Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill

I move, That the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

This Labour-led Government is committed to doing its part to give children the best possible start in life, and this bill committing New Zealand to provide 26 weeks of paid parental leave (PPL) by 2020 will help to reduce some of the stress placed on families when a new child arrives. Extending paid parental leave is just one component of our overall families package, which includes increasing Working for Families payments and extending it to 30,000 more families, introducing the Best Start payment for all families, and additional accommodation and winter energy payments.

Through the introduction of the Best Start scheme and our increase in Working for Families payments, the Government will target money and support for babies and toddlers at low and middle income families. We believe that every Kiwi child deserves the best start in life, regardless of their background.

In the first year of a child’s life—particularly the first six months—it is important for a newborn’s development to get full-time personal care. It is also important for parents and caregivers to get support to manage budgetary and other pressures. Full-time care and monetary support can greatly assist with allowing the time and space for parents and other caregivers to develop close bonds with children, and with reducing parental and family stress. The measures also assist with enabling mothers to breastfeed exclusively for the first six months, which is the World Health Organization’s recommendation. All of these things combined support children’s health and development, and improve short-term and long-term child and societal outcomes.

I acknowledge that the previous Government did take steps to expand the reach of our parental leave scheme, including by broadening the types of working arrangements that could qualify for parental leave. The last Government also made increases in the duration of parental leave payments. However, despite having a majority of the House in support of Labour member Sue Moroney’s bill to extend paid parental leave to 26 weeks, it was vetoed by the former Prime Minister, who was the then Minister of Finance. “It couldn’t be done.”, he said. Well, we say it can, and it will, because we will be a Government defined by its heart, putting people at the centre of everything that we do.

There is currently a fundamental shortcoming in our parental leave scheme. New Zealand’s current paid parental leave entitlement of 18 weeks is one of the lowest in the OECD, with the average number of weeks of paid leave for mothers among OECD countries being 48 weeks. Eighteen weeks is well short of the six months, which, according to the Australian Productivity Commission and the OECD, is the minimum time necessary for child and maternal health and welfare benefits. We know from earlier quantitative surveys on the parental leave scheme, and from the many public submissions in support of the two members’ bills sponsored by Sue Moroney, that many mothers in New Zealand are compelled to return to work sooner than they wish to after the birth of a child, for financial reasons. In fact, the data told us that a third of mothers taking paid parental leave were working five months after they started their parental leave.

The majority of recipients of paid parental leave take the leave at the end of other paid leave, such as annual leave, in order to maintain income for as long as possible. The Government is introducing this bill to enhance the paid parental leave provisions, to ensure families with a newborn—and other primary carers responsible for young children—are supported, to give that child the best possible start in life.

An earlier evaluation of parental leave, which looked into the experience of employers, found that two-thirds of employers agreed that PPL allows them to plan and manage workloads with greater confidence, and 70 percent said that PPL helped them to retain experienced staff. Enhancing paid parental leave for families should not have an adverse impact for business and employers. Employers are already required to provide job-protected leave to eligible employees for a minimum period of six months if the employee has been working for them for at least six months but no less than 12. For employees who have worked for them for 12 months or more, the period of extended leave is one year. The change we are progressing today does not require employers to provide any additional leave. What it may do is provide more certainty for employers, given the likelihood that more parents will take the full 26 weeks if the leave is paid. This may give greater confidence to employers about the length of time they need to backfill the role.

If I may turn my attention to the mechanics of the bill that is currently before the House. The bill is a straightforward one. It provides for an increase in the duration of paid parental leave from the current 18 weeks to 26 weeks. This is achieved in two stages: first, an increase to 22 weeks from 1 July 2018, with a further increase to 26 weeks from 1 July 2020. As with previous extensions to our PPL scheme, these new time frames will apply where the actual or expected date of delivery of the baby is on or after the date of the change. In this case, babies born on or after 1 July 2018 will be eligible for the additional four weeks of paid parental leave, and babies born on or after 1 July 2020 will be eligible for the full 26 weeks. In the case of whāngai, Home for Life carers, and formal adoption, the relevant date is that on which they assume the permanent care of the child. This will benefit the full range of primary carers currently eligible for parental leave payments, providing increased support for working parents with newborns, and families taking on the permanent care of children under the age of six. It will enable those carers who are not currently in a position to take additional unpaid leave to reach the six-month period, considered a minimum for optimal child development, and where many benefits of full-time personalised care are realised. It is our view that this investment in the well-being of parents and their newborns and young children is critical to achieving better social and economic outcomes for all New Zealanders.

