Minimum Wage (Mitigation of Youth Unemployment) Amendment Bill

Hon Sir ROGER DOUGLAS (ACT) Link to this

I move, That the Minimum Wage (Mitigation of Youth Unemployment) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. At the appropriate time, if it is given a first reading—it does not appear likely—I will move that it be considered by the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee.

This bill is about two very simple things. The first thing is jobs. The second is helping young people find their footing in the labour market and giving them a start.

Since the previous Labour-led Government abolished the youth minimum wage in 2008, youth unemployment has soared. Since 2008 youth unemployment for 15 to 19 year-olds has almost doubled. The number of unemployed youth has risen by more than 18,800 people. The recession has had an obvious impact, but the youth unemployment rate is far higher than usual in a recession. University of Canterbury economist Eric Crampton has demonstrated that there was a large rise in the youth unemployment rate relative to the adult rate after the youth minimum wage was raised to the adult level.

The youth unemployment rate today stands at 26.5 percent—a national disgrace. The rate for Māori youth is even worse: it stands at 38.7 percent. Almost two out of every five young Māori people in this country are unemployed. To put it in another way, for every 1½ young Māori people who are in employment, one person is unemployed. Yet the Māori Party, as I understand it, intends to vote for this situation to continue. It intends to vote against this bill.

Why do National, Labour, the Māori Party, and the Greens keep pretending that the abolition of the youth minimum wage has helped people in New Zealand when it has, in fact, stopped many young people from finding work? Labour and now National tell us that they care about the young people of this country. But the people of New Zealand should not be fooled: it is those parties that are responsible for the large number of young people who cannot find work. Labour and now National have forced thousands of young people to go without gainful employment.

Why does the youth minimum wage have this unintended consequence? Businesses are not charities. They respond to prices just like the rest of us. The abolition of the youth minimum wage has priced young people out of the market. That has occurred because many young people are just starting out on their career. They will be searching for their first job. Their lack of training and experience means that they have few skills. What Labour and now National have forced young people to do is to compete with adults. They are forced to compete with those people who have had a lot more time to gain experience and who have more skills.

I find it hard to believe that the National Government will not support this bill when it has conceded that the abolition of the youth minimum wage has led to unemployment. Then again, the National Party has always been bold in Opposition, but has proved to be spineless in Government. As Wayne Mapp said when debating this issue in 2006—

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) Link to this

In this debate I think we will see most members of the House, especially members of the two main political parties, unified in their opposition to the Minimum Wage (Mitigation of Youth Unemployment) Amendment Bill. I will start by responding to some of the issues that have been raised by the presenter of this bill. In the context of looking at the youth of New Zealand and at the future this country has available to it, of which this Government is very much aware and which it wishes to promote, we see a bright future for our young people. We see our young people getting education, skills, and training, and having a direction and purpose in life, and we see a positive, successful, and dynamic future for New Zealand’s youth. Those things are essential if our country is to achieve its goals.

The fundamental proposition this bill puts up is that we need to pay people less to get them into their first job so that they can have an unskilled future. That is what this bill essentially will do to New Zealanders. We see a different future for New Zealanders. We want those young people to get into training and skills so that they are not talking about getting the lowest-paid job they possibly can, but instead are looking to get the best-paid job they possibly can. If we can achieve that, we can make the dynamic change in our economic base that will give New Zealand the growth potential we need. I think that is the fundamental point that the ACT Party has not grasped. It is looking at things in a historical perspective. Well, the world has moved on. At this stage we need to create an economy that has a strong and successful workforce, and to do that those young people need to get the best skills they can, at the youngest age they can. We should be promoting to them the need to get education and training, not encouraging them to take the easy option of temporary employment, which may provide some financial gain at an early age, but will not deliver long-term benefits for them as we go forward as a country.

That is the dynamic that I think the ACT Party has not grasped. It is looking at it from the perspective that we can just give lower rates of pay, and therefore people will be happy. It is also scaremongering by talking about things like youth gangs, taking the dole, and all that kind of “work”. That is not the reality. The reality is that youth want to achieve and get a decent start in life. Where do we set the rate? Where do we set a youth rate, if we are to have one? What is the value that would be put on a young person, under the ACT proposal? I imagine that if we were to take ACT’s logic to its full extreme, it would be detrimental to have the youth rate that ACT is proposing. ACT should not propose a rate if it really wants to get young people into employment, rather than into the gangs or on the dole. To set a rate is to set a line, and the fact of the matter is that the line is set at the minimum wage. I think we will see agreement on that between the main political parties, because we probably share a common vision of what we want for those young people going forward.

