Parental Leave and Employment ProtectionAmendment Bill

I move, That the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill be now read a first time. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the Social Services Committee consider the bill, that the committee present its final report on the bill by 9 August 2004, and that the committee have the authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting, except during oral questions, and during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, despite Standing Orders 191 and 194(1)(b) and (c).

Paid parental leave is one component of our Government’s policy to promote high-quality working lives. Since this Government introduced paid parental leave in 2002, thousands of working parents have benefited from paid leave from work on the birth or adoption of a child. Last year the Government conducted a review of paid parental leave, which shows that the scheme has been very successful, and both employees and employers have adjusted well to the entitlement. Benefits identified by employers include happier and more satisfied staff and a greater likelihood of being able to retain experienced staff. Benefits identified by employees include being able to afford to stay home longer with a new baby, and reduced financial stress through the provision of some income replacement during that period of paid leave.

However, the review also showed that the scheme could be improved to extend coverage to employees who are not eligible for paid parental leave because they have not worked for the same employer for at least 12 months. It could also be improved by providing a longer period of paid leave. This bill will extend the period of paid parental leave from 12 weeks to 14 weeks for eligible parents. Eligible parents will be entitled to 13 weeks’ paid parental leave from 1 December 2004, rising to 14 weeks from 1 December next year. This extension will improve New Zealand’s compliance with human rights standards relating to the length of paid maternity leave under ILO Convention 183 Concerning the Revision of the Maternity Protection Convention.

The bill will provide a new set of entitlements for employees who have worked for the same employer for between 6 and 12 months and who are not currently eligible for paid parental leave. Eligible employees in this group will be entitled to 13 weeks from 1 December of this year, and again rising to 14 weeks on 1 December next year. In addition, 1 week’s paid paternity leave will be available to eligible fathers or partners who have worked for the same employer for between 6 and 12 months.

This bill provides practical enhancements to the paid parental leave scheme that further a number of objectives supporting the birth or adoption of a child. These amendments will ensure that the scheme is accessible to a wider number of employees, provide a longer period of paid leave, encourage female workplace attachment, and support the health and well-being of mothers and newborn babies. I commend this bill to the House.

I think that when discussing this bill we will quite clearly see a marked difference between Labour and National. One party thinks the future direction of this country comes from making the middle classes dependent on welfare. The other party thinks it is better to create a situation whereby people can be independent, and make their own spending decisions. We are not going to pretend that life’s complex problems can be fixed by legislation, or by the Government. We will leave it to the other side of the House to think that that can be achieved.

It takes 9 months to produce a baby, and that is 9 months in which to prepare for and think about the time that the parents will have away from work to care for their child. Certainly, during the first few months of any child’s life it is absolutely vital that a parent is there to look after and care for the baby, and bond with it. But I think what we have here is just a method of making mothers dependent on another form of welfare. It is a very small amount of funding, and for many people it is quite unnecessary. A lot of quite wealthy women who have taken advantage of paid parental leave have not needed the cash handout from the Government, because they have made their own arrangements with their employers.

We do not think the welfare State needs to be expanded into this area. Extending the welfare State to middle-income New Zealanders really is no vision for New Zealand, at all. Over the next couple of days, what we will see from Labour’s big spend-up is, at best, income tuning, or, at worst, a cruel hoax. Most of these women—and the recipients will mainly be women—will be receiving back what they paid in tax in the first place. The Government wants these women to be incredibly grateful for this handout, but it is money they earned in the first place. If they had retained that income, they would have been able to provide for themselves and continue to lead an independent life.

I am not trying to play down the huge impact that having a child has on anybody’s life, but I think we are not naive enough to suggest that some Government programme will make a lot of difference. The first few months with a new baby are incredibly stressful for any new parent, and money is not really the major obstacle faced by a lot of parents. One of the questions I have is what happens to those women who are left out of this programme. The Minister talks about wanting to encourage women to bond with their babies, and wanting women to stay at home, and those are worthy ideals, but she has made no comment about what happens with self-employed women, such as the contract hairdresser, the taxi-driver, the real estate agent, the sharemilker. Surely, if the Minister is true to her word, her worthy intentions would apply to other New Zealand parents as well. This bill is discriminatory, and that is why the National Party has not supported it in any of its forms. When a Government tries to provide these sorts of benefits, providing them to just a certain number of women really is not fair. There has been huge feedback on this bill and the programme, but some of the feedback I have had is from the mothers who have been left out of the programme. They cannot quite understand why they are not able to take advantage of it. That is why this programme has ended up being a cruel hoax. Most mothers-to-be thought they would be able to take advantage of this programme, but so many thousands of women found that they were not eligible. The Minister has said that thousands have enjoyed the scheme, but, equally, thousands have not.

One of the things that concerns me is that if the Government creeps into various parts of people’s lives, thinking that it can solve a lot of complex problems faced by families, the long-term scenario is that the Government starts to crowd out things that New Zealanders do for themselves every day. I do not think that the Government can minimise the stress, or the enjoyment, that a new baby can bring to any family’s life. For that to happen we need a lot of community change, and for a lot of families to get alongside some of these new babies when they are born. This bill, in my view, continues to make a larger number of New Zealand women welfare beneficiaries. It continues to put some women in the position of not having to think about preparing for what their life will be like when their baby arrives.

