Kaye NikkiHon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): I am delighted to be speaking on this legislation in the House today. At the outset can I just agree with a number of things that the previous speaker Iain Lees-Galloway has said. Firstly though can I start by acknowledging Kristine Bartlett—what an extraordinary New Zealander and she did not act alone. She had the fight the courage and the perseverance of a whole lot of other New Zealanders in what led to what was a very historic $2 billion pay equity settlement under the previous Government.But I think it is important that we do look through the lens of history here because in the words of the current Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety this is about justice and access to justice and it actually is OK—in a year when we're celebrating 125 years of women winning the right to vote being the first country in the world—that we actually say we need to do a lot more. We have had some progress and I think if you look at some of the measures that we judge ourselves by there has been some progress. In fact if you look at 1998 to 2018 we saw the gender pay gap go from about 16 percent to 9 percent. We are not proud of that; we want to do better and that is what this legislation is about. But it is also a time to say things are heading in the right direction and this legislation is hopefully a major game-changer for the thousands of women in particular out there that are not earning what they should—equal pay for equal work—and that is what this legislation is about.I think it is time as well that we do acknowledge the working group. The Rt Hon Dame Patsy Reddy did a fantastic job. On this side of the House National would say we would've hoped to have been here earlier. We do acknowledge the work of the working group but we do believe that we are 12 months behind in part—Denise Lee had a fantastic piece of legislation and we've got a couple of amendments here but we could've been going a lot faster on this piece of work given that there has been really good cross-party agreement around changing the law. Again this Government did spend that 12 months putting it back to the joint working group. But just again coming back to the main provisions in the bill I mean ultimately we need to acknowledge as a country that in certain professions—and you know I'm involved in education but every single day I meet teachers and support staff predominantly in a female-dominated profession for which if you look at comparable sectors the reality is they have not been valued as much as other men doing complex roles like at times being principals and teachers. And that's what this bill is about. Now ultimately if you believe in that goal—and everybody in this House does; that's why we're here and we've got cross-party agreement—then the question is what is the best policy and legislative machinery to be able to deliver that? As I've said before I think there is a lot of agreement but some of the core differences between the bill that my colleague Denise Lee put up versus this bill do relate for instance to the hierarchy of comparatives. And again that was very clearly set out in previous legislation that National put up and there is a difference in this legislation. Again if you look at the issue of back-pay it is important—and the Minister has acknowledged the fact that back-pay is not new and the six-year provision actually is consistent with the Equal Pay Act. That is part of this bill and I look forward to being a member of the select committee and looking at these issues of back-pay. The reality is there are people out there that are owed—and it will be shown—huge sums of money because the reality is they have been undervalued for many years.It has been a privilege to meet people like Kristine Bartlett and to understand the huge impact on people's lives not just financially but also at a self-worth level of not being valued properly and having this discrimination. Again it is very timely that we are doing this in the year that we're celebrating women having the right to vote 125 years on.I think the other big provision that we will be talking about at select committee on this side of the House is this issue of the criteria—of which we had previously used the term merit" and now that has been changed to be "arguable". And again this is a delicate balance because everybody in this House wants justice and wants that access to justice but what we will be focused on is ensuring that we have legislation that doesn't create a situation whereby we have a whole lot of claims coming through that may not end up being of merit. Because that's in nobody's best interest that people's time is wasted because potentially the system is clogged up with claims that aren't of merit. So it is a delicate balance there and again the Government has chosen to change that term to "arguable" and we will be asking significant questions about what is "arguable" because arguably almost anything can be arguable. So we do want to hear from submitters around that particular provision because I think it is really important because again if we want the most amount of effort on those claims that are of merit then we won't be clogging up the system with other claims.The other thing I want to acknowledge in the legislation is the fact that there has been a shortened time frame to give the employer to respond to the claim: from 90 days to 65 days. Again on the face of it that might seem like it's quicker access to justice but some of these claims are very complex and we need to acknowledge that. So that's something else that we will be testing out in select committee—is that time period enough? Then I think if we again step back and look at the bigger picture here and we remind those people that are watching that there is cross-party agreement to put this legislation in. Again it's going to come back to the process. We think this issue of the hierarchy of comparators was the right approach. That has been changed by the Government and we're going to be very interested to see how that actually plays out in practical terms. As a former Minister of the previous Government the reality is you can imagine that you can get tied up with some claims that may not necessarily have merit and that's what we will be focused on.Look I think the other sort of bigger picture here is that we cannot have equity we cannot have equality of opportunity and we cannot have equal pay and equal pay for equal work in this country if we just think of this legislation alone. It will not just be a fair and practicable legislative process that will turn around historic discrimination. We also need to at a leadership level all speak to those business leaders those community leaders and also those parts of Government that may not have valued particular sectors high enough. I think that would be my plea: it's not just about the legislation; it's also about a cultural shift as a country that needs to occur. That's why I am proud of some of the things that we did in the previous Government. We were focused on greater flexible working which is very important because it is about valuing a diverse group of people. We were focused on ensuring that we get more women into areas like science and technology which is crucial—again whether it's the digital technologies curriculum. There are other things in Government alongside this legislation that we have to be doing to ensure that every young child whether they are a boy or a girl or LGBTIQ or of different ethnicities has the same equal opportunities and that does not just involve this legislation. Again I do want to acknowledge areas like the police force that have tried to be way more progressive in the last few years. The police have set a target of 50 percent of police recruits to be women by 2021.So I'm very pleased to be standing in this House to be a member of the select committee to be considering these thorny issues that will in my view lead to thousands more people who have been historically discriminated and undervalued to be properly recognised and rewarded for their efforts. For some people it will be life changing. We saw that with Kristine Bartlett and all of the people that ended up getting significant pay increases as a result of that. And that is what we are all hanging out for in this House: to be able to give that equality of opportunity and to be able to ensure that those people are properly recognised. But we must do more as a society both culturally and also fiscally."