I encourage those people who are listening and members in the House to look at this issue in the wider perspective of what we want to achieve in setting some incentives and some direction, and not try to scaremonger or create perceptions that if we have a lower rate of pay at the first level of employment, those opportunities will necessarily be provided. That is not the signal we need to send to young New Zealanders as we go forward.

I think it is important to look at the situation we are in at the moment. I do not think anybody out there is under any illusion about how difficult it is to get a job. The most difficult and harrowing situation for a student leaving school, university, or polytech is achieving that first start in the employment cycle, or, for someone who has lost his or her job, finding that next job. Many New Zealanders are living that nightmare at the moment. That nightmare has been brought about partly by the nature of our economic position, which is partly caused by world circumstances, but also because we need a stronger and more vibrant economy that can deliver opportunities for our young people going forward. That is the crucial problem, and we as a Parliament should be looking for solutions.

We should be looking for solutions so that New Zealanders, and especially young New Zealanders, can see a future in training and in employment so that they can achieve personal growth and the desire that comes with getting a job. That is what this Government is focusing on. It is focusing on the economic fundamentals that will provide the environment whereby employers can hire young people and deliver them the incentives to get ahead and succeed. The Transport and Industrial Relations Committee has debated the issue of youth employment rates and unemployment many times. One of the key points that always comes through is that we have young people appearing before the select committee who are attaining very high levels of management expertise and success at a young age. It is difficult, when we see the logic of this member’s bill, to compare that with the reality of the success of a lot of young people. We are denying them their success by holding them at a lower rate than their ability shows as individuals. It is a tremendous shame if we dumb down our young people, who can provide successful and strong services and can be paid for that at a rate that demonstrates their capability and their ability to do a job well. It is important that we do not set the bar too low, in the sense that our young people who work hard must not find that they get no reward for their efforts. That is something that I think this legislation could have a problem addressing if it goes through this House.

In essence, there is a new way of looking at these issues as we go forward. There is a way of building an economy that is strong, and that delivers the skills and enterprise for our young people to take advantage of that strength. The Government is committed to creating that economic environment. We do not believe that this measure will create the environment that the ACT Party says it will. We believe that the true measure of success for New Zealanders as we go forward is a strong economic environment, where we deliver skills and enterprise, we back our young people, and we give them the right direction and rewards so that they know they can succeed. They will then build themselves into even stronger and more successful New Zealanders going forward.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) Link to this

For the second time in a day I find myself in the unusual position of following the speech of a National member of Parliament on industrial relations legislation and just about agreeing with it. I think I can agree with the vast majority of what my colleague David Bennett from the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—and Tau Henare; the pair share a hairdresser—said on the Minimum Wage (Mitigation of Youth Unemployment) Amendment Bill. David Bennett is right. He has got it. If I were Sir Roger Douglas, I would be slightly insulted that a junior backbencher was sent to the House to deliver the Government’s position; the tradition is that a Minister takes the first call on this sort of legislation to state the position for the Government. A Minister is part of the Government, and a backbencher, of course, is not. I know that procedural niceties are not as important as that as far as this Government is concerned and I think that Sir Roger is not as sensitive as that anyway. He probably would not realise that Kate Wilkinson is a Minister at the moment.

Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) Link to this

I am pleased to speak to the first reading of the Minimum Wage (Mitigation of Youth Unemployment) Amendment Bill. This bill will provide for differing levels of minimum wages for youth and other workers. National will be opposing this bill. We do not feel that it is helpful in keeping the focus on growth and growing the economy, which is needed to create jobs, and which this Government has made a top priority for this year. That will be crucial going forward. Getting the economy right is absolutely fundamental and the rest will follow. I agree with the Hon Trevor Mallard’s argument that we need to be a high-wage economy. Importantly, this Government is focused on keeping youth in education or training, and we have introduced a number of measures to achieve the same. This Government is committed to giving youth every opportunity to achieve and meet their potential. We value our young people.