Our party believes that the real way to solve societal problems is to encourage people to be independent—to plan for things, to take personal responsibility, and to put in place things in their lives that allow them to look after themselves. No one feels good about receiving Government handouts, but most people feel good about providing for themselves, which they can do if they are able to keep a larger proportion of their own pay. One of the things that make this bill a cruel hoax is that the Government is really just giving back what many of those parents had earned and paid in tax in the first place. Over the next couple of days we will see greater examples of income churning, where the Government expects the country to be wildly enthusiastic and thankful for its handing back of what was really New Zealanders’ money in the first place. Rather than put people in a position where they are independent and providing for themselves, the Government will continue the creeping of the welfare State into areas of their lives where the Government was not present before.

A lot of people think the Government introduced paid parental leave. In fact, that was not the case. For many women, it was something they were already negotiating and providing for themselves. There were already a lot of enlightened employers who were ensuring that, in order to keep female employees, they provided terms and conditions that made it easier for mothers to stay in the workplace. But, once again, this Government here thinks it has to get in and intervene and, basically, start to change some of those employment relationships between staff and employers. I feel sorry for some employers, who are now going to have to provide parental leave for some staff who have been working for them for only 6 months or so. I think of the small dairy owner, who has someone working 10 hours a week. Somebody might relieve on a Sunday so that the dairy owner can have that day off. That worker will now be eligible for both paid parental leave and parental leave, and that was not the case before. That employer has to keep that job open for someone who was just a casual staff member in the first place. What concerns me is a growing problem of the cost of keeping positions open, of compliance costs, and of a lot of other things that small-business owners try to deal with all the time.

I believe that all new parents should be able to spend the first wee while with their new babies as they bond with them, but that is not something in which the State needs to continue to intervene. In terms of future directions for this country, if people want to see a difference between National and Labour, they can see in this legislation the stark contrast between the two. National is a party that believes that people should take personal responsibility, and plan. Jeepers! Parents-to-be have 9 months to do that. Nobody has ever said that a baby was a total surprise when it arrived 9 months after the event, so people cannot argue that it is something that creeps up on them that they cannot prepare for.

I think that what we have here is some goodwill legislation designed to buy a few more votes—as we will see within the next couple of days with this massive spend-up. If we are talking about future directions, I believe that this bill leads New Zealand down a future direction where there is a creeping welfare State, and where the Government continues to get more and more involved in New Zealanders’ lives. I think we need to start to establish what the things are that we want to provide for one another as a community, and what the things are that we want the Government to be able to do. In terms of what this bill tries to achieve, I think that while it does not provide a service for everybody it will continue to be discriminatory, particularly for the self-employed.

That was a very disappointing speech from a young mother. I would have expected her to support something that is very pro-mother and pro - new baby, and very important in supporting families. We know, by the sound of that speech, that this policy would go—probably by lunchtime—if National were in power. This is a very good bill. It brings us into line with ILO Convention 183. It is good news in terms of the extension of coverage, which will give 3,400 more parents the opportunity to have paid time with their new babies, which is so critical in those first few weeks of a baby’s life. I support the bill.

Let me make New Zealand First’s position clear from the start. We will be supporting this bill, because we think the Labour Government did not get the initial legislation quite correct and a number of people were left out. We welcome—

💬 Simon Power: What about the self-employed?

I am coming to the self-employed, I can assure the member. We welcome the opportunity to correct any anomalies and to consider everybody’s case. We believe that it is unfair to leave the self-employed out, as Katherine Rich referred to. I think she spoke of people under contract, and she listed a few. We think it is unfair they should be left out, and we hope this bill gives the opportunity for consideration of those cases. I say to Mrs Rich that I was a little disappointed in her contribution, because, as far as I am aware, when her children were born she did not lose a cent of her income here.

💬 Katherine Rich: I didn’t claim paid parental leave.

No, but the taxpayer paid. I just make the point that the taxpayer paid even if she did not claim paid parental leave.

💬 Simon Power: That’s very personal.

It is personal, but we must have some compassion in these things and some consideration for people. But that is not to say that New Zealand First does not have some worries about this bill. I want to quote a little bit from the second paragraph of the explanatory note: “These amendments to the Act further a number of objectives supporting the birth or adoption of a child.” That is all very good. “This includes ensuring that the scheme is accessible to a wider number of employees, encouraging female workplace attachment, supporting families with leave …” etc., etc. It all sounds very good, but the three words that worry New Zealand First are “female workplace attachment”. Will this bill, for example, provide paid parental leave to a female prison officer who has a baby as a result of a dalliance with a criminal? [Interruption] The member over there laughs. I tell Mr Peck that that is a serious question. I hope he will take a call and tell me—

💬 Sue Bradford: Why not?

