Parental Leave and Employment ProtectionAmendment Bill

I move, That the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill be now read a third time. I am pleased to begin the bill’s final process for passage. This Government is conscious that balancing work and family life is a critical issue for many New Zealanders. The Government is committed to ensuring that working people who have families are able to participate in paid employment to their full potential. Thousands of families have already benefited from the paid parental leave scheme introduced in 2002. The scheme has already made a difference to many working families by supporting them with leave and job protection, by encouraging greater female workplace attachment, and by supporting the health and well-being of new mothers and their babies.

In 2003 the evaluation of the implementation and effectiveness of the paid parental leave scheme showed that the scheme had been very well received. The research showed that the scheme’s impact on business had been predominantly positive or neutral and that almost all mothers who accessed the scheme took the full 12 weeks’ paid leave. A number of people who participated in the evaluation made suggestions about how the scheme could be improved. Some of the key suggestions formed the basis of the bill before the House.

The bill enhances the existing Act to ensure that the benefits of paid parental leave can now be accessed by more people. It lowers the eligibility threshold by providing that to be eligible for paid parental leave a woman need only have worked for the same employer for the 6 months immediately preceding the expected date of delivery or adoption of a child, rather than 12 months as at present. This change makes it easier for more New Zealand women to access the scheme, particularly those who work in less standard employment arrangements. The bill also extends the duration of leave, from 12 weeks to 14 weeks progressively by 1 December 2005. This will enable better compliance with international human rights instruments relating to the duration of paid maternity leave.

The bill continues to recognise the diversity of New Zealand families. While paid parental leave is predominantly taken by women, paid parental leave may also be transferred to a partner provided he or she also meets the eligibility criteria. The bill makes it clear that, for the purposes of entitlement to the paid parental leave scheme, teachers employed by boards of trustees at more than one State or integrated school are to be treated as having one employer. This ensures that teachers who work concurrently in more than one school or move from one school to another have continuous employment in the public education service recognised for the purpose of accessing paid parental leave. The bill also ensures that the unique situation affecting some junior doctors who currently risk missing out on parental leave entitlements because they are required to change employers as part of their compulsory training will be addressed. A new provision will recognise continuous service between different district health boards.

Some submitters made suggestions as part of the evaluation of the paid parental leave scheme and to the Social Services Committee that the scheme be extended to self-employed women. Further work on the feasibility of extended paid leave to the self-employed is currently being undertaken. As part of this process, officials are considering the overall framework, the design, the eligibility criteria, and the payment structure that could apply to self-employed people. Policy development relating to the self-employed is a very high priority for me, and I am committed to progressing this issue further in the near future.

The bill strikes a fair balance between employers and employees. This balance will allow new parents time to raise a newborn or adopted child without fear of losing substantial amounts of income or resigning from their jobs, while also ensuring that the rapid growth of the New Zealand economy continues. By extending paid parental leave from 12 to 14 weeks, expanding the eligibility criteria for those wishing to access paid parental leave, and allowing new mothers to transfer their paid parental leave entitlement to their partners our Government is ensuring that New Zealand working parents who wish to have children have the best opportunity to do so while continuing to participate in paid employment to their full potential.

In conclusion, I thank the Social Services Committee for its diligence and hard work on the bill. I also commend very highly the officials, particularly those from the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the Department of Labour, for their hard work and commitment to this area. I commend this bill to the House.

Following on from the Minister, the Hon Ruth Dyson, I say firstly that it is nice to have a Minister who thanks the committee because it takes a tremendous amount of work by a committee for these bills to come through. Even when not supporting a particular bill, we in the National Party find that we do our best to try to help the bill along in the best possible way that we can, and when there are some amendments that we can help to make. Speaking from experience, which, of course, most of the Labour Party do not have, it is very helpful to them so we do our best.

This is the sort of bill concerning which the Labour Party should bring itself to understand that self-employed people are not the enemy. Self-employed people work, have babies, and pay taxes and they also need work-life balance or, as the Minister has called it, family work-life balance. Yet these people are being excluded, and that is why we cannot support this bill. The Labour Party and United Future, which is supporting Labour, had the opportunity to give self-employed people a bit of a go—to give them a chance.

💬 Peter Brown: That’s right.

New Zealand First, along with National, would have been happy to help out in that way. But instead, Labour chose to extend the period of paid parental leave from 12 to 14 weeks. It chose to reduce the amount of time that someone needed to be in the same employment before he or she could get parental leave, and it did that in preference to providing for the people who own their own businesses in this country.

New Zealand is a country of small businesses, the numbers of which are getting smaller. New Zealand is a country where lots and lots of women and men own their own businesses or set up their own practices. Physiotherapists, nurse practitioners, people who work in areas such as the trades, people who have panel-beating shops—all these people have families too. If we are to give to one section of the community, why are we not also giving to them? Paid parental leave is not based on income. It is not something that only those on a limited income can access. This is something that some of the highest-paid people in the country, who happen to be employed—people, for instance, like the chief executive of Telecom—can access. Yet poor old Joe and Janet Bloggs, who are on $30,000 a year, having set up a plumbing business, will not be able to access this benefit because they have decided to be independent, work for themselves, try to build their own business, and work all the hours that God has given them. They will pay for the luxury of very highly paid people getting this benefit. That is what it is—a benefit.

We are all for some fairness in this issue. Most of us on this side of the House have some experience of working and being mothers or fathers at the same time. The two should not be mutually exclusive. We think that people who have families will obviously add tremendously to their work experience because they bring a bit of reality to their work. They understand what it is like to bring up families, and often under quite severe financial difficulties. It takes an awful lot to do this. It is very, very interesting that this is one bill where the Greens, ACT, New Zealand First, and National are all on the same side. That is because of one issue, which is that this bill is discriminatory. Obviously, bills that are concerned with benefits need to discriminate in some way, otherwise we would not be giving out anything in terms of taxpayer money for people to have children.