We know that not every young person is suited to mainstream education, and that is why the Government is committed to opening trade academies. These are a key part of our Youth Guarantee policy and they will keep more students engaged in learning. They will provide more career choices for 16 and 17-year-olds, and give them greater opportunities to develop their knowledge, skills, and talents through trades and technology programmes. National’s Youth Guarantee is about creating thousands of places at tertiary and training institutes across the country to help 16 and 17-year-olds to stay engaged in learning. We know that the longer youth are engaged in learning, the less likely they are to fail in life and the greater the chance that they will be in work and be productive. We want to see every young person succeed and reach his or her full potential.

This Government is committed to giving young people the opportunities they need to succeed. Yes, we know that young people have been hit hard by the recession, and there are a number of reasons why we have a recession. Our Job Ops package has proven to be hugely successful. Job Ops is about backing businesses that create work opportunities for young people. We asked firms to provide up to 4,000 young people with an entry-level job for at least 6 months. The Government paid a $5,000 wage subsidy for each placement. Job Ops is about giving incentives to local businesses that hire low-skilled under-24-year-olds for 6 months. It was such a successful programme that an extra 2,000 places were announced in February this year.

Community Max, another policy, has also been very successful. Community Max is about inviting local councillors, mayors, community groups, and iwi to play a role creating up to 3,000 work opportunities. We wanted community organisations to come to the Government with local projects that could employ young people and engage them in our communities. The Government paid the minimum wage for 30 hours a week for up to 6 months, a training payment, and for one supervisor for every four participants. Those 3,000 places have now been filled. National believes that every young Kiwi should be able to find his or her way on to the path to success. We are concerned that for young people starting out in their working lives, a long period of unemployment could be very damaging. We know we cannot afford to leave young people languishing on a benefit and risk diminishing the potential of an entire generation of Kiwis. That is why the Government has been proactive in keeping our young people in work, education, and training.

National has not seen any evidence to show that young people are losing their jobs because of youth rates. We are not convinced that this bill will reduce youth unemployment. We should be focused on growing the economy and providing opportunities and jobs for young workers. This Government is doing exactly that. Thank you.

DARIEN FENTON (Labour) Link to this

I am thankful for the opportunity to speak on the first reading of the Minimum Wage (Mitigation of Youth Unemployment) Amendment Bill. I have to say, how the worm turns! I was in the last Parliament, under a Labour-led Government. We had this very same debate about youth minimum wages, and National voted against it. It is really pleasing to know that National has seen the error of its ways, and has actually accepted that what Labour was saying about youth minimum wages being discriminatory and not having any impact on youth employment was accurate. We have seen from the figures that the minimum wage makes no difference to youth employment. We can argue about research—and the member Sir Roger Douglas will argue about that—but the fact simply is that if someone is working, it should not matter whether that person is young, a Māori, a woman, or whatever he or she may be. Someone who is doing a job should be paid a decent wage for what he or she does.

This bill seeks to return young workers to the scrapheap of the youth minimum wage, and, as I said, that is not a new argument to have in Parliament. The arguments that Sir Roger Douglas has put for his legislation are well rehearsed. I know that the member was not here for the last Parliament, but I tell him that we went through them then and they were rejected. They were rejected. We went through a select committee process and we heard from all kinds of people, but the arguments were rejected because there was no evidence that increasing the youth minimum wage or young people’s wages has any impact on employment levels, just as there is no evidence that increasing the wages of women has any impact on wages. I think we have seen arguments about that in the past.

I do not want to be disrespectful to the member—I welcome him back to Parliament—but I ask him whether this is really what he came back to Parliament in order to do. I ask whether this is really what he came back to Parliament to do, because I would be interested to hear a response on that. We had debates on this issue in the last Parliament, but no one can remember what life was like in the 1980s, when that member was in Parliament. No one can remember that, actually.

GARETH HUGHES (Green) Link to this

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. As the youngest member of this House, it was not that long ago that I was pushing supermarket trolleys, delivering pamphlets, and serving up fish and chips, and being paid at a lower wage than the minimum adult wage. Back in the late 1990s when I was a high school student working after school, I, like many Kiwis, was discriminated against by the youth minimum wage, which applied to 16 to 19-year-olds and was set at 60 percent of the adult minimum wage. In my case, I was actually supervising adult workers, yet due to the law I was being paid less.

