Key John: Minimum Wage Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Key John: Minimum Wage Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:608;Page:5160] 
JOHN KEY (NZ National—Helensville) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of National to continue to oppose this hapless legislation. Clause 4 talks about the people in this country to whom employers will apply a minimum wage. They are young people 16 and 17-year-olds who are in apprenticeship schemes across the country. 
Why is the Labour Government pushing through this legislation? It is not because it is right to do so; the Government’s own advisers have told the Government that this legislation is wrong. The Government’s own advisers have told the Government that this legislation will lead to a reduction in employment for very young New Zealanders. The Government’s own advisers have told it this legislation will fiscally cost it more money. So Government members are not enacting this legislation because it is right. They are not doing it because they have a lot of evidence that one day this legislation may be right. At the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee the officials could not actually produce a lot of evidence because they had not done a lot of empirical research on what the results of this legislation would be. They just knew it would be wrong. That is why they wrote that up in the commentary on the bill—they just knew that fundamentally it would add to unemployment and add to the Government’s fiscal costs. So Government members did not proceed with this legislation because they knew it was right. They did it and they are doing it for one reason alone: they hold an ideological view that this legislation will be right. 
Well I have a message for the Labour Government: it should go back and look to see when the number of people on apprenticeships started rising in this country. It was in 1992 when the Employment Contracts Act was passed by the previous National Government and flexibility started coming back. Government members are shaking their heads but they should go and look at the numbers. Since I have been in this House I do not know how many Labour members have been on their feet telling us what a wonderful job they have done by having more people in apprenticeships across New Zealand. We have heard speech after speech—and they have been right. The number of apprenticeships has been rising but not because there has been a minimum wage. The Government’s own advisers tell it there will now be fewer apprenticeships and would have been fewer apprenticeships if the previous Government had had legislation like this in place. 
In 1992 when flexibility was introduced right across the labour market New Zealanders of all ages of all educational backgrounds and in all areas of employment had a better opportunity of gaining employment. What this Government is doing will reverse that. So I do not think I want to hear any more Government members on their feet in the weeks ahead telling us why there will be an increase in the number of apprenticeships. There will be no such increase. The Government’s own advisers are telling us that because they know there will not be an increase. 
This legislation will apply to very young New Zealanders—to 16 and 17-year-olds. One thing we know about 16 and 17-year-olds is that they are leaving school without a full education through to year 13 or what was the seventh form in my day. They are leaving school without the equivalent of School Certificate—the National Certificate of Educational Achievement—very possibly. They are certainly not leaving with University Entrance or with a bursary. They would not have had time to do that so they are leaving school without the full set of educational skills in their toolbox. They are leaving without those skills. They are taking a statistical risk against all advice given by the Department of Labour in this country and by agencies in every country in the world that the probability is that they will be paid less and that their chances of gaining employment will be less than if they had gained higher educational qualifications. Their only hope for employment is to gain some skills that will provide them with a chance to convince future employers that they are good at a job. That is their only hope. 
What does this legislation tell us? It tells us that it is more important that those young people are guaranteed to receive $6.80 an hour than to have the chance to get a job. I say that that is completely wrong. If I was a 16-year-old New Zealander leaving school without the full educational skill-set in my toolbox I would not care whether I was receiving $6.60 $6.70 or $6.80 an hour. What I would want is to know that I would have the opportunity to be able to earn a good wage in the years to come because I would know I did not have the educational skills to fall back on.