Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. I thought I would never ever get to say those words, because what a wild ride this has been—what a wild ride this has been. This bill was pulled from the ballot almost 3 years ago, in April 2012. Actually, it was the Thursday just before Easter. I recall it very well because a lot has happened since then. Can I, at the outset, thank all of the parties that have contributed to making sure this bill did in fact get to its third reading. I want to thank the Green Party, New Zealand First, the Māori Party, United Future, and Mana, when it was in Parliament, for ensuring that these families, families of newborn babies, had their issue debated in our Parliament. It is only because of the support of those parties that we have got to the point where we are.

But I want to reserve my greatest thanks and gratitude to my Labour colleagues. It is the Labour Party that had the courage and—yes, Mr Key—the guts to stand up for families when no one else would. It was my Labour colleagues who, at the height of a global financial crisis, understood that this was where the brighter future really did lie for New Zealand. It was my Labour colleagues who, despite the fact that the Government was running a scare agenda of saying that nothing could be spent on anything positive, actually decided to turn the tables and trust New Zealanders’ instincts and say: “Yes, New Zealanders will back a positive initiative that will make a real difference.”—and did they ever. New Zealanders got this. They were able to demonstrate that it was the Labour Party that is completely in tune with the thinking of decent, hard-working New Zealanders.

Despite the fact that the Minister of Finance at the time over-inflated the bill, said it was going to cost $500 million, and tried to frighten the New Zealand public into not putting families first and not supporting children in this way, it backfired. The New Zealand public sensed that the Minister of Finance was exaggerating. They knew he was wrong and they knew in their hearts that this was the right thing to do. The New Zealand public was in tune with the New Zealand Labour Party and the New Zealand Labour Party was in tune with the New Zealand public.

We know this because there were a couple of polls that were conducted, and I imagine that the National Party did more than a couple of polls—I think it was polling regularly on this issue. It is the only reason that it has actually capitulated on this, because it knows of the public’s support. When Television One went out and surveyed about a thousand New Zealanders and said “It’s going to cost $500 million—do you want it or not?”, 65 percent of respondents said “Yeah.” Even at that exaggerated level—[Interruption]—yes, they did. And the members opposite still do not believe it, but the poll said 65 percent wanted paid parental leave extended to 26 weeks, despite the fact that the Government was exaggerating the cost of it and threatening a financial veto against it. So from the get-go there has been this sort of controversy and that sort of degree of push-back from the National Party opposite, because it did not trust the public on this, it did not want to prioritise families, and it just did not get how important it is.

When it came to the select committee process, we had almost 4,000 submissions come to the Government Administration Committee on this. That is how strongly people felt about it. And 99.6 percent of those submissions were in favour of extending 26 weeks’ paid parental leave to all the families who are currently eligible. Only 0.04 percent opposed it—0.04 percent opposed it. I remember one of those submissions really well for all the wrong reasons, because Business New Zealand, in its desperation to try to support the National Government’s opposition to this bill, decided to come and argue in front of the select committee that the reason it opposed this bill was that if women had 6 months away from paid employment, they would completely forget how to do their jobs and they would need complete retraining, and this was going to be a big imposition on business. It was going to cost them a lot of money, and that was why it should be opposed.

Well, I think Business New Zealand very soon crawled back into the cave that it had crawled out of on that occasion, because we had to point out to them that actually the law, as it stands, already allows women to have 12 months’ leave from their jobs, and then they come back and do their jobs quite successfully. That was the level of desperation from the supporters of the National Party’s opposition to extending paid parental leave. That is how desperate it did get.

The first deception happened in the select committee on this bill, in this wild ride, because the National Party MPs, faced with seeing the strong support that this bill had and knowing how bad it was going to look for them, decided that they needed to try to turn this round somehow. So they came to me and asked for an extension of the time for the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (6 Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill to stay in the select committee, so that they could have some time to talk their colleagues into supporting it. I took that in good faith, and I probably should not have. A very wise woman told me, quite some time ago: “Never trust a Tory.” Never trust a Tory, she said, and I should have remembered that. I forgot it at precisely the wrong moment, and I trusted the Government MPs when they promised me that if they extended paid parental leave, it would be done in a bill in my name. That is the commitment they gave me. They lied. They reneged on that commitment—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!

Sorry, Mr Assistant Speaker—they misled me. They deceived me. They misled and deceived all of the families who were relying on an extension of paid parental leave to 26 weeks.

💬 Tracey Martin: And they laugh about it.

And they laugh about it, because they think that is clever. They have played politics with this bill from day one, but they have forgotten—because of their arrogance—that they are in fact playing politics with people’s lives. They are playing politics with those very important first few months of a baby’s life, and I think it is disgraceful.

We came to the second reading of the bill, when it came out of the select committee, and there was more drama. I do not know whether people recall this, but the National Party whips made a mistake when they cast the Māori Party vote, and they had the Māori Party voting against the bill instead of in favour of it. That meant that the bill could not proceed. When Pita Sharples came down—when he realised what had happened and he came down to try to correct the vote—he got taken outside by the National Party whips, he got taken outside by some of the Ministers, and he got bullied into not correcting the vote. It did, over time, get corrected, but that is part of the interesting political story about this bill.

We moved on—we did eventually get that vote corrected—and we moved on to the Committee stage, and, wow. Was that the National Party’s finest hour, or what? It filibustered a bill that would give 26 weeks’ paid parental leave to families—filibustered it in order to try to stop it from going ahead. In the National Party’s finest hour it put up Mike Sabin to do four speeches lecturing New Zealanders on how to raise children. I am just going to say that again. It had Mike Sabin stand up on four occasions to filibuster this bill and lecture New Zealand families on how to raise children properly. Do you feel proud? Does the National Party feel proud about that? Well, I hope that it will feel proud about that particular issue in the months to come.

So after all of this, what have we achieved? What we have achieved—what Labour and our allied parties have achieved—is we have pushed the Government into extending paid parental leave to 18 weeks over the course of the next 2 years. We know we have pushed the Government into that, because Bill English looked right down the barrel of a TV camera when that bill came out of the ballot and said: “It is not a priority for us to extend paid parental leave. Even when we are in surplus we will not extend paid parental leave.” And look what has happened. But today the story has got even more interesting, because now the Government is promising to deliver what my bill does today, but not do it in my name because it is still playing politics. It has promised that it will do it in a bill in its own name. Thank you.

I do appreciate the opportunity to take a call on the third reading of the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill. As it is a members’ day it is customary that members of the executive do not tend to speak on members’ bills, and I do appreciate that I have been given the opportunity to do so.

Firstly, I want to talk a little bit about what we have heard from the person sponsoring this bill, Sue Moroney, and also, as the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, to lay out what the Government does intend to do by way of improving and extending paid parental leave to parents over the next year or two. I will say this about Sue Moroney: she is certainly passionate about this issue. I have no doubt about the authenticity with which she has championed the issue of paid parental leave, but I do worry that she has mixed the politics and the passion to such a degree that it is impossible to work out which is which. Nevertheless, I do want to touch on a couple of elements of what she said.

I heard her say that it was her Labour colleagues who have, in her words, “had the guts to support this bill”, and that is perhaps true, except that what she did not say was that that was not the case when they were in Government. When money was sloshing around and Labour was spending money like drunken sailors, locking in structural costs that this Government has had to deal with, the very canny Dr Michael Cullen—of all of the things that they could have done, of all of the passionate things that they could have supported, increasing paid parental leave to 26 weeks at a cost of who knows what, but several hundred million dollars is the best estimate, was not part of the Labour Government’s agenda. It is very interesting that, as this is a member’s bill—and knowing that it is not possible for members’ bills to have that kind of financial impact—Ms Moroney would say: “Right, now we are in Opposition it is time to increase paid parental leave”.

When we are in the most straitened times that this country has seen in 80 years, suddenly it is a priority for Labour, when, in previous years, they did not see raising the length of paid parental leave to 26 weeks as a priority. Lions in Opposition—lions with other people’s money when it does not have the fiscal costs of the decisions that it wants this Parliament to make—but lambs in Government.

Indeed, there are some other statements that have been made by Ms Moroney about what the Government did or did not say about paid parental leave, and I want to make it very clear that the Government always said it was prepared to extend paid parental leave as and when fiscal conditions allowed. It is really important to understand that the fiscal conditions did not allow that. What did the Government do? An amount of $500 million has been bounced around as a possible cost, but I think that overly exaggerates the cost of Ms Moroney’s existing bill. Let us remember, we are not debating the original bill. This is not a matter of principle and passion, because Ms Moroney herself has watered down her own bill. Why? Because the goal is no longer to extend paid parental leave to 26 weeks; the goal is to embarrass the Government. The goal is to expose the Government, and that is the politics of this. That is the politics that is interfering with the passion.

The Government, in these straitened times, the toughest conditions in 80 years—which was left with the legacy of structural deficits for 10 years, which we have seen halved, despite the impact of the Canterbury earthquakes—has come up with around half a billion dollars of measures to support children and their families. We have seen that in the free general practitioner visits for under-13s. We have seen that with the breakfast in schools programme.