Sue Bradford asks “Why not?”. Why should a female prison officer who gets fired from her job, and has a baby, not get paid parental leave? [Interruption] From the sounds of the outbursts I am getting here from the Greens and from some other members, they think that is only fair. I ask members over there on the Government benches how they can justify that payment yet leave out the self-employed. How can they justify a payment to someone who has lost her job, yet leave out the self-employed? My call will not be very long, but I do point out to this House that the number of incidents of female prison officers getting involved with prisoners is in the ascendant. The Minister of Corrections answered a question from my colleague Ron Mark and said there were three incidents. Subsequently he corrected that and said there were five. Then he said there were 17. Then he said there were 21. Ron Mark tells me that in one prison alone there were 19 occurrences. If they carry on like that, we are likely to get an epidemic of female prison officers having liaisons with criminals, and, as a result, some will give birth to babies.

💬 Sue Bradford: No.

Does Ms Bradford not accept that? And the taxpayer will give them paid parental leave. This is a legitimate question—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): But it also leads to disorder.

—and I am pushing it home so that those people will give me an answer. But, worse still, the other day we heard the Hon Phil Goff do a U-turn about 12-year-olds having sex together. Does that mean that if they have a paper run, and one of them gives birth to a baby, they will get paid parental leave from the taxpayer? Under this bill, which I have read inside out, if two 12-year-olds or a 12-year-old and a 13-year-old have a baby, and are doing a paper run—my children used to do paper runs when they were young—they will get paid parental leave. Sue Bradford is saying “No”. She is drawing the line there. These are honest questions that I am looking forward to the Government answering. New Zealand First wants this bill to go to the select committee, too, because everybody is in a state of laughter here. This is actually a serious question. My honourable colleague here realises it. If two schoolchildren have sex and one gives birth to a baby, would they get paid parental leave for not being able to do their paper run or their work at Foodtown at night? There are a number of issues that have to be addressed here.

If we pay parental leave to some people, we should consider paying it to all. I am talking seriously now about the self-employed—contracted people. They give birth to New Zealanders and have just as much hardship as some people in the workforce. Some people in the workforce who will be paid under this bill are relatively very wealthy. So the measure should be extended to the self-employed; consideration should be given to them.

This amendment has come to pass a relatively short time after the principal Act was enacted, and we do not want another amendment and another amendment to get it right. The Government gets so many things wrong the first time round that it should practice what New Zealand First says: do it once and do it right. This is the Government’s second attempt—

💬 Darren Hughes: Ha, ha!

Those members are laughing. We say do it once, or do it for a second time, but get it right and address the key issues—particularly for the self-employed. I will sit and listen to the people who take a call, and I hope they will respond to the prison officers’ situation and that of young people doing a paper run, because I want answers to those questions. I am so keen to get those answers that if this bill gets to a select committee, I will get myself on the select committee to ask the questions. I look forward to Mark Peck taking a call and addressing those issues. I know that Sue Bradford will give me the answers as she sees them, from the Greens’ point of view. We will support this bill going to the select committee and we look forward to posing a few difficult questions.

I never dreamt I would hear such a humorous speech in the first reading of the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill, and I thank Mr Brown. The Green Party welcomes the introduction of the bill to the House tonight and intends to support it through all its stages. There is no question that we have a serious long-term commitment to do everything we can to support the rights and welfare of all working mothers and fathers, and of their children—no matter who their parents are. This bill marks another small step on the long journey towards the full recognition of the essential role that adults who are selfless enough to have children play in our society. Unlike the National Party, the Green Party does not see paid parental leave as a pitiful welfare crumb that is either not needed by the very rich or insulting to the poor. Rather, we support it as a long overdue first step towards enabling at least some working mothers to have some time at home with their baby or babies after they give birth or adopt. I say “babies” because I had twins the first time around.

When the first paid parental leave legislation went through Parliament in 2002, we thought it was a good start but felt very much that there was still a long way to go before New Zealand could truly pride itself as being on a par with other developed countries in its treatment of working parents and their children. One of the key reasons for our misgivings was the fact that the first bill gave workers an entitlement to 12 weeks’ paid leave, rather than the minimum of 14 weeks’ called for under ILO Convention 183 Concerning the Revision of the Maternity Protection Convention. Even though New Zealand has not ratified that convention, we felt that a Labour Government, with the support at that time of the Alliance and the Green parties, should have been able to see its way clear to legislate for at least the bare minimum required. We therefore put forward at that time an amendment during the Committee stage of the bill seeking to extend the amount of paid parental leave from 12 to 14 weeks. Of course, it failed to go through but at least it is some vindication now to see that the Government has reached the point where it does feel able, following its own evaluation of the scheme, to give employees an entitlement of 13 weeks’ leave from December this year and 14 weeks from December 2005. While it is a pity that this extension will be staggered and is taking years to occur, at least it will happen.

