Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Labour: I move, That the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. At the appropriate time it will be moved that the bill be referred to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, not, of course, because this is a transport issue, but because it does relate very broadly to the industrial relations area.

But now that I am on my feet, and the oratorical opportunities have overcome me in this respect, let me simply say that, of course, it has been the intention since paid parental leave was first introduced to extend it to self-employed people. It was recognised from the beginning that, actually, the most difficult part of paid parental leave is not so much how to define who is self-employed, but how to define relevant earnings etc. It is much more difficult, obviously, for self-employed people than it is for those people who are employed. But, clearly, in terms of the original provision within the legislation there was a recognised inequity—that not to include self-employed people was a hole. An undertaking was given right from the beginning that that hole would be filled at a reasonably early opportunity.

I might say that the National Party opposed paid parental leave. The most extraordinary sight was its women’s spokesperson, who had availed herself of some significantly paid parental leave at the time, actually opposing paid parental leave for the general workforce and everyone else. The primary purposes of that legislation were first of all to assist parents—particularly in the first stages of a baby’s life—and, secondly, particularly for women, to provide the mechanism that enables the maintenance of a connection with the paid workforce. That clearly had worked overseas. It was the primary justification in many respects of the introduction of paid parental leave, and I think the evidence since that time of increased female participation within the workforce has demonstrated that that has proved successful.

I might say, by the side of that, that one should not go overboard. The United States, in terms of its benefit system, applies a work test to a parent when a baby is as young as 3-12 months. Ninety-odd percent of mothers who are not in employment are below the poverty line, but, appallingly, 40 percent of sole parents who are in employment are also below the poverty line. That suggests that a much broader approach to these issues, and a more generous one, is actually appropriate. But I shall leave that to my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson to explain in more detail.

National will be supporting the bill to the select committee, but I think that Dr Cullen had a bit of a hospital pass there. The Minister in charge of the bill perhaps did not arrive in proper time to speak on it, but I note that Dr Cullen did canvass the issues quite widely.

This bill is belated recognition of the issue, and it is all very well for Dr Cullen to say that the Government was going to fix this issue at an early time. Well, that was not the case. It took time for them to recognise that reality, and it is 3 years since the original legislation was passed into law. I acknowledge that it has been reasonably popular legislation, and I guess the question we have to ask ourselves is why it took Labour 3 years to do this. Is it because it is dominated by unionists—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: What!

—who, like the Minister, tend to look at the world through only the eyes of employees? They cannot really see broader than that, at all. The failure to include the self-employed was one of National’s major objections at the time. My colleagues Anne Tolley and Dr Lynda Scott put this directly in their speeches at the time. Dr Lynda Scott asked, in 2002, what rural women and the self-employed got from the original bill. Well, she had the clear answer—they got a big fat nothing. That was the truth of it. So this legislation is belated recognition and, frankly, National takes some credit for the fact that the bill is here now. We raised this issue up and down the country. I was at meetings held by my colleagues, who were concerned about this. I read some of the submissions at the time. I know that in my former legal profession this was a real concern of women lawyers. I know that my colleague Judith Collins raised this issue at an early point, because women in the legal profession had been campaigning for years and years to get some form of recognition.

One of the flaws of Labour’s argument, its philosophical approach, is that they did have choices—in particular, the self-employed. What Labour is doing here is providing a benefit from the welfare system, at a set figure of $375 according to the commentary on the bill. The alternative is a tax deduction. These are hugely different things, because they speak volumes about the philosophical approach of the parties. Self-employed people actually do not want a handout from the State; they do not want to be turned into beneficiaries by this Government. Maybe the select committee will look at the options that are available, because I am prepared to bet that many of the submissions that will come from the self-employed, because that is who will be making them primarily, will say that maybe a tax deduction might be a better way of doing it. Just think of the advantages: under the beneficiary system there is a whole range of inspectorate systems.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: How can people have a tax deduction if they’re not in paid work?

The bill has labour inspectors checking to see whether people are taking time off work, whether they are still involved in the work, and how much they are involved in the work. It is all there in the bill, if the Minister would care to look. That is exactly what New Zealanders hate—particularly the self-employed. They hate the intrusion of the State into their lives in that particular way. I point out to the Minister that that is the advantage of a tax deduction. It gives people choices—something Labour seems to struggle with in reality.

We need only to think of the way people run their businesses. We do not have labour inspectors checking to see whether every particular little tax deduction in one’s tax return is proper; it is all done through an efficient and effective system called the “IRD”—very efficient and low compliance costs through the department. The interjections made by the Minister of Labour simply show her lack of understanding of the world of small business, the world of the self-employed, who want choices, and who do not want the intrusion of the State and Department of Labour inspectors into their lives.

I ask the Government to take on board the issues that are raised in the submissions. There will be proposals to treat this in a different way, because in reality it is very hard for those who are self-employed to absent themselves completely from their business. They want some supervisory role. They will be ringing up the office, checking on things. Women at home will be wanting to do that. They do not want to have to get approval from the Department of Labour to see whether they can do that. They just want to be able to do that and get on with their lives, and at the very minimum they should have the choice between a tax deduction and receiving a State benefit. I can imagine in some instances people might actually want a State benefit, but women who are self-employed, who are taking time out to have a family and still want to be involved in their business, ought to have the choice of a tax deduction as well.

National is supporting the bill to the select committee. We see this legislation as a belated, although inadequate, measure. We understand that the Government will say this is all part of its commitments made in the election campaign, and so forth. I just ask the Government whether it really went out and talked to self-employed women. Does it understand how self-employed women think about their lives, think about the way they run their businesses, think about the way they run their households, and then ask whether self-employed women actually want to become beneficiaries of the State? Because that is the dependency mindset that the Government would put them into.

