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

One of the points I wish to make is about the way the Minister has been conducting herself in the chair. Members will notice that on this side of the Committee there has been considered and thoughtful debate analysing not just the bill itself but also the wider issues—the issues of, for instance, whether one should do this by a tax deduction, whether one should do it by a welfare payment, whether one should do it by a lump sum, or whether one should spread it over 14 weeks. Should, for instance, people listen to the Business New Zealand submission and pay a parental benefit for all parents? Those are legitimate and reasonable questions to ask. In fact, I have even heard my colleagues congratulate the Government—it is not something I am personally prone to do, but some of my colleagues have done it.

Do members know what the Minister’s response to all of that has been? There has been a bitterness about it, has there not? The Minister has wanted to play shallow politics all the way along in this particular debate. I think I know the reason for this. The Government just squeaked into office in the last election. All those members look across—all of them, those tired old faces over there—at an energised, active, and proactive National Party. I look at my colleagues and there are 23 new members of Parliament, and they add energy to the debate. One of the things they have done—and I would like to note this specifically for this debate—is to be willing to say that, actually, the Government, in certain things, might be doing something right.

💬 Hon Member: Might!

Might—indeed my colleagues have noted that. That is why we have been supporting this legislation. Is that not such a contrast? Is that not, surely, one of the things Mr Hughes, on the occasional times he is seen in his electorate, hears people on the street say: “Would it not be a good thing if Parliament acted in the interests of New Zealanders, that they were not always indulging in name calling, petty politics, and so forth?”. But that is what this Government is doing at the present moment. I have to say that that is the sort of activity Governments that are on the way out, that are tired, that are worn out, and that are lacking in ideas, tend to indulge in.

I am frankly disappointed that the Minister has not noted the fact that National supports this bill, and understands that all Governments—and I acknowledge this—get to make changes to the fabric of society. One cannot just run elections as if nothing has changed. So the truth is that National clearly will not be repealing the paid parental legislation, as amended in 2002. It is simply absurd for the Government to make that kind of suggestion. The truth is that each Government gets to make changes.

Another disappointing aspect of this current Government is that it seemingly fails to understand why it lost the 1990 election. It is still railing about the bad old days of the 1990s. Actually the public could not care less—they simply could not care less when Ministers in this Government get up on a daily basis and say: “Oh, let’s just trot out what National did between 1990 and 1996 and, indeed, National and New Zealand First between 1996 and 1999.” The public could not care less. They are interested, however, in what will happen in the future—what the future agenda for parties is.

That is why the issue of the Business New Zealand submission, which I thought was imaginative and interesting, is the sort of thing this Parliament, this place of elected representatives, should be discussing. Business New Zealand has actually put a challenge to all parliamentarians to consider what it has laid down in its submission—its kaupapa, if you will. It has said we should move beyond distinguishing people on the basis of whether they are employed or self-employed, and actually step back and ask whether we can get a more creative, family-friendly policy that would reward all parents with an appropriate level of benefit and submission.

I generally support the bill. It will right a wrong. Self-employed people should be treated in the same way as employed people. I find it difficult to understand why the changes in this bill were not part of the previous bill. It is obvious to me that all workers should be treated in the same way, whether they are employed or unemployed. It could be argued that self-employed people need more assistance than employed people, because somebody has to run their businesses while they are on leave—having babies, obviously. Self-employed people are the dreamers of New Zealand. We need them to grow their small businesses into larger businesses, so that they can employ more people. [Interruption] I tell the members opposite to shut up; they asked me to speak before. We should not disadvantage self-employed people. Their customers need to be looked after.

💬 Taito Phillip Field: You can’t read your speech out.

I do not know why we bother to teach Government members anything; they do not listen to us.

I still think that people who have babies should get 14 weeks’ paid assistance, regardless of their situation. That would be a lot simpler than the provisions of this bill, and the bureaucrats would not have to run around and check on people. It would save thousands of dollars.

Generally, we must encourage women to have more children. We have an ageing population, which will need support in the future. I strongly suggest that all couples have one child for him, one child for her, and one child for New Zealand—where have I heard that before? [Interruption] Members should keep quiet for a minute. David Bennett should get started. We need people like Dave to reproduce in order to help pay benefits for people in the ageing population like myself. I thank Dave.