As for those critics among Opposition parties and business who say it is unthinkable to have any paid parental leave at all, much less this shockingly huge amount of 14 weeks, I say that some of us who were on the recent Speaker’s tour to certain European countries were amazed—and in my case delighted—to find that paid parental leave of up to 1 year or more is becoming the norm in a number of countries as Governments realise that they have to do a lot more to encourage their citizens to have children and also the ability to nurture them well in their infancy. In New Zealand we are still a very long way behind the times and it is entirely possible that, with the high student loan burden, a low-wage economy, ever-lowering birth rates, and decreased inward migration, we may before long find ourselves in a position similar to that of some of the other developed countries that are positively panicking about how older generations will survive without a younger, working-age population to support them.

Adequate paid parental leave is just one strand of what needs to be done to support and respect those who choose to have children, but it is a critical one in a society where the adults in many one-parent and two-parent families find themselves forced into the workforce through economic necessity and societal pressure. As a side note, I hope that the Budget tomorrow afternoon will provide enough financial relief so that at least some primary caregivers of young children will have a chance to stay home while their babies are young, rather than heading out on that weary, forced march back to work after a mere 12 or 14 weeks. I speak of this with some passion as a mother of five who, with my last two babies, went back to full-time work when they were only 2-weeks-old in one case and 1-week-old in the other. As all the many mothers who have been, or who are, in this situation will know, it is quite a heart-wrenching business to leave a newborn baby behind and set out with a smile for another day at work. I do not think any truly humane society should allow this to continue as the norm.

This brings me to the second major improvement brought forward by the bill before us today, whereby some employees currently not eligible for paid parental leave will become so from 1 December this year. This new bill will provide that a woman worker who has been with the same employer for at least an average of 10 hours a week for between 6 and 12 months before her baby is due will now be eligible for both maternity and paid leave for the period of paid parental leave only. Partners who have worked for the same employer for 6 to 12 months will also be offered leave for the first time. Both these new entitlements will be at lower rates—the mother will not be eligible for extended leave and the male partner will get only 1 week’s leave rather than 2—but at least this is a big improvement on the current situation, in which people who have worked for the same employer for less than a year are entitled to nothing unless it is negotiated completely separately from legislation.

Again, this was an issue that we raised during the course of the paid parental leave legislation in 2001 and 2002. I am glad the Government is gradually extending coverage to those many workers who have not completed a full year with one employer, even though they may have been accumulating student loan debt for years, or may have been gainfully employed over an extended period but with a whole lot of different employers.

Although the Green Party is more than happy to give its support to the advances contained in this bill, we remain concerned about the failure of either the original bill or this one to address the question of self-employed parents. I acknowledge that other parties here tonight have raised this as well. Many people from both the farming and urban small-business sectors made submissions to us during the select committee process on the original bill about the problems faced by self-employed people when they come to have their children. Indeed, in some ways they are in an even more difficult position than those in regular employment. I know this is a difficult issue and I believe that the Government has been doing work on it over time, but I certainly hope that by next year we will see some progress in this area. If we can provide accident compensation cover for people who are self-employed and assess them for tax, benefit, and student allowance purposes, I cannot understand why a fair system cannot be devised that would in the end bring equity between employed and self-employed parents.

In conclusion, I commend the Government and officials for taking the evaluation of the original paid parental leave scheme seriously enough not only to carry out a substantive consultation but also to extend the scheme as much as they feel fiscally able. Although it is a pity the improvements could not have gone further, particularly in relation to self-employed people, at least we will finally meet the ILO minimum of 14 weeks’ paid parental leave and coverage will be widened to include the pool of around 7,000 employees who fit the 6 to 12 month tenure requirement. This bill is a small but significant stepping stone on the journey towards ending structural discrimination against women in the paid workforce and I look forward to its being enacted in time for its December 2004 provisions to take effect.

It gives me pleasure to rise to speak to the first reading of this bill. ACT New Zealand did not support the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Bill when it was introduced, and it certainly will not support this amendment to that legislation, for the many reasons I will come to in a minute. It is interesting to look around the House and to listen to what people have been saying. Only the two young mothers in the House—those closest to the people this bill is supposed to advantage—have stood up and said that they oppose this measure. That was for very good reasons—[Interruption] I am sorry. Ms Bradford is also a young mother, but she is not quite as close to being one as the other two young mothers in the House.

This bill is discriminatory, as the National Party member pointed out. It means that people will be more dependent on welfare than they need to be. Also, the Government has completely failed to point out that there are people who are not covered by this bill: the self-employed and those who participate in work on contracts. The Government is yet again picking winners and showing its anti-business bias—in this case, against the self-employed and contract workers.

💬 Steve Chadwick: Mothers are winners.

Mothers are definitely winners, and nobody would suggest for a moment that they should be denied this time at home with their newborn babies. I was certainly fortunate enough to have this time, although, like the previous speaker, when I had my fourth baby I went back to work after 2 weeks—as did Steve Chadwick—and I went back to work 1 week after my fifth baby was born. I was in the fortunate position of being able to work part time and of occasionally being able to take my babies to work with me. That does not mean I think I should have been paid to do that. I am surprised that Government members have not thrown up their hands in horror already and said that some mothers cannot afford that precious time at home with their babies. That is the philosophy behind this bill, and many others that the Government has promoted.

