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

I rise to speak to Part 2 of the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill and to say, as we have said on a number of occasions, that National supports this legislation. I particularly want to speak to section 1A inserted by clause 6 and to clause 7(2). Section 1A(c) in clause 6 focuses on where this legislation is actually going to. It states that certain employees and, in particular, self-employed persons are entitled to up to 14 weeks of paid parental leave. That is the important part of this legislation.

My first question, though, is whether this bill will actually help to lift economic growth. One of the key reasons for National supporting this legislation is that it is one of the few bills that have come through the House in the last 6 or 7 years that actually do something to assist those people. Why is that? In a small way it will assist self-employed parents, the small-business owners, who are responsible for the majority of innovation, entrepreneurialism, and risk-taking, which are things that are necessary to take this country forward and, indeed, to deliver on Dr Cullen’s goal of getting us into the top half of the OECD. It is those families who are very important.

One has to ask oneself why that particular provision was left out of the legislation in the first instance. I was not part of the Government at that particular time, but from what I hear it was just that self-employed people were not considered important enough.

💬 Dr Wayne Mapp: That’s right.

I ask Dr Mapp whether there were some other reasons at the time, and what they were.

💬 Dr Wayne Mapp: Prejudice.

Anything else?

💬 Dr Wayne Mapp: Bias.

There were a number of things. The fact is that self-employed parents are critical, for two really important reasons that I want to focus on. The first is that parents assist their children to do things that they themselves are good at. I take as an example sportspeople and families who are interested in sports. Their children tend to be successful at sport. Families who have a musical background and are part of the arts tend to encourage their children to learn to play musical instruments and to be successful in the arts. Is that a fair comment? It is the same with children from violent homes. They tend to find it difficult to break the cycle of family violence.

The point I am making here is that children from families with self-employed parents who are business owners tend to end up in business. They are led down that track because their parents have been involved in business. They are predisposed to being entrepreneurs themselves. They are predisposed to being risk-takers. These are the children we need to be encouraging into business, because they are the next generation. They are the kids who will get into business and help take this country up the OECD rankings. We need to make sure that mothers who are self-employed are supported. So there is a very key reason for this legislation to be supported.

The second point is that self-employed mothers and fathers—parents—face much larger difficulties when taking time out of the workforce than do employees. Obviously, employers are very aware of when somebody is having a child and know they will have to plan for it, but they are not in the same position as an employee who can just take time off. Employees can apply for 6 weeks’ leave and take time out. An employer, or a self-employed person, has significant difficulty in taking time out of the workforce. That is just a fact. Business does not stop, particularly if the self-employed person is a one-man band, and there are plenty of examples of those in the workforce. It is extremely difficult for such people to take time out. So in that respect we definitely support this legislation.

I move on to clause 7(2), where there is the definition: “self-employed means working in 1 or more of the following, other than as an employee:”. It further defines in paragraph (a): “ providing goods or services for hire or reward under a contract for services:”, and in paragraph (b), “carrying on a business …”. So this is defining the very fact that this legislation will deliver for the self-employed. With that small-business hat on, I want to focus on the importance of the self-employed in this legislation.

In the previous part we were discussing the importance, under the words of Business New Zealand and Paula Bennett, of extending the whole concept of paid parental leave basically to all parents, recognising that this is a position on which the nation should really arrive at—probably on a consensual basis. It would be of huge importance to supporting families, particularly those on lower incomes. That, of course, is the general point, and I will return to it, perhaps, in the closing debate.

I want to focus in this debate upon Part 2, which is essentially a rewriting of the existing statute, and especially on clause 18, which inserts new section 70G: “Labour Inspectors may make determinations in respect of self-employed persons”. I am drawing that to the attention of the House because it picks up on the points made by Mr Chris Tremain, the member of Parliament for Napier. The importance of that clause is that self-employed people do not actually want bureaucracy. They do not envisage a whole bunch of self-important bureaucrats coming around to their businesses and asking them questions, such as “Are you self-employed?”, saying “Show us the books, show us your work site.”; using that sort of approach. It is something that could be dreamt up only in the bowels of Wellington, or in the Department of Labour.