We think that children are really good in this country. We want more babies. We particularly want anyone other than me to have more babies. The reason that we need people to have more babies is that we need to have our home-grown babies first and foremost. We cannot do that if we consistently take more and more money off people by way of taxes—money that they cannot afford—and then punish them because they happen to look after their own children and stay with the person who is also the other parent. That is what they see happening to them.

There is nothing in this bill for people who have set up their own businesses. There is nothing for the plumbers, the electricians, or for the people who have mortgaged their homes and thrown caution to the wind. They are the people in this country who make a huge difference. There is nothing in this bill for farmers. That is important because, despite all the rhetoric from some of the Ministers about high-tech—and it is true that high-tech is very important—high-tech in this country started with the farmers. We need only to look at the work that places like the Ruakura Research Centre have done over the years and that Fonterra is now continuing to do—and will do more of it overseas because of the funny rules we have here about GE—to see that these industries have been at the forefront of science in this country. The farmers have been the people who have paid for it. They are again being asked to go about their business, keep on working—both women and men—have children, look after their kids, get them to school, be in charge, and pay for the pleasure of someone else being able to have some time off.

This would be a nice opportunity for the Government, instead of extending the 12-week period to 14 weeks—and what sort of difference does that make anyway except to the pay packet—to extend a little bit of taxpayers’ largesse to self-employed people. We understand that it is good for self-employed working people to be able to have families as well. They are getting squeezed by this Government. It taxes them to beggary. We have only to look at the November issue of North and South to see that in this country now there is no point bothering to earn $60,000. One might as well earn $38,000, because under the Government’s scheme that is what one is paying for. It is all going out in taxes. It is totally unfair.

This is the opportunity that the Government has. I do not understand why United Future did not help in this matter. I do not understand why, given its ability to bring a bit of common sense into this bill, it did not use that opportunity. United Future had the Government in the position of having to look to them, to us, or to somebody else to help out with this bill. United Future had the opportunity, and it let it go. That is the great tragedy.

The Government knew that it could not go to the Greens on this legislation. It knew it could not go to ACT and it could not come to National, unless it would allow self-employed people to get a little bit of a fair go. Unfortunately, United Future buckled. It buckled on this bill and let down the people of this country who have common sense, it let down small business, and it did it because it wanted to say to the Government: “We’ll roll over and you can tickle our tummy.” Coming from a farming background, I can say that I would not accept that sort of behaviour. United Future has let this opportunity go. It will now have to wait until after the next election, when we will have to look again at this whole issue.

I have to say that that would be one of the most sanctimonious contributions I have heard in this House, made by somebody who likes to describe herself as a spokesperson on families. The utter inconsistency is absolutely breathtaking. On the one hand, the National Party is telling one constituency that this bill does not go far enough and, on the other hand, that it does not agree with one word of the existing legislation. So it does not support the bill, at all.

I think that that is utterly inconsistent with the practice of those members in National’s own party. Sure, Katherine Rich did not get paid parental leave, but she was paid her full salary while she was having her babies—not once, but twice. For weeks on end she was happy to receive her pay as a member of Parliament, but she is not happy to see ordinary working women in this country, and men who provide parental support when their babies are born, with 12 weeks’—now 14 weeks’—paid leave.

This bill is a fantastic effort on the part of this Government, which is really doing something to help young families and working parents and enable them to settle in with their new babies, and then to return to the workforce. I think that this Minister, Ruth Dyson, who has been utterly and consistently determined to deliver improvements to the paid parental leave scheme, is somebody who I trust will deliver to the self-employed in the future—but there has to be a new way of finding that out.

One thing that the very interesting previous speaker did not mention was what National would do about people who were entitled to paid parental leave but who did not take that leave. When self-employed people have been interviewed about the subject, they have said that taking 12 or 14 weeks off work would be detrimental to their businesses, and that the negative impacts would outweigh the benefits of receiving paid parental leave. When we actually talk to individuals, we find it is very clear that a lot more work needs to be done on that, but I am confident that Ruth Dyson will deliver on it.

Is it not ironic that we have a bill before the House that gives some form of benefit to one sector of the community, while others are denied the same opportunity and privilege? Is it not ironic that a Supplementary Order Paper presented to the House that even the select committee did not refuse, has been reassigned to be disposed of? Is it a sign of the future that we are not given the opportunity to speak on amendments presented? That smells of disrespect—or, should I say, dictatorship. We in New Zealand First have been told that we cannot speak to our amendments, so the self-employed—a very hard-working sector—are being denied the same opportunity as employees.

The title of this bill should be changed to the “Employee Parental Bill”, because my understanding of the word “parent” is that it covers all people who have fathered and mothered children, irrespective of their social status and employment.

The Social Services Committee received 11 submissions on the bill, the majority being in support of its general intention. Many of those who generally supported the bill wished to see some aspects changed. One suggested change included extending the legislation to cover self-employed women. If this Government has any future intention of including the self-employed, I ask when that will happen.

Initially, New Zealand First was in the frame of mind to support the bill, subject to the amendments being included. We have now had a change of heart, because of the unfairness to a very strong competitor in the economic structure of this country. New Zealand First is very disappointed with the result of the readings of this bill. However, I say to fair-minded listeners out there that the opportunity for their participation will come their way.

New Zealand First, in all sincerity—even at this stage of this Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill—exhorts this minority Government to reconsider the present position and include the self-employed in this legislation. If international human rights allow that to happen, what are the rights of our women who are self-employed? What about farmers’ wives and those who are running small businesses, as has been noted?