Families today are not in the fortunate position they were in during the past. I think back to the 1950s and 1960s in particular, when we can say that women did have the luxury of staying at home and looking after their newborn babies. In most cases, they stayed at home until their children were well into their school years. The very simple reason for that—and a reason why we should not pay people to take parental leave—is that in the 1950s and 1960s families paid approximately 25 percent of their income in taxation. Today, when we calculate everything, including GST, that figure is much closer to 40 percent. That is the crux of the matter. Many mothers—or fathers, in some cases—now cannot afford to stay at home full time with their children, and that is a great shame. But the situation is easily rectifiable. ACT advocates taxation cuts, and we would certainly like to see a low, flat tax rate of 20 percent. If that were the case, more families would have the option of one parent—either the mother or the father—staying at home. It would be a much more viable option for those families to have one parent stay home to look after the children for as long as they felt it appropriate.

There have been several high profile examples very recently. I think of the article on the front page of the Sunday Star-Times’ a couple of weeks ago about Marilynn McLachlan, a mother of four children, and her husband who is a schoolteacher earning $55,000. Not only can they not put anything aside but they feel they are moving backwards. Middle-income earning families are moving backwards, and the main reason is that taxation in this country is too high. They cannot make ends meet on that sort of money.

The taxed earnings that the National Party member also spoke about are a very important consideration. Each time tax is taken from somebody and moved through the Government departments—firstly, through the Inland Revenue Department, then on to the Ministry of Social Development, and then back to parents in the form of parental leave—there are inefficiencies, and money is lost along the way. It would make a great deal more sense to allow people to have that money in their back pocket. They are the ones who can spend it the most wisely on their own behalf.

Employers need to be considered too, because they are often left out of the equation. They are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of sex when employing people, but many—as we know when we talk to small-business people, as I do—will not even think about employing a young woman with childbearing potential. If a women applicant for a job does not have a child, or has only one or two and expresses an interest in having more children, then she is often overlooked because of the burden she would be to her employer should she decide to have children. That is a great shame, and often employers will miss out on very good employees. However, if they have a small business, one can see their point of view. It is often very difficult for them to have to do without an employee for any length of time, or to get somebody else in when they are perfectly happy with the employee they have.

This leads on to the distrust that this Government has of employers—in particular, of private employers and small-business people. In many cases, we see small businesses remaining as family businesses, because the owners do not want to take on the obligations that employing people would place them under. It is easier for them to keep their businesses small. Even if their business is a thriving business and may go on to do particularly well, it is easier to operate as a mother and father business.

So parental leave throws a whole lot of balls into the air. It creates an awful lot of difficulties for employers and it sends the wrong message to society. It says that it is all right to have children and that we do not have to plan for them, and that we not need to think ahead and work out what we will do with those children. What sort of society do we have when we have to pay people to take time off to look after their newborn babies? I think that is a sad indictment on us.

💬 Sue Kedgley: Mothers should be paid for their work.

The issue of whether mothers should be paid for their work is a very different one. Somebody who has a baby, or who plans for a baby, has an obligation to think very carefully about how that baby will be brought up. As the National Party member said, people have 9 months to think about these things. It is not a surprise when the baby finally arrives. Adoptive parents are in a slightly different position, but, for most people, those 9 months give adequate time to plan, and the decision making comes a long time before that, as well. In my own case, I am pleased to say that I have not been dependent on parental or maternity leave. I planned well ahead. I am very proud to say that I have five children and that I was lucky enough to be in the position of not requiring that money.

But I come back to the point: if money is the question, then tax cuts are the answer. The best situation is more money in people’s back pockets so that they can make the best decisions for their own families and their own lives. We in this country have had enough of a bossyboots Government that interferes in people’s lives. This Government’s days are numbered. It will have to push through its pet legislation—like parental leave—as quickly as it can, because its days are numbered. ACT New Zealand will not support this bill. It is a discriminatory bill, and it means that people will, yet again, be dependent on welfare. It sends very wrong messages to society, and ACT will not support it.

I am pleased to rise on behalf of United Future, which will support this bill at its first reading. I feel that we are a true centrist party in relation to this bill, because I can sense what the left would support, and likewise I can support what the right would support.

Just for the benefit of Simon Power, even if United Future does not choose to support this bill all the way through—although I trust we may be able to—it will support the Government in supply and confidence, because United Future is a party that takes agreements seriously. United Future is a party that honours the agreements it has made. Unlike the National Party, we are concerned about what we have said and spoken to. Just so Mr Simon Power can be very clear on that, United Future is a party that will stand by its agreements.

The extension of parental leave is worthy of further consideration, in light of the largely positive reaction it has received since it was introduced in 2002—in spite of the controversy it attracted beforehand. An initial evaluation of the scheme by the Department of Labour found that parents consider it highly beneficial. I do not believe that any of us could argue against that. As well as having more money to cover bills, new mothers have been able to stay home longer with their babies. It is also thought to have had a positive impact on the number of mothers who have breastfed. Paid parental leave also acknowledges that being a mother—or a father, for that matter—is important. We are a family-based party, so we support that. Whereas previous generations of women fought for the right to have a career, it is getting to the stage—which greatly concerns United Future—where this generation is fighting for the option of being a parent. That is something we in power need to consider greatly.