I guarantee that no advice was taken from the Small Business Advisory Group on that particular issue. If that organisation had been asked, it would have queried whether the Government was going to add yet another compliance cost on small business. After all, who has to pay for all this stuff? It is hard-working New Zealanders and, principally, businesses through their business tax. So the Small Business Advisory Group would have said that compliance costs of that nature could go in the bin.

That is why National had mentioned that the better approach was, in essence, to have a tax deduction. There does not have to be a whole bunch of labour inspectors making determinations, under new section 70G, in those kinds of situations. The Department of Labour will have all sorts of tests for determining a self-employed person’s average weekly earnings. What does that actually mean? Does that mean department officials will go through all the books and accounts of the self-employed, like some kind of inland revenue inspectors? The truth is that the Inland Revenue Department would not go to that kind of extraordinary extent. We already have a very good system in place to assess business accounts. Why do we not just stick with that and go for a much more straightforward and simpler system that respects the self-employed?

The other point—and perhaps I will complete my contribution on this point—made earlier by Paula Bennett was that a far simpler approach is just to give a lump sum. I mean, who truly believes that at, say, week 5, week 7, or week 10, the payments will suddenly stop? The answer is that they will not. People will expect to get the full amount for the full 14 weeks. Well, why not cut out all the administration and all the rubbish of paying money by weekly amounts into bank accounts? Again, that is something that could be dreamt up only in the bowels of Wellington—an efficient and effective system is to pay someone 14 equal payments of $378, or whatever the figure happens to be. Why not just cut through the—I will not use the word, because it would be unparliamentary—rubbish, and pay people a single sum? That is of benefit, of course, to parents but it is also of benefit to the Government, because it would save administration and compliance costs.

I guess there is only one flaw in all of that—the flaw is that Labour is always seeking ways to enable its mates to get jobs, in order to boost the bureaucracy and to entrench all those Labour voters in Wellington. How does it do that? It grows and bloats the bureaucracy, down here. It is always dreaming up madcap schemes to expand the bureaucracy, and I guess that one of its madcap schemes is to have 14 payments monitored by Department of Labour inspectors, checked into bank accounts through automatic payments opened and closed, and so forth, when it could go for a simple but effective system.

I think that Wayne Mapp is talking about something that is probably a budgetary leak. He is well ahead of Parliament and the Government in the concept of providing a new formula based on fairness and equity. Paula Bennett has also taken initiative in this area, as well. It is good to see that National is providing the leadership that we have not seen from the Government.

We are looking at Part 2, and we are glad the Minister is here today. An issue came up at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, and we have not had resolution of that issue to a satisfactory level from the Minister. The issue was in regard to a constituent who had a very sad story. He was a solo father at the time he came to the office, and about 9 months previously, while his wife was pregnant, she had injured herself. She had a highly paid job in the local hospital, and she was on accident compensation for a few of the last months of her pregnancy. Tragically, she was killed in a motor vehicle accident soon after giving birth to their third child. The father, as a solo parent, sought to transfer to himself the paid parental leave entitlement, but that payment was going to be based only on the lower income of the accident compensation payments, not the higher possible total income, on a pro rata basis. He felt very much aggrieved that he had gone through a terrible tragedy in his family life, but that the Government was not willing to recognise that and would recognise only a lower payment entitlement. We have asked the Minister for some resolution of that issue, but we have not received a satisfactory response at this stage.

However, I note that when we raised that issue at the select committee, the Department of Labour came up with an amendment to the legislation. Members will see that Supplementary Order Paper 31 in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson has an amendment to clause 20(1)(b), to clarify the circumstances of parental leave taken by a self-employed person. The time before a baby’s due date is not included when calculating a self-employed person’s earnings. So essentially the time that a person is not in work before the due date has not been included in the calculation—the calculation is based on the person’s actual income in the time before then. That is a sensible solution, and it needs to be applied in employment situations as well. However, it does not cover the case of payments for such things as accident compensation. As a Parliament, we need to be prepared to widen the extent of our legislation so that we do cover specific cases where someone could get into that circumstance.