This bill is far too complicated. It has far too many hoops for people to leap through. The problem is in defining who is self-employed, who is employed, and who is unemployed. That is confusing. I think this bill will have to be revisited in the future. Every person will need to consult a lawyer in order to see whether he or she is eligible for payment. This legislation is far too complicated. It will be a huge burden that applicants, businesses, and the Department of Labour will have to sort out. We are building another bureaucratic empire. The cost of administrating each benefit will be greater than the benefit itself. The maximum a person can get is $3,800. Can the Government assure us that the cost to businesses and the Government in administrating the payment will not exceed $3,800? We do not want to have a similar situation to the leaky homes fiasco, where the cost of administration exceeds the payment towards the repair of a house.

💬 Hon Pete Hodgson: How did that come about?

Boy, the member rattles on, does he not? Members cannot hear properly when they have their mouth open; that is why we are given two ears.

National supports the bill, but says a much better bill could have been found. If I had entered into contracts that were as complicated as this bill is, I would have gone broke due to lawyers’ charges.

I will just take a brief call, as the chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, to thank the other members of the committee for the good work they did. Listening to the debate, I am a little confused. It sort of sounds like this is National legislation and we should ask permission as to whether we can support it. It is somewhat amusing. I congratulate Bob Clarkson on making that very fine speech and giving us the benefit—

💬 Darren Hughes: His maiden speech.

I think it was his second maiden speech. I say well done to Bob. As a member of the select committee, Bob quite often said he was confused about this bill. He was not alone on that side of the table, as we have experienced today. Some committee members might not have been aware that the officials told them that the Supplementary Order Paper would be put forward. I can recall the officials telling them that. I say to those new members that it is quite useful to get up out of one’s seat, come to the Table before these debates happen, and read the Supplementary Order Papers, which take care of the concerns of submitters and the select committees. It is a good exercise in learning so that one does not make a fool of oneself by getting up and making a speech that is clearly designed to filibuster on a bill that everybody supports. Why are National Party members holding up this legislation when those self-employed people whom they pretend to want to represent can get it quicker? Why are they wasting the time of the Committee by holding up the debate with endless stupid speeches? Those members are in favour of this bill. What are they going on about? Why do they not just use the wisdom of Bob Clarkson and say nothing? They should not waste the time of the Committee by making speeches that claim that this is National Party legislation, as Mr Bennett did.

For goodness’ sake, the National Party has opposed paid parental leave in every form it has taken before this Parliament except for this one. Why is that? It is because, as with so many other things, those members have finally woken up to the fact that this Government has some progressive policies that help every New Zealander out there who is in either employment or self-employment. Finally, those members have seen the light and have decided to support this very good bill.

I thank the Minister, Ruth Dyson, for the good work she has done. It is ongoing work—if we read the commentary on the bill, we see that there is more yet to be done. I am looking forward to National members supporting the next round of amendments to this bill. It will be interesting to see whether they support the bill then. Future amendments will see more benefits go to working people, and I will be very interested to see whether the select committee that I chair supports those. Those select committee members from the National Party have said they want further amendments, and we want them to make sure that they remember, when we get to the next iteration of this legislation—when we extend it to some more people—that they said those things in the commentary and in this Chamber.

It is no good for them to say that they support this bill in principle because it is for self-employed people; I want to see them to support it for all workers in this country. We will be watching the next lot with great interest to see whether they support those extensions to the bill and to the law.

Anyway, I thank the select committee members who have been forced by their whips to come here to make silly speeches. In the select committee they were quite sensible and they learnt some things as they went along. I hope to be able to guide them further in that select committee when we look at many more good pieces of progressive legislation along the lines of this one.

This bill is entitled the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill, and the only reason that it provides for self-employed persons is that the Government was made to realise it had left those people out of the original parental leave legislation. So it is pretty rich for members of the Government to say that provision is something Labour always wanted to do and was part of its grand plan for the future.

