Regulatory Systems (Workplace Relations) Amendment Bill

I rise to speak, with some misgivings, actually, on Part 2 of this bill, which is, as I said before, just purely technical amendments to the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act. But I have got to say that what this Parliament should really be doing at this part of the year is actually making the amendments that would have been in place in just 10 days’ time, actually. The irony of standing to talk to technical improvements to paid parental leave, when, really, if the Prime Minister, Bill English, had not vetoed Parliament’s will to extend paid parental leave—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I am now going to sit the member down and say that she might just be able to say that in the third reading, but it is not relevant now.

More is the pity. We are just doing some really minor technical things that really do not improve the bonding between parent and baby at all, but we are doing things that, I guess, recognise how complicated people’s lives can be when a new person enters the world.

The one that I really want to start off talking about is in clause 6 of the bill, which clarifies the entitlements to pre-term baby payments. We did not have a thing called pre-term baby payments until quite recently in New Zealand’s history. And, boy, there is a good story to tell—probably in the third reading—about how that came to pass, because it certainly was not the will of the Government to have a new thing called pre-term baby payments, but they have ended up here none the less. This is when a baby is born prematurely, and now parents have the right, for each week that the baby is born premature, to have an additional week of paid parental leave, effectively. Although, in the legislation, of course, it is not called that. It is called a pre-term baby payment.

So what clause 6 of this bill does is it takes into account—if a baby is born prematurely, quite often that baby is in hospital and under hospital care. It is not able to go home. The bill imagines that the parent who is claiming the pre-term baby payment might actually leave the baby behind in hospital and go back to work instead. I am not sure how often this is going to happen, actually. I am just not sure how many parents would be in the headspace, having just had a premature, tiny little, vulnerable person, to leave the baby behind in hospital and go and start work, but this legislation imagines that might happen.

The effect of clause 6 is to make sure that should that happen, although the parents forfeit their right to the pre-term baby payments, they do not then go on to forfeit their right to paid parental leave, as long as they start their paid parental leave no later than the date on which the baby would have been born—that is, the full-term date on which that baby would have been born.

I guess it is a protection of sorts. But I guess I query how often, in reality, this technicality is going to be used. I cannot imagine the situation in which a baby is so vulnerable and so fragile that it is in the intensive care unit or in the neonatal unit of a hospital, and the parent who is entitled to the pre-term baby payments would go back to work. I really cannot see how you might be in a mindspace in order to do that. However, should that happen, this amendment will address that.

A person who has already started their parental leave period early, for example to take bedrest on doctors’ orders, and that does happen quite frequently, particularly in the situation where a pre-term baby is about to arrive—if the person has already started their paid parental leave payment early for that reason, then they have a pre-term baby and they have their parental leave suspended, then they return to work, forfeiting some or all of their pre-term baby payments, then they recommence their parental leave payment period no later than the original expected due date, that will now all be able to take place because of these technicalities. That particular provision, I think, will be used much more frequently than the one that I described earlier.

This is, again, just describing how complicated things can get when a baby enters into a family. Quite frequently I get people talking to me about the need to start their paid parental leave payment early on doctors’ orders, often because it is for bedrest. That is frequently the situation under which a baby will arrive early. So we are getting the situation where we have got paid parental leave starting, and then baby arrives early—that ceases the paid parental leave and it becomes a pre-term baby payment.

Should the person go then back to work after the baby has been born, then this provision fixes all of that up so that they can continue. They will forfeit their pre-term baby payment, but they can continue to pick up their paid parental leave provision where they left off. That, of course, is the 18 weeks of paid parental leave that we do have in legislation, albeit that on 1 April we should have been going to 22 weeks of paid parental leave. We will not be doing that under this Government.

The other part that I want to spend a little bit of time talking about is the keeping-in-touch days. This bill also amends provisions for the purpose of clarification about these keeping-in-touch days. This, again, is a new piece of terminology, and so I guess it is right and proper that there were always going to be some technical improvements to this legislation, because it is a new concept. It is a concept that has not been tried before. It is the concept that women—well, actually, parents, whichever gender they might be, whoever is the eligible parent taking up the paid parental leave—may go back to work, during the course of their paid parental leave, for up to 40 hours without losing their entitlement to 18 weeks’ paid parental leave.

The reason for that is that when the parent is off on their 18 weeks’ paid parental leave, there might be a course that comes up, which may be offered only once through their work, and so they should not be disadvantaged because they go back and they work for that day, because they do that course.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): This is a very narrow clause, and I must ask the member to come back to what is in the clause, not the general topic.

Sure. I am just ensuring that people know what keeping-in-touch days are, and I am sure they understand that now. Section 71CE(3) of the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act provides that parental leave payments can be recovered as an overpayment when an employee performs work in certain circumstances while on parental leave. So that was the current situation.

This clause 5A will amend that section of the Act by inserting the word “paid” before the phrase “parental leave”, so that it makes sure that it is the paid parental leave where overpayments can be brought back from, not just the unpaid part of the parental leave provision. Of course, parents can choose to go back to work at any stage during an unpaid period of parental leave and not lose their entitlement to continue with unpaid parental leave.

People might wonder why on earth that is even a technicality that we are fixing up here, because what is the harm if the parental leave is unpaid? The harm is that the parental leave provisions in the original Act, the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act, actually give the parent the right to take a certain amount, up to 12 months, of parental leave, albeit that only 18 weeks of it is paid. So making that distinction is important, in terms of parents and their return to work, their brief period of returning to work, and how that impacts on their payment or non-payment or the overpayment being sought from them.

I want to, again, commend the officials, because these are all quite tricky technicalities. They are difficult to think about, the various forms and the things that happen to people in these circumstances, and how we write a piece of legislation that actually reflects real life, that takes into account the human fragilities and all of the issues that families face when a baby is born, and in particular when a baby is born earlier than expected. I want to commend Part 2 of the bill to the Committee.

Thank you, Mr Chairman—a fine choice. I would like to speak very, very briefly to new section 5A of Part 2, which relates to the keeping-in-touch days. In this clause we are inserting one single word—the word “paid”—before parental leave. It is a very important distinction to make because the parents who make use of this new keeping-in-touch-days provision are able to work for up to 40 hours. If they work over 40 hours during their paid parental leave period, then any parental leave paid to them at that point is considered an overpayment. So it is really important to make a distinction between the paid parental leave and the unpaid parental leave people can take, because a parent can come back for as long as they like during the unpaid period of parental leave, work for as long as they wish, and still be entitled to unpaid parental leave, and they are entitled to keep any pay that they receive. It is, actually, a very, very important distinction that we make between the period of paid parental leave and the period of unpaid parental leave. The addition of that single word “paid” before the words “parental leave” is very important.

I said that my comments would be brief. It is half past 9, so I am happy to relinquish the floor at this point.

Part 2 agreed to.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Bills to be reported without amendment presently.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported the Regulatory Systems (Building and Housing) Amendment without amendment, the Regulatory Systems (Commercial Matters) Amendment Bill without amendment, and the Regulatory Systems (Workplace Relations) Amendment Bill without amendment.

Report adopted.