Business New Zealand, which made some very good submissions during the process, raised the case where a permanent employee on parental leave may be replaced by an employee, who is also pregnant, on a fixed-term agreement. The new employee will be eligible for parental leave during the term of the agreement. Business New Zealand submitted that in those circumstances, the agreement cannot be terminated on grounds other than those in the agreement. So, when the temporary employee has finished parental leave, she will be able to return to her job to complete the remainder of the term of the agreement.

Essentially, it is a case where a second employee would come in and get the same entitlements as the original employee, and employers felt that they could be aggrieved in having to cover two lots of entitlements. That was another issue raised at the select committee, and we did not get a satisfactory resolution to it. The select committee was doing a rush job. It had to get its legislation on self-employment through within a certain time frame, and members were not prepared to take the time to look at individual circumstances or specific cases, or, indeed, at innovative concepts such as those Paula Bennett and Wayne Mapp have been talking about this afternoon. Their concept is innovative, because it is different from the concepts we are considering in just trying to extend to self-employed people what has been given to employment relationships.

This legislation was dreamt up only after an election campaign. It is here only because the Government saw the opposition from a number of other parties when the original legislation went through. I ask members not to think for a minute that it has been done out of regard for the best interests of self-employed people. This legislation is a cover-up that the Government felt it needed at a certain point in time. Self-employed people were never on the Labour Party’s original list of people it wanted to look after.

I know that the member David Bennett is a relatively new member and that his time in Parliament may be brief—we have to put up with that sort of ignorant presentation to the Committee only for another 2½ years—but I draw his attention to two things. First of all, Supplementary Order Paper 31 responds to the question that the member raised, which was a genuine question and a genuine concern in terms of the constituent whose case he has just related to the Committee. The explanatory note of the Supplementary Order Paper states: “It has the effect of excluding from the calculation of a self-employed person’s average weekly earnings time spent not working while the person is on ACC or parental leave, or not working in other approved circumstances.” I would appreciate the member reading the Supplementary Order Paper and perhaps relating to me during the remaining Committee stage whether that actually resolves the case. That was my intention; that is why it is in the Supplementary Order Paper. It would be preferable for the member to do a little bit of homework—including reading the Supplementary Order Paper—before he stands up to take a call. The Supplementary Order Paper was tabled and is before us for debate right at this time. [Interruption] That is exactly right, I say to Mr Bennett, that is where it is to be found.

The other point I recommend to the member is that before he accuses me or any of my colleagues of not supporting self-employed people, he should learn a bit of history and read some of our speeches. I have consistently said that paid parental leave of 12 weeks, as it was introduced in March 2002—and that, by the way, was opposed by National at the time of the introduction of paid parental leave—was the first step. I said that the review process that we had under way would look at people who were missing out because the legislation did not cover them, and at the length of time of paid parental leave, because it was so minuscule—12 weeks at its introduction—compared with comparable countries that we like to be ahead of rather than behind. I also said we would ensure that the process was easy. That has been done. It has been reported to Parliament, and it certainly has been mentioned in my speeches. So I say to Mr Bennett that on every point in his—fortunately—brief contribution to this debate, he was wrong. It does not do him, or his electorate, credit for that sort of ill-informed presentation to be made.

National opposed this bill. It opposed paid parental leave from the start. National members have consistently opposed paid parental leave and have said that people who receive a payment on the birth or adoption of a child are being made into beneficiaries. For that member to attack my party for extending the payment to self-employed people and to say that it has not happened fast enough is just an outrage. I recommend that Mr Bennett reads the Supplementary Order Paper, and I would appreciate it if he contributed to me directly or to the Committee as to whether it addresses the problem. If it does not, may I recommend that he uses the opportunity to amend the legislation himself. He has that opportunity as a member of Parliament. It is one of the privileges we have in this Parliament.

