Woodhouse Michael: Minimum Wage Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Woodhouse Michael: Minimum Wage Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 19 September 2012. Volume:684;Page:5408. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) 
: 
 I am very pleased to take a call on the Minimum Wage Amendment Bill. In starting I want to acknowledge the difficulties for those living on low incomes and on the minimum wage. The goal is indeed to increase the minimum wage. Indeed this Government has done so every year since it came to office as well as reducing the lower tax rates including the first marginal tax rate to 10.5 percent and to 17.5 percent for those earning over $14001 and we have maintained Working for Families. 
 I think that is really where any agreement or empathy I have with the sponsor of this bill ends because as I have said in this House in the past Dr Clark has become very good at telling half a story very well. One of them is that this will not have an effect on businesses on people on more than the minimum wage or on unemployment. I want to take him to a place where he has never been and that is into the smoko room of a small business. Let us say it is a plumbing firm in Dunedin North. He is sitting in a smoko room and the story goes something like this: “Hey guess what Scott?”. 
Scott Simpson 
: Tell me what. 
MICHAEL WOODHOUSE 
: “I was on $13.50 an hour. The Government changed the law and now I’m on $15 an hour.” Jami-Lee sits beside him in the smoko room and he says “Hang on. I was on $15 an hour. I was ahead of you by 11 percent. I’m going to go to my employer and say that I want an 11 percent increase in that wage.” So he gets to $16.67 an hour. Then another person in the plumbing firm—her name might be Louise—is sitting there going “Hang on I was on $16.67 an hour. I want an 11 percent increase.” So that person goes to $18.52. And so on and so on. It is simply not acceptable—in fact it is deceitful—to say that this would not have a knock-on effect on the thousands and thousands of small businesses in this country. 
Let us remember that the other side talk about big business. They talk a lot about big business do they not? But we know that nearly 60 percent of employees in this country are employed by businesses of fewer than— 
Brendan Horan 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I apologise for interrupting the member’s speech but I have a small business and none of that happens in my small business. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Sit down. That is not a point of order. Points of order are about process not about content. The member has a chance to make a contribution to this debate later on if he wishes. 
MICHAEL WOODHOUSE 
: I was saying that this is a country of small businesses. Nearly 60 percent of employees in this country are employed by businesses employing fewer than 19 staff. If one takes it up to 50 staff it is nearly 90 percent of all of those people. 
Official advice on this bill has it that 5500 people would lose their jobs. On this day which is Women’s Suffrage Day the same official advice says that 3350 of those people would be women. Dr Clark blogs about the fact that this would not have any effect and refers to unemployment rates in the 1990s. He says that Labour increased the minimum wage significantly and that unemployment went down. If you follow that logic why do we not make the minimum wage $30 and unemployment would disappear? It is voodoo economics and it does not make sense. 
The last thing he has been blogging about is the Prime Minister’s cleaner. The Prime Minister’s cleaner according to Dr Clark is earning something like $14-something an hour. That is above the minimum wage but still not enough to live on particularly given the many dependent children in her care—by some counts it could be eight. That is a challenge. I accept that. But this is another example of the member telling half a story very well. Thanks to Working for Families and accommodation supplements somebody in that situation even on the minimum wage with that many children in their care would be getting the grossed-up equivalent of a $70000 salary. I accept that that is an appropriate thing to do. In fact anybody in that situation— 
Dr David Clark 
: She’s a grandmother. 
MICHAEL WOODHOUSE 
: Well that does not mean that those children are not in her care. 
Darien Fenton 
: They are not in her care. 
MICHAEL WOODHOUSE 
: So this is the point: telling half— 
Dr David Clark 
: They’re not. 
MICHAEL WOODHOUSE 
: That is right. Well let us say that maybe only four children are in her care so probably $60000. The point is tell the whole story Dr Clark because it does this case no good. At least when Holly Walker talked about Working for Families in this debate she compared that with a subsidy to employers. I simply do not agree with that. If you call that a subsidy and then take it away from those people who have family members who need to be cared for and give it to people who do not that does not make sense nor does this bill.