I have a particular role that has gained a certain momentum—that is, political correctness eradication. One of the key issues is that New Zealanders say they are sick of the intrusion of the State into their lives. That is a key way of looking at political correctness. So what does the Government do? In the guise of assisting women—and that is a good thing—it loads on more bureaucracy. That is the very thing that New Zealanders do not want more of. I ask the Government to take note of the submissions, understand that people in self-employment operate differently from employees, and give them choices, because that is the sort of thing that will be put to the select committee when it hears the evidence on the bill.

It gives me huge pleasure to speak on the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill. Paid parental leave is a significant component of our Government’s policy to promote high-quality working lives. Since we introduced paid parental leave in 2002, over 52,000 working parents have benefited from paid leave from work on the birth or adoption of their child. The Government conducted a review of paid parental leave in 2003, which showed that the scheme has been successful and that employees and employers have adjusted well to the entitlement. I do not recall that a single submission said that people would prefer tax cuts. They all said that it had been very successful.

Since that review, in December of last year the Government extended paid parental leave for employees from 12 weeks to 13 weeks, with a further extension from 1 December this year to 14 weeks. That review also showed, though, that the scheme could be improved to extend coverage to self-employed parents who are not currently eligible for paid parental leave.

I would like at this point to make it clear that there are currently some parents who work in their own businesses who are eligible for paid parental leave. Where a company’s shareholders are also legitimately employees of the company, they are eligible for parental leave payments as employees under the current scheme. This applies only to those who are legitimately shareholder employees. It is an offence under the Act to provide misleading information to obtain paid parental leave.

This bill provides for 14 weeks’ paid parental leave, from 1 July 2006, for self-employed mothers. The bill is intended to provide paid parental payments to self-employed people on a basis consistent with that currently provided to employees, while recognising the particular circumstances of self-employment. It is estimated that over 2,170 self-employed parents will apply for paid parental leave each year.

Self-employed mothers will be eligible if they work an average of 10 hours a week or more during either a 6 or 12-month period immediately before the expected date of delivery of their child, or adoption. Self-employed mothers will have the same right as employees to transfer this leave to their eligible partners, who may either be self-employed or employees. A self-employed person will be entitled to paid parental leave if he or she is engaged in more than one type of work consecutively and/or if he or she has a break of 30 days or fewer between engagements. Like employees, they will be required to stop working while receiving payments, but they will be able to maintain a level of oversight of their business during the leave period.

Parental leave payments for the self-employed will equal their average weekly income, up to the maximum rate paid to employees of $357.30 per week before tax. Those who make a loss or earn less than the minimum wage for at least 10 hours a week will be entitled to payments for 10 hours a week at the minimum wage.

The bill also provides that employees will become eligible for a second or subsequent period of parental leave and parental leave payments if the expected date of delivery or adoption is at least 6 months after the return to work from a previous period of parental leave, rather than 12 months as at present. This will extend eligibility for paid parental leave to a small number of employees. It also provides that self-employed women will be eligible for parental leave payments for second and subsequent children 6 months following previous parental leave payments. It is important that these provisions are aligned with the minimum eligibility criteria for first-time mothers.

The bill also includes a new provision, which explicitly provides that an employee or self-employed person can apply to the Employment Relations Authority for a review of the decision made by the Department of Labour about his or her eligibility for a parental leave payment. It enables the department to approve applicants for payment where there are technical problems with the application. Currently, these applications must go to the Employment Relations Authority before they can be approved. This amendment will save applicants from having to go through this process. But the department may not approve applications if the problem is a dispute between the employer and the employee.

This bill reflects the Government’s commitment to provide paid parental leave for working families. It will extend coverage to a range of self-employed activities, including the working arrangements of farming families. This is a significant step, giving practical financial help to families when new mothers have been self-employed, and it supports positive health outcomes for both mothers and babies. I look forward to the progress of this bill through the House.

I am looking forward to making a contribution to the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill. It is not before time that self-employed women, and self-employed parents, are included within this legislation. It always appeared to me to be a glaring omission from the very first legislation put before the House.

I understand the principles behind the bill. It is very much the Kiwi way, I think, to look to support Kiwis when they are unwell, when they are unable to work, or when they are at some stage in their life where they are not able to participate. One of the things we need to appreciate is that after a baby is born, many women are unable to work and are unable to participate. As a result of that, I am totally comfortable with the concept of paid parental leave.

Having said that though, the fact that self-employed women were not originally included in this legislation was very hard to debate. I look back at some of the points the Minister made at the time, when defending the fact that self-employed women were not part of this scheme. It was argued that it was difficult to measure a self-employed parent’s income. It was argued that it was too difficult to manage, and that it would be difficult to administer. A lot of those arguments did not hold water at all. If someone is unable to work, that is quite clear.

The fact is that paid parental leave offers a finite amount, being some $350-odd a week. It was not as if we had a paid parental leave scheme as overseas, where it is linked to a certain level of income that one may or may not be earning at the time. It seemed to me to be discriminatory that self-employed women were not part of the scheme right from the outset. It was difficult to argue to self-employed hairdressers who might have a contract seat in a salon, to women who were working in local retail shops that they owned, or to rural women who were involved in the dairy industry or farming that they were not able to be part of the scheme. I think that this is a step forward, which is why I am pleased that my party is supporting this bill going to a select committee.

It is also important to tell some truth about the genesis of this bill, because the Labour Government is very quick to claim credit for it. We need to remember that Laila Harré first brought this up as an issue. When the debate was first raised, Helen Clark said: “Over my dead body!”, would there be paid parental leave. In fact, while Labour wants to claim credit for this scheme, the credit lies with some people who are now outside the House.