This bill is not part of a grand plan. It has taken 3 years for the Government to realise that it left out the self-employed group of people, and it did something about that only when those people came knocking on the door and asked about themselves and their entitlement. The Government still has not finished the work; the previous speaker from the Government said there is still more to come. Indeed, we were told in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee that four more elements were to come, and, by way of Supplementary Order Paper 31 in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson, we sorted two of them out. One of those elements was never discussed in the Minister’s speech in the second reading, but suddenly it appeared on the Supplementary Order Paper after National had raised the issue. That Supplementary Order Paper was discussed after the second part of the bill was discussed, so there was nothing wrong with bringing forward an example like that today.

There are other examples. Business New Zealand put forward a perfectly good example of a situation that could arise if an employee who took paid parental leave was replaced with someone else who then also went on to take it. The Government has not covered that sort of thing in the bill. That is not part of its grand plan. It does not intend to look after employers in that situation. It seems only to look after the people whom it thinks will vote for Labour. It does not want to look after Business New Zealand. We have seen that the Government did not want to look after those self-employed people who would have had accident compensation issues with regard to their claims for parental leave, until that issue was brought before the Government.

I challenge Government members to walk the talk and to actually deliver all the amendments now. But they cannot afford to do that. They need National’s leadership; they need us to show them what to do. The next stage of whatever they are talking about was demonstrated by the leadership shown by Paula Bennett in the Chamber today. She is providing the leadership on this issue for the next election, and Labour has no one who will deliver that.

💬 Dr Wayne Mapp: Tired old nags.

Labour is a tired old party. The Labour members are on their last legs. Government members and Ministers stand up and make bitter comments, trying to tell us that National has some kind of liability for the problem of self-employed people not being eligible for paid parental leave. The fact is that Labour has known about the problem for 4 years and it did not deliver paid parental leave for the 8,000 self-employed people. That is a real shame, given that the Government had that issue pointed out to it by most parties in the House at the time when the legislation regarding employees was being debated. One need only to read the speeches made in 2002 during the first reading of the original legislation to realise that Opposition members pointed out that it did not deal with self-employed people The Labour Government just waltzed on and did its thing. Four years later, the Government cannot even say it is sorry to those 8,000 people. It cannot look them in the eye and say it is sorry it got things wrong. No, the Government blames National and says it is our fault. It looks back to last century and says it is National’s fault. What else from 20 years ago was National’s fault? It seems as though anything can be National’s fault, in Labour’s view.

According to the Government, anything that goes wrong is somebody else’s fault. When will the Government take responsibility? It has been in office for 6 years, but it always blames someone else. Then we will hear the minor parties say it was not their fault. They will blame somebody else. When will they stand up and take their chance to deliver while they are in Government? They will look backwards and say retrospectively it was this or that party’s fault. The reality is that the Government has failed to deliver for 4 years on this issue, and only after National’s hard work and determination to push legislation through do we have legislation that will work for the benefit of all New Zealanders.

I would like to address a couple of things, perhaps with the other parties in the Chamber, because I think the issues are incredibly relevant and something we need to look at. I ask the Minister to answer me, because she has not answered any other point I have raised today. I want to talk about whāngai, because adoption is covered in the bill. The bill recognises legal adoption under the law of the land but I point out it does not recognise Māori or Pacific Island adoption under their laws, if you like. Other legislation does—for example, immigration legislation and some social welfare policy. In the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee we did look at whāngai briefly and thought it was an issue we would like to look at it in the future.

I stand as a Māori woman and say that whāngai is part of our culture and something I fundamentally agree with. It is an ingrained part of New Zealand culture. We can give that lip-service or we can do something about it. So I lay down the challenge that we should be recognising the significance of whāngai and making that part of paid parental leave not only for self-employed people but also for other employees. I note that neither the original legislation nor this bill identifies that issue, and I would be very interested in hearing the Minister’s views and where she sees that going in the future.

At the end of the day, I think it is fantastic that self-employed people will be included in the legislation through this amendment A friend of mine owns a hair salon. She had three babies in 18 months—a multiple birth and another baby 11 months later.

💬 Bob Clarkson: What!

The member will be pleased to know she has stopped. She has her three.

💬 Bob Clarkson: One for New Zealand.