According to a recent study by Waikato demographer Janet Sceats, parents are increasingly choosing to send their kids to day-care facilities at much younger ages because they cannot afford the luxury of raising them at home. I agree with the point, which has already been spoken about, that it is time that we as a Government recognise mothers who choose to work at home. We had four children under 5, so I will never be convinced that mothers do not work at home. They work very hard and get no recognition for it. United Future’s income-splitting policy would go a very long way towards addressing issues such as that.

I am glad that all ears are listening to the great common sense that comes from United Future. I see all parties nodding in agreement that income splitting should be brought into predominance. The Government does not recognise the worth of a mother but only the worth of a paid worker. I think that is a very good point. Do I get a cheer for it? The concern for our population growth is that women faced with juggling work and family commitments will opt to not have children. That is supported by falling fertility rates, particularly in urban areas, such as central Auckland and Wellington. Paid parental leave seems to play an important role in easing some of those issues.

I would like to see income splitting, because that would then give women a greater right to choose. All the legislation of this type that has come in has, sadly, taken away the free choice women had to be full-time mothers. Legislation that has been passed under the pretence of welfare or of doing them good has actually destroyed the very thing many women really want to do—be a mum, stay at home, bring up their families and educate them, and put them on that road. To our detriment, we have seen that become increasingly harder. I for one want to fight the fight to restore families. If mothers want to make the choice to stay at home and look after their kids, we need to put systems in place to make that possible.

It is almost impossible to be a one-income family today. People are forced to have two-income families. They do not necessarily choose that. First, any woman who does part-time work for her employer while she is on paid parental leave is considered to be back at work and is turfed off the scheme. I am thankful that I am a member of the Social Services Committee and will be able to look at that matter, because it is one that concerns me. Some bosses have managed to get around the issue by delaying payment until the woman returns to work full time, but they would rather the legislation be changed.

Perhaps a more serious issue is that employers say that some women who intend to be full-time mums after their babies are born falsely tell their bosses that they plan to return to work. They do this in order to get the benefit. Also, I know that in many places overseas where the scheme operates women may take parental leave, then pay other young people to look after their families so they can get a secondary job. People will always find a way to bend the system for a lot of things that are theoretically good. The fact that the bill extends the provision for parental leave, with a particular focus on those who have worked for only 6 months, has the potential to multiply such problems for employers.

I also have a difficulty with the situation whereby one partner has the right to choose which one will take the paid parental leave. I would like to work that through in the select committee. Unfortunately, I have continually found that the Government tends to look only at workers who are on a PAYE system. Anyone else is a multinational corporation. But a self-employed businessman with only one staff member will lose 50 percent of his workforce on that basis. Not only that, the businessman will not know whether the staff member can be replaced for 12 months, because the job must be kept open for that period. In a small business that is a huge length of time, and we need to look seriously at that matter.

Also, if an employer employs males—and I know that one is not allowed to do that today, but we should get real here—because he or she does not want the inconvenience of someone leaving the workforce to have a child, all of a sudden that employer can be advised that that person’s spouse or partner is having a baby and he is going to take parental leave. I think that is very harsh on employers. One west Auckland service company closed its doors late last year, citing the cost of leave compliance. The managing director said: “By the time I’d paid for sick leave, holiday leave, bereavement leave, and maternity and paternity leave, the company had to leave.” Really, the pressures coming on those small businesses are serious concerns.

I would like the select committee to undertake a really thorough assessment of what the compliance costs to small businesses of extending the parental leave scheme will be. I know that the Department of Labour has already surveyed businesses on parental leave and come back with very favourable responses, but I would particularly like to know what the impact on small enterprises will be, because they make up over 90 percent of all businesses in New Zealand. It is also relevant for the select committee to find out what the Government intends to do about extending the scheme to the self-employed, which is an issue that has been well covered tonight. Federated Farmers has already raised it in relation to young couples working on farms who are not covered by the current scheme or by the amendments proposed in this bill. Apparently, Cabinet has discussed the matter but is not happy with the proposals put forward by the Minister.

I am not sure why this bill could not have waited until a solution could be found for self-employed parents. [Interruption] We are supporting it at the first reading. I know that the survey showed that some self-employed people would rather not take the time off as the money received in paid parental leave would not compensate them for their business loss. United Future will be supporting this bill to the select committee.

I am delighted that 2 years after the Government introduced the first paid parental leave scheme, we are already back in the House extending it. I thank our colleagues in the Greens for their wholehearted support.

I do not think that any one party could say it is the party for families. Every party cares about families. However, the affirmation of this bill to extend the provisions of paid parental leave is a great thing. It will cost the Government $68 million more to extend the scheme. Ultimately, we will get there for the self-employed, but we cannot roll this out all at once.

Having listened to the speaker from United Future, I wonder how he managed to have four children aged under 5 when obviously he spent so much time sitting on the fence. I would have thought that that would do him a lot of damage. I think the member from United Future was calling for home detention for mothers, rather than for the freedom of choice that most mothers expect to have in their lives.

