleasing that the Minister announced recently that the Government has already met its target. But we are not just paying lip service to it. We have made it a requirement of chief executives to report and plan for how they are going to address the gender pay gap so when we do our annual reviews—and I was pleased to be a part of that this year—when the State enterprises come in for their annual reviews we can actually asked the question about what they are doing and how successful they are at closing that gender pay gap and having women in executive roles on their boards.But I guess for us the demonstration of putting our money where our mouths are was the settlement that the Government recently announced—a $2 billion settlement—for some of the health sector's lowest-paid employees predominantly women and those of course are the women in our healthcare and our disability rest home care. We are putting our money where our mouths are.