The Green Party wants to look after Aotearoa New Zealand and all of its people. We believe in a fair go for everyone, young workers included. Everyone deserves a decent living wage, but this bill sets to undo the success that the Green Party, and in particular Sue Bradford in her last term in Parliament, achieved through her Minimum Wage (Abolition of Age Discrimination) Amendment Bill. The Minimum Wage (Mitigation of Youth Unemployment) Amendment Bill, put forward by Roger Douglas, wants to take New Zealand back to the past. Perhaps we would not go back as far as he would prefer—the 19th century and rampant, unregulated capitalism—but as far back as the 1980s and the 1990s. It would be back to the bad old days of the previous National-led Government and its neo-liberal Labour predecessor, in which Sir Roger himself was a key player.

This bill seeks to reinstate a discriminatory youth minimum wage. It is discriminatory. Why should young people who are doing the same work get different pay? In a fair society we are not paid depending on our gender, our sexual preferences, or the colour of our skin. As TheStandard points out, as a parody, the word “youth” could be replaced with “Māori” in this bill. The point is that we would not discriminate based on ethnicity, so why should we on age? Ever since the Equal Pay Act back in 1972, discrimination in rates of pay based on gender has been unlawful, yet the one piece of legislation where discrimination should not be setting guidelines, the Human Rights Act, condones setting up discriminatory wages. Members may have noticed my first member’s bill, on youth human rights, which proposes repealing section 30(2) of the Human Rights Act to make this type of age-based discrimination unlawful.

The bill we are debating is misnamed. It is called the Minimum Wage (Mitigation of Youth Unemployment) Amendment Bill, but that is just a front, a Trojan Horse for the real issue. ACT’s buddies in big business want to pay young workers low wages, to keep wages down in general and profits for a few up. The Green Party wants to give everyone a fair go, and thinks it is a tragedy that near to 30 percent of the unemployed are aged 15 to 19. Youth unemployment is rising, but that is because of the recession, not because businesses cannot discriminate based on age. A Treasury report from 2004 said that there had been no negative impact on youth employment from the 2001 changes. In fact, youth were more employed and working longer hours. This bill has nothing to do with lowering youth unemployment; it is about lower wages for workers and higher profits for shareholders and owners. It is tragic that this Government is making moves to make further tertiary studies harder to access and more expensive for our young people. From raising fees to cutting 40 to 45 percent of New Zealand tertiary courses and reducing student loan access, this Government is making it tougher, not easier, for unemployed young Kiwis to train, to get skilled, and to contribute to an innovative, prosperous, and growing economy.

In summary, the nation’s young are beset on all sides. Our young people are growing up in an increasingly unequal society, an increasingly uncaring society, and an increasingly dangerous one. Those with jobs are threatened by work conditions that breed mistrust, fear, and conflict between workers and employees. The 90-day fire-at-will bill, miserable minimum wage increases, and looming GST rises send all workers, but our youngest and most vulnerable workers in particular, a strong message: this ACT-led, John Key - led Government is standing up for private profit, not for a fair go for all. Last month National somewhat slowed Sir Roger Douglas’s dreams of returning New Zealand to the 1990s, then to Victorian England, when it announced that it will not support this bill. It is a rare piece of good news out of the Beehive, but let us face it: the bill was a bad idea to begin with.

The Green Party believes in a fair go for all, not in discriminating and setting pay based on age, or on any of the other prohibited grounds of discrimination under the Human Rights Act. The Green Party believes in finding real solutions for unemployed young people, like supporting upskilling and increasing access to tertiary education. That is why the Green Party is opposing this bill.

RAHUI KATENE (Māori Party—Te Tai Tonga) Link to this

The Māori Party has a longstanding concern about the specific issue of youth unemployment. In particular, we have been devastated by the grinding consistency of the rate of Māori unemployment, which tends to be approximately 2.3 times the non-Māori rate, and by the fact that Māori have lower labour-force participation rates than non-Māori. But we take great heart from the strength of our people, who never give up, and who remind us of the need to keep fighting the fight to ensure that the potential of our young people is enabled and that they are empowered to thrive.

It was for that reason that the Māori Party duly recognised the significance of our co-leader, Tariana Turia, being delegated responsibility for Māori and Pasifika employment, a challenge that she has taken on at full steam. It is within this context that Minister Turia has pioneered the Community Max programme, which has been immensely successful in its short duration. In fact, at last count some 3,200 positions had been filled, and, of those, approximately 1,900 were taken up by young Māori. That has been an incredible endorsement of the success of the programme. It is an endorsement that we see and hear about right throughout our electorates.