This bill is a step forward. I think it is important that we debate some of these issues and look further at the scheme. I am glad the bill is going to a select committee because that will give us the opportunity to detail some of the important points to do with this legislation. But if we look at the number of women who will now be included, a lot of working women will be shaking their heads in wonder, trying to understand why they were not included in the first place. A lot of our self-employed women are not people earning multimillion-dollar salaries. They tend to be those who have done the right thing, gone out and created businesses for themselves, and employed themselves, but they tend to be part of small-business operations, which make up some 95 percent of all firms in this country.

If we look at those who will be captured by this bill, it makes sense that we include self-employed women. Let us face it, any new mum is in the same situation. It should not matter for a moment who employs a new parent. The issue is that that parent should have the same ability as anybody else to access support when it is required.

As I look at my own situation and look back at my political life, probably one of the dumbest things I did was attempt to go back to work some 2 weeks after the birth of my two children. I think it is a good thing that we take time and allow some new parents just to get on with bonding with their baby and enjoying those first few weeks. I think one of the problems we have with working currently is that a lot of parents feel they have to rush back to work at that very, very important time.

I think that the scheme we have in New Zealand has proved able to support a number of parents over the last couple of years. But we are not being fair to all new parents because, until recently, many have not been able to enjoy the same rights with the scheme. It was discriminatory not to have self-employed women as part of the original scheme. Some of the arguments put up, in my view, did not hold water, and if we look at trying to track the engagement of self-employed mothers and fathers with the scheme, we see that it is not that hard to do. It is certainly not as hard as that to determine whether they have had children and whether they will be engaged in work.

It will be interesting to see the sorts of submissions we get at the select committee level. I think we will see the same sorts of groups endorsing the inclusion of self-employed women. We need to remember some of the submissions made by groups like Rural Women New Zealand. Representatives from that group made the very pertinent point that many of their members, coming from the rural community and being involved in sheep and dairy farms, needed that break and the ability to take time out more than anybody else in the same situation, and they needed to be able to protect their incomes during such a difficult time. But they were not able to be part of the scheme. So they were paying taxes and contributing to a scheme to pay for a whole bunch of other parents who were in exactly the same situation as themselves.

I recall receiving many, many letters from rural women involved in the daily graft of a family farming operation, asking why they were not allowed to engage in the scheme and saying it was not fair. Their taxes were going to support other new parents, but they were trying to juggle a new baby and a family farming operation, and they were not able to be part of the scheme. So I suspect we will get a lot of submissions from the rural community making exactly that point. We will welcome those submissions when they come.

A lot of self-employed new parents are not actually wealthy individuals. One of the myths the Government side of the House wants to perpetuate is the idea that if people are in business, they are wealthy and well off. That is not the case. Many self-employed people up and down the country make up what could be described as the working poor. They are doing the right thing in getting up every day to go to work, paying their taxes, being burdened with compliance costs, and making sure that they play their part in the community, but they can also fall on times when, I think, they deserve additional support, as well. It is just as important for those parents to have the time to bond with their children and to take that time out as it is for any other employee.

The fact that a woman happens to be her own boss was never an excuse to leave her out of this scheme. Such people are very easy to track. They were always going to gain a finite amount of income from the scheme. The arguments put forward to lock them out of the scheme were always discriminatory and quite unfair.

I suspect we will see a lot of industry groups put forward submissions—from the hairdressers association, to the legal fraternity, to accountancy firms. I think a number of professional women will have a view on this inclusion, and we will welcome every single one of those submissions and look forward to hearing them at the select committee. We do not know what sort of amendments and suggestions they will make, but it is important that this bill gets as far as the select committee and the select committee can make amendments and improvements. If we have seen anything from this Government, it is that often it will put before a select committee a poorly drafted bill that needs a lot of work if it is to make it through to being an Act that will actually work.

For self-employed women—and for new dads, as well; I cannot leave them out—this is a step forward. We look forward to the select committee process, and I hope the public will rise to the occasion and put forward their views.

I do not intend to take a long call, because I think that the member who has just resumed her seat has explained in quite some detail the background behind this bill and how important it is. She made one mistake, though: she described it as a step forward. New Zealand First would be a lot more positive than that; we would say that this bill is an essential requirement. It is essential for fairness alone. It was a sad fact that self-employed women were left out of the last bill. New Zealand First did not vote for the last bill for that reason. We thought the last bill was totally unfair. We supported the first bill. We support the concept of paid parental leave, but we thought the last bill should have addressed this issue fairly comprehensively—a year ago, was it? It is actually a sad reflection on the Government that it has taken 3 years to recognise self-employed women.

There is a statement I want to read from the explanatory note of the bill. It is on page 12 if anybody is interested, in two bullet points. It states: “self-employed parents face the same difficulties as employed parents in combining work with childcare:”. Did we not all know that? We did not have to have some sort of evaluation exercise to know that. The explanatory note goes on to state: “self-employed parents did not receive parental leave payments despite helping to fund the scheme through their tax payments.” That is absolutely true, and it is a disgrace that this Parliament has not addressed that issue much, much sooner.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: But we are now.

The Government is now doing so—and I would not skite about it, because although some very highly paid women in this country can get paid parental leave, the small operator, the self-employed woman, gets nothing. She pays tax and gets nothing—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: But they will be able to get something.

—and I say to honourable members that it is about time we addressed that issue. There is no obligation for employed people to go back to the job they came from. There is an obligation for the employer to hold the job open, but there is no obligation for the employee to go back to that job. I almost guarantee that self-employed women will go back to the same job. They play a very positive and prominent part in our society.

