Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): It is a huge honour to stand in the House this evening to contribute to and offer the Green Party's support for the first reading of the Care and Support Worker (Pay Equity) Settlement Bill. I want to join with the others who have spoken already—and just so full-heartedly—in paying tribute to Kristine Bartlett and her E tū union colleagues and the New Zealand Nurses Organisation and Public Service Association colleagues who came and joined the fight.This is a step along the journey that was started by Kate Sheppard over 120 years ago. The suffragettes in this country—next on their agenda was equal pay for work of equal value. Here we are; we have been slowly slowly moving. This is a struggle. I just want to express how incredibly impressed I am with these women for getting this across the line. This is a truly historic moment and it gives hope to so many other women in this country who have been undervalued and exploited for far too long. So thank you thank you thank you on behalf of the Green Party.I want also to acknowledge that alongside the pay equity struggle this has also been a struggle for recognition of and valuing specifically the work in the aged-care sector. This has been a struggle that has been going on for 30 years in this sector alone with select committee reports and inquiries and volumes of paper including an inquiry done by the Labour Party's Winnie Laban and Sue Kedgley from the Green Party in 2012. Then of course there was the very notable report Caring Counts by the former Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner Judy McGregor. They all identified that training and pay were major issues that needed to have been resolved well ahead of time in the caring industry.I do just want to point out that Judy McGregor through the Human Rights Commission in that incredibly considered report—for which she went undercover and worked as an aged-care worker—laid out a time frame for resolving these issues as well as the other issues in the sector in relation to training. We would have had this sorted by 2016—by last year; all of the issues in the sector—if the Government had picked up on that expert advice.It was laid out there to do but the Government instead chose to intervene alongside the employers against Kristine Bartlett and the aged-care workers who were seeking justice in the courts and an end to exploitation. Kristine and E tū were forced to go as far as the Supreme Court. Really I think people need to get their heads around the fact that these are some of New Zealand's lowest-paid workers who gave up a section of their pay that could have gone to feeding their families and keeping a roof over their head for their union contributions to pay for a court case that had to go all the way to the Supreme Court because the employers and the Government kept on challenging the decisions of the Employment Court when this never needed to go to court.Anyone who has had any dealings with aged-care work has known that those workers—mostly women workers—have been being exploited and that that job is an incredibly skilled job and is worth so much more than minimum wage. It was one of those things for me out on the election trail in many elections—well the two I have been through. When you were talking to people about inequality and they were like Yeah I think people should you know—they just need to work harder or you know pull their socks up." and then you would say: "Well what about the aged-care workers you know who are on minimum wage who are struggling to pay their bills? Don't you think that's a problem?". Every time that person had no comeback because everyone recognises how incredibly valuable the work that they do is and how all of us want that good friendly person to be there for us when we get to that time in our lives.I do want to point out—oh there is so much to say. I just want to touch on some of those points around just specifically acknowledging some of the work that people are doing in aged care and that the pay and training that is being pushed for is really important but also staffing levels are important. That has not yet been acknowledged and we need to keep working on that because I think it puts an undue pressure on what is already an incredibly difficult job.I do also want to acknowledge that this is a little bit like a Treaty settlement in some ways in the context that you have got to—I acknowledge the massive effort and the achievement and the work and the feat of negotiation that have gone into getting this result and the recognition of a fundamental right that underlies this around pay equity and the end of exploitation. But we have to recognise that this and the legislation on the Table is a deal that has been done in lieu of a just response and it is a deal that the unions and Kristine have been—it is extraordinary what they have managed to achieve against a Government that has fought them all the way.But it is a deal and as the Employment Court recognised economic arguments do not stack up when it comes to pay equity. Economic arguments were used to justify slavery and we kind of get that that was wrong. When we are seeing the pay increase being phased in over 5 years that is telling me that the Government is still despite the court rulings and despite the pressure thinking that the economic arguments override the basic fundamental right and the basic fundamental drive to end exploitation.I do want to acknowledge that the unions have managed to—in this deal they have given up the right to back-pay and we need to acknowledge that. That is an established right in our courts and they have given that up. They have given it up through the negotiation to be able to get to addressing qualifications and minimum standards which they have been fighting for for so long. That is again another indication of the fact that these mostly women put the care of the people whom they are serving and working for first above some of their basic legal entitlements and rights.You know hats off to them. I wish I could express it better but I have so much admiration for them and we should all just be so grateful to these women and should be committing to ending that exploitation whenever we can as quickly as we can because they should not be having to trade off back-pay or the qualifications and the minimum standards for the immediate realisation of their right to equal pay.Finally I just want to again state how important this is. This is a fight that has been very very hard fought and it is a huge honour to stand and be a part of celebrating this victory for women coming together in union in the interests of all. Kia ora."