Yes, she did that third one, and very quickly. She rang me late last week when she saw the bill was coming up, and said: “Wow! What a difference that would have made to my life.” She is self-employed and said that things would have been so much easier if she had had that leave. It would have been two lots of 14 weeks’ leave for three babies. She would have used the money to put someone in part-time to manage the business while she was away. She pointed out that the payments would not have replaced her full wage on a weekly basis but it would have given her that little bit of freedom, even to have put an accountant into the business for a few hours a week so it could be overseen while she took that time off.

In fact, with the multiple birth the babies came early at 27 weeks, so she went on leave very unexpectedly and before time. I am very pleased to tell members, as I am sure they are interested, that both boys are absolutely fine and healthy. The point is she went off work so quickly that she did not have a chance to leave things at the stage she wanted, and needed, to keep that business going. But like any good Kiwi woman she was fortunate to have networks of people out wide and far and they stepped in for her and ran that business. But this sort of payment would have, firstly, acknowledged her role as a mother, and, secondly, have stepped in to give her that support and bit of financial assistance so that she could step up and keep that business going.

It is with great pride that the National Party stands up for this. The select committee process was interesting. I take my hat off and give credit to the chair, Mark Gosche. He ran a very good meeting. I must say I had a couple of questions at different times, because the process was quite new to me. He was extremely open in making sure those questions were answered, and that at the end of the day we all felt fully informed and had put in our 2 cents’ worth. On behalf of the National Party I thank the people who made submissions. They were worthwhile. The rural women came in. They talked about how the bill would help them in their farming community. I was a little surprised at New Zealand First.

I move, That the question be now put.

The Hon Mark Gosche asked why the National Party was taking the opportunity to delay the bill—which actually does not come into force until 1 July, anyway, as he would know if he read his papers. I tell him that we want to take this opportunity to speak tonight because it is a chance to remind that member in particular of some comments made by the Hon Dr Michael Cullen in his first reading speech on the bill. To quote directly from Hansard: “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 … 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 suggest to Dr Cullen—

💬 Lindsay Tisch: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I am sorry to interrupt my colleague, but a dialogue is going on between two gentlemen who are yelling across the Chamber, which is completely unacceptable. My colleague is articulating a very important part of the debate, which National is supporting, and the interruptions and noise in the background are not helpful.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): The members will desist from calling across the Chamber. It is very distracting.

I find it quite ironic that the members were having that debate while I was quoting the Hon Dr Michael Cullen’s words back to them. I thought they would have given his words more respect.

💬 Darren Hughes: We heard it the first time.

Well, I wanted to take the opportunity to quote the Hon Dr Michael Cullen because it was missed in the process that an undertaking was given, right from the beginning, that the hole would be filled at a “reasonably early opportunity”. That early opportunity has taken 4 years to come. It is a tragedy that Dr Michael Cullen believes that a reasonably early opportunity has a time frame of 4 years. I say to Business New Zealand that if Dr Cullen believes an early opportunity takes 4 years to come, it might imagine how long it will be before it gets any tax relief, which Ministers Dunne and Cullen are working on. I was not on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, as my honourable colleagues were. But I have found it fascinating, while sitting here and listening to the debate, that the Minister has taken the opportunity on numerous occasions to suggest that National did not support the intent of the bill. I have to suggest to the Minister that that is incredibly mischievous.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: That’s not what I said.

Madam Chairperson, the Minister has already had a warning. I ask you—

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): The Minister must not talk into the microphone.

That was the second time. I was taking the line that the Minister has been incredibly mischievous, and such behaviour is not becoming of a Minister in the New Zealand Government. We support the idea of supporting those who are new parents. We had a difference with the Government that related to how parents will be supported. Labour’s choice was to apply the benefit; ours was to use the taxation system. We lost that one, so we have moved on; we understand the game, and we very much support the intent of the bill. The only issue that I feel is sad in respect of this process is that there are very entrepreneurial self-employed people who have pride—who have set up a business and developed it, and have won a lot of kudos for doing that—whom, to some extent, we are putting on a benefit. That is sad, because if Labour had used the taxation system there might have been a process that it could have bought into a lot easier.

To finish, I again take the opportunity to say that it is fantastic that the Labour-led Government—with New Zealand First and United Future—is supporting those who are self-employed. It is not a position I have seen those parties take very often during my time, and it is wonderful that they have understood the importance of those people.

I move, That the question be now put.