from the Employment Court are limited to questions of law, and leave must be granted for an appeal hearing to take place. The question of law in this case was altered by the Court of Appeal to better reflect the Employment Court's decision. The final question for determination was: "were the answers given by the Employment Court to the 1st and 6th questions at [118] of its decision wrong in law?" Judgment of the court The judgment of the Court of Appeal was delivered by Justice French. The Court dismissed TerraNova's appeal, upholding the Employment Court's decision. Commission report The report of the New Zealand Royal Commission of Inquiry into Equal Pay in 1971 (Commission report) was relied on heavily by the Employment Court. However, the Court of Appeal found that it was sufficiently ambiguous so as to support all of the parties' competing interpretations. Therefore, it also found that the weight given to the report by the Employment Court was unjustified. The Commission report recognised the "crowding of women" into lower-paying occupations, however it also suggests that the issue was equality opportunity, rather than pay equity. Systemic undervaluation of skills is not mentioned, nor is there any discussion of s 3 of the Government Service Equal Pay Act, which the Court of Appeal considered to be relevant. The Commission rejected the United Kingdom's approach to equal pay with very little discussion, and rejected the Australian approach with little more. The report was also considered to be unhelpful because of its age, and the societal shift in attitude towards enterprise bargaining and away from centralised wage fixing and multi-employer agreements since it was written in 1971. Text of the Equal Pay Act The Court identified that there are two separate categories within s 3(1) of the Equal Pay Act 1972 (the Act), and that interpretation of the section must make a meaningful distinction between them. The phrase "would be" in s 3(1)(b) indicated that the comparator was intended by Parliament to be hypothetical, therefore causing the Court to dismiss TerraNova's argument that the Act was solely concerned with internal comparisons between male and female workers under the same employer. Having decided that external comparators were allowed, the Judges then considered what sort of external evidence could be considered. They noted that s 3(1)(b) contained no restrictions other than to require that the evidence must be in relation to "a hypothetical