Tauranga MP Simon Bridges needs to wake up smell the sweat of the under-paid New Zealand working class. NZ's economy may read well but it is based on the greed of the minimum wage. NZ is a low wage economy. Yes, the employers in general are doing well and spending up large but any worker on the minimum wage is a slave today. Until NZ employers grow longer arms and have shallower pockets the workers in NZ will be classed as poor. Nobody can live well on $15 an hour. A worker being paid $15 an hour is in the poverty class. Take the tax off that and the GST off the money he or she has left, the rent or mortgage and there are pennies left. One of our cars needs a special type of servicing and in Tauranga one greedy motor company wants $130 and hour to work on it. We drive to Auckland to get the same job done have a good day out, and including petrol it costs us much less. In Tauranga we have plumbers being paid $20 an hour and the charge-out rate for their work by their employer can be anything from $80 to $100 an hour - pure greed. I know of people leaving Tauranga and going to Christchurch and being paid $35 an hour for the same job. Pay your staff well and they will work harder for you, stay with you and you will prosper just as well. Simon NZ is bordering on being a third world country as far as the workers are concerned. I haven't written the above as a worker. I am a businessman not an employee - and I am ashamed of my fellow employers in this country.

A Bourne, Bethlehem.