New Zealand First supports this bill. No doubt there will be glitches in it that will need to be tidied up by the select committee, but we will support its referral to the select committee, and we welcome its fast-tracking through the House, simply to make the whole thing fair.

On behalf of the Green Party I would like to say how pleased we are that this bill is finally before the House. We will definitely be supporting this legislation right through to its third reading, as we have advocated strongly over the last 6 years for the ability of self-employed parents to get paid parental leave. I remember, as I am sure other Opposition members do, the promise made by the Minister during discussions on the last paid parental leave amendment bill in 2004, when she pledged that policy development relating to the self-employed was a very high priority for the Government. It is great to see that Ruth Dyson has been able to keep this promise, with the support of her own party, the Greens, and other parties in this House.

Over recent weeks I have heard concerns from some women that they have planned their pregnancies so that the birth of their baby will coincide with the implementation of this legislation on 1 July next year. I dare say it is a risky business to organise one’s pregnancy on the basis of a Government’s declared intentions. I have been a bit nervous about this in relation to the progress of the legislation, as have those women, but sometimes people do seem to believe what Governments tell them. I just hope that we will be able to progress this bill quickly enough so that those particular self-employed parents who have aligned the birth of their child with the timing of this bill’s passage into law will not be disappointed. I believe that there are plans for this bill to be heard with some urgency at the select committee. That will be necessary, or there will be some very sad parents out there.

As we all realise, a large number of potential mothers are in this category. About 66,000 women of childbearing age in the self-employed workforce are not able to access the existing system of paid parental leave. I remember well, as my colleague Katherine Rich has just said, that when we heard the submissions at the select committee for the first paid parental leave bill we heard some very telling advocacy from groups of self-employed business people in the urban areas, and from rural women, about the inequity of our passing legislation that would give something to parents working for an employer, which was to be denied to those in self-employment.

There has never been any rationale on equity grounds to grant paid parental leave to one lot of parents and not to another, when both are in the workforce and both have equal need of the many benefits that up to 14 weeks’ paid parental leave can provide.

All employed and self-employed parents deserve the opportunity to plan ahead for the births of their children, in the knowledge that they will be eligible to receive up to 14 weeks’ pay to help compensate for their loss of income during that period. Whether a mother is working as a sharemilker, a self-employed management consultant, a farmer, a shop owner, or in any other form of self-employment, she deserves the same chances as other mothers-to-be in the employed workforce. This new extension of paid parental leave to the self-employed will also carry with it the opportunity for the transfer of payments by a self-employed mother to her eligible partner, whether that partner is self-employed or an employee himself or herself.

Although paid parental leave is only one part of a much bigger picture, when it comes to providing more and better support for parents and children, it is a critical component. Paid parental leave of 14 weeks is, at least, a bare minimum, which gives parents time to have a breathing space away from work to focus their full attention on their new child and their growing family, and allows them to build those early bonds and to recover from childbirth.

One of the main reasons that the self-employed were not included within the paid parental leave framework earlier was because the Government found it difficult to sort out suitable eligibility criteria and a workable methodology. I could never understand why this was so hard, when the Accident Compensation Corporation already has elaborate systems for providing various forms of cover for the self-employed. I am glad that the Government has now broken through its self-imposed fiscal and administrative impediments so that an estimated 2,000-plus self-employed parents a year will receive eligibility from 2006 onwards.

Although applauding the Government for keeping its promises on this one, I will say in finishing that we in Aotearoa New Zealand still have a long way to go. We are way behind a number of other countries in this area, particularly the UK and Europe. Just to give one example, in February this year the UK Government announced plans to extend paid maternity leave from 6 months to 9 months by April 2007, with the aim of taking it out to a full year in its next term of Parliament. The British Labour Party is certainly giving its New Zealand counterparts something to aim for.

The Māori Party believes there is no greater responsibility and honour than that of raising the next generation. The privilege of parenting should be one that all parties seek to protect and support through a variety of means, and this bill is one of those means. This is not to say that one must always be paid to undertake duties as a result of choosing to continue the existence of the human race, kāo!

The desire of the Māori Party is for our people to go forth and multiply. Our policy commitment is to strengthen and support whānau to take up their responsibilities for child rearing. The Māori Party believes that parents—solo parents and couples—grandparents, and aunties and uncles should have the choice to stay at home and look after their children, their tamariki. That is their choice. We do not see this as another welfare payment. In fact, it should not be, because, despite anything that might be said, welfare is a net that entangles one—he taura ka herea atu ki te kakī o te tangata: it tightens like a noose around the throat.

There are alternatives to welfare. We are supportive of the concept of the reduction of taxation if the family income is under the poverty line. Currently, 1.9 million taxpayers are on an income of $25,000 or less. Those people are paying $3.5 billion in tax, -while the Government is accumulating surpluses of between $4 billion and $7 billion each year. If we could use $1.75 billion of the $3.5 billion on those 1.9 million taxpayers, to give a tax discount of 50 percent to our low-income people, we could achieve significant changes in the welfare and well-being of these people—and they could achieve choice.

The primary aim of the bill is to amend the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act 1987 and to extend the 14-week paid parental leave scheme to self-employed individuals who are not currently covered. It is interesting to note that women are significantly under-represented amongst the self-employed—particularly Māori women. New Zealand Trade and Enterprise has found that only around 44 percent of applicants seeking Enterprise Awards Scheme grants were women, and only 8 percent of applicants had identified themselves as Māori.

