Belich Camilla; Pugh MaureenCAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker and congratulations on your new role. This is a very sad day for this Parliament. This morning I greeted some workers on the forecourt of Parliament. I greeted workers who worked in the early childhood sector I greeted people who worked in the supermarket sector I greeted security guards cleaners—people that would have benefited from fair pay agreements. I received a petition of 15000 people who opposed what this Government is doing. All of these people understand that fair pay agreements were a way forward for New Zealand to address the embarrassing low productivity that we have and that has gone on for a number of years and also the low-wage economy that we have had for a number of years. Those people understood that in order for us all to succeed we need to have secure work we need to have high wages we need to have fair conditions we need to have safe workplaces. Fair pay agreements would have been the mechanism to achieve these goals in New Zealand and those things are sorely needed.This Government has shown its true colours in these last few days. The first thing they did was to attack jobs with the repeal of the dual mandate. The next thing they did was to repeal the fair pay agreements—to attack wages and conditions that working people would like to see in their workplaces that would have helped New Zealand. The Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety has been questioned regularly about the advice that she's received and it's quite obvious from the speech that she has just given that her answers in the sense that she hasn't had any advice are correct because none of her explanation as to why fair pay agreements need to be repealed is actually backed up by evidence.I want to address this issue because we're going to spend a long time on what is an issue that I find very very interesting and have spent a long time in my life looking at. So one of the issues I want to address early on is the issue that the Government seemed to say that just because they had something in their election manifesto it means that somehow they can come to this Parliament they can dispense with the usual norms of lawmaking and scrutiny which are usual like select committee processes and use urgency.Hon Member: You used it.CAMILLA BELICH: They say—well yes the Labour Government used urgency. Yes we did. But there should always be a justification and reason and a good reason for urgency and there isn't one in this instance. As the Minister has said none of the fair pay agreements that we are looking at have actually been initiated yet. So why is this Government prioritising taking away rights for fair pay for fair conditions of working people before Christmas? Why is this a priority of this Government? I will answer that question. The reason is because they are an anti-worker Government. They don't stand with working people. They stand against working people and that's why they're repealing this piece of legislation.Two hundred thousand to 300000 working people stood to benefit from fair pay agreements. I want to go through each of the industries that have actually initiated fair pay agreements so that the people on the other side of this House know and the public of New Zealand know who this Government is targeting and who they stand against. The people that this fair pay agreements bill will hurt the most are bus drivers. They are people in the hospitality industry. They are security guards. They are commercial cleaners. They are early childhood education workers that teach our most precious children and have such an important role in the first thousand days as we've heard. They are supermarket workers—our essential workers that got us through COVID-19.It is absolutely unconscionable that this Government is prioritising taking away rights from these vulnerable low-paid workers before Christmas. They should be ashamed of themselves. Let me tell those on the other side of the House: you are on the wrong side of history. You will look back and your children will look back at this day and they will think I wish we'd had industry-level bargaining earlier because we can see—now that the 2026 Labour Government has implemented it—the gains that that has made for productivity the gains that that has made for workplace safety the gains that that has made for wages how people feel secure in their work."This bill is a disgrace and I do not support it.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The question is that the motion be agreed to."