Self-employed people are also family people. If United Future supported my Supplementary Order Paper, why does it support this bill as it now stands? That is something to think about. This bill provides some form of benefit. Why is that not extended to families who really contribute to the tax take of this country?

New Zealand First also recognises parents who are in the process of adopting children. That was one of the amendments we wanted to speak on but that was never taken into consideration. New Zealand First is really disappointed. We thought the Labour-led Government would look at the amendments and consider including self-employed people in this bill. When we look at mothers who struggle—who already have families at the same time as they give birth to the future generations of this country—we ask why they are being left out.

Who is responsible for not allowing a hearing for our amendments? I asked that question yesterday. Yes, I really did, but as of today we have not received a reply. We have all heard that this bill is for only one sector of the people—maybe all those who belong to a union? I am not quite sure. If they belong to a union, is that why the Government is chasing those employees only?

New Zealand First looks at the broad spectrum of families throughout the country. We have heard remarks about how beautiful this country is. What about the people who reside in this country? Are they not the ones who make it beautiful? Are they not the ones who contribute to the tax take and to the GDP of the country? Why are they not being taken into consideration? When New Zealand First, hopefully, becomes part of the Government, or becomes the Government, this policy will change to include every citizen of this country who meets the criteria.

I thank members for listening, and I tell those in the Government to take heed. They are denying people who have families, who work hard, and who are entitled to the same treatment as those they purport to support, from being included in this bill.

I rise on behalf of United Future to support the third reading of this bill. We support the extension of parental leave, because it values the time that a family spends together when a child is first born.

Despite the controversy the bill attracted before it was introduced in 2002, paid parental leave went out to 18,000 people in its first year, at a cost of over $51 million. About 3,900 people receive paid parental leave at any given time, and 98 percent of those take the full 12-week payment so that they can stay at home. An initial evaluation of the scheme by the Department of Labour found that parents considered it highly beneficial. As well as having more money to cover bills, new mothers were able to stay at home longer with their babies. It was also thought to have a positive impact on the number of mothers able to breastfeed. Paid parental leave also acknowledges that being a mother—or a father, for that matter—is important.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Before the House rose for tea, I was referring to the fact that paid parental leave acknowledges the fact that being a mother or father is important. Whereas previous generations of women fought for the right to have a career, it is getting to the point with this generation that women have to fight for the option of being a parent at the same time as having a career.

According to a recent study by a Waikato demographer, Janet Sceats, parents are increasingly choosing to send their kids to day care at much younger ages, because they cannot afford to stay with them at home. Whereas 22 percent of women born in the 1940s returned to work before their children were 2 years old, by the 1970s it was up to 64 percent. The concern for our population growth is that women faced with juggling work and family commitments will opt not to have children, and that is supported by our current falling fertility rates, particularly in urban areas such as central Auckland and Wellington.

Parental leave seems to play an important role in easing some of these issues, but it is by no means a silver bullet. Although this bill extends the scheme from 12 to 14 weeks, it is of fairly limited assistance for those who would like to stay at home with their children for the first few years of their lives. Our point is not that every parent should do that, or that the State should pay for it, but we are concerned that that option is no longer a real choice. Rather, I want to quote the word “luxury”, which the Hon Steve Maharey labelled it on the radio earlier this year. Whether it is motivated by feminism or the need to realise all labour resources in the light of skill shortages, the Government has been focused on subsidising childcare so that both parents can return to work as soon as possible after a child is born. But the same kind of assistance is not available to those who choose to stay at home to look after their children. We are saying that we should at least level the playing field so that families face a reasonably balanced choice between whether one parent stays at home or both return to work.

To the extent that paid parental leave is only ever enough to subsidise a very temporary break from the workforce, United Future believes that income splitting would help to create a more level playing field by recognising that the main income earner is not only supporting a child but is also supporting another adult who takes the main role in caring for that child. Paid parental leave is also limited by the fact that it does not extend to the self-employed. For some time the Government has said that it is looking at extending the scheme to self-employed parents, but to date very little has been forthcoming. According to a letter that the Minister wrote to the select committee: “Policy development relating to the self-employed is a very high priority for me, and I am committed to progressing this issue further in the near future to include self-employed parents as far as practicable.”

Submitters to the select committee were also very keen to see this issue advanced. It was reported in the Sunday Star-Times in February this year that Margaret Wilson was recommending to Cabinet that the self-employed be covered by paid parental leave, and apparently Cabinet has discussed the matter but was not happy with the proposals put forward by the Minister. So the question that United Future has is: why could this bill not have waited until a solution is found for self-employed parents? Why is the Government able to levy the self-employed for accident compensation levies and assess them for tax purposes, yet is not able to come up with a way of paying them with paid parental leave? Or is the issue here the Government’s unwillingness to let its policy-making be guided by anything other than the myth of a class struggle between downtrodden workers and exploitative bosses. We prefer to take the view that the common element here is the family, and that that is why the self-employed should be covered by this bill.

However, our support for this bill is based on this idea: if we in this room could imagine 10 women representing a cross-section of women in New Zealand, we can assume that five of those women already qualify for paid parental leave, that after this bill three more will qualify for paid parental leave, and that the remaining two represent those women yet to receive an acknowledgment by this Government that they are also entitled to paid parental leave. My challenge to New Zealand First is: why vote against this bill because of who it excludes, rather than support it because of who it now brings in under that umbrella? United Future is happy to support the bill on that basis, but is very keen, though, to advance the cause that New Zealand First put forward its amendments on—that paid parental leave be extended to self-employed women. We are very happy to see that extension at a later date, but not to support this bill when we would exclude another group of women from coming under its provisions, which is a very sad thing for parties that are posturing to care about families.