The December 2000 household labour force survey reported only 4,500 self-employed Māori women, which is about 6.4 percent of the total number of self-employed women. In addition, 1,300 self-employed Māori women employed others, which is only 3.3 percent of the total number of women in that category. Although we are very surprised to see that Māori women are under-represented in this area, we should not be, because we know from bitter experience how difficult it is for Māori to access loan facilities to enable them to give substance to their entrepreneurial talents. They also lack the material assets from which they can borrow. That Māori—and Māori women in particular—are entrepreneurial cannot be disputed. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor now covers 41 countries and is the largest survey of entrepreneurship undertaken in the world. It is ironic that Māori are more likely to be necessity entrepreneurs—that is, forced to start a business due to job loss or redundancy—than are non-Māori or the global average. One has to ask, then, whether it was a necessity to achieve international recognition as being entrepreneurial. Although we are supportive of the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill, it might dull the entrepreneurial spirit, and that would be another irony.

Within the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor survey 83 percent more Māori women than men, at 30 percent, identify themselves as opportunity entrepreneurs—that is, those able to spot a business opportunity. Again, we question the irony of this international achievement. Māori women are successful at spotting a business opportunity, but perhaps up until the time of this legislation they were unable to act on the opportunity because they lacked resources, including parental leave and parental leave payments in order to maintain a decent standard of living. We are optimistic that this legislation will help to do something about this situation and ensure that those women can maintain their entrepreneurial spirit in enterprises by the assistance it will give them. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor survey covering female entrepreneurs found Māori women to be remarkably more entrepreneurial than non-Māori New Zealand women. Female entrepreneurs account for 13 percent of the general Māori population, compared with 8.7 percent amongst non-Māori and 6.4 percent for the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor world.

Again, with all the success being heralded overseas it is sobering that, despite these talents, reality paints a quite different picture. The latest report of the Ministry of Social Development shows that despite improvements, inequalities remain all too real. It notes that hourly wage and salary rates for Māori still trail European rates—$13.76 against $16—and literacy skills and educational achievement are also lower. That is an indictment on our national and international standing, yet again. It is to our national shame that Professor Stavenhagen, the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples, found only 2 weeks ago that “there is also widespread concern that the gap in social and economic conditions is actually growing larger and that an increasing proportion of Māori are being left behind.”

The Government’s own figures reveal that the unemployment rate for Māori has steadily increased over the last year, from an actual rate of 8.3 percent in September 2004 to 9.1 percent in September 2005, with the unemployment rate for Pākehā still steadily decreasing over the same period. All of those figures go to show that despite the international recognition of the entrepreneurial spirit of Māori women, much still has to be done to address the inequities within our society. To that extent the Māori Party supports the introduction of this bill as one means to address the inequities.

The bill is consistent with Māori Party kaupapa that underscores the importance of a whānau’s financial security and its implication of assistance to whānau when a parent is temporarily out of the paid workforce. We should let such parents be paid out of the annual tax take, which they have contributed to. A question we have around the bill, however, is whether it is possible for the bill to include those in multiple or casual employment situations. There are criteria contained that restrict eligibility to mean that one must be working at least 10 hours a week in concurrent employment, and also that any break between consecutive types of work is for only 30 days or less. We would like to know what that will actually mean for self-employed persons, in real terms. Parenting, for us, is important. The Māori Party applauds this bill as it supports parenting for those people who are also wealth creators and creators of employment. Tēnā tātou katoa.

I rise on behalf of United Future to speak to the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill 2005. Like other parties, United Future is very pleased to see the advent of this bill. We congratulate the Minister on taking the necessary steps to advance the development of this legislation, and we look forward to assisting its passage in whatever way we can.

The bill does four main things. The first, obviously, is to extend the provisions of parental leave to the self-employed. Second, it allows for that leave to be shared or transferred, and I think that that is important when we start to understand that there are families for whom fathers may be the most suitable to provide parental care in those essential first few weeks. Third, the bill also clarifies eligibility, particularly for the self-employed, and allows them to maintain some sort of business oversight while still qualifying for help. Fourth, it establishes clearly what that rate of payment will be. We have known for a long time that self-employed parents, who actually do face the same difficulties as employed parents in combining work with childcare, are the same people who have not received parental leave payments, despite the fact that they have helped to fund the scheme through their tax payments. So the advent of this bill is long overdue, and we welcome it.

It is so interesting that just within the last week or so the Hon Peter Dunne received from one of his constituents an email asking for the time frame, in anticipation. She said: “I struggle to understand why self-employed mothers who work just as hard as anyone else and pay their taxes are not entitled to parental leave. Both my husband and I work extremely hard and are both self-employed. We have struggled with how we could possibly have a baby, as it will require me to take time out from my demanding business. I am a one-man band and will still need to employ someone to run the business while I have time out, thus putting a huge financial strain on us, and we were giving up hope that we could possibly do it.” So is it not exciting that so close to receiving that email we are now doing the first reading of this bill? I agree, and I am thrilled.

One of the great things about the presence of the Māori Party in this House is that it is another party, I think, that celebrates parenthood, as we do. For myself, of all the things I have achieved in my life the thing that most fills me with pride is the fact that I have been the mother of three children. It supersedes any other achievement that I have ever had, and the most precious 11 years of my life were spent focusing on that job. We have to face the fact that it is very difficult for families now to get ahead, own a home, and pay off student loans on a single income, as was possible though difficult even a few years ago when I was parenting our three children at home as an unpaid mother.