I rise for the National Party to speak against this legislation for several reasons. When people decide to become parents—or do not decide, but do become parents—they do so in the full knowledge that they will be responsible for their actions and for their children. People do not decide on the basis that they expect to be paid for the role they undertake as mothers and fathers. Being a mother or father is the payment itself.

Speaking from my personal experience, when my husband and I decided to become parents I became self-employed so that I would never have to ask anyone else’s permission—and, of course, I never did—to take my child to Plunket. I did take my child to Plunket, and he was a good Plunket baby. In addition, as a self-employed lawyer at that time, I employed other women and men—but mostly other women. I found that as a self-employed person it would have been really nice to have the benefit of parental leave and employment protection.

Of course, under this legislation I would not have been able to get that benefit. However, while I might be heavily pregnant and have to struggle through work, I would have to keep open the jobs for my employees, and watch them being paid while I had to pay for someone else to do my job. One of the problems for self-employed people is that when they become mothers they have to find someone else to replace them at work, plus they do not get the income they would have been earning.

So in many ways this legislation is a double whammy for the self-employed. This is just another example of preference being given to employees, and of no acknowledgment being given to the fact that employers are not some sort of group out there who have nothing to do with reality. They are mums and dads too, and they see their taxes being taken off them to support other people in their life choices.

National values motherhood and fatherhood. We value responsibility. People should not become mothers or fathers unless they are responsible for their children and themselves. If they cannot be responsible for themselves and their children, they should not be parents. That does not mean we do not like to see any help being given to parents whenever it can be given, and whenever necessary. But the Government takes from one parent—solely on the basis that that parent has mortgaged his or her house, put in capital, put his or her life on the line, and got into a position where he or she could go bankrupt if it all did not go well—to give to another who has security of employment and who knows that his or her job will be remain open, whether or not the employer can necessarily afford that. That is not right. It is not fair, and it is another example of this Government using taxpayers’ money to try to win some votes—and it will have to win a lot more yet!

As I have said, employers are parents just like everyone else, and this is just another slap in the face. Today I have been in Christchurch, where I was around a lot of self-employed people. I can tell members that I do not think there was one person there who was not a National Party supporter. Those people told me they were sick of the legislation this Government is bringing in, sick of people telling them what they can and cannot do, and sick of being told that they would have to pay for people who cannot take responsibility for themselves.

I was very interested to hear the United Future member talk about income splitting. I took it from what he said that United Future is promising that income splitting will be in tomorrow’s Budget, because it would not be supporting the Budget otherwise. United Future members told us tonight that that was the deal. Certainly, they implied that that was the deal and that it was absolutely central to their thinking about parents and about being a mother or father. They felt that that was only right.

In many ways one can see their logic. After all, with many farmers, both husband and wife are working in the same business. Often they are in partnership, and one of the reasons—apart from the fact that they both milk the cows and shear the sheep—is that they can income split. Certainly, it is good to hear that United Future will prevail tomorrow and allow income splitting to come in. I can see Mr Alexander has gone to sleep.

In essence, National believes that this legislation is unfair. We will not support it to a select committee. We believe that it is biased against the self-employed; that it is another example of the Government telling people not to bother taking responsibility for their actions and not to bother planning ahead, because it will get the taxpayers—the other employed and self-employed people—to pay more taxes than they need to, so that people do not have to think and plan ahead. The Government is saying that it will not help people to plan ahead and think for themselves; it will help them not to. The one thing this country does not need is more parents who do not think ahead and do not take responsibility. If there is one thing that we have a lot of at the moment, it is people who are not prepared to be the parents that their own parents necessarily were.

I do not intend to speak very long on this bill, except to make two points that have been lost in the debate today. A lot has been said about the role of mothers, and I congratulate my colleagues Ruth Dyson and Stevie Chadwick in particular on the addresses they made in the debate. Stevie Chadwick, as we know, now has her second grandchild, and good on her.

Two things need to be said. Firstly, a Department of Labour survey on the way in which the employment protection legislation has been working in the last little while found very good support for it amongst employers. This particular legislation will provide for an extension of the scheme to a greater number of workers. One of the reasons we want to do that is to retain skills.

One thing that has been missing in this debate is any understanding at all on the economics of the provisions. It is quite simple. There has been some sort of suggestion that the money will go out of employers’ pockets and into the pockets of the person taking parental leave—the mother taking parental leave, as it will be by and large—and that that is where it will sit. Anybody who has done even a rudimentary level of economics will know that money is made to go around. Essentially, there are two markets. There are the markets for goods and services, which is where the workers are, and there are the markets for the factors of labour, which is where the employers are, and employers will get the return. That money will go back into the pockets of employers and businesses. The community as a whole will benefit from this particular change to the parental leave legislation. The bill is good, and I support it.

💬 Opposition Member: How’s your varsity studies going?

My varsity studies are going very well.