I am pleased to rise and join my colleagues on the National side of the House in supporting this bill. I preface my remarks by noting that mothers are very important to the well-being and moral tone of our communities, and I take this opportunity to remind members of the House—and those New Zealanders who are listening to this debate—that Sunday is Mother’s Day. It is an opportunity for us to appreciate and show our respect for mothers, and, on some occasions, to take a moment for quiet reflection on what our mothers have meant to us.

I compliment the Minister. I believe this bill, in extending paid parental leave to the self-employed, marks a welcome departure from the Labour - New Zealand First - United Future coalition Government’s usual attitude to business, and to small business in particular. I remind the Minister in the chair, the Hon Ruth Dyson, in the light of her comments when she took the call, that actions always speak louder than words.

I will focus my remarks on those clauses of the bill that address the position of the self-employed. I support anything that will be of assistance to such people. I ask members never to forget that the self-employed are the people with the initiative, the innovation, the creativity, the ability to organise, and the willingness to take risks and to give another New Zealander an opportunity to work. They are the people who create work in our communities. They are also the people whom this Government consistently penalises with its confiscatory tax rates. The Government penalises those people—the self-employed—for the very things that make them successful.

I also welcome the inclusion of farming families in the bill. Farmers are a very special part of the New Zealand economy. They still provide the backbone of many of our rural communities. It is important that their role is acknowledged, along with that of all the other self-employed people in New Zealand.

It is also proper—and the bill acknowledges this—that a self-employed person on parental leave should be able to maintain a level of oversight of his or her business during the period of leave. Such businesses, which are the backbone of business in New Zealand communities, are very, very dependent on the organisation, the leadership, and the interest that the people who own them take in them. Those businesses cannot afford to suffer from the neglect that may otherwise occur. I ask members not to forget that many other members of our communities depend on the work of the self-employed—as I have said—and on their leadership, their initiative, and their creativity. And, most important of all, many other New Zealanders depend on such people for their own employment.

According to the bill, a self-employed person can apply for paid parental leave for more than one business. It is good to see—and I support—two businesses being treated as one for the purposes of paid employment leave entitlements. Again, that is a reflection of the nature of small business in New Zealand. It is not unusual for a self-employed person to be running more than one business and to be employing people in both those businesses. It is important that they are able to keep both businesses—or more if they have others—operating, for the benefit of everybody.

Obviously, one of the positive effects that will come from this bill will be the retention of the entrepreneurs, owners, and people who provide the leadership in their businesses, even while they are on paid leave. Again, I repeat the point—because it is important and worth repeating—that other people benefit from that opportunity. Any measure that keeps self-employed people in their businesses—and this is one such measure—contributes to the overall growth of the national economy, contributes to the good of our communities, and, above all else, contributes to the stability of our families. And it acknowledges the special role that mothers play in our communities.

I would have liked to see the Labour Government take the opportunity to address the situation where people who are going on paid parental leave are not able to tell their employers whether they wish to stay in their job. Since we are amending the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act, it makes sense to me that perhaps we could have addressed the anomaly that is out there at the moment. What is happening is that when people go to take paid parental leave, to be eligible for the payment they have to say they will go back into their job. They have to have the full intention of going back to work.

We have not covered this with the self-employed persons, either. It may be that someone intends to run down the business in order to start a family or have more children. However, people cannot tell us that, because they will then not be eligible for the payment because it is for the duration of the 14 weeks. People who said they were closing down the business and would no longer be running it would not get the 14-week payment. What people will do instead is say they intend to take the 14 weeks off and then go back into the business, and it is at that point that they may run it down and close it or sell it. That is not such a big issue for people who are self-employed, but it is a huge issue at the moment, with unemployment being at its lowest in a long time—as the Government likes to tell us—so it means we have not got as many people out there looking for work.

In my mind, when people have a baby they fit into three categories: those who intend to leave their work and not return, and instead raise their children at home themselves; those who intend to take leave and are not quite sure what they will do and whether they will return; and those who have the complete intention of returning after a short period of time.