I believe that beyond even this legislation we need to have Parliament think very carefully about the expectations we put on parents who can survive only by having two incomes. That debate will have to happen on another day, but that is why United Future still advocates income splitting. That is an opportunity for families with two parents to think carefully about how they manage the parenting of their children. Currently people in business are already income splitting, but in relation to the tax system it is an opportunity to actually make some choices available to parents regarding the parenting arrangements for their children. We would like to see, in many ways, that reversed out to the employed, so they were able to have those kinds of options, as well. But, as I said, that is a debate for another day.

Right now, we are thrilled to think that for the nearly 66,500 women of fertile age who are currently self-employed this new opportunity is before them. It is interesting that it is estimated by officials that about 2,173 self-employed parents will be applying for this paid parental leave each year. That is an interesting statistic, and it is good to see that the Government is seeing this as a priority.

I am also very interested in the Bills Digest on the bill, which refers specifically to farming families, because that is also my background. I was raised in a farming family and, unlike a lot of situations today, my mother would probably never have called herself a farmer. I think she tried it for a couple of weeks after she got married to my father, but after she took out a concrete strainer post that he had spent a lot of time putting into the ground I think she retired to domestic duties and voluntary work in the community. I think he was quite relieved. But I do know that many women in our rural community spent a huge number of hours at the cowshed and helping on the farm, and that that was the way their farms survived. They did it at great cost and at great risk, to be quite honest—knowing that there were often young children at home unsupervised while mum was down helping milk the cows. That situation, which we would now consider appalling, was the way those families survived and made their farms pay. So it is very exciting to see specific reference in the Bills Digest to farming families, who I do believe face particular challenges in that regard. It is going to be pretty exciting to see provisions rolled out to them, as well.

I also reiterate my interest in, and will be interested to see what submissions come in on, the issue of transferability of parental leave payments and the sharing of leave. As dads start to take a much more proactive role in parenting their children—which I think is an exciting development—that gives, again, a whole series of new choices to families about that important period of time. It will be very interesting to see what the uptake of that is, and it will also be very interesting to see what submitters make of that and whether there are any additional suggestions in that regard that need to be considered. I think that this is an exciting addition, and I am looking forward to hearing what comes up in the select committee on that matter and what submissions are made on it.

The other thing I would like to pick up on is a suggestion just made by the Maori Party that we need to look very carefully at people in multiple employment situations who may fall through the cracks of the provisions in the bill. I think that that needs to be seriously looked at. Maybe we need to add together the hours they work in jobs on a regular basis, and if together the hours make up over 10 hours those provisions could be extended. That is something again that the committee might want to look at amending through the select committee process, and United Future would be very keen to see that work continued.

I think that probably everything that needs to be said on this bill has been said. We look forward very much to seeing its passage progress with speed, and to hearing from the community on this matter to see if any other areas where this important provision could be extended can be identified. I thank the Minister again for the work she has done in advancing this legislation, and I also express my gratitude to all parties in this House for being so positive about this bill.

It is good to be speaking in this debate, and I am looking forward to the bill coming to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee where, I am sure, we will deal with it as quickly and as expeditiously as possible.

It was interesting to hear some of the speeches tonight. I certainly agreed with Peter Brown’s sentiment, that things should have happened a lot sooner. I think it should have been backdated 28 years for everybody—I think that is how old my daughter is now—but unfortunately I did not succeed in getting that bit of policy through. However, I was somewhat surprised to hear Dr Wayne Mapp say that people really did not want this.

💬 Dr Wayne Mapp: I didn’t say that at all.

Maybe I misheard the member. I thought he said that parents should get tax cuts instead, and that they hated having to apply for these sorts of things. Well, I have noted that since 2002, 52,000 working parents have benefited from this Government’s wonderful policy. Not one of them has complained to me. I ask any members of this House who agree with Wayne Mapp to put their hands up and say that all those people have complained to them that paid parental leave is something they do not want. People call Wayne Mapp “the eradicator”. He is eradicating the National Party’s vote with every speech of that sort that he makes. At least Katherine Rich had the sense to recognise a good policy when she saw it, and she indicated that the National Party would—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: She benefited from it.

Yes, she benefited substantially more than what this bill will give to people.

Yet again, the Government is moving policy forward. We get a little bit tired of Opposition politicians talking about being family friendly and having family values, when we hear that whingeing sort of speech about how parents really want tax cuts instead of this policy. We will be very interested, when we get to the end of the process and the bill has been through the select committee, to see what the National Party does. Does it want to eradicate more votes, as “the eradicator” said, or does it want to vote for sensible policies that put families at the forefront? I think the Minister should be congratulated. Other changes in the bill will be useful in terms of speeding up some of the processes if there is a problem about eligibility. Also, as the Māori Party speaker said, some people want to go forth and multiply much more quickly than others. The bill allows that to happen, because now a parent will be eligible for paid parental leave after only 6 months of work, rather than the 12 months in the current legislation.

This bill is, yet again, the work of a very good Minister and a very good Government, and a very good select committee will put this bill through the select committee process. We are looking forward to the cooperation of all members of the select committee in getting submissions in. We will call for submissions this week so that there is plenty of time over January and February for the public to make their submissions, then we will come back and make sure that this House passes the bill in good time, which is what the parents of this country want. It is a good bill.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. National wishes the next call to be a split call of 5 minutes each between Paula Bennett and Chris Tremain. I understand that there will be a bell at 4 minutes, prior to the 5-minute bell.

There will be a split call for National between Paula Bennett and Chris Tremain. There will be a first bell at 4 minutes.

These people are our backbone. They are the people who work hard and take risks, who have built our businesses, and who are building a future for our country. So I stand in support of the bill.