Do you know what the most disappointing thing about the Labour Party in Opposition was? It campaigned in 2008 on the fact that this Government, should we have the privilege of taking the Treasury benches, would gut Working for Families and would gut interest-free student loans. Do you know what made it most angry in the 49th Parliament? We did no such thing. Through those vulnerable periods we made sure that the supports that were locked in place stayed for our most vulnerable.

The Government does intend to increase paid parental leave. Not only is it prepared to do that, but it has already locked in, through Budget 2014, the fiscal appropriation to do just that. It is necessary now to change the legislation to give effect to that, and it is my intention to bring a Government bill to the House in about June of this year, and have it passed this year, for effect on 1 April 2016, as we have already appropriated. It will increase the duration of paid parental leave for those parents who are already eligible for it. It will go to 16 weeks in the first year and then to 18 weeks thereafter. But it is going to do more than that. It is going to broaden the range of people who are eligible for paid parental leave. At the moment, the legislation provides, I think, for a very one-dimensional view of employment and a one-dimensional view of employees. I think what we know now is that employment relationships, but also parenting arrangements, have changed significantly in the last generation or two. Firstly, people work in more than one role. They work in different ways: they may be self-employed, they may be contractors, they may have multiple employers, and they may have moved recently, before expecting a child.

None of those conditions are currently met by the existing legislation, or by the bill that Ms Moroney has introduced. The Government will change that. The Government will extend the range of parents who will be eligible for paid parental leave to include those different working arrangements, to include multiple employers, and to include those who have been working for their employer for only 6 months, which would actually rule them out under the current regime.

It is also going to recognise the fact that parenting arrangements can be different as well. I take, for example—and I acknowledge the Māori Party intervention into this particular part of the policy that is being developed—the concept of whāngai, or traditional Māori adoption, which is not recognised presently in the law, and will be when the Government introduces the bill into the House in the middle of the year. That will be very important, and I want to acknowledge the Hon Te Ururoa Flavell for his intervention to ensure that that very longstanding traditional means of bringing up children will be met in this scenario.

What we have is a passionate member, who has no concern for fiscal impact, introducing a bill that I believe she introduced with the best of intentions—although it is a little hard to untangle the politics from the passion—who then watered it down when she realised that she would not have the numbers and, actually, that the Government was coming up with a better arrangement to support families by increasing the duration of the support and broadening the nature of the relationships and the number of employment relationships that would be covered by it. I do acknowledge her.

But the Government takes this very seriously. Support for parents and enabling mothers, in particular, to re-enter the workforce is a very important part of growing this economy and ensuring that people stay connected with the workforce. I should also add, actually, that the bill being introduced in June will allow parents to keep in touch if they are on paid parental leave. At the moment, if you go back for a single day you lose your entitlement to paid parental leave, but that is often not practical for people who are in highly skilled jobs, who want to keep in touch with training and development, or who need to cover for leave. There will be sensible provisions in the bill that will enable that to occur.

The National Party will not be supporting Ms Moroney’s bill. It will be introducing a very sensible range of measures that will deliver a better outcome for parents. I look forward to Labour’s support when that bill is introduced.

It is my pleasure to take a call in this final reading of Sue Moroney’s Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill. Perhaps I need to start by correcting the record. The Minister who just resumed his seat, Michael Woodhouse, stood and asked the House why, if Labour cared so much about this issue, it did not do anything for paid parental leave when it was in Government and running a Budget surplus. I find it extraordinary that the Minister who claims to have responsibility for this area does not know the history of paid parental leave. It was introduced, Minister Woodhouse, by the previous Labour Government. Let me repeat that again: paid parental leave was introduced by a previous Labour Government. Can I just point out that at the time it was introduced in 2002, National opposed the introduction. It opposed the introduction of paid parental leave when at that time in 2002 we had a surplus of $2.5 billion. It was absolutely financially responsible for Labour to say we have the ability to do this and it is the right thing to do, and it was National that opposed that we did that.

We did not just introduce it; we extended it. In 2004 we looked to expand and extend it again. National again opposed it. At that point we had a surplus of $5.6 billion. Again, it was possible to do it, we did in it a fiscally responsible way, and it was the right thing to do. Perhaps if the Minister missed all of those points, he might like to be reminded of the National Party’s positioning at that time, because it was not opposition just on monetary grounds or fiscal grounds. It is not that the members stood up and said: “Lovely idea, but we really can’t afford to do it right now.”, because at that time they were begging for tax cuts. They knew that we actually could financially afford it. That was not the rationale for which they opposed it. They opposed it because they ideologically did not believe in it. They ideologically did not believe in it. Anne Tolley in 2002 said: “This legislation … shows how the Labour-Alliance Government is stuck in the radical feminist era of the 1960s and 1970s … and is completely out of touch with women of the 21st century…”. Anne Tolley never supported paid parental leave. Those were her words.

Nick Smith said that the draft bill was a “dumb bill”. Paul Hutchison said that it was cementing State dependency rather than incentivising individual responsibility—what, for an infant? I do not even know what he means by that statement. Judith Collins in 2004 said it was another example of this Government using taxpayers’ money to try to win some votes. I find it absolutely rich for that Minister to try to tell this side of the House that we have never believed in paid parental leave when it is that side of the House that is only supporting it for the pure politics, because when you strip it away, it still does not believe in the concept of supporting women and newborn children when they are unable to work at the most vulnerable period of a child’s life.

Members talked about dependency, being out of touch with women, and harking back to a feminist era of the 1960s. Well, actually, if it is harking back to feminism, that is not something I would apologise for. But the point is that that Government is extending paid parental leave only because of the hard work of Sue Moroney and the support of parties like the Greens, Labour, and New Zealand First. That is why the Government eventually shifted.

If we want to talk about anyone being out of touch, it would have to be the Government. Only yesterday a report was released by Growing Up in New Zealand, a longitudinal study that 7,000 children are part of. It is the most in-depth study we have seen of children. It tracks them from birth to adulthood. That report has found that more than 50 percent of New Zealand mothers experience hardship between late pregnancy and the first 9 months of their child’s life. I repeat that: 50 percent of New Zealand mothers experience some level of hardship between late pregnancy and the first 9 months of their child’s life. And here we are, with some arguing that we cannot afford to do more to support those families in the most vulnerable period of their child’s life. That is not something I am saying off the cuff without research and evidence.

You do not have to look at the UN’s feedback—of course it supports breastfeeding in the first 6 months. That stands on its own. But organisations like the Brainwave Trust have long argued that if you want to invest anywhere, invest in those first critical months of a child’s brain development. Their connection with a parent is critical. It is what determines whether or not they are able to build trusting relationships in adulthood. It determines whether or not, for instance, they will experience some of the behavioural issues that we then grapple with as taxpayers further down the track. Conduct disorder, something that is connected to whether or not a child forms those trusting relationships and bonds, costs the taxpayer $1 million—$1 million—per child. We have been shown what we need to do about it; yet, we turn a blind eye.

We literally cannot afford not to do things like what Sue Moroney has proposed in this bill. So if we want to talk about cost, I can tell you that that is where the real costs exist. If we want to talk about being in touch with what new parents are experiencing, we should be looking at the evidence, like the longitudinal study Growing Up in New Zealand. It is interesting that when mothers were first interviewed before they gave birth, the mothers’ plan was to go back into the workplace, to use up what paid parental leave they had, and then return. What the study found was that a number of mothers would use up that paid parental leave, then they would try to use up all their holiday leave, and they would then try to take unpaid leave. They would do everything they could once their baby arrived to stay with their child as long as they could. That was when mothers started exiting the workforce. When they used up all that leave and realised that they were not ready to go back, they exited the workforce.

So if that Minister was really serious about mothers trying to maintain bonds with the workforce, he would recognise what the evidence was telling him and maintain that link via decent paid parental leave. That is what would make a longer term bond to the workforce, and that is what he should be looking at and listening to. That would demonstrate that he was truly in touch with what New Zealand families are experiencing.

That study was the kind of information that we, as the Labour Party, looked at when we established our Best Start policy. Not only did we ensure that paid parental leave in our policy would be 26 weeks but after that we said that for the rest of that year we wanted an additional contribution for those families to ease the burden that almost any family, no matter what their financial circumstances, experiences in that first year of their child’s life. We absolutely stand by that policy. It is the right thing to do and it is the most cost-effective thing to do.

I want to use the last moments of my contribution to pay respect to Sue Moroney and the work she has done on this bill. The audacity of the Minister—to claim that she has confused politics and passion. There is no harder thing than to compromise as a politician, and, yet, Sue Moroney saw an opportunity. She could not get 6 weeks’ leave for every family—or try to at least do that for families who experience a premature birth or a multiple birth or who have a child with a disability—so she compromised her bill in order to try to make gains for at least some families. That demonstrates that this was always about the issue more than it was about the politics. It was always about the issue, and it is extraordinarily disappointing that that Government has been unwilling to accept that sometimes when you see a good idea you should vote for it, regardless of who puts it up.

Labour votes with National on good ideas. That is what we do. That is what a good Opposition does. What a good Government should do is recognise that a good idea can come from the Opposition as well. I am saddened on behalf of New Zealanders that the Government did not recognise that. So let it be said and let it be on the record that when that side of the House comes before this Parliament with a bill that will allow those families to access greater paid parental leave, it was Sue Moroney who did that for them. There is no way that that Government deserves any recognition.