People opposing this bill need to be seriously questioned about that. United Future is very happy to support this bill for that reason.

The Green Party has supported and will continue to support any moves to extend paid parental leave to more working mothers and fathers in New Zealand, and we will be voting for this bill today. We are pleased that the Government did not feel that it needed to wait until after the next election before starting to expand on the 2002 Act, and that today we are increasing entitlements up to 14 weeks, albeit gradually, and extending eligibility to employees with between 6 and 12 months’ service with one employer.

However, I have to say that like many union submitters, we do not think that this bill goes far enough towards meeting the demands and needs of working women in particular, or our theoretical obligations under ILO Convention 183 Concerning the Revision of the Maternity Protection Convention. But we accept, alas, that there are budgetary constraints under which the Minister and the department must operate. In particular, we would have liked to see more groups of precarious workers become eligible for paid parental leave, by removing the minimum weekly hours threshold, by extending eligibility to those employed by more than one employer in the previous 12 months, and by redefining continuous employment to allow breaks of employment of up to 3 months.

The Green Party is also keen to inspire this Government—eventually, anyway—to implement a legislative right to breastfeeding breaks, and to do more to encourage employers to create a positive and enabling environment for breastfeeding mothers in the workplace. We would have liked to move an amendment to this bill in that direction, but unfortunately we were informed that breastfeeding is outside its scope. Personally, I can see a very direct connection between the issue of paid parental leave and the ability, or otherwise, of new mothers to return to work after a mere 12 or 14 weeks. But, alas, that is far too sensible for the system of how we create law in this country.

Turning to another matter, like some of my Labour colleagues I have been somewhat astonished by the ferocious input by National, ACT, and New Zealand First on the question of paid parental leave for the self-employed. Although those parties have voted—so far, at least—against the bill itself, I do not get that the parties of the right are saying that only the self-employed should get paid parental leave. I do not understand what sense it makes to oppose paid parental leave for employed workers, while advocating passionately for the same right for the self-employed. That is a patently ridiculous proposition. However, where I do agree with those members, and indeed with Labour members on the select committee as well, is that paid parental leave should be extended to the self-employed at the soonest possible opportunity.

As I would have pointed out in the Committee stage of this debate yesterday afternoon, had the Chair permitted discussion on the amendments dealing with the issue, the Green Party would have voted for the Supplementary Order Paper put forward by Bill Gudgeon from New Zealand First, which rendered self-employed people eligible for paid parental leave. However, not only was a fiscal veto placed on Mr Gudgeon’s amendment, but on top of that the Chair refused to allow any direct discussion of his Supplementary Order Paper—which I found quite extraordinary. It is quite incredible that we cannot debate an amendment—even one with a fiscal veto on it—during the relevant Committee stage of a bill, especially when the matter under discussion is also referred to extensively in the commentary prepared by the select committee that a number of us here in the House tonight sat on. We all know that the question of paid parental leave for the self-employed was an integral part of our discussions on this bill.

As I have said in this House and elsewhere since the introduction of the first bill, the Green Party believes that the self-employed should be able to access paid parental leave subject to the development of suitable eligibility criteria and a methodology that allows for a system equitable to those in paid employment. I have never quite understood why, given that the Accident Compensation Corporation has managed to find ways of providing cover for the self-employed as part of its equally convoluted mechanisms, the Government has found it so hard to do the same with paid parental leave. On top of that, the Department of Labour itself, in its own 2003 review and evaluation of the paid parental leave scheme, found that extending the scheme to the self-employed was in fact one of the three most frequently mentioned suggestions for improvement. This was backed up by a range of submissions, from groups as diverse as trade unions and farmers, to the select committee during the course of both paid parental leave bills.

However, during our discussions on this issue during the Social Services Committee process this time round, the Government advised us that the Department of Labour had not yet had sufficient time to work out how extending paid parental leave to self-employed people could be made to work, given other legislative and policy priorities. The Green Party pressed the Government on this matter and we were heartened, as the commentary on the bill reports, to receive a letter from the Minister advising us formally that: “Policy development relating to the self-employed is a very high priority for me and I am committed to progressing this issue further in the near future to include self-employed parents as far as practicable.” The statement forms part of the official commentary on the bill.

💬 Peter Brown: What is the “near future”?

I say to Mr Brown that I believe that the task for all of us inside and outside the House who support this particular extension of paid parental leave is to ensure that we help keep the Minister to her word over the coming year. Although the Green Party would have voted for the New Zealand First amendment on the Table yesterday, if it had not been subject to a fiscal veto, we also know that in reality it will take time and a lot of work to develop the framework by designing eligibility criteria and a payment structure for applying the scheme to the self-employed, as the Minister indeed notes in her letter to the committee.

We were also pleased to see other amendments made to the bill by the Minister yesterday, particularly those that mean paid parental leave will now be extended to doctors who work, for example, for more than one district health board over brief periods, as is common practice as part of their training. It made no sense that teachers who move schools were to be covered, while doctors who moved hospitals as, for example, surgical trainees were not. Women doctors, in particular, suffer from a huge student loan debt, which is only exacerbated when they are excluded from paid parental leave coverage simply because they are required to move from district health board to district health board as part of their professional training requirements. I am pleased that the Government has been flexible enough to acknowledge the reality and the inequity of this situation, and even though the improvements will impact on very few women in practice, they are women who deserve all the help they can get at this critical point in their careers.

In conclusion, I would just like to thank and congratulate all of those who have taken part in writing and considering the bill, including the Minister and all the submitters, from whatever perspective they came. I am glad we are taking a few more steps towards paid parental leave today for more women, and men, even if we continue to lag well behind some other comparable countries. I will finish by noting a report released just a few weeks ago from PricewaterhouseCoopers in the UK, proposing that paid parental leave should be paid for 12 months: 6 weeks at 90 percent of earnings and the rest at the national minimum wage. On top of that they suggest a home-care allowance to be paid to parents who choose to stay at home to look after their children aged 12 to 24 months, with reduced rates for part-time workers. If only!