It is about time it was passed. When I was reading Hansard before I was amazed to find that 3 years ago Anne Tolley and Bob Simcock said that self-employed people should be considered in the bill that went through. It was then that we should have done this. It saddens me that we are having to address this issue at this time, when we could have dealt with it 3 years ago as National members called for. It is shameful, but here we are, and thank goodness we are getting it right now. Those people are our backbone. They deserve equal rights, and they deserve the paid parental leave that others get. Those people deserve to be recognised, as other men and women who have young babies do. They deserve the right to get paid parental leave. [Interruption] Would members like me to quote from it—

💬 Hon David Benson-Pope: What a bunch of plonkers!

Is the member going to tell me off? Was there something he would like to say?

💬 Hon Member: Watch the tennis ball!

I hope not! I would like to address some of the things in this bill. It was discriminatory that parents who were self-employed were not included in this legislation in the first place. It is time we addressed that. This bill is about giving women choice. It is about giving them the option to take time out to raise their newborns without being penalised, as they currently are, because they happen to be especially ambitious or entrepreneurial enough to start their own business. It is time for us to address that discrepancy and to make sure that self-employed parents are given equal opportunity under the law.

When we ask self-employed people what they would like as they move forward, they say that they would like less bureaucracy. They would like an opportunity to run their businesses and their lives with less Government involvement. They would like to be paying less tax. They would like an opportunity to move forward and to build a future for both themselves and future generations. This bill goes some way to addressing those issues, and I look forward to receiving submissions at the select committee, where we can start to look at the will of the people. Self-employed people deserve to be looked at in an equal way.

Those people want time to raise their babies. This is about breastfeeding. Dr Jackie Blue is sitting next to me, and she will certainly tell us about the importance of breastfeeding in a baby’s early days. We need that time. At the moment self-employed women are thinking about either not having babies, or, if they do have babies, rushing back to work because they do not have the same rights as other parents in the country. It is time to address that role, so I give credit to the Labour Government for finally bringing about this legislation. But I am quite saddened that we are having to do this 3 years after the initial legislation was passed. It just seems a bit of a waste of Parliament’s and the select committee’s time that we did not address this issue when the National Party identified and raised it 3 years ago. They just point-blank said—[Interruption] Anne Tolley said that rural women would be excluded by the legislation because they were self-employed.

Let us ask self-employed people what they want. They want equal rights under the law, and this bill goes some way to doing that. The National Party will support this bill going to the select committee, and we look forward with interest to seeing the submissions that are received.

The National Party will support the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill 2005. We will support ensuring the scheme is accessible to a wider number of individuals, we will support enhancing equity by allowing employed people to access paid parental leave irrespective of whether they are employees or self-employed, we will support enabling a self-employed parent to take leave for the period of income replacement, and, lastly, we support the health and well-being of new mothers and their babies.

Let us examine how this amendment came about. Apart from the pressure exerted by the National Party, this amendment came about by an outstanding piece of research commissioned by the Labour Government. An evaluation of paid parental leave was completed in 2003, and it “identified that the benefits of paid parental leave are not being able to be accessed by the self-employed.” That amazing piece of research uncovered the earth-shattering evidence—hold on, wait for it, here is a drum roll: “that self-employed parents face the same difficulties as employed parents in combining work with childcare;”. Holy heck! Secondly, we found out: “self-employed parents did not receive parental leave payments despite helping to fund the scheme through their tax payments.” That research absolutely astounds me. It is research that any person with an ounce of common sense would have known. It is research that proves entirely where the focus of this Government is aimed—obviously, nowhere near anyone who has the gumption to own and run their own business.

The fact that the Government needed to conduct an evaluation of this nature is indeed quite disheartening, as is the fact that it is so far out of touch with the self-employed business people of this country that an evaluation had to be undertaken to uncover that, I repeat: “self-employed parents face the same difficulties as employed parents in combining work with childcare;”. No way! Do they? It is as though self-employed parents come from another planet.

Well, it is these aliens—these parents—that I want to talk about in some detail, for they are not aliens to me, and they are certainly not aliens to the National Party. Although they are no more important as individual human beings than anyone else in this nation, they should definitely not be forgotten. Small-business people and self-employed people are an essential ingredient of this nation. They are the entrepreneurs, the risk takers, the innovators, and the wealth creators. They are an essential element in improving our nation’s growth and our balance of payments. They are our job providers, our family supporters, and our community fundraisers. Small businesses are massive taxpayers.

As at February 2004 there were 312,000 enterprises employing under 20 people—209,000 of those employed zero people. The Hon Dr Michael Cullen and the Hon David Cunliffe, in the September 2003 landmark Government discussion document entitled—wait for this one—“Making tax easier for small businesses”, make this very telling point: “Small businesses are important not only in number but also in the extent of their tax contribution. Self-employed individuals who work on their own and businesses that employ five or fewer staff contribute around 40 percent of the business income tax revenue. Most of the remainder comes from a small number of large businesses.” So, at least to give them credit, Michael Cullen and David Cunliffe already knew back in 2003 that self-employed people were an important ingredient of the economy. Despite this, they still needed an evaluation under the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave) Amendment Act to understand that self-employed parents were an important ingredient in our country. Effectively, this group of parents pays for one-third of the health budget of this country.

So the Labour Government knew, back in 2003, how important self-employed people were to this economy. What they forgot, though, is that those aliens actually have families, as well. Shock, horror! Self-employed people have families. Like I said, it is earth-shattering stuff. So I tell members that self-employed parents today face far greater difficulties than employed parents. Some people might not like to notice that, but it is a fact. First, let me qualify this by saying that many employees out there work like they own their own businesses, and I give them full credit for that. But, at the end of the day, employees can walk away from their jobs, thereby leaving the responsibility of the replacement with the owner of the business. Self-employed people, especially one-man bands, do not have that luxury. They are the driver of their business; they are the leaders. They are the people who are so passionate about their business that they will crawl over broken glass to make sure that business is successful. Yet this Government forgot about them. It needed an evaluation to uncover the earth-shattering fact that self-employed parents face the same difficulties as employed parents. Holy heck! And the Government got it wrong. Any half-decent researcher would have reported back that self-employed parents face much tougher difficulties. That is why the National Party and I will support the bill.