The next call is a split call. I call Sarah Dowie—5 minutes.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, for allowing me to take this short call on the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill. I would like to start out by acknowledging the sponsor of this bill, Sue Moroney. Like the speakers before her, I do acknowledge the intention she has in bringing this bill to the floor of the House, and the spirit of the bill, but, unfortunately, this Government cannot support it on the grounds of fiscal responsibility. I also want to respond to the claims made by the member opposite, Ms Ardern, who pointed to a number of dissenting opinions in 2002.

I stand here and say, as part of this Government, that we do support the spirit of the bill—we do support paid parental leave—but we disagree as to the fiscal constraints and how we are going to implement it. As such, talking about the spirit of the bill, we are saying that this is not a case of one size fits all, and, as a Government, we have to balance competing priorities and look across the board as to the well-being of children and their mums. In that vein I want to reiterate, as the Hon Michael Woodhouse did, that this Government is extending paid parental leave from 14 to 16 weeks on 1 April this year, and then, again, to 18 weeks on 1 April 2016. That meets the fiscal responsibilities of being in Government, and it will be a very good help to those families having children.

But, again, in response to the spirit of the bill, we are looking at measures across the board, and I want to take time to talk about one of them that I, as a mother, found extremely helpful. I am talking about the $20 million extra invested into maternity services and Well Child services for new mothers and babies. For me the Well Child services were a godsend. I, as a new mum, relied heavily on the support of my family but also the experts, such as the community nurses who worked for Plunket. They provided me with advice as to how to deal with children, and how to bond properly without getting too concerned about the colic I faced or the other issues I had to work through. Just in terms of that example, although paid parental leave is being extended by this Government and is of help, the advice that those nurses gave me rounded out that support and was incredibly well received by me. It helped me enjoy the time I had with my newborn baby.

I also want to talk about this Government extending free general practitioner visits and prescriptions to children under the age of 13. Again, from a cost perspective for a family, to be able to take your child to the doctor and not worry about the cost is extremely important. You do not need to worry about the cost. You certainly do not worry about the burden that you could be putting on your finances. Again, that support from GPs to enable your child to be seen, to get the treatment that they may need, and to help them to flourish into the future is another example of an all-rounded package that this Government is bringing into force. Again, I stand here as part of this Government and I say we support the intent and spirit of the bill. Again, I do acknowledge the member who sponsored this bill for her passion, but there are fiscal constraints when you are in Government and, as such, we cannot support this bill.

I call Jami-Lee Ross—5 minutes.

There is a bit of a theme developing right now on the Opposition benches. The theme from the Labour Party seems to be that National is so mean that it will not let the Labour Party pull out the credit card to spend up large. That is effectively what the Labour Party is saying.

We have to be clear when we talk about paid parental leave that there is one party sitting in the House right now that is extending paid parental leave, and that is National. I do not know whether the Labour Party was listening during the Budget last year, but the National Government has announced, and has enacted, changes to extend paid parental leave in New Zealand. The National-led Government has implemented a package worth $500 million to support families. Included in that package are two extensions of paid parental leave, which will eventually take paid parental leave out to 18 weeks. I have heard the Labour Party today say that extending paid parental leave to 26 weeks is affordable. I am sure it would also try to find an argument that extending it to 52 weeks would be affordable, and then it will go to 2 years, 3 years, and 4 years.

The problem with the Labour Party—and we found this during the election—is that it thinks everything is affordable. During the last election campaign the spending promises from that side of the House amounted to $30 billion. Those members think everything is affordable. This side of the House, instead, does things in a measured way. We support families, we support New Zealanders, but we have to recognise that every time the Government spends money to support New Zealanders, it also comes out of the pockets of New Zealanders. I think the last thing that New Zealanders would want is for any Government to put New Zealanders into more debt, which the other side wanted to do, and to have to raise taxes, which the other side wanted to do, when there is a more affordable and measured way to do it.

We are supporting families. Families in New Zealand are getting paid parental leave extensions. As part of our $500 million package as well, families in New Zealand are going to have the ability to send their children to the doctor for free, up to the age of 13. Families in New Zealand, because of the National Government’s changes that we have enacted, will see parental tax credits extended. Families in New Zealand, because of the changes the National-led Government has enacted, are seeing more funding going into early childhood education and more funding going into welfare changes to support families in this country. We have the track record to do it.

I feel a little sorry for Sue Moroney. I feel that she has been hung out to dry by her party. The Labour Party has found in the last election that its promise is unaffordable; that its promise is not one that the Labour Party was able to sell to New Zealanders, and she has been left to hold out this bill—which actually says nothing at the moment. It has a title, it has a commencement date, and it has a clause that outlines the principal Act that she wished to change, but it has nothing else in it. If she had some honour, she would have asked the Business Committee to drop the bill, but she was hung out to dry by her party.

We are extending paid parental leave. We are enacting changes for New Zealanders.

💬 Sue Moroney: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am offended by that misrepresentation by that member, and I would like him to withdraw and apologise.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Well, I am not quite sure what the point of contention is. There has been quite a robust exchange across the benches. What specifically are you objecting to?

💬 Sue Moroney: I am objecting to the member saying that I was hung out to dry by my party when, in fact, it was his party that filibustered the bill—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No, no. [Interruption] No, that is not a point of order.

💬 Tracey Martin: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Is this a new point of order?

💬 Tracey Martin: It is a new point of order. Can I seek your clarification? During Mr Ross’ last contribution he said that if Ms Moroney had any honour, she would have asked for the bill to be withdrawn. Is that parliamentary language?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): That is certainly parliamentary language.

Sometimes the truth is hard to believe. I was interrupted in my flow, but I was outlining the fact that the National Government has been supporting families. When members on this side of the House go out and knock on doors, stand in the main streets of their cities, and talk to New Zealanders about what they want, they want a country that is affordable for their children to live in. They want a country that supports their children in their time of need but does not tax them and rack up debt to pay for it. They want a Government that lives within its means. They want a Government that provides proper housing for New Zealanders—we are doing that. They want a Government that provides good-quality education services for their families—we are doing that. They want a country that provides health services for their families—we are doing that.

Families in New Zealand are far better off because of the changes implemented in the past 6 years. The Labour Party may wish to go out and say that the National Government is not doing enough for families, but our track record speaks for itself. We are extending paid parental leave. We are doing so in a measured way. That is what this country deserves and asked for. It passed its judgment in September last year.

I rise again to offer the Green Party’s support for Sue Moroney’s member’s bill to extend paid parental leave to 26 weeks, even though, sadly, the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill does not contain that provision any more because it was previously voted down by this Government. I do want to take just a moment to properly commend Ms Moroney for the work that she has done in the very long process of shepherding this bill through the House and providing an opportunity for New Zealanders to express their overwhelming support for paid parental leave and the care of the smallest members of our society. That support has been overwhelming, and the Green Party appreciates your work and all of the compromises that you have made to try to get even the barest amount of provision through to those New Zealanders who were consistent on what they asked for through the select committee process.

We have just heard from the previous member, Jami-Lee Ross, that when National members are out on the streets they hear New Zealanders asking for everything but paid parental leave. I would ask that member to go back and look at the submissions, and consider the parliamentary process and our democratic process, which presented this bill and asked New Zealanders for their opinions. I would remind that member that there were 3,809 submissions made on extending paid parental leave to 26 weeks. I would just remind that member again that 3,795 submissions out of those 3,809 submissions supported the extension to 26 weeks—that is, 99.6 percent of submissions said that they wanted 26 weeks’ paid parental leave. And even the other 0.4 percent were not necessarily against the bill; they just had some concerns around some aspects of it, for some of them. So, you know, this is completely overwhelming support from the population, saying that they wanted 26 weeks. To say that when you are out on the streets you are not hearing any support for this bill—I find that hard to believe. I refer you to the Parliament of which you are a member and ask you to listen to the democratic voices coming through this Parliament. I remind every member of this House that we are here and we set up these processes for people to participate for a reason—to inform us in the decisions we make in this House. To ignore the views of New Zealanders when making those decisions does a discredit to this institution and to every single member of it.

I also go back to the process, to reflect on some of the process of this. We have heard a lot of politicking tonight. It has been suggested by the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety that the member Sue Moroney has offered passion, but that it has been confused with politics. I really do want to challenge that—not that the Labour Party needs the Greens to support it or defend its honour. But it really does just seem horribly unfair and misrepresentative to me, when the member extended the submission time and the consideration within the Government Administration Committee to enable the National Party members of that committee, who were overwhelmingly convinced by the evidence, to go back to their caucus to try to get support for this bill. That then turned into the Government putting something forward in the Budget that was entirely different, which I absolutely supported. We voted in support of it. I totally agreed with the extension of the provisions of paid parental leave to groups that were missing out. That was a really important initiative. But it was not what Parliament and the people of New Zealand had been discussing. There was one clear submission that asked for that to happen, and I supported it, but the others did not. The others were saying that 26 weeks was the fundamental thing that they wanted addressed, and that is what this bill has been seeking to do.