There have been two ground-breaking media releases in the last 10 days that give us room for hope, although they have received very little media attention. Two days ago Minister Bennett announced there was an overall increase of 9.5 percent in job vacancies between January and March of this year. In the previous week, we learnt that the number of New Zealanders receiving an unemployment benefit dropped by almost 4,000 in the last month. Most significant of all, in our mind, was that 2,500 Māori cancelled their benefits in March because they had found employment, as did 546 people from Pasifika communities. That is great news, and we hope to hear and see more of the same.

We come to this bill with some cynicism about the allegation that 20,000 young people have lost their jobs as a result of introducing minimum wages for young people. The explanatory note of the bill paints a grim picture that implies that because the youth wage rates were abolished and aligned with the minimum wage for adults, mass unemployment would occur. It goes further and suggests that equitable pay for youth workers at the minimum wage for adults is detrimental to their employment prospects. Our concern is that we simply have no evidence or analysis to suggest that such spurious claims have any factual basis. The more likely reason is the global economic downturn that has ravaged the employment sector generally.

I want to make it absolutely clear that the situation of job seekers is of immense concern to us in the Māori Party, and it was in this context that we absolutely supported Community Max. The challenge for the Government, however, is to determine what the next step of engagement will be to ensure that those young people do not enter or return to unemployment. I know that every member of this House and every electorate has seen incredible progress in connecting young people to the positive work already going on in our communities through the Community Max scheme. The reason the programme was so successful is that, along with receiving the minimum wage for 30 hours’ work a week, those Community Max graduates achieved a great sense of self-satisfaction.

The answer does not lie in short-changing our young people by giving youth a few extra dollars on an hourly basis, when that amount does not even match the rate of inflation. We want solutions, not bills that create more problems. The Māori Party will not be supporting this bill.

JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) Link to this

I am somewhat bemused to be in the Chamber again debating another bill introduced by the member the Hon Sir Roger Douglas that, I think, fundamentally attacks the rights of young people. I find it bizarre, also, to be agreeing with some of the contributions made by the Government. But I still find it a bit rich for the Government to claim that it is against the Minimum Wage (Mitigation of Youth Unemployment) Amendment Bill because it values the young, and because it is interested in youth unemployment as an issue.

The Government’s scorecard on youth issues is dismal. I was reflecting on those issues as I was preparing my contribution to the House today. The list looks something like this: failed boot camps for young offenders; treating child offenders as adults; targeting students who are struggling to pay loans after completing tertiary education; capping enrolments in polytechs and universities, and turning away 8,000 young people; trashing youth health centres; and cutting funding to the youth workers association. If the Government goes ahead and supports voluntary student union membership, I will be adding that to the list of lost services also. But I also have something to say about the absence of the Government’s action on some critical issues, and I add youth unemployment to that list.

This bill, naively I think, purports to address the issue of youth unemployment. It is an antiquated and discredited argument to claim that if youth are paid less, that will fix the issue, rather than simply perhaps shifting unemployment around. We have an evidence base from within New Zealand to discredit that argument with. Labour increased the youth minimum wage by 126 percent and 81 percent for the two different age groups. At the very same time, youth unemployment in New Zealand fell to 11.8 percent—one of the lowest levels that we have seen. No one in this House is denying that youth unemployment now is high, and is a significant issue that we should all be concerned about. In fact, it is an issue that the entire OECD is struggling with, but only nine countries have looked at lower youth minimum wage rates as a potential way of addressing it.

The member raised the significant youth unemployment numbers we face. When was the last time that youth unemployment was as high as it is now? It was in the 1990s, when the youth minimum wage was in full swing. I have spoken to people who work in the New Zealand labour market at an academic level. They tell me that moving around minimum wage rates for young people is simply not the answer, from an evidence-based perspective. What will fix the situation? There is no point saying that these young people would have jobs if we simply paid them less, if the jobs are not available in the first place. Job creation in New Zealand is a significant issue. Skills training for our young people is a significant issue, as is making sure that they are educated in areas where we have gaps in New Zealand. Did I hear anyone say that the Skills Strategy may have contributed to answering that? But the Government decided it was best suited to the shelves. All of that would have contributed to fixing our youth unemployment issue.