I rise on behalf of the ACT party to speak on the third reading of the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill. As we have done all along in this debate, we will be voting against this bill. The reason is that we believe it is unfair, it is discriminatory, and it increases the welfare burden, so to speak, on New Zealand.

It is interesting that in a democracy we expect people, and political parties in particular, to stand up for their principles. In this debate we have seen two parties who support the Government: the United Future party and the Green Party. Both parties have explained to the House why they disagree with a large part of this bill—the fact that it discriminates against groups of workers, in particular. I have to say that members of those parties on our select committee raised those issues all the time, but it is a sad fact, I believe, that they are still supporting a bill that is very unfair. I think that the parties that have opposed this bill, even though they may see some merit in it, have done so on the grounds that they would rather not support bad law than go ahead and support bad law because of some other reason and privilege the major party may give them.

This bill is essentially about the right of a woman who is having a baby to choose to stay at home while that baby is young, to choose to leave her place of employment, to have this parental leave benefit, and then be free either to take the statutory 12 months’ leave a woman is entitled to when she has a baby, or to stay at home permanently to look after that child. But I say to the Government that the better way to give that choice to working families is not through a welfare entitlement that favours a group of women in New Zealand, while discriminating against probably the majority of working women.

In fact, the better way to do it would simply be to lower the tax burden on working families to let them keep more of what they earn, so that they can make those choices themselves as to whether they keep mum at home for 3 months, or whether they can afford to keep her home on a longer-term basis, which is obviously the way that New Zealand used to be. I think all of us can look back to our own childhoods and we can say that many of our mothers stayed at home while their kids were little, and it is a really sad indictment, I think, on New Zealand’s high tax burden that so many working families no longer have that choice.

💬 Darren Hughes: Oh!

If the member who keeps grunting over there would like to take a call, maybe he can explain to the House why that logic is wrong. Why is the logic wrong when we know that the average family now has to pay 46 percent of its income in taxes? That includes not just income tax, but the 34 stealth taxes brought in by Labour in its short reign. In 5 years it has brought in 34 additional taxes, levies, fees, and other types of tariff, which have taken the tax burden up so that almost half of the income of working families now goes in tax.

I say that that is too high, and I remind the member that a Treasury paper published earlier this year explained to the Government that if it simply took the surplus and gave most of it back—not even the whole lot—taxes in this country could be lowered to 20 cents in the dollar. We can just imagine what that would mean to working families, and it would not be touching any spending that the Government had already promised.

So this is a debate about whether we have more welfare in this country, which means those working families will have an even greater tax burden as a result of the changes we are passing through the House today, or whether we should give those working families a break so that they can make the choice themselves and take responsibility for mum staying at home or not staying at home—whatever they choose. I say that that is the better way to go, and that is essentially why the ACT party does not support this legislation.

We have heard about the discrimination against many working women that this bill now brings into our law—that it discriminates against the self-employed, and it discriminates against the casual worker whose work makes up a full-time job but with different employers. We have heard that this bill makes exceptions for teachers, who we know have a strong union to back them. We understand it does the same for doctors. What about nurses, who make up a huge proportion of our workforce? What about those nurses who have different employers because they are employed by different district health boards? What about cleaners? What about women who supplement their income by going out and doing the tough jobs but with a number of different employers?

This Government does not care about those people, yet I would say that many of their voters are in that category: unskilled workers who have a number of different employers. They make up a 40-hour week by grafting hard, and this Government does not care about giving them the right to this new welfare benefit that it is now promoting and providing through this House. I say that smacks of double standards. It smacks of the sorts of double standards that we in the Opposition have become accustomed to from Labour.

A third reason why the ACT party does not support this bill is that it is yet another election bribe. We see that the next phase of the 14-week entitlement, which is the change from 13 weeks to 14 weeks, comes into force in December 2005. Is that not great? It means that anybody who wants to look forward to the 14-weeks’ entitlement will realise they had better vote for Labour. I think that that is despicable, and that we will see a lot of that as time goes by. We will see Labour putting out more and more legislation that comes into force after the election. In my mind, that is not the honourable way to pass legislation.

We then go on to the fact that this is anti-business legislation.

💬 Hon Members: Oh!

Labour members groan, but I can tell them that if any one of them had run a small business, they would know how difficult it is if a staff member takes either 3 months or a year off work—and they do not know which it is. Any woman who has had a baby and who intends to take a year off work will end up taking the 3 months’ paid parental leave, and who could say anything against her for doing so? But she will no longer signal to the employer that she will be away for a year. That will come after the 3 months is up. It puts a huge burden on to the small-business person, who does not know whether to hire somebody part-time through an agency for 3 months, or whether to go out and get a longer-term commitment from an employee to work for a year.

There are unintended consequences in this legislation. What small business will hire a woman who it is thought might be pregnant? Now that we have brought the time limit for the entitlement down to 6 months, an employee can work for somebody for 6 months and then be entitled to the paid parental leave provisions. The limit used to be a year, so when an employer took somebody on, at least that employee would work for a year before the provisions came in. Now it is only 6 months. If an employer has a choice between a woman who may be pregnant and a man, the employer will take the man, so the unintended consequence is that this bill will discriminate against women of childbearing age.

I finish by asking this Government why it is so keen to keep in the workforce working mums who have had new babies, when we have over 110,000 women on the domestic purposes benefit—50,000 of them with children of school age—who do not share that enthusiasm for getting into the workforce? I say that this legislation, to my mind, again smacks of a double standard.