It is a delight to contribute to the debate on the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill. I am especially pleased to hear the contributions from members on the opposite side of the House. I welcome all the latter-day converts to paid parental leave. I am very pleased that members opposite have finally seen the worth of paid parental leave, having had an unblemished history of opposition to it until this moment. However, I welcome their conversion.

I want to make a couple of comments. This is a progressive measure in a series of progressive measures, and I think that is how good legislation is built. Five years ago I offered paid parental leave in a collective employment agreement that covered some 1,700 employees, in advance of legislation. So paid parental leave has been around for a long time, but it has not been available to the extent that it became available in 2002, through legislation, because there were not a lot of employers around who saw it as a useful, productive worker and family-friendly measure to promote.

In the public sector, for example, there used to be maternity grants for teachers, and 6 weeks’ pay was provided when women left to have their babies. In the health sector, women tended to be given a grant on their return to work. So there was no incentive to remain at home with the child, but, in fact, there was an incentive to get back to work as quickly as possible. That anachronistic, crude retention device has long since been overtaken by what parents and families now require as a better understanding of working life and home life requirements in the workplace. So we moved from maternity grants, grants on return to work, some kind of split arrangement of the two, 3 weeks’ paid leave when one left to have a child or to adopt one, and 3 weeks when one came back to work, to a system that was introduced with the legislation of the Labour-led Government in 2002, which actually provided money when people needed it most—not when they came back to work but when they left to have their child or to adopt their child. That has been progressively improved, from 12 weeks to 14 weeks, and it will be improved in the future. This is simply another progressive improvement that has taken this understanding of the need to support families who are working, and allows self-employed people to take advantage of the same provision as employees.

So I welcome this as a sensible measure. It was something that became apparent in the course of the application of the paid parental leave provisions, and the thousands upon thousands of people, and, therefore, families, who have taken advantage of paid parent leave since its inception in 2002 will now be augmented by another 2,000 or so who will be eligible to take advantage of it. We should not underestimate the impact and the benefit of this for the families who are represented by the parents who will avail themselves of those provisions.

I would also like to add my congratulations to the Minister, because she has shepherded the whole progression of paid parental leave from the beginning, and I am very pleased to add my support. The fact that self-employed people will be able to access the same provision—the maximum of $357 or so per week, after tax—is a benefit. I look forward to hearing expressed the series of congratulatory notes that I am sure will be sent to the Minister for the work she has done on bringing this bill to the House.

I am very pleased to take a call on this bill.

There is a totally different sense in the House tonight than there was in 2002. I just want to recap for the benefit of new members in the House that the debate at the time Ruth Dyson submitted the original bill to the House was simply appalling. I remember Katherine Rich putting her head in her hands in shame at the stance that the National Party took. She was appalled, and there simply were not enough women in the House to support her at that time. I also remember the member Judith Collins making absolutely outlandish statements, and I am on record as saying that I would take them back to every women’s group, every midwife, and every group in the country that I could possibly get the opportunity to talk to. She said that paid parental leave was not required and not needed. She voted against it. She said that people needed to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, get on with their lives, and not expect help from the Government. That was appalling, and we did go out there and talk.

I welcome the new women MPs. They have added something to the Opposition that has changed the whole tenor of the House tonight. Women now make up 32 percent of the members in the House, and it was Labour women originally, with the support of our then Minister of Women’s Affairs, who introduced the bill.

Another feature of the bill, which I think is very significant, is that it extends paid parental leave to self-employed people. We knew at the time that the lack of such a provision in the original legislation was inequitable. Also at the time, the Minister said that over time we would introduce an affordable regime—and it is affordable—and we would address the situation of self-employed women so that they came under the same protections. We are here tonight, and I congratulate her on that; it has not even been a long gestation.

Another significant aspect to this bill is that paid parental leave increased, in December, to 14 weeks. Now, why is 14 weeks’ leave significant? As a midwife, I will tell people why. Women breastfeed their babies exclusively for 12 weeks—that is a great goal, which will help with obesity and diabetes in later life—but at 12 weeks, that infant demands a lot more milk and goes through a bit of a growth surge. Where women were having to go back to work at 13 weeks, many were deciding to stop breastfeeding. They would have had to cope with bottles if they went back to work, so they gave up breastfeeding, and that was terribly sad. Our national statistics for the exclusive breastfeeding of children were becoming something that we were very concerned about. By extending that leave to 14 weeks, women get over that hurdle. As women also realise that all the protections that have gone into making workplaces friendly for breastfeeding—the fact that they can go and express in rooms, not toilet cubicles; that they can store the milk in fridges; and that the infant can actually come into the workplace to be fed—are part of the norm of a working woman’s existence, we will see an increase in breastfeeding in this country.

I congratulate the Minister on this bill, and I will give the Minister another challenge. I remember the Prime Minister saying, through the Speech from the Throne, that we needed to look at the Scandinavian model, and that the gold-plated parental leave would be 6 months. I look forward to the day when we can slowly and incrementally increase parental leave provisions, as they become affordable, up to 6 months. Then we really will be working for women, men, children, and families in New Zealand.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee.

The House adjourned at 9.45 p.m.