There was a huge amount of accommodation made by that member. And then the Government turned round and sought to make personal political gain from it. Then we hear that now Sue Moroney, in looking at the numbers in this House, went and spoke with the ACT Party about whether it would seek to have this bill go back to the Committee stage to debate some of the substance again. She was able to convince the ACT Party member of the need for 26 weeks and the democratic process and the request from New Zealanders. When the National Party heard that that was happening, it called the member into the Prime Minister’s office and said: “You can’t support this bill. To stop you doing that, we’ll put forward and deliver the content of this bill. But you can’t support it through a Labour initiative. We’ll do it.” That is politics. I have to say that that deeply offends me. I am not in this House to play political games. I would have thought that every member of this House was here to deliver for New Zealanders—to listen to New Zealanders and to deliver for them. That kind of politicking is not doing our job, in my opinion. It is playing politics, and doing a disservice to New Zealanders.

Good on David Seymour, as a new member, for actually listening to and hearing the arguments, and seeing what the provisions of the bill had been reduced down to by Sue Moroney: ensuring 26 weeks for when there was a premature birth, or when there was a child with an impairment that would entitle a person to Government-funded disability support, or when there was a multiple birth. So 26 weeks’ leave for those people—I am so pleased that Sue Moroney’s bill has prompted the delivery for them, because who could not think that there was a clear need for those families to have time out of the workforce, to be able to bond with their babies, to take care of health needs, to just be able to cope.

The submissions that we heard during the select committee—again I want to thank those submitters because they were tear-evoking submissions for every single member on that committee. We heard of people who had missed the early years of their child’s life and had to look at photos of their babies to remember what they looked like at that time, because they had had to go back to work. We also heard of people who had managed to get 10 months to spend with their babies and who had bonded with them and found a love of parenting, even though they actually had not wanted to be a parent before that. They had managed to use that time to bond and connect, and find joy. We can only imagine the flow-on benefits of that time to the parent, to the family, and, most important, to the child. In the submissions that we heard—to get to the point of what this is all about—the evidence was overwhelming that the benefit of 26 weeks’ leave is that it facilitates bonding and attachment between parent and baby, and improves the learning and the development of the baby, the health outcomes for mothers, babies, and children. The World Health Organization recognises 6 months as the minimum for breastfeeding.

This provision supports families and ensures stability of their incomes. It allows choice for women in maintaining workplace attachment, and it updates our employment conditions to recognise the contemporary world that we live in. Most of us have families, and it is appropriate for workplaces to adapt to that. Twenty-six weeks makes it easier for employers to manage time out and substitution of workers. So this bill, the 26 weeks’ leave provision, is not just a matter of what would be nice. For $110 million, which is the cost of what this would be, the return to us as a country was judged by 99.6 percent of submitters as worthwhile. It is a shame on this Government that it has subverted the democratic process and is refusing to deliver that.

It is an honour to be able to stand this afternoon and speak on the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill. I, like others, also want to commend Ms Moroney. She is not here right now, but I just commend her intent.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! The member cannot refer to the absence of a member.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I was trying to speak in acknowledgment of the member, who is not here, but I do want to acknowledge—

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: For goodness’ sake, Alfred, learn the rules.

—OK—the sponsor of the bill. It is a bit of a mean spirit there. I am actually acknowledging the sponsor of the bill and her intent. That is what I want to do, because the intent is right.

It is of interest, I know, to all MPs to be able to have their own member’s bill pulled out of the ballot and to have it presented to the House. It is important to us. The reason why it is important—and I know that later on tonight in the House Tracey Martin’s bill will be debated—is that the ability to have your own bill drawn out of the ballot means that you can become the champion of a cause that is important to you. That is what members’ bills allow you to do, especially for those in your community who advocate for the importance of a bill. So I take nothing away from the sponsor of this bill and the importance that the issue of this bill tries to address around paid parental leave and employment protection.

With that, I acknowledge the intent, like the intent of all members who are honourable members in this House. However, where we begin to differ is in the how. How do we ensure that we meet that demand and that need in the community? I want to just make some comments, because there have been previous speakers in the House who talked about the previous Labour Government and what it did when it introduced paid parental leave. They talked about the extension of that paid parental leave. I want to just go over those points. For instance, in 2002 paid parental leave went from 10 weeks to 12 weeks—that was in 2002. In 2004 it went from 12 weeks to 14 weeks, which is what it is currently, until its extension later this year from 14 weeks to 16 weeks. And in 2016 it will go from 16 weeks to 18 weeks.

The reason I make mention of that is that those increments of change are the same increments of change that this Government is also making. They are the same increments of change, by 2 weeks, so it is no different from what the Labour Government did in its time to increase paid parental leave by 2 weeks in that period of 2 years, from 10 weeks to 12 weeks, and then from 12 weeks to 14 weeks. For us, it goes from 14 weeks to 16 weeks, and then 16 weeks to 18 weeks. So I make the point that we are making the same responsible judgments, which we think are absolutely important as well.

The other thing I want to make mention of is that there was talk about this Government being mean-spirited in this. It is my understanding that the Hon Ruth Dyson, who was a Minister at that time, was also presented with a brief about extending paid parental leave even further, and at that time it was declined. So, again, under a Labour Government there was no intent to try to increase it even further, even though petitions were made on the same issues relating to parental care and responsibility. Again, under a Labour Government, it was not increased.

The other point made by Ms Ardern, the previous speaker, was in regard to a Labour Government looking towards introducing bills that it felt were important to New Zealanders. Can I mention that this was talked about by a member who was previously here in Parliament, the Hon Tariana Turia, when she talked about the issue of Whānau Ora. I want to make mention of this in the House because it is not often talked about, but when she talked about Whānau Ora at a number of conferences, she made mention of the fact that it was under a Labour Government—under the leadership of Helen Clark—that she introduced the idea. She talked about Whānau Ora being important for Māori and their families. She talked about having a better way to meet their needs and to have self-determination so that they could be self-determining for themselves, for the hapū, the iwi, and for the nation of Māori all together. It was a Labour Government under Helen Clark that declined—she declined—to even introduce this into the conversation. Yet it was under a National Government that Whānau Ora was not only introduced, with a commitment of over $137 million over 4 years, but we now have three commissioning agents—two for Māori; one for Pasifika.

That is the care and concern—that is the difference between a National Government and a Labour Government that seeks to create continuing dependency, rather than saying to those communities, in particular, that it can find a way to help support them. I make mention of that to say, again, what this National Government is doing to make a difference to families in our community.

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: Tell us a bit more about the bill.

Let us talk a little about this bill for Mr Lees-Galloway, because he probably has not read the bill. Changes to the parental leave framework—here is the difference that we are making. We are going out and having a consultation process to talk about how we can change the bill in an appropriate way that is fiscally responsible—as was talked about before on the other side of the House—and that ensures that the changes that we make meet the different complexities that different families have in this day. Over 900 submissions have already been put forward and, from that, the changes will allow for greater access and increased flexibility.

Here are some of the key proposals that we are introducing, which are really important and which we believe supersede the intent of this bill and instead show what we are doing to support and care for families and children in New Zealand. The key proposals are as follows. We are extending parental leave payments to people in less regular work, such as seasonal and casual workers, those with more than one employer, and people who have recently changed jobs. We are extending parental leave payments to primary carers providing permanent foster care akin to adoption, such as Home for Life parents. People who have permanent guardianship, biological fathers, and grandparents caring for grandchildren will be eligible, provided they meet the work test criteria. Employees will be able to work limited hours or days and keep up skills development during their paid parental leave. We are allowing workers who have been with their employer for more than 6 months but less than 1 year to be entitled to some form of work and unpaid leave. These are some of the things that we are doing and that we believe are making a difference to families. We believe that that is the way that we are showing we care.

The reason why we oppose this bill is that we are increasing paid parental leave from 14 weeks to 16 weeks, and then to 18 weeks, but we are doing more than that. We are introducing a number of things. I want to mention this one again because it relates to Mr Faafoi. I remember him saying in his speech that down in Porirua, in the Mana electorate, he went to a pharmacy, and what he saw as a clear image was the number of prescriptions that were lined up. He said this: “How can we allow these prescriptions, which need to meet the medical and health needs of our children and our community, to be sitting on a bench, on a shelf? What are we going to do about it?”. Mr Faafoi, help is on its way. This is what we are doing about it. We are extending free GP visits and prescriptions to children aged under 13, from July this year.

So, Mr Faafoi, you can go along and know that when you look into that pharmacy, those prescriptions will be free. They will be free for them and they can access them in the pharmacy. In fact, I look forward to it. Maybe you will take me out there and we will look at that pharmacy. We will meet the pharmacist and talk to the people in Mana as well.

The other thing that we are doing is making homes warm and dry. In the communities where I have begun to talk to constituents, we have talked about the importance of having warm and dry homes. Over 300,000 homes have been insulated. We think that those things are important. Why? Because they contribute to the care and concern for families, which relates to the fact that their needs are being met by this Government.

Just lastly, I want to talk about offering free breakfasts in schools. That is absolutely important, so that parents know—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! The member is wide of the mark. I know that it is a small bill and there has been some licence, but you are getting well outside the scope of the bill, so I ask the member to come back. The bill is about paid parental leave. That is what we are talking about.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. Yes, it is about paid parental leave. It is also about how we care. We have had robust debate from Opposition members, and I know you have given them licence to talk about all the things that we are not doing.

