Mr Speaker,

I move that the Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

For too long young workers in this country have been underpaid and devalued. When I started work on this Bill just after the 2005 election I was motivated by anger at the unfairness of the way in which 16 and 17 year old workers are paid less for doing the same job simply because of their age, and also by a broader concern at the way in which so many older people in this country disrespect the young, a disrespect which the pay differential simply serves to magnify.

The Bill we are passing today goes some way towards remedying both these problems, and I'm grateful for the support the Green Party found from enough parties in this House to see it through. I know it's been a tough call for some MPs and parties to see their way clear to supporting the elimination of age based employment discrimination, but at least we've got there, almost. I am hopeful that in a few years time equal pay for equal work on the basis of age will not be seen as such a radical notion as it is today.

I am, of course, sorry that the clarity of my original purpose - to completely remove youth rates for 16 and 17 year olds - has been watered down, but the compromise we have ended up with still marks a huge improvement on the status quo.

From 1 April 2008 16 and 17 year old workers will have to be paid the minimum adult wage once they have completed three months or 200 hours of work with any employer, whichever period is the shorter. If they are supervising or training other workers they will have to be paid the adult wage, fullstop.

The new entrants' wage for the first 3 months or 200 hours will still be paid at 80% of the adult rate. Personally I think this is superfluous. By the age of 16 many young people in our country have already been in the paid workforce for months if not years. Even if they haven't, every person who is new on the job needs time to learn the ropes and orient to the new workplace, whether they are 16, 25 or 60.

However, while the Greens do not support the new entrants wage concept, we accept the realities of political compromise, and I am grateful to Labour, NZ First, United Future, Jim Anderton and Taito Philip Field for helping get the Bill this far.

I would also like to acknowledge the Maori Party who are opposing the Bill in its amended form but who are in fact its fiercest supporters. I am grateful for the Maori Party's unflinching and uncompromising support for the Bill as originally conceived rather than in its watered down version, and I hope one day your party and ours - and others - will join in going the whole way in abolishing youth rates altogether.

For this Bill, even as it was originally drafted, was a compromise all along. Right from the start I was criticized in some quarters, and rightfully so, for putting up a Bill that didn't do away with age discrimination altogether, maintaining it for workers under 16.

There were two main reasons why I didn't take the Bill down this path. The first was pragmatic - I didn't think a Bill which did this would have any chance of succeeding in this Parliament. The second was that while I do not support wage discrimination on the basis of age for under 16 year olds, I think we need to do some serious thinking and discussion in this country around the issues of children and young people and paid work.

At what age should our children enter the paid workforce? Are there some jobs which we think are OK at certain ages and some that aren't? On what basis do we make that decision? Are some jobs worth less than others, and why? Where do we draw which line? How do we stop some children being exploited in basically slave labour conditions, something which still happens here and to which we as a society remain almost completely blind?

I hope that the debate around this Bill will help trigger serious consideration by Government, other political parties, trade unions, employers, churches and NGOs of these issues. And in the end I hope we will have a society that recognises that if someone is doing an adult job on an adult job description they should get adult wages. And we must also protect our children from having to go out to work too young, or in conditions or for wages that are untenable by anyone's standards.

I sometimes cringe when I hear people of good will and human rights groups correctly rail against child labour in the third world, but not acknowledging the rapidly increasing use of child labour as defined by the ILO that is occurring here.

Addressing this will take more than a Private Member's Bill. I hope that the Minister of Labour takes up this issue and includes it as part of the Government's employment relations work programme. I can assure her that she will have the support of the Green Party is she does.

Next, I would like to make a particular acknowledgement of some of the organisations which did so much to help ensure that this Bill got through.

Above all I would like to pay my respects to two particular trade unions, the National Distribution Union and my own union Unite!, who both put a huge effort in people power and resources into mobilizing against discriminatory youth rates.

Right from the start both the NDU and Unite! organised on the job, on the streets, in the union movement and with MPs to demand an end to unequal pay for young workers.

Along with other groups like students' associations, the CTU's Youth Union Movement, and Radical Youth, they organised some of the loudest and most colourful rallies and demonstrations we've seen on the streets of Auckland and Wellington in the last few years. Young workers told their own stories of exploitation, naming and shaming youth rates employers as well as placing this struggle well and truly within the broader struggle for youth and worker rights.

They not only took to the streets, they came to the Select Committee - and made far more perceptive and intelligent submissions than some of those who opposed the Bill.

Young workers and their unions also included the issue in their bargaining claims. With some employers like Postie Plus and BP they have succeeded in abolishing youth rates completely. With others, such as Progressive Enterprises and Restaurant Brands, they have started the process of elimination of youth rates, which I am sure will soon be a total elimination, further assisted by this Bill.

Beyond this core of support, the CTU and the rest of the union movement pitched in, alongside groups like youth organisations, community law centres, church agencies, the office of the Children's Commissioner, the Human Rights Commission, and many others.

I also want to make a brief comment on submissions that opposed the Bill. I was surprised at the low level of opposition from the business sector. It was as if - in most cases - they went through the motions of opposing the Bill without their heart being in it. In fact I had to rely on some of the business submissions to negotiate the final compromises to allow the Bill to go through.

Perhaps I should not have been so surprised. I have been interested to read a couple of employer polls over the last two years that showed a majority of employers did not support the continuation of youth rates. Also some major newspaper editorials have come out in full support of this Bill.

These business and editorial comments have left the National Party completely exposed on the issue. Their opposition at the committee stages was purely token. The refrain seemed to be "we don't believe in aged based wage discrimination, but we don't want Parliament to do anything to reduce or eliminate it".

What a cop out. It's time the National Party turned its back on the knee-jerk anti-worker attitudes that have infused the party for so long. They should instead support this and other progressive pro-worker legislation rather than pandering to the predilections of some of their more reactionary backers.

Finally, I want to comment on the hand grenade that the Ministry of Justice tossed into the Select Committee proceedings in the form of their Bill of Rights compliance report. This report stated that the current regulations that provide for youth rates in the minimum wage could be considered ultra vires the principal Act when read in conjunction with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

Like a hand grenade, it seemed to stun the rest of the Select Committee who preferred not to deal with the issues raised in this report, regardless of my attempts to put these issues back on the table.

I still have a niggle that the compromise reached in this Bill may not meet the Bill of Rights compliance test.

However, the amended Bill does take us a long way down the path to completely removing discrimination based on age in our Minimum Wage Act.

I am pleased with what we have achieved today and look forward to the time when youth wages discrimination will disappear completely not only from the Minimum Wage Act, but also the Human Rights Act and from every collective and individual employment agreement in the country.

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