Those people who fit into the first category—who have no intention of returning to their jobs—cannot resign, because then they will not be eligible for the 14 weeks’ pay. It is important that we address those issues, because what is happening is that those employers who are covering the maternity leave are having to take on temporary employees. They have to keep the job open—and that makes sense to me; we need to keep the jobs open for those women, and I certainly support that—but what I am saying is that being able to take on only temporary employees cuts down the current labour-market force that is available to them at that time. It is a much smaller proportion of people who want to do temporary work.

What we could have done while looking at this Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill was address some of those other issues. This is where we come back to the issue of the lump sum for everyone. If we were paying out the lump sum, it would not matter whether someone was intending to take the 14 weeks off. It would be a lot more straightforward. At the moment, people are in a situation where they almost have to lie. I have certainly employed staff myself—I come from the recruitment field, and it is mainly women whom I employed in that business—who would say they did not think they would come back to work, but goodness knows they could not resign. They had no intention of coming back but did not want to resign, because then they would not be eligible for the 14 weeks’ paid parental leave. Who can blame them? It is an expensive job, and I do not blame them for getting the 14 weeks’ pay. In fact, I say they deserve the 14 weeks’ pay, and I certainly am all for self-employed persons getting it as well.

However, if we were to give a lump sum and not have all these restrictions around it, as my learned colleague pointed out it would cut down so much of the administration cost and would actually cost the country less—that has to be a good thing. It would give people freedom of choice, and they would not have to mislead their employers. In the case of the self-employed, it may affect their employees. Assuming that it is not a big business and that self-employed people have perhaps only one or two working for them, such people may have the complete intention of closing down the business or selling it in order to start a family, but in order to be eligible for the 14 weeks’ pay they have to say they are going back. That is where we are almost making liars out of people.

I think it is a shame we are not addressing a bigger and wider issue, which is how we support women into—

I apologise for interrupting Paula Bennett; she was on a lovely roll there. By definition, 2,170 self-employed persons will be able to apply for the benefit that will be made available—2,170 persons will be able to apply. I suppose, then, if one quietly looks at the facts, one could wonder whether maybe this could have been done in the first instance when paid parental leave was brought in in 2002. That was 4 years ago. I suppose if one quietly does the figures on the Minister Ruth Dyson’s numbers—2,170—one can work out that in 4 years 8,680 people have not been able to receive what she is now suggesting, and we are supporting, they should receive.

So I suppose I would love the Minister—if she could take the call—to explain to those 8,680 people why she has taken so damn long to get this bill into the House. Those 8,680 people have missed out on this opportunity to pick up the paid benefit we are discussing today. I would like to ask the Minister whether, in fact, she will apologise to those 8,680 persons—not just for, amongst other things, the leaking of the Budget, for the stupid microchipping law that may wander its way through the House, and for turning many Kiwis into welfare beneficiaries; I believe that the Minister should take this opportunity to apologise to those 8,680 persons. In fact, if I was going to round up the figure, it was 2,173 persons, which would then work out at 8,692. There is an apology coming, and I would love to hear the Minister give it. It is a word that I think is foreign to the Labour-led Government.

I would like to talk about—and I alluded to this before—the fact that I have had the privilege of working personally with some self-employed people. As members may know, I currently own a business. I refer here to the example of a woman who is very much of the self-employed ilk. She is one of those wonderful entrepreneurs who is building a future for herself and for this country. She operates a business, and I can remember the period during which she was under huge stress and concern, when she was trying to run her business while going through her pregnancy and, afterwards, raising her young child. She had no other income apart from the income she was able to earn herself in her own business, so she needed to work. She could not afford the baby care that was available, so her husband had to take some time off work and put his own career at risk, which was very disappointing.

I suppose where I am going with this is that I think it is wonderful that this bill also applies to the husband or the other partner. We do not talk enough about the fact that paid parental leave does not apply only to the mother but can also be transferred to the dad. That becomes hugely advantageous because the parents now have the opportunity to plan ahead together for the birth of their children in the knowledge that either one of them will receive up to 14 weeks’ pay to help compensate them for the loss of family income they would have incurred during that period. I think being able to plan for the family in this way gives parents a peace of mind they have not had.