So in my final comments, I want to say this. Again, as I said—and now that Ms Moroney is here—I applaud the intent of the bill, but I cannot agree with the approach. The Government is making a difference. It is extending paid parental leave. We believe that that measure will meet the needs of our families and our communities. On behalf of the Government I say that we do not support this bill and we oppose it in its third reading.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker, and thank you very much. First of all can I commend Sue Moroney and can I just say that she has gone above and beyond the call of duty, really—and I am referring particularly to a breakfast this morning—to support New Zealand families. But I also want to say that New Zealand First is not suggesting that the Government has not supported New Zealand families. The reality is that this Government, in the last Budget, did exactly what Mr Ngaro said. It has extended paid parental leave. It is a thrill, actually, to hear Mr Woodhouse—and I am going to see about subbing-in on that select committee, actually, on this bill that is going to be brought to the House in June with all these other manipulations and mutations of paid parental leave that might better assist New Zealand families.

💬 Hon Jo Goodhew: They will.

It is great. I am really looking forward to it, Ms Goodhew. I am really looking forward to it. I think there is a wider conversation that needs to happen—the fact that it is actually going to start to take in the concept of whāngai, which I mentioned when I spoke at the first reading of Ms Moroney’s bill. Let us hope that there might be a conversation about a requirement for fathers to take some of this paid parental leave, because what we know is that with all the efforts we have made in trying to get pay equity inside the workforce, those countries that have been successful in doing it have actually made parents equal at home. It also removes the stigma for those fathers who want to stay at home and take paid parental leave. Perhaps if we actually start looking at and talking about that part inside the bill that this Government is going to introduce in June, I think it was—we will all be looking forward to that.

Could I just send a message to Mr Seymour—it is time to pull on your “big boy” pants. It is time to actually stand up in your own right. If you believed this morning that it is important that you support this bill, then do not allow any other member of this House to bully you. I think that if you are bullied there is a sign up by your photocopier saying that you can gain support. You need to read that sign, Mr Seymour, call for support, pull on your “big boy” pants, and cast your vote as you believe it should be cast. That is what the people of New Zealand expect of us.

I also want to explain to the listeners and the viewers of New Zealand that the reason why the conversation in this House has got so snarky is not that there is not recognition that at Budget time—

💬 Jami-Lee Ross: It’s not snarky.

Mr Ross says it is not snarky, and yet his contribution was the most disgusting contribution that I have heard in this House in the 51st Parliament. It became personal and it was beneath him. If he wants to continue and still be considered to be a valuable member of the community and highly respected, I suggest he goes back and changes the way he attacks other people in this House. Ms Moroney’s comments were robust but they were about policy, and they were about a party and about a Government. Mr Ross’ comments were personalised and they were insulting. [Interruption] It hardly adds to the debate, Mr Ross—it hardly adds to the debate—but perhaps after a few years and a bit of wisdom we might see a better politician.

So, if I can just go back to the point I was trying to make, the reason this conversation has got quite snarky is not that there is no recognition that the Government has not made movements. It is actually because there was a betrayal of an amount of trust that was brought into that select committee process, and Mr Ross possibly got so snarky because he was one of the people who were pivotal in the loss of that trust.

What I want the New Zealand public to understand is that Ms Moroney believed in this to such a point that she took Government members inside the select committee—and I believe that the backbenchers need to listen to this. I believe that the backbenchers went out of the select committee with goodwill, with a true commitment. They understood the people who came in and submitted to them, and the importance of this bill. They took all of that information, all that support, all that voter information back into their caucus, and their executive decided they had another way to do that. The executive decided: “We’re going to make sure that Sue Moroney doesn’t get any credit for this. We’re going to make sure that we can use this against the Labour Party at the next election and gain those votes from those voters.” And they did it very well. They have done it several times, actually, usually in chunks of about $10 million. So if the voters of New Zealand would like to go back and have a look at what happens when an issue starts to get traction, this Government, rather than withdraw—mind you there have been a couple of times: class size, Novopay, those sorts of things—tends to find $10 million of your money and dumps it there, just to keep that little lid on that little pot.

So the reason why this conversation got so snarky was that Ms Moroney absolutely tried to participate in a cross-party conversation. The backbenchers on that select committee—in good faith, we believe—walked out of there and took that information back to their caucus, and then the National caucus decided to pull the rug out from under Ms Moroney. The caucus decided to betray the very thing it consistently asks for when it decides to send troops overseas or when it decides to send anything else out of the way—it asks the Opposition to work cross-party; it asks the Opposition to work collaboratively.

The Ministers say, when we ask an interesting question, that they are more than happy for the member to come and work with them, but “why would you?”, would be the question. Why would any member of this House do that, after this example—and, new members, look and learn. Why would any member of this House go and take the word of any Minister or any member of the Government, after what just happened there? So, New Zealand, that is actually what happened to this bill.

Nobody is denying that the Government has moved forward. Nobody is denying that historically the movement inside paid parental leave that Labour made could equally be matched by what has recently happened with National. Nobody is denying that Mr Woodhouse is probably—keep your eye on it though, once the pressure goes off—going to bring a bill here in June, which will then go to select committee. Maybe it will take 10 years to get through the select committee, though, because National members will need so much conversation around it. It is going to have so many little paddles and angles to it that if the will is not there it might never end up back in this House.

But the point as to why this has got so snarky, the reason this has got so vicious, is that there was a massive betrayal of trust by this Government when this bill was at select committee and there is nothing it can do to take that back.

I rise in opposition to this bill, although, as my colleague Mr Ross pointed out a little earlier, there is, quite frankly, no substance in the bill to oppose. The Parental Leave and Employment (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill has three clauses: it has a title, it has a commencement date, and it references the Act that it amends by not doing anything. There are, quite frankly, in this third reading absolutely no amendments and no substance.

If this House were to pass this bill at this reading it would not actually do anything and that is quite telling. It is quite telling, because what I would like to say, what I would like to point out, is that in its original form it was possible to disagree with the bill because of the financial implications. This Government did. This Government opposed the original bill because it considered it to not be viable under the financial constraints of the times and in Government. But it was very open and transparent about that. We told all of the members across the House that we could not support it and why we could not support it. We did more. We told the people of New Zealand why it was that we could not support the bill in the form it was in.

But I have to say that even though we could have disagreed, and did disagree, with it at the time, at least it could be argued it was a highly principled bill. The sponsoring member was introducing it under a matter of principle and she was highly impassioned about what she thought it would achieve for families.

But let us look at it now and this is the most disappointing thing. It has been watered down to be a completely nothing bill—a bill that can do nothing. It is normal for anyone in this House or, more important, for the public to question why—why has it become a bill of nothing from where it started. I think it is quite possible the public might say that the changes have come about for reasons of pure political expediency on the part of the sponsoring member, simply to get runs on the board by getting a member’s bill actually passed.

There is a saying that one is either on the bus or under the bus, and the Opposition has thrown many, many New Zealand families under the bus of its bill. Let us look at them. Parents having a pregnancy with one child? Under the bus. No change for them. Parents with multiple children, facing all of the challenges and financial pressures of having multiple children to care for, and one more on the way? Under the bus. Nothing extra for them.

💬 Sue Moroney: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am offended by that member’s suggestion that we are throwing children under the bus. Will he please tell the truth about the bill?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Look, there are two points here. [Interruption] Order! First, it is probably unhelpful to use phrases like “families under the bus”, so I will ask the member to constrain himself on that. Then I say to the member on this side that there is Speaker’s ruling 42/3, which says that you cannot use “Tell the truth!”. So it is one all—all right?

The other condition is that parents, where the pregnancy will go full term, get no addition to the paid parental leave that currently exists, under this bill, which actually has no content. That is the greatest disappointment of all. When the bill was first introduced it claimed a need for families and it said that it sought to satisfy a real need. But since then that need has been undermined to the point where it is offering so little to families and only to specific families.

It must be pointed out that the original bill was unaffordable and that is why the Government opposed it. It ignored the reality of the constraints of governing in an environment following the global financial crisis and the Christchurch earthquakes. It also ignored the reality, the disgraceful condition, that the previous Labour Government had left the country in with projected deficits going out for at least a decade. New Zealand needs and New Zealanders want—and they have shown us through the elections we have held that they want—a practical and pragmatic Government. With this National-led Government that is exactly what they have got and what we have delivered for 6½ years.

Within those constraints—that reality—this Government is making a real and positive difference to New Zealand families. We are extending paid parental leave to 18 weeks over two affordable steps in subsequent years and under this Government everyone can benefit from that extension, not only those in very limited, specific circumstances, because this is a Government that is governing for all New Zealanders.

We recognise that families come in many forms now. They have many different priorities and many different specific requirements for assistance, and this bill would help those people, not only specific limited-interest groups. We offer broader support in the broader forms and nature of our assistance. Not only are we extending paid parental leave to 18 weeks, not only are we doing that, but we are going to extend the paid parental leave to caregivers, because we recognise that in some families’ circumstances, it is not going to be the biological parents who will be the ones looking after the child in those early weeks.