I am privileged to speak in the third reading of the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill. But it is so disappointing to follow the previous speaker who has just resumed her seat, Dr Muriel Newman, because she was talking down.

In fact, this is a great night for many thousands of New Zealanders. This bill is about uplifting the family, and it is about providing benefits for many more people yet to come. I am glad to see that the parties opposite that are going to vote against this bill will be supportive of increasing the benefits in the future—which the Government has given a commitment to look into—for the self-employed and others.

So we look forward to that support, as we move forward. This is a great step tonight for New Zealanders—men and women alike—and we should be proud. I support the bill.

What a rant we heard from Georgina Beyer, the member for Wairarapa! National is indeed opposing this bill because it is discriminatory. It discriminates against the many thousands of self-employed working mothers. Labour and Georgina Beyer have blatantly decided that they will look after their own first, and so discriminate against a large section of New Zealand society who are often much worse off and who work much harder than—and who will actually subsidise—those whom the Government wishes this discriminatory bill to help.

I am sure there is no one in this House who does not recognise just how important it is to have optimal conditions for babies, young children, and their parents. All the evidence is totally clear that those years, months, and weeks following birth are absolutely vital. However, this bill is utterly inconsistent and inequitable. If indeed this bill had been brought in on full principles of equality, equitability, and affordability, and did not cause a degree of welfare dependency—which indeed it has on one group rather than on another—then maybe it could be supported. But we have the Labour Party grandly bringing in this so-called social good, particularly for its own supporters. Not only does this bill not help those self-employed mothers, it does not help full-time mothers. So many around the hustings have said so many times that of all the jobs in the world, parenting is probably the most difficult to do effectively.

We notice from the commentary that: “The Bill implements Government policy to extend the duration of paid parental leave from 12 to 14 weeks …”, and on it goes. But when has the Minister ever explained why she has not included the self-employed? She has never done that in a detailed manner. Those women working in corner dairies and those women working on farms work just as hard as any other women. They often work harder and face much more difficult circumstances because of the very fact, particularly on farms, that they do not have the services available in the urban area. But the Minister has never ever explained to us why she has not been prepared to include them in this bill.

Again, she talks grandly about the International Labour Organization conventions. In fact, again the commentary states: “One of the policy objectives of the bill is to better align New Zealand policy with standards for the length of paid maternity leave contained in the International Labour Organisation Convention 183 on maternity protection.” Well, I just happened to get hold of a newspaper article pointing out that supporters of this bill claim New Zealand is one of only three OECD countries—the other two being Australia and the US—that do not provide paid parental leave, and that we are out of step with 120 countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. That was the argument the Labour Party was using 2 or 3 years ago. The International Labour Organization’s list of 120 countries has it that women in Afghanistan are entitled to employer-funded paid parental leave at 100 percent of wages for 90 days, and that women in Zimbabwe have 90 days’ employer-funded leave at 75 percent of wages—the comment is: “Yeah, right!” Here we have once again the Labour Party with its fanciful, do-good, State dependency-type of policy that indeed makes these grand statements, but that really cannot back them up when they go around the world.

I think Muriel Newman made the important point that philosophically perhaps, it would be much easier just to have a simplified lower tax system so that people could make their own choices, and so that there were direct incentives to take on the appropriate responsibility. But no, what this Labour Government insists on once again is income redistribution churning through the Inland Revenue Department, and an ever-burgeoning social welfare system.

After all, in the ideal world all our children would be carefully planned. The stark fact in New Zealand, we understand, is that probably only about 20 to 30 percent of children are planned. Even then, hopefully, it takes a 9-month period from conception to birth in order to plan. We would hope that by far the majority of parents in the ideal optimal circumstances would indeed plan prior to conception, and do everything possible to plan and organise the arrangements that they themselves wanted.

But here again with this legislation we see a discriminatory, inequitable bill that leaves out a large part of New Zealand society just as deserving as other parts, and we see the Labour Government cementing in that State dependency rather than incentivising individual responsibility. That is a huge concern.

I note in the evaluation of the scheme that three things were suggested—one of them, of course, being the extension of the scheme to the self-employed. Well, it takes an inquiry before the Labour Government is finally prepared to see that there is a great big hole in this bill. I note that there is a point where the Minister states: “Policy development relating to the self-employed is a very high priority for me and I am committed to progressing this issue further in the near future to include self-employed parents as far as practicable.” What does she really mean by that? She has been silent on that for so long. In fact, I think this bill first had its genesis 2 or 3 years ago, and she has skilfully managed to neglect those who are self-employed.

As the representative for Port Waikato, I see from time to time those rural women who are deeply offended by this bill. That was very much substantiated by the submission of Rural Women New Zealand to the select committee. I think it is worth making a note of their executive summary, where they stated: “The Government’s approach to parental leave typifies the fundamental problem with the policy framework introduced over recent years that is slowly and steadily returning New Zealand to unproductive State dependency. The Government appears to believe that most people in families cannot think or fend for themselves, and is actively discouraging and penalising those who seek to be self-sufficient and those who plan and prepare for the future.”

Well, that is the view of Rural Women New Zealand, and it is quintessentially the expression of those who have been left out by this discriminating Labour Government. Seventy-five percent of paid people working in the farming sector are self-employed.

💬 Opposition Member: How many?

Seventy-five percent of them. Those are the very people who do not have the services enjoyed by many living in the urban sector—by many in the public service who the Government is so concerned will vote for it. I notice that rural women also say that if the bill is passed, a significant number of women and men will continue to be ineligible to receive statutory-funded paid parental leave, although they will be required to meet the cost of providing it for others—there is a substantial list of them.