I rise to endorse the position of the National Party, which opposes this legislation. We did so when the provisions were introduced some years ago, and we do so now, for a number of reasons. Although those reasons have largely been traversed by colleagues in the House, I would like to make my thinking on this known, as well. I will take three or four points that the Minister made in her speech and see whether they hold up in light of what National sees as the shortcomings of the bill.

The Minister said that the underlying philosophy—I am not quoting her words exactly, but this is as I heard them—is to provide high-quality working lives for parents. I do not think any member in this House would dispute that. This Parliament should always be trying to see whether it could put the right supports in to provide just that sort of thing for parents, whoever they are—in fact, for all hard-working New Zealanders.

The problem with this bill—and, therefore, the problem I have with the philosophy as espoused by the Minister—is that, unfortunately, these provisions do not apply to all parents. Why not? If the underlying philosophy were a good one, then surely this Government, in putting aside $68 million to extend the paid parental leave provisions, ought to have seen whether it could extend them across the board. It did not. That is typical of this Government. It picks those people who it thinks are its sure-fire voters, and, therefore, we get people left out. I do not think that philosophy holds when we look at the actual provisions of the bill.

The Minister also said that the review of the paid parental leave provisions has shown that employers are happy because they have happy staff. That presumably means they have a more settled working environment. But the Minister made no mention at all of the fact that this is a cost on employers. Employers know that, and that is why many of them—particularly those with small businesses—are reluctant to employ women. We on this side of the House have gathered a lot of anecdotal evidence that basically states that although employers are not meant to discriminate against female workers, it is going on. If they can possibly get away with not employing a young woman, they will do so. Who can blame them? Why should anybody expect them to keep a position open while someone goes off on leave, or to bear the cost of taking on someone temporarily so that the work spot is open when the parent returns?

But that is only part of the cost that employers bear. Under this Government we have seen more and more costs put on business. Business realised quite some ago now that this Government is not its friend; employers are realising that. So when the Minister said that employers are happy, I do not know what employers she was talking about. She said that employees are happy, as the legislation reduces the financial stress on families during the period of paid leave. Yes, we can certainly see how that might be a benefit.

However, the Minister made no comment at all about ongoing costs to families, and those are massive. There is ongoing health-care and childcare. I was talking to a woman today who is part of a two-parent working family with three children. In effect she pays $12,000 to put 1.8 children in childcare for 1 year. There are costs all the way through this scenario of having children and rearing them. This Government has not proved to the House that the best spend of hard-working taxpayers’ money is in this area.

I heard one of the members on the other side of the House say that mothers are winners. Of course they are, and so are fathers, especially good fathers. Fathers are winners, too. Parents are winners. It goes back to what I said at the beginning. If that is a truism—and, of course, it is—then we should be looking to see whether we are treating all parents, all mothers, and all fathers equally. Clearly, this bill does not do that.

The cost to extend these leave provisions is $68 million. It would have been better if this Government had tried to be more equal across the board. It has not done that. Quite frankly, who does that $68 million belong to? It belongs to every single taxpayer in the country, and a lot of those taxpayers are self-employed. They run both small and big businesses—but, in particular, small business. Why should this Government use the taxes of hard-working New Zealanders across the board to benefit only those people it thinks ought to benefit?

Those are the people whose votes the Government will be buying through this legislation, and whose votes it intends to buy tomorrow when it showers around the country more of our hard-earned taxes—more of the hard-earned taxes contributed by ordinary middle and low-income New Zealanders. Michael Cullen has hoarded that money so that in the year before the election he can shower it all over the place, but, unfortunately, he will not do it in a way that is equitable. It is impossible to do that, anyway.

But there is an answer. The answer is to leave that hard-earned money in the pockets of the people who worked for it. That is what National would do. Quite frankly, those people are better placed to decide how they should spend their taxes and their own money. This $68 million worth of taxes that is being allocated to extend these paid parental leave provisions are the taxes of workers across the board, but only some in the community will benefit from them. That is not fair. It is patently unfair. What the Government will do tomorrow will be unfair—it will take taxes from every worker and dish the money out to those people it thinks ought to get it. That is totally unfair.

💬 John Key: The privileged few.

Well, the Government will give the money to those whose votes it feels most confident of getting. That is patently unfair.

The polls show that no matter how much money the Government dishes out tomorrow—and that in itself is scandalous—it will not work. Nothing this Government can do now will turn those polls around. It should leave New Zealanders’ money where it should be—in their own pockets. That is what a National Government would do. These kinds of provisions encourage reliance on the largesse of others. The Government wants to exercise that largesse. It has no right to collect those taxes and then to spread the money around the community as it sees fit. We oppose this legislation. It is a scandal, and the Government should know better. It does not, and it will pay for that.

At the end of this first reading debate I just want to rise and signal the strong support I have for this bill. I do so on behalf of all the hard-working families in the Otaki electorate, who will note with interest that only ACT and the National Party are opposing it.

I move, That the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill be referred to the Social Services Committee for consideration, that the committee present its final report on the bill by 9 August 2004, and that the committee have the authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting, except during oral questions, and during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, despite Standing Orders 191 and 194 (1)(b) and (c).