Not only are we doing that but also we are going to raise the parental tax credit by 40 percent to $220 per week. That supports parents who choose to remain in the workforce. And not only that but also we have effectively indexed that maximum rate to the average wage, so as the average wage rises—and it has risen in recent years under this Government to be higher than the rate of inflation—so too will that support for parents.

We understand that the well-being of children, of families, is broader than merely the first few weeks, so we have a programme that not only deals with parental leave, parental tax credits, and the form of the family support but also is going to provide things such as free doctors visits and prescriptions for under-13s. It is going to provide more funding, $155.7 million, for early childhood education to raise participation to a 98 percent target.

We are also implementing further comprehensive risk screening for people who work closely with children, as we are also adding a further eight Children’s Teams to help protect our most vulnerable children. Our free breakfast in schools programme for the children who want it—

💬 Sue Moroney: The bill is about paid parental leave.

Well, no, actually. I raise a point of order, Mr Assistant Speaker. The bill is not actually about—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No, no. No, no—[Interruption] Order! Just concentrate on the bill. That is not a point of order. If the member has got nothing to say, well, that is easy; you sit down.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I was just trying to make the point, I think, that care and concern for families including children is a bit broader than merely the first 18 weeks of their life or even, as the member originally had in her bill, 26 weeks. There is more to concern New Zealand families than simply that.

What we have is a Government that is focused on ensuring that we are caring for families across all of New Zealand. But what has been presented to the House to consider tonight and make a final resolution on is, in fact—well, if we forget the fact that the bill has no amending provisions in it and the way the members opposite have talked about it—that all the bill would do is extend a small amount of additional financial support to a very limited number of groups. That is an absolute disappointment because, as I began by saying, the member originally had a fundamental position of principle, which was that she felt—and the Labour supporters felt—that the financial support paid to new parents should be more across the board, but that has been completely diluted.

Meanwhile, while Labour is diluting what it is trying to do, this Government is actually taking real action, real action that addresses the needs of a far broader group of New Zealand families and provides very positive and real outcomes for them. So I oppose this bill and I call upon members across the House to vote against it.

I understand the next call is a split call. Denise Roche—5 minutes.

It is with regret that I rise to take this call on this bill because I see it as yet another lost opportunity. It seems that every time I speak in the House it is about lost opportunities.

This was a great bill. I pay tribute to the sponsor, Sue Moroney, who brought a bill to the House that was a call for 26 weeks’ paid parental leave. I pay tribute to her skilful shepherding of this legislation through the meandering corridors of Parliament and the process, the frequently Byzantine mechanisms, you have to go through to get a piece of legislation back into the House. I refer particularly to sending it to the Government Administration Committee instead of any other committee, which I thought was a very good tactic, and then to compromise—to go through an incredible compromise with the Government—and attempt to reduce the scope of the bill so that 26 weeks’ leave applies specifically to families who have had multiple births or those who have had births where their children had suffered health or disability issues. I think that was very skilful.

So today, as we come to the third reading, we have a gutted bill, as the previous speaker, Brett Hudson, outlined. I think “guts” is the word of the day, and I would suggest that this bill has certainly been gutted. We bring this bill back and it has been eviscerated, essentially, and that is a tragedy. We know for a fact through various research—research that has been canvassed; we have used the entire resources of Parliament through the select committee process to look at the benefits of paid parental leave—that investment in paid parental leave to 26 weeks or beyond can stimulate the economy even during a recession. That is according to Australian research.

We know that we are not keeping up with other countries. We are 24th out of 25 OECD countries for our leave provisions on paid parental leave. If we want to attract skilled workers in a global labour market, then we need to ensure that we have policies and leave provisions that will attract those skilled workers to contribute to our economy here in New Zealand.

The benefits to first-time parents accessing paid parental leave and to their families, to their children in those first few months, are well canvassed. We know that the bonding with families means that there are fewer cases of neglect and abuse of children. We know that children who have had their parents with them in the first year of their lives have better cognition and fewer behaviour problems, which means that we save money down the track. Investment in paid parental leave is certainly an investment in the future, which is quite a change from the short-term thinking we see in this House.

We know that paid parental leave is good for all of us, and yet this Government has allowed the bill, the brave bill that Sue Moroney brought to this House, to be completely and utterly gutted. I have to say that Sue Moroney can take credit for the fact that in the last Budget announcement this Government has actually moved on paid parental leave at all. The fact that it will this year extend paid parental leave from 14 weeks to 16 weeks and then next year to 18 weeks is to her credit. And it is to her credit that the Government was able to see that it was going to lose votes if it did not shift on this, because there are thousands of New Zealanders who want better provisions for paid parental leave. It was also Sue Moroney’s bill that meant that this Government has decided to shift on how paid parental leave can be applied, and to extend the categories that it can apply to.

So although we are voting on a bill that has been gutted, has been emptied, and is a shell of what it was, Sue Moroney can take credit for shifting this Government a few tiny steps in the right direction.

I call Iain Lees-Galloway. Five minutes.

There has been a lot of waffle and distraction from the National Party members in this debate. Let us cut to the chase. If it was not for Sue Moroney, and if it was not for her bill, absolutely nothing would be being done about paid parental leave. That Government would not have done a thing to extend paid parental leave if it had not been for Sue Moroney.

Let us talk about the facts. Some background—the fifth Labour Government introduced paid parental leave. National voted against it. The fifth Labour Government extended paid parental leave. National voted against it. In the last term of Parliament, Sue Moroney introduced this legislation, and at its first reading National voted against it. If it really believed in this issue, it would have taken the bill to a select committee. It would have voted for it to go to a select committee, and it would have worked with the Opposition parties to get it right and to reach a compromise. But, no, it voted against it. But the bill went to the Government Administration Committee anyway. It went to select committee, and the support for it from the public was absolutely overwhelming. National started to understand that it was out of touch, that it was on the wrong side of this debate, and that things had to change. It started negotiating with Sue Moroney. Sue Moroney thought that maybe there was going to be a deal done with the National Party, and that it might agree to support her bill if she reduced the extension of paid parental leave. And then the National Party—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.

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

The paid parental leave bill got to select committee and that is where the National Party realised that it was completely offside and completely out of touch with public opinion. So National members came to Sue Moroney and they indicated that they actually wanted to move from their previous position, where they had consistently voted against paid parental leave, to actually being prepared to extend it. Sue Moroney, wanting to see the best in all people, thought that the National Party wanted to make a compromise and work with her on this legislation. But that was unfortunately incorrect. What the National Party wanted to do was to play politics on this and to block Sue Moroney’s bill and then introduce a weaker version of it of its own.

So the bill came back from the select committee and to the Committee of the whole House. That is where the filibuster began. That is where the National Party MPs stood up in the Chamber and put the brakes on this legislation because, of course, National was in the minority on this issue. But they just thought that if they could hold the bill up until they got to the election, Parliament might change and they might be able to get a majority and block the bill properly. Sadly, they were successful, and that is exactly what happened. When we came back from the election National used its majority with the ACT Party to gut this bill, to actually put this bill into the position that it is in now where it actually has no substance in it. I have heard National MPs talking about the fact that the bill now has no substance in it. The reason is that the National Party voted to remove all the substance from it.

The National Party has at every turn, from when paid parental leave was first introduced by the fifth Labour Government, voted against it and moved to block it. The only reason National is going to introduce legislation of its own is that Sue Moroney has championed this issue and National members have belatedly realised after a decade that they are on the wrong side of this issue and they have to do something to appear to be in touch with ordinary New Zealand voters. That is the only reason National has been prepared to do this.

Then today we get this bizarre situation where David Seymour tries to strong-arm the Government, and now what is going to happen is that the compromise position that Sue Moroney tried to get agreement on with the National Party, which it still voted against—National is now going to do that through its own legislation as well. I am fascinated to know what the libertarian argument is for extending paid parental leave. I would love to hear David Seymour tell us about that. Maybe it is something the Athenians were into—I do not know. But we got into this interesting situation where the National Party is now going to move. It is not going far enough. It is slow off the mark. But thank you, Sue Moroney, for your advocacy. Thank you, Sue Moroney, for standing up for parents. It is only because of Sue Moroney that anything is going to happen at all.

This next call is split into two 5-minute calls.

I rise to take this call on the third reading of the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill. This is the first time I am speaking on this bill. I must say, probably like many viewers and listeners at home listening to that last member of Parliament, I am very confused and probably not terribly interested in the he-said, she-said, they-said—what happened. At the end of the day I think viewers and listeners are interested in what is going to happen. I think it is right that this Government supports our children. It is right that this Government protects that parents have the time with their children. I think it is right that this Government promotes attachment between parent and child. But at the end of the day, a country has to live within its means. The Opposition can have all the best intentions it wants for social policy but if you do not have the money to pay for it, it is just all talk. That is what we have listened to—just all talk.

Last year I had the amazing experience of witnessing the birth of my first child, a fantastic experience that I am sure many people in this Chamber have experienced themselves. I was very proud to be in a country that supports parents and supports parents to spend time with their children. I know for myself it was great to watch my wife enjoy some time with our child and enjoy some time off work. My wife did not qualify for paid parental leave but she did qualify for parental tax credits. I cannot say I have spent much time in the dirty world of politics that that member was referring to—more the dirty world of changing nappies. But I have a lot of pride in being part of a country that is supporting parents to stay home with their children.