I want to acknowledge the efforts of many people, but in particular those of Sue Moroney in championing this issue in this House. This is a matter that this House has supported twice over in the past, and it gives me great pleasure to bring it in as a Government bill, with the opportunity for us to finally progress this issue and achieve the 26 weeks’ paid parental leave that New Zealanders have been crying out for for so many years.

This bill responds to the needs of working parents and caregivers and newborn children, by providing better assistance to provide more financial certainty. I commend this bill to the House.

Mr Speaker, thank you. I will take a call in this first reading under urgency on the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill, and note that it has been tabled only a very few minutes ago. The Opposition, of course, therefore, are having their first chance to have a look at it. But I see that it’s not just the Opposition that haven’t had the chance to put it together; there is this somewhat flimsy accompaniment with the bill, which is simply called a “cover sheet”, and which clearly has done away with the requirement for a regulatory impact statement (RIS) in the normal way, which I do find somewhat interesting given the vehemence with which the Government, when in Opposition, insisted on due process and insisted on proper regulatory impact statements. They jumped up and down with outrage when there wasn’t a full assessment and ability to understand the impacts. This cover sheet, I have to note, notes that there will not be any regulatory impact assessment for 100-day plan priorities. Clearly, the Government thinks that the most important things they are doing don’t deserve a proper impact assessment. In fact, Treasury notes that the RIS contains only very minimal analysis of likely impacts. Fiscal impacts are apparently set out in the Cabinet paper, but, of course, we haven’t been given any of that, and social impacts are only touched on, but there’s no assessment of broader impacts.

So straight away, the very first piece of legislation that this new Government brings to the House—firstly, they’re using urgency where there is utterly no reason to do so. This is a bill that takes effect—it’s very first iteration takes effect—on 1 July next year. And yet, straight away, this is a Government that is so unready to govern that they didn’t have their legislation ready and don’t trust themselves to put it to a select committee, where the public, very properly, would want to have a say. I say that because, while the National Opposition is going to support the bill—and I will touch on why that is in a moment—the National Opposition can absolutely see that there are opportunities in this bill where the public would want to have a say, because, actually, it is not just about the number of weeks, which is all that Labour had in their manifesto. There are some very real issues.

Now, I would point out to the House that, actually, it was National that increased paid parental leave from 14 to 18 weeks, and it was National that campaigned as well on increasing it to 22 weeks. But I would point out to the Government that, actually, we would like to think that, given that this is an issue that they have chosen to put forward as their first piece of legislation, they would want to see it work as well as they could for young parents.

There are some very important issues that, as far as I can tell in the limited time the Government has permitted us to see the legislation, simply aren’t in here. Those are issues that we included in our policy, like ensuring that there is flexibility, so that both parents can take some of that time off together, and also ensuring that there is other support for parents and newborns, which we had put in our policies, around free dental care during pregnancy and more IVF funding. So even if you didn’t want to go into the wider newborn support, there are very real issues to look at in how the weeks of paid parental leave are allocated.

I think it is really very revealing, and very sad, that the Government is not taking the opportunity to put this bill to a select committee. I can see—and I listened very carefully to the Minister’s speech—that there wasn’t a single reason given as to why this needed to be done in urgency. He didn’t even touch on it. And yet here is a Government who, when they were on this side of the House, used to wind themselves up in faux outrage, and how quickly we see how little the principles that they espoused for nine years fell to the wayside when it didn’t suit them.

Actually, the reality is it’s a rushed piece of legislation—

💬 Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: No, it’s not.

—and they don’t want the public to have the chance to have a look at it. And if it wasn’t a rushed a piece of legislation, Mr Lees-Galloway, why wasn’t it on the Table a heck of a lot sooner than about half an hour ago?

This is a bill that this Opposition will support, because we campaigned on taking paid parental leave to 22 weeks. We are in fact the party, as I said, that did extend paid parental leave, not once but twice, and we have always said that we wanted to see that expanded as and when fiscal and economic conditions permitted. So we have no problem with that.

What is interesting, though, is that we shouldn’t kid ourselves: these are big-ticket spending items. At least $60 million a year—at least—for the first jump, and then at least that much again. Actually, we don’t know, because the fiscal costings, to the extent that they have been done—we are not being told about them. They don’t want the public to know, they don’t want the Parliament to know, and they don’t want select committees to examine it. They’ve buried it in a Cabinet paper they haven’t put out. They’ve refused Treasury the opportunity to do a full regulatory impact statement, and you have to start wondering: is that because the numbers don’t add up? Whatever the numbers are, we know that it’s a lot of money. As I said earlier this afternoon in the Address in Reply debate, it’s very easy to spend money, but at some point in time the numbers are going to have to be made to add up.