Again, I take the opportunity to congratulate the Labour-led United Future New Zealand First Government on the fact that it has recognised the importance of the self-employed person to New Zealand society. For sure, 8,680-odd people missed out on this opportunity, but at least now the self-employed person is being recognised, and we need to applaud the fact that that recognition is now occurring—

💬 Hon Member: Under pressure from National.

—under pressure from National.

I take a brief call to respond, once again, to the single point the previous speaker raised, which was his call for an apology. The member estimated that there are over 8,500 self-employed people who have not received paid parental leave in the last little while since the Labour-led Government introduced paid parental leave. What about the 26,010 self-employed people—by his calculations—plus the thousands more employees who did not receive one day of paid parental leave during the 9 long years that that member’s party was in Government, let alone the 14 weeks that our Government has given employees and now self-employed people? For that member to come in here and ask for an apology from me needs a little rewriting of history. The member’s memory may be foggy around that time—for whatever reason, I am not sure—but 26,010 self-employed people missed out on paid parental leave completely in the 9 years that Mr Blumsky’s party was in Government—as did every single employee.

That was because National members oppose paying paid parental leave for everyone. They opposed it on the introduction of the bill in March 2002, they opposed it when we amended it in 2004. The point for which I am very sorry is that I wish we had been the Government during those 9 years, because we would have had paid parental leave for the employees and self-employed of New Zealand a lot earlier.

This is a moment of progress on the bill. We still have some people who will not be able to access it and we still have it for only 14 weeks. That is not as good as what other countries have, and we will continue to look at the gaps where those people miss out—as I promised to do when I made a commitment to the House in 2004 and subsequently introduced this legislation in 2005.

I think the National members should stop trying to rewrite history and just admit they got it wrong. Otherwise they should say to the thousands of New Zealanders who are puzzling over their position that even though they are now demanding an apology from us for not extending paid parental leave earlier, they still opposed the original legislation, which we are now extending. Mr Blumsky cannot have it both ways; he either supports paid parental leave or he does not. He cannot have it both ways. The public of New Zealand know that National opposes paid parental leave, and we will continue to remind them—despite those members’ performances in the House today.

I take this opportunity to set the Minister in the chair, the Hon Ruth Dyson, straight on a few things. The Minister seems not to have noticed that National members actually support this legislation, and we should be very clear as to why we are supporting it. Right from the word go, yes, we opposed paid parental leave, because we knew that a better way to deal with giving hard-working young families who are raising children a break was to give them a tax cut—not to give them a welfare benefit. The Minister raises her eyes. That very point is behind all of this. Our philosophy is not to put hard-working parents on to welfare benefits, but the reason we support this—[Interruption]

💬 Lindsay Tisch: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I am sorry to interrupt my colleague. The Minister is interjecting at the same time as my colleague is speaking, and the Minister has an unfair advantage because of where she is sitting. We would welcome the opportunity for the Minister to take a call and speak after my colleague has spoken.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): The Minister will not interrupt.

Thank you, Madam Chair. As I was saying, the issue is really about philosophy and about the fact that we believe there are better ways than this legislation to give hard-working families a fair go.

But—and let us not forget that National members support this bill—we are supporting this legislation because it was grossly unfair to leave self-employed parents out initially. Members on the Government benches may be interested to know that many of the young parents in my electorate were left out, and maybe that is why provincial New Zealand hit back at the Labour Government. We are talking about 66,412 women—we have had a lot of numbers here this afternoon—of fertile age who are self-employed. That is how many people this legislation potentially affects. We know they will not all become pregnant and have babies in the one year, but we also know that those people knew they were being let down badly by a Government that portrays itself as a Government with a concern for families. What a load of codswallop that is! What a load of old rubbish! Only some families were being left out. Small businesses, which are 95 percent of our businesses, are the sorts of businesses where young families—mums and dads—are trying to get ahead, and they too need the recognition that extending this paid parental leave to the self-employed will give them.