I know for a fact that it is valuable for children to have that attachment with their parents. I worked at the Tavistock Clinic in London where the attachment theory was developed by Bowlby. We know that parents spending their time with their children, the attachment, is part of children’s emotional development and their mental health development. I am very proud to be part of a National Government that is committed to giving children the best possible start in life, and a Government that is prepared to extend parental leave but in an affordable way. We have always said that where we can afford it we will do more—where we can afford it we will do more. I think Budget 2014 was a good example of this, where we invested $500 million more into the well-being of children and young people in this country. When we can do more we are doing more. This Government is extending and will extend paid parental leave in a way that is affordable.

Budget 2014 provided a comprehensive package of measures focused on young people and those who need the help the most. What this Government is doing is providing 4 weeks of extra paid parental leave. This will happen in two steps. The first will go up to 16 weeks on 1 April 2015, and then up to 18 weeks on 1 April 2016. Not only that but we are increasing parental tax credits by $70 a week to $220 a week. That will be extended from 2 weeks to 10 weeks. The fiscal cost of this is $180 million over 3 or 4 years and a further $30 million to increase paid parental leave eligibility following that consultation process. What we are doing is realising that you cannot throw money at everything. When I went to the state of the nation report a couple of weeks ago, it said that child poverty was tracking down. It was not tracking down because benefits had increased; child poverty was decreasing because of job creation. So that is why we are modernising paid parental leave. We are modernising it in relation to modern working arrangements. This is why I do not support this bill

I rise to talk to the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill at its third reading. Well, what an extraordinary process listening to Labour on this bill. Quite frankly, the Labour Party is all over the place. At question time over the last few weeks all I have heard, particularly around questions to the Minister of Finance, is that we have borrowed too much to get through the tough years, through the global financial crisis, and that we should have been at surplus earlier—the inference being that we should have cut spending more aggressively than by our measured approach. And now all I hear, and have heard particularly over the last 2 hours as we have discussed and debated this bill, is typical Labour: spend, spend, spend. Spend regardless of the impact on the economy; spend regardless of the impact on New Zealand families, with higher interest rates; spend regardless of the fact that ultimately to pay for it you need to tax middle New Zealand and small business out of existence; and, spend regardless of the fact that this Government has done more for parents and children than any other Government in recent memory, including paid parental leave.

This obsession that somehow only the Labour Party has the moral high ground to hold a view on paid parental leave is absolute nonsense. This party has campaigned on extending paid parental leave, and we got a huge endorsement from this country because of it. What I have struggled to accept and watch from members on the other side of the House, particularly from the Labour Party, is an absolute, almost precious, sense that unless their view of how paid parental leave is be applied, it does not matter, and, therefore, it does not count. Well, it does count. This party has promoted it and has got it through the last Budget, and it is delivering real value in terms of family support in this country.

💬 Sue Moroney: Don’t be mean-spirited; come on.

It is not mean-spirited. That is far from the truth. This is a party that is committed to paid parental leave, has campaigned on it, and has delivered real outcomes for New Zealand. Spend, spend, spend—that is what we get from the Labour Party. Well, guess what? It is not yours to spend. You have not earned it. The hard-working people of New Zealand have earned it, and they have afforded us the privilege to spend it on their behalf.

The Government has said all along—as my good colleague said earlier, and, I think, very effectively—that we are prepared to extend paid parental leave, but in a way that is affordable. We can afford more when we can afford more, and we were very clear in Budget 2014 that over this financial year we would make some adjustments in that regard.

This is a Government that is focused on delivering a comprehensive package of practical measures—practical measures that deliver real value to New Zealand families right here, right now. It is not some utopian view whereby you can provide everything for everybody. This is a package that delivers real value that we can talk to. We have lifted paid parental leave to 16 weeks, and then we will extend it beyond that, to 18 weeks. For our young families we have provided the opportunity to have free GP visits. This is real stuff, OK, and when you get the extreme anger that we hear expressed on the other side of the House because their particular view of paid parental leave does not progress, I think it is a nonsense.

We can talk to a record that is very, very strong for families in this country. In only a couple of months’ time we will be able to extend paid parental leave out to 16 weeks, and then, of course, next year from 1 April we will extend it to 18 weeks—18 weeks. This is not a Government that is not supporting families. That is 18 weeks’ paid parental leave from next year, and we will increase the parental tax credit by $70 a week to $220 a week. They smile and say: “Oh, that’s not good enough.”, but that is real money in the pockets of families in New Zealand, at a time when we have got a whole lot of competing objectives. We can, I think, talk quite confidently to this country about our record of achievement. That is why, quite frankly, when we took this to the country, we got the result that we got last September. I have appreciated the opportunity to spend a few moments talking about why our approach is the right one and why I will vote strongly against the bill that is front of us tonight. Thank you.

Sorry about that momentary interruption. I had to pick up my pen that I dropped in stunned surprise, actually, at the contribution from that member. I am unable to recall his name. He is a new member and perhaps that is why he gave such a confused, rambling speech. I intend to put the facts on the record so that that member will not come into this House and make things up, and talk about voting against a bill that earlier on this very day his Minister committed to introducing. He calls other parties confused. That member will be voting for this legislation when it is in the name of National. That will be the only difference.

He calls Labour financially irresponsible. This legislation would have cost $6 million for the three target groups that Sue Moroney narrowed this bill down to in an effort to get some compromise and support for the most vulnerable families, so that they could have the additional support they need. When Sue Moroney offered that compromise to National, costing $6 million—a quarter of what National is spending on referendums for flags—that member and his party said no, and tonight his name will be on the record for voting against extending paid parental leave to families of premature babies, to families who have multiple births, and to families who have disabled children or children with specific health needs. There are not many other families who are more deserving of additional support than those. If there had been, the member could have added them at the Committee stage of this bill, but, instead, he is voting against those families.

That is one of the best things about our Parliament. The name of every member of Parliament is on the public record alongside how they voted. The member who split his call with the member who has just resumed his seat gave the second speech that he has given in Parliament. The first one was his maiden speech, and that was his second contribution. I want to congratulate him on the birth of his baby. I know that it is a delight to him. I have seen him out and about in Christchurch showing off his baby, and well-deserved too. Tragically, he talked a load of nonsense as well—beautiful baby; terrible speech. He said: “If we don’t have the money, it’s all just talk.” Well, what about in 2002? In 2002 the Labour-led Government Budget surplus—I know that is a strange word for the National Party to hear, but we did it every year—was $2.5 billion.

💬 Chris Bishop: Wasted the surplus.

Mr Bishop should remember that—$2.5 billion. He wrote the speeches for the National Party front bench to come in and say: “You’ve got a surplus. Why don’t you give tax cuts?”. And we said: “Because there are better priorities—higher priorities.” So we introduced paid parental leave in 2002 with a $2.5 billion surplus, and what did the National Party do? What did the National Party do? This party comes in here making stuff up like: “We’ve always supported paid parental leave. We’ve always supported families and babies.” Every single member of the National Party voted against the introduction of paid parental leave in New Zealand. We were finally taking a step towards getting up to speed with the rest of the world that we like to compare ourselves to. Every other country that we like to compare ourselves to has got paid parental leave. In 2002 we had a $2.5 billion Budget surplus, and National voted against it.

In 2004 the Labour-led Government extended paid parental leave, and that year we had a $5.6 billion surplus. Eat your heart out, Bill English—a $5.6 billion surplus. And what did National do then? “Oh, we don’t have the money.” It had the money for tax cuts, but it said it could not afford to extend paid parental leave. And exactly the same thing happened in 2006. We became, in 2006, the first country in the world to have a form of paid parental leave for the self-employed. That is a very good thing because we have a lot of self-employed people in New Zealand. We broke new ground. What did National do? For that similar-sized Budget surplus—listen to those words; you will not hear them much while there is a National-led Government—National voted against it.

So Mr Doocey and Mr Muller, do not come into this House making stuff up, because the Budget surplus and the voting record of your party are on the public record. And what you said—“If only we could afford it. It’s all just talk. You’ve got to walk the walk.”—is absolute nonsense.

💬 Chris Bishop: Laila made you do it.

Mr Bishop knows it because he wrote those rubbish speeches that Bill English and his colleagues set up. I want to congratulate Sue Moroney on her attempt to get paid parental leave extended. I think New Zealand families would have welcomed this. In fact, I can say that with a lot of confidence, because I chaired the select committee that considered this bill and there were over 3,000 submissions to the bill, and 99.6 percent of the submissions on this legislation totally supported it. About 0.5 percent of submitters said that there are some good things and some bad things about it, you know—that there were perhaps some tinkering measures that should take place before they would be 100 percent supportive of it. One single submitter—one single submitter out of over 3,000—opposed it, and that was a tragic submission, actually. It was tragic. The young man who presented the submission clearly had been obliged to on behalf of his employer, and clearly did not want to.

💬 Sue Moroney: The National Party, I think.