I thought a Government member was going to take a call to explain why Labour members are supporting this bill, but clearly I cannot rely on them. I thought that sooner or later one of them would stand and say that he or she fully understands this bill and what it is all about. What a guilt trip United Future and the Greens have had. What a guilt trip! Those members spent at least half their speaking time apologising for not supporting the self-employed being covered in this bill. I say to United Future members, and they should take this on board, that when Judy Turner made her contribution she spoke as if this was a new bill—a new concept. But this legislation came in 2 or 3 years ago. It just increases the entitlements and makes a few more people able to receive them. But the bill ignores the self-employed. We were promised 2 or 3 years ago that the case for the self-employed was a good case, and it would be addressed forthwith. How long do we have to wait? Nobody told us—not one single person—mentioned how soon—

💬 Shane Ardern: It won’t happen under this Government.

I tend to agree with the member; it will not happen under this Government. Part 2 comes in on 1 December next year. Will the self-employed be covered by then?

💬 Shane Ardern: No.

No, I do not think they will. Yet the Minister says the Government will give urgent priority to the case for the self-employed.

💬 Georgina Beyer: That is correct.

Well, give us a time frame. We have been sitting, waiting for 3 years. New Zealand First would have supported this bill if it covered the self-employed. They pay their taxes, they work for this country, they are the backbone of this country in many, many respects, and they are entitled to be covered by this legislation.

Lianne Dalziel, during the 1 minute she spoke, or it might have been 1 minute 10 seconds—I do not want to take anything away from the member—said that the reason self-employed people are not covered is that some of them will want to work. Well, so do employed people. If employed people work and do not want the parental leave they do not get it. That is the same with the self-employed, I would assume. I would assume that that is fair—if one works, one does not get the leave. I cannot imagine a woman on $200,000 or $300,000 a year taking paid parental leave. But she would be entitled to it, although a self-employed person on a modest wage is not.

So the argument might be that the Government does not have the money. Well, let us have a look at that. In 1999 the total tax take was $33.1 billion.

💬 Craig McNair: Surely not!

It was $33.1 billion in 1999. Guess what it was in June this year?

💬 Craig McNair: How much?

It was $45.9 billion. That is an increase of nearly 40 percent, but the Government cannot afford to give a little bit back to the self-employed. This is a benevolent Government? Like hell it is. I tell those members over there that they should be ashamed of themselves. Worse still, if United Future and the Greens had stuck to the principles they espoused in this House and said: “If the self-employed are not in, we’re not with it.”, we would have got the self-employed covered. We would have got the cover if they had come across and said: “We will not embrace this bill unless it covers the self-employed.” We would have achieved that target.

💬 Craig McNair: They are lapdogs.

As my honourable friend says, they are lapdogs. [Interruption] But that is not our only concern. Let me enlighten members a little further—the members who know so much about the bill they cannot take a call to explain what they know.

I have a letter written to the Minister of Health, Mrs King, from a young lady doctor, and I will read a paragraph. “I am a doctor. I have worked full time within the public hospital system since graduation—5 years. I have recently come to Wellington from Whangarei. Prior to this I was employed within the Auckland region by both the Auckland District Health Board and Counties-Manukau District Health Board. From Wellington I’m being sent to Christchurch in December.” If that lady gets pregnant she does not qualify for paid parental leave because she will not have served the appropriate time under one district health board. In other words every health board is regarded as a separate employer. She is sent from one health board to the other, but she does not qualify for paid parental leave.

Is that the way this Government operates? No, not for teachers, and it is stated in this letter:

“I understand that teachers from most public schools are employed by the Department of Education and are therefore still eligible for parental leave, even when they have chosen to change schools.” The doctor who is sent from one hospital to another, from one district health board to another, does not qualify. The teacher who goes from one school of his or her own choice to another does qualify. Is that fair I ask members over there?

💬 Shane Ardern: Definitely not.

It is definitely not fair. That is why New Zealand First will not be supporting this bill. We support the concept. We supported the first bill 2 or 3 years ago, and we were looking forward to supporting this bill. However, we will not be part of the discriminatory-type regime that this Government is imposing. It is playing favourites here—favourites to its supposed friends, and it is leaving out other people, quite unfairly. The people I am referring to all pay tax in fair measure.

💬 Shane Ardern: They don’t pay union fees.

The member says that they do not pay union fees. I think that doctors do pay union fees. [Interruption] I cannot argue that point. I do not want to put this argument on the basis of union versus non-union. This is selective legislation by the Government. Where it thinks it will get votes, it will push it through.

United Future members are silly enough to vote against their principles. They know they can stand firm. Many, many times they have stood in this House and said that they support the self-employed and how important the self-employed are to this country. It is not just farming people, but the small-business person who runs a garage, runs a shop, or whatever. They are the people whom United Future said it supports. But what do United Future members do when they have to front up to a bill like this? They roll over and say: “Never mind, Government. We’ll take care of them in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 years. Just let them keep paying taxes so that other people can benefit from it.”

This legislation is totally unfair. It would not be so bad if it were a first attempt. New Zealand First lived with the first attempt to exclude the self-employed. That was in 2001 or 2000. The first bill was introduced about 3 years ago. It has taken the Government 3 years, and it still cannot get there. I say, Mr Speaker, that New Zealand First can fix it. You might have heard this before, and I think you have by the smile on your face. New Zealand First can fix it, and it will. It will fix this legislation to make it fair for every New Zealander who should qualify. We are ashamed that this legislation will go through tonight in the way it is, and that is why we are voting against it.

If the Government had only listened to my honourable colleague Bill Gudgeon’s amendment and taken it on board, it would have been a different kettle of fish. We would have been very, very supportive. However, the Government refused point-blank to give any consideration to the self-employed, and the issues concerning doctors that have been covered tonight by myself, and the complaints from nurses, raised by Muriel Newman.