We have heard about the number of submissions that came before the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee when this bill was being discussed, and I wish to touch on Rural Women New Zealand’s submission. Rural Women had consulted rural self-employed women, both those working in partnership and those working in their own right in rural businesses or enterprises, and it was of the opinion that a lump-sum payment, as per the Australian system, would work well. Rural Women knows that inherent in any legislation such as this bill is an awful lot of bureaucracy. We have heard other members of the National caucus talk here today about the level of bureaucracy that is involved in this legislation, when a simple tax cut would have done.

We have also heard that Business New Zealand made an interesting submission. That group certainly could see there were anomalies that needed to be addressed and, for that reason, it encouraged the inclusion of self-employed persons within the bill. The College of Midwives wanted to have its say, as well. That group was very much in favour of “righting the inequity”, as it put it, that currently exists between the employed and the self-employed in the midwifery workforce. We heard from those groups, which represent women. Women currently, in larger numbers, look to the Labour Government for a lead and for guidance.

So it is good that I have had the opportunity to rise today and suggest to the Minister that she is looking in the wrong direction. We in the National Party support this legislation because of that inequity. We want to see self-employed persons get a fair deal. But the Minister should just remember that perhaps the bias of the Labour Government against business actually causes Government members to be as reluctant as they are to give National members credit for supporting this legislation.

I move, That the question be now put.

I want to respond to the comments made by the Minister. The Minister in the chair, the Hon Ruth Dyson, made comments in relation to an example that I gave, and it was a very touching example from a real-life situation. The Department of Labour made an amendment to the legislation in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, to take into account part of that matter. However, the committee did not take into account the full amount—that is, the accident compensation component.

I see that that is now provided for on Supplementary Order Paper 31 in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson, and that is fine.

💬 Hon Mark Gosche: Apologise.

No, I have nothing to apologise for, because I have just relayed that that issue had not been addressed and, in fact, now it has been. The point is that the Labour members actually listened to me, because in the second reading I raised that issue again. In the second reading the Minister set out what she was going to address on her Supplementary Order Paper, and that matter was not to be on it, but suddenly it has come along. The Labour members have listened to what we relayed to the public, and I congratulate them on doing so.

But that is not enough. I want to know whether there is provision for the same ability as that in the employer-employee legislation. Do employers and employees have the same ability in their legislation? Do the employers and employees have an amendment like this as well? If they do not, then there is a gaping hole in that legislation. The reason there are gaping holes is that the Labour members do not understand what the public actually goes through. They do not understand what “self-employed” means because they do not want to know what “self-employed” means. Those members have never been self-employed. If they were self-employed, they would have delivered a company that has gone, like this country, to zero percent growth over the last 6 months. They have strangled and destroyed this country’s growth.

How will the country provide the health and education systems we want, when it will not provide any growth like that set up by National and the previous Labour Government? If we had had a Labour Government during the 1990s, there would have been no growth in this country. There would have been no ability to pay for any of these kinds of welfare payments, which have been made possible by the strong economic conditions that we set up in the 1990s. Labour would be apologising not to 25,000 people but to 4 million people for having a country that did not deliver. I think Mr Mark Blumsky was quite right in saying that we need an apology for those 8,000 people, because Labour has had the economic conditions in the last 4 years whereby it could have delivered for those 8,000 people but it has not.

You have known for the last 4 years that there was a gaping hole in the legislation, and did you deliver for them? No. Will you deliver for people in the future? No, you will not, unless you are part of—

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): I just remind the member that he cannot bring the Chair into the debate.

The fact remains that there has been a situation where this Government sat for 4 years—sat and watched. It went through an election campaign, and it sat and watched those people miss out. The situation here is that we went to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and found there were gaping holes in the legislation that the Government had not addressed. It was only at the select committee, when members of the National Party brought forward the reality of the situation, that we got the amendments that deliver paid parental leave for all New Zealanders. So I tell all New Zealanders that although Labour does not say it is sorry, they should thank the National Party for bringing these amendments forward, because the pressure we put on in the select committee has mean we have the results here today. Labour members had no idea. They would never have given the amendments to us, because they do not know what is going on. It was National members who brought this issue to the country’s attention, and National should be thanked for doing so.

I move, That the question be now put.