One point that I want to make is that the cost of doing this—yes, the policy was in Labour’s manifesto, as it was in ours, but the cost of it wasn’t in their pre-election fiscal plan that they put out. Now, how much did we hear through the campaign about how they’d costed everything and they were being fully transparent and they were going to be a Government of transparency? This was going to be the “people’s Parliament”. Well, straight away, the people are being shut out. They are being excluded from the right to have a say.

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

💬 Mr SPEAKER: The House is resumed. [Interruption] Order! Mr Strange—your first mention in the House is a reprimand. That’s not a good thing. When we broke for the dinner, we were debating the first reading of the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill. The Hon Amy Adams is speaking, and she has three minutes and 57 seconds remaining to speak.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I will enjoy every second of those three minutes and 57 seconds. When we broke for the dinner break, I had been working through explaining that the National Opposition will be supporting this legislation because of its consistency with the position that we have taken for many years of extending parental leave as and when fiscal conditions allow. In fact, it was that Government that extended it twice in our term, and, of course, National campaigned on 22 weeks’ leave in this year’s election—that we wanted to extend it as conditions permitted.

The point that I was making, though, is that this is an incredible turnaround of principle from parties who until now have derided, castigated, abused, and got outraged over the use of urgency. Now, when the National Government took urgency it was very clear as to the need and the reasons for doing so. This Government, on its very first piece of legislation—and, actually, policy that they’ve had for some time; it’s not a new idea to them—have taken urgency for no good reason for legislation that won’t take effect until 1 July next year. Now, you could say, “Well, it doesn’t really matter.” Well, it does, because I believe that the public can add value to this bill. I think there are a number of ways that paid parental leave works, quite apart from the issue of how many weeks are available, that could validly be explored, and we counted a number of them in our policy.

But the other thing, of course, which I talked before the dinner break about, is the fact that this rushed and hurried and last-minute, seat-of-the pants process has left this bill very light on the sorts of details that this House needs to properly scrutinise and that the public would want to see. We talked about the fact that there are no fiscals at all. There were certainly none included in Labour’s pre-election information, and I mentioned previously that Treasury, who have a very important job in assessing these things, have already noted that the assessment contains “only very minimal”, and I am quoting, “analysis of the likely impacts”—only very minimal analysis.

Then, what I didn’t touch on before dinner was the fact that the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, again, have noted in their comments that compressed time frames have “limited our ability to consider a full range of options. The phased nature of the extension means that there is less certainty for the costings”. Now, why on earth, when you have a policy that Labour have been talking about for some time, would you have a process that has such rushed time frames that none of the agencies who are tasked with properly scrutinising and providing information to this House—none of them have the ability to do their job? It is an absolute attack on this House in the first bill out of the gate. So that tells you a lot about where this Government sees itself and how it’s going to run, and how quickly it dispenses with its principles.

And I want to just reflect for a moment on the Green Party, who have spent nine years telling us that they do not support the use of urgency except in very exceptional circumstances. I’ll quote from Gareth Hughes, who just this year said that “[there’s] huge room for improvement, as the Hon Trevor Mallard talked about … Urgency is a particularly important one. All members of this House … have seen legislation passed under urgency when it [didn’t] have to happen … It should [only] happen … in extraordinary circumstances,”. And how quickly they give that away for a chance to sit at the big table. How quickly the things that they told us—that they are a principled party—and the things that they stood for are given away. The first bill out of the gate: no process, no select committee, no fiscals, and no proper assessment.

So we will support the bill on its merits, but I have to say: if this is how Labour and the Greens plan to run their Government, then I am appalled at how quickly they’ve given up on the things that they told us really matter to them.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, and as this is my first speech to the House for this 52nd Parliament, can I just begin by congratulating all of our new members across the House. Can I also congratulate the Hon Trevor Mallard—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: The right honourable.

—the Rt Hon Trevor Mallard—for being our new Speaker of the House, and I sure hope that you will be patient with all of us, Mr Speaker. Can I also just say that I was heartened by your speech yesterday, Trevor Mallard, because you said you wanted this House to be a much more family-friendly environment, and can I just say that in this House right now we have Heeni right here. So thank you for your words yesterday, Mr Speaker.

I am humbled that the very first