This is poor legislation when it comes to New Zealanders and I am ashamed that this Government is pushing it through like this. New Zealand First will not be supporting it, and I say that with a heavy heart. Basically, it is the sort of legislation that we should be providing for all New Zealanders, not just a selection of them. I rest my case.

I rise to take a very brief call in this debate. One of the things in politics is that we cannot get everything done in 5 minutes. Members have principles and things they believe in, and we are always trying to improve things for all New Zealanders. This bill is a good example of that. It extends parental leave to another 3,500 people in New Zealand. The glass on this issue is half full, not half empty. However, because we cannot do absolutely everything in this one piece of legislation, Opposition parties say “Let’s have none of it.” They will vote down this bill even though we have extended paid parental leave to 3,500 people.

Of course the Government would like to take this further, and of course we are open to considering extending paid parental leave into the future. This is not the end of the process. This is the middle part of it. It is another good piece of legislation where we invest in strong public services, which the Labour-Progressive Government firmly supports. Don Brash would unwind paid parental leave for all Kiwis. From tonight, we are including another 3,500 mothers in this provision, and we will keep on marching, because we believe in keeping this country strong.

We have just heard from that member over there that another 3,500 people will be paid parental leave. What about the rest? What about the self-employed people who will miss out in this legislation? It is all very well that he says it is part of the process to take a little bit here and a little bit there. I am telling the Government that until the legislation affects everybody, and everybody has the benefit of it, we will vote against it. We will vote against it because it is absolutely discriminatory. Where is the equity here? We are a nation of small businesses. We have 292,000 small businesses. That is the mums and dads out there who are working hard trying to make things work. Shortly we will be looking at the taxation bill in the Committee stage, and I will have a bit to say when we get there. However, the backbone of the economy, those people who put in the hard yards, make the investments, and if they happen to be self-employed, do not qualify under this bill.

The Government says that it has to look after small business. I am absolutely ashamed of United Future, which is meant to stand up for those people. I hope that Mr Alexander takes a call, not in this debate, but in the debate on the taxation bill, because that is important as well. A party that can support this legislation—which is inequitable, which is discriminatory—and wants to support the Government on it, when we could actually bring this down, is a nonsense.

What will the Government do? The 3,500 extra people the previous member just spoke about is fine, but what about the rest of us? What about the rest of those families? I shall tell members what is happening in business. In particular, small-business people are saying that they will not employ somebody who will possibly want to start a family. That is what they are saying. So who will miss out? It is those people whom we should be trying to help. In the real world—and Labour members do not know about the real world; they have never been in the real world; they have never put their money at risk, so they would not know—it is about the bottom line.

I can tell members that small businesses cannot afford to carry people where there is no commitment that they will come back. They could hold a job open for 12 months. This is what happens in the real world, which they do not know about. It is about survival and it is very, very difficult for small businesses with these compliance costs. All this is, is another compliance cost.

The bill states that a person has to work for somebody for only 6 months. It used to be 12 months. At least with 12 months there was a bit of flexibility, but when it is only 6 months that a person has to work for somebody, that person will qualify for 12 weeks now, but that person has had to work for someone for only 6 months. That is absolutely intolerable. This is another huge compliance cost with red tape that this Government is so fond of getting involved in, and it is another nail in its coffin. Not only that, the policy also applies if people are going to adopt. Many people do not realise that this will apply not only if they are having their own child but also applies to those people who adopt.

If I take someone on to work in my business, what will I do? I will not ask whether that person wishes to have a family, but I would probably look at just taking on a male. But, of course, how it works is that the wife or the partner may work in a person’s business, decide that he or she will have a family, and will get paid parental leave, but does not need to take the whole period of 14 weeks, or 12 weeks as it is now. It could be that the husband or partner would work for me and would be able to pick up a couple of those weeks. Some think they are very smart, because they will not take on a woman specifically, because she might want to have a family, and what actually might happen is that I could be caught out as well if the husband also qualifies. A lot of businesses today are being caught out on that, because they do not understand how this legislation works. That is an absolute indictment on a Government that has no understanding of what makes communities work, no understanding about small business in particular, yet it wants to foist on us an extra couple of weeks of compliance costs, and reduce, of course, the time period in which a person will become eligible. If the Government had included everybody, then it might be a different ball game.

Because when we look at who is ineligible to qualify for the 14 weeks’ leave, it is self-employed women and those who job-share; it is women in casual employment, either part-time or full-time; it is women who cannot find, or choose not to engage in, formal employment, including women who choose to stop work to have a family; it is women who, for many reasons, have had a new employer within the last 6 months, and women who cannot have children or choose not to have children.

I repeat the point I made right at the beginning that this legislation is discriminatory. It is not equitable, because not all women qualify for 14 weeks’ leave. National will oppose the bill. We have voted against these matters before. We certainly oppose the bill tonight. This Government should be looking after businesses, because they are the wealth creators in our communities. But, no, the Government says it has to look after these particular workers. The next item on the Order Paper is a taxation bill, and the same sort of arguments will be very, very important.

New Zealand relies on the productive sector and on the growth of small communities. That is where the wealth of the country comes from. It comes from those 295,000 small businesses that employ 92 percent of all employees. Those self-employed people, the ones who put their dollars in and want a return on their dollars, are being told by this Government: “We’re going to sock you one with this, along with the Holidays Act, the Employment Law Reform Act, and increases in excise tax on fuel because of Kyoto.” However, this legislation will prove to be the nail in the coffin for the Government, because it shows it is uncaring and does not understand what makes communities work. I must say we are disappointed that United Future is supporting the bill, because there was a chance that we could defeat it. The bill is discriminatory and inequitable, and the Government will pay for that.