Instead, the only response that we hear on this from one party in Parliament, through Sir Roger Douglas, is that we should simply pay young people less. In fact, one of his arguments was that, somehow, paying young people equal pay for equal work—paying them equitably across the board with peers doing the same job—would contribute to their choosing to join youth gangs. That is a completely abhorrent argument to make, that somehow we are sending a message to young people that we do not value them. It was certainly the message that I took when as a young person I was paid less for a job I was doing that was exactly the same as the job of an older peer—that I was not valued as a young person. That was the message I received.

I have asked young people their view of this bill. I have asked young people about it. One young person told me that he agrees with this member’s bill. When I asked him whether he felt that having a different minimum wage would give him a decent wage to survive on, he said yes. I asked him how he would pay the rent, and he pointed out that his mum and dad covered it for him. I do not believe that this is a realistic bill that addresses the significant issues that young people are facing. I hope that we come back to this House and debate the real issues around youth unemployment.

Hon TAU HENARE (National) Link to this

I read in the New Zealand Herald this morning “Apathy towards jobless issue does us no credit”, and that 38 percent of Māori aged between 15 and 19 are unemployed. I do not totally pooh-pooh Sir Roger Douglas’ idea, although we will not be supporting his move.

I want us to cast our minds back to the last time we had such a scandal in terms of unemployment. I do not lay the blame at anybody’s doorstep. Unemployment is what it is: unemployment. But I find it abhorrent that we would pay somebody the dole to do nothing. I find it abhorrent that we would pay anybody anything to sit at home and to do nothing. I think there are better ways, and this country has seen better ways, of dealing with unemployment, especially in those high unemployment zones, as I like to call them. They are basically the north, the East Coast, and pockets of the suburbs.

One of the things that I think we should be seriously looking at, along with what we are doing with Community Max and our other programmes, like Job Ops, is putting all of our energies—

Hon Sir ROGER DOUGLAS (ACT) Link to this

It was an interesting debate: not one solution to the unemployment rate amongst young people was put up by any speaker. The fact is that National has already conceded the principles of my Minimum Wage (Mitigation of Youth Unemployment) Amendment Bill. It did that when it said that the abolition of the youth minimum wage has led to unemployment. That is why the National Government has implemented the Job Ops scheme, giving businesses $5,000 to hire someone between the ages of 15 and 24. It has done that because it knows full well that the businesses could not afford to hire those young people without that subsidy. Instead of facing the truth and reversing this silly policy, the Government’s solution is to spend more taxpayer dollars trying to restore to youth the ability to get a job that was taken away by the Government in the first place.

The whole thing is absolutely ridiculous. Whether or not we want to deny it—and everyone in this House was denying it tonight—there is one economic reality that we cannot overcome, and it is that wages will always reflect the productivity of the worker. Regrettably, thousands of young people do not have a productive value of $510 a week, and to those young people who do not have a productive value of $510 a week, we have said that we will put them on the scrap heap. We have said we will throw them on the scrap heap. In my area a decile 6 school had a test for young people coming into that school. One of the questions asked if we have 36 apples and we eat 27, how many we have left. Guess how many people got it wrong. It was 23 percent. One in four got it wrong. The school system has failed these young people, and what this House is doing is making damned sure that the labour market will fail them, as well.

What we are doing—the National Party, the Labour Party, the Green Party, and the Māori Party—is saying to young Māori people of 16 years of age that they cannot accept the job. Even if they are offered one at $400, they cannot actually take it. We say that by law they cannot take that job. They cannot go into that job and develop the skills they did not get at school. They cannot get that work experience. They cannot get their foot on the ladder. We fail them in the education system and we are failing them in the labour market. We are saying to those young people that we will not help them. They could get $400 in the workforce, and guess what we say to them? We say they cannot have $400, they cannot earn $400. They have to go on the dole and we will give them $160. We would prefer them to be $240 worse off than they could otherwise be, and somehow we are claiming we care for these young people. Do not talk rubbish. We should be ashamed of ourselves, and, frankly, that is why New Zealand is in the cart. It is because we in this House do not have the courage to do what is right. We do what we think is best politically, and that disgusts me.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) Link to this

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The rules of this House are very clear that members have to vote in the first instance before they can call a division. No one said Aye for this bill.