And the National Party, I am sure, strongly encouraged him. It could find only one person in the whole country. He said that one of the difficulties with giving women paid parental leave was that, generally, after having a baby and taking time off they forgot what their jobs were, and they had to be completely retrained—so it is total amnesia. I am sure Mr Doocey would know about it. I am not sure whether his wife would share that view; I doubt that she would. She looks pretty on top of things to me, actually, and she has recently had a baby. But this submitter said that women who had a child should not have time off from work because when they went back they would have completely forgotten it. He also forgot that, of course, at the moment we have an entire year’s entitlement in the law for unpaid parental leave, so this bill is actually just filling that gap of absence from the job with some money to support the family. For a lot of families, of course, it makes the difference between them being able to choose, genuinely, to stay at home with their newborn baby and have the attachment that Mr Doocey has clearly had experience with, which everyone in this House will know is so important.

Listen to the health experts and the family support experts who say that breastfeeding for the entire time of 6 months, if possible, is best for the development of the baby. Of course, the stress and pressure of having to work in a job part-time or full-time as well as having a new baby is big. So the more genuine choices we are able to offer families by giving them the financial support that can make that choice a reality, the better it is for New Zealand families. So I am just stunned not only that the National Party fought so pathetically against this bill by filibustering on a member’s bill for hours and hours and hours when it had been watered down, if you like, or tailored, to a meagre $6 million a year. It was a compromise on a plate that National could have accepted, so that those who might be considered the most vulnerable of families, the most in need of that additional support because of the pressures they are facing, could be the ones who got the first additional assistance.

This is less money than it is costing the Government—taxpayers—to move the Treaty of Waitangi one block from Archives New Zealand to the National Library of New Zealand. That is costing $6.7 million—a very good spend, I am sure. It is a whole block that the Treaty is moving—$6.7 million. The implementation of paid parental leave for this targeted group would have cost $6 million. As I have said, it is a quarter of the amount of money that the National Government is going to spend on referendums for a flag.

💬 Simon O’Connor: And how much in the second year? And the third and the fourth and the fifth?

Mr O’Connor, you should take a call and explain to your constituents and the country why your name is going against extending paid parental leave. Sue Moroney did her best to introduce—

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am sorry to interrupt the member, but her time has expired.

I seek leave to table a letter to Government MPs, asking them to support this bill to extend leave to 26 weeks—

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that purpose.

Can I just describe who the letter is signed by and who the letter is from?

You have described the letter. Leave is put for that purpose. Is there any objection? The document will be tabled.

Document, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on Sue Moroney’s bill. This bill is to extend the paid parental leave entitlement of 14 weeks to 26 weeks. It was good to see that the member who spoke before me, Ruth Dyson, acknowledged that National gave tax cuts when we had money, because we do not believe in taxing and spending. I acknowledge that newborns’ and mothers’ health and development benefit from a period of absence from work without worrying about income. This also helps with the balance that is needed in family life and work life, and also helps settling in, with the changes coming to the family with the birth of a newborn.

The National-led Government continues to invest in different public services to help children and families. The Government has already announced changes to parental leave provisions as part of Budget 2014. As for the changes coming soon, we know that the current entitlement of 14 weeks is going to be increased to 18 weeks in two stages. From 1 April 2015 the current entitlement of 14 weeks is going to be increased to 16 weeks, and on 1 April 2016 leave provisions will be extended to 18 weeks. Not just that, but from 1 April 2016 parental leave payments will apply to more workers: those who have just changed jobs, seasonal and casual workers, and workers with more than one employer. Also from 1 April 2016 primary carers, Home for Life parents, and other carers with similar permanent arrangements will be able to access paid parental leave. For babies born on or after 1 April 2015 the Government is increasing the parental tax credit from $150 to $220 a week and is extending the payment period from 8 weeks to 10 weeks.

Parenting is an important and also complex issue and a process that can be stressful and difficult. Raising children is enjoyable, I know, but it can be difficult no matter how many children one raises. It is important for children to have their parents or caregivers or their family with them, especially as a newborn. I acknowledge that. Parenting is an ongoing commitment, but families do like to keep that balance between the time a person spends at home and the person’s commitment to their field of work. It is necessary that we take into account both sides and find this balance, and that is what the National-led Government did. It announced that paid parental leave extension from 14 to 18 weeks.

💬 Stuart Nash: Give women a choice—don’t speak on their behalf.

💬 Simon O’Connor: With everyone else’s money.

Yes, it is everyone else’s money. Paid parental leave is a Government-funded entitlement. It is one of the uses that the taxpayer’s money is put towards; hence we must use this money effectively. The paid parental leave programme is a great initiative and it is important that we make it as effective and efficient as possible. But we need to operate at an affordable level. The extensions announced by the Government are optimal for both family life balance and affordability.

I will share my own experience. Just like many others I did not want to stay away from work for too long as I wanted to be an active contributor in my field of work. As well as this, I know the opportunity to bond with my children is limited. This is why I truly believe, and have learnt, that it is the quality of time that you spend with your children, not the quantity of time that you spend with them.

The family structure is changing. Our families are becoming diverse and our needs are changing as well. Therefore the Government is also developing further changes to ensure New Zealand’s parental leave framework reflects current working arrangements in today’s diverse family structures. To do this, a discussion document was released in July 2014 seeking feedback on the Government’s proposals to enhance and modernise parental leave. Almost 900 submissions were received, and those submissions are under consideration currently. The Government aims to put these changes in place by 1 April 2016.

The Government continues to stand with New Zealand families and children. The National Government is known for delivering value for our taxpayers, and is always striving to deliver more for families and children. The Government is doing a number of other things to help children in our communities, like extending free general practitioner visits to children aged under 13 and free immunisation against rotavirus. It is about fiscal management and balance. We do not support this bill.

I would just like to congratulate that last speaker, Parmjeet Parmar, on a very fine speech, which was representative of somebody who has intelligence, integrity, and a desire to make a difference, unlike the speaker before her, Ruth Dyson, who attacked her when she was speaking and tried to make it personal. That is a disgrace from that member from Christchurch from the Labour Party, who has not got the ability to debate in this House like that last speaker has. It really is something that is the nature of this Parliament. I would like to also congratulate Mr Matt Doocey as well. I thought he gave an excellent speech. I thought he was right on the mark there. He talked about families, commitment, making things work, and how there is that time and desire to do something by the Government for families. I thought his speech was brilliant, and I thought that for a new member coming in that speech was a real speech of integrity as well. I think those last two National speakers can be very proud of the way that they have not played politics with this issue. They have talked about it and they have worked through the issues in a constructive and balanced way, just as the Government has. I also think it is important to acknowledge Sue Moroney here today. She has put a lot of work into the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill. Sue is also from Hamilton, and I know that this is something she is passionate about. Whenever we have debates in Hamilton she brings it up, and I would like to commend her on that. I think that she has shown passion within that area.

💬 Phil Twyford: Always a gentleman.

Yes, yes! No, I do. I think she has done a good job on that, and it is a shame that some members of this House try to play politics with the issue rather than actually look at what is going on and work towards getting long-term solutions that everybody can work with and that are in the best interests of New Zealand families.

I think that is the most important thing, because we all want the same thing. Nobody in this House wants to deny New Zealand families the best start that they can have. That is part of being in this House; it is the future of our country. Of course, we want that. Of course, everybody will work within their own ways to do this. Did you say something, Mr Nash?

💬 Stuart Nash: Are you going to cross the floor and vote for it?

Mr Nash wants me to cross the floor—it is more likely Mr Nash would cross the floor this way and vote against the bill, but that will not happen, will it, Mr Nash? I am sure that cosy seat there is just too nice to do that. The fact of the matter is that all members of this House will feel the same way. It is a matter of balance and of what can be done constructively within the Government. This Government has made changes in regard to paid parental leave. We are working towards making more available for those in that situation, and towards giving our youngest and our brightest and our families the best opportunity we can.

There was one point that was raised by the previous Labour speaker: she mentioned the surpluses that Labour had encountered when it was in Government, and that is true. It had great economic times. It did not have a world recession. It did not have to rebuild our second-biggest city. It had great economic times, and it was probably set up by some great policies before that. It also took New Zealand into recession a year before the rest of the world, but we have to forgive it for that, because it did not know what it was doing. It was just following the economic policy that it had learnt, that was inherent to its beliefs. It had the opportunity then to extend paid parental leave, but it did not happen, did it? Did it happen under Labour when it had the money there? No, it did not. But then the provision comes into this House and Labour makes it an issue now. And I think that is sad, because Sue has spent a lot of time on this bill. Sue really did mean well, and it is disappointing that Labour has not reflected that in her role in Labour now. I think that is an indication that it does not believe in what it is doing. I am disappointed for you in that regard, Sue. I think that Labour had that opportunity; it did not do it. We have been in more difficult economic times, and we have still made moves in that area. OK, it is maybe not what everybody wants, but we have to take the steps that we can. This is a balanced approach.

In summary, I would just like to say that everybody in this House will, no doubt, want to see the best for our families and our children. There is no doubt about that. This bill is part of that process of getting the best for our young children and our families. There are going to be some changes. There is a programme ahead in the Government that has reflected a number of Government initiatives that will deliver for our young people going forward. I would like to thank everybody who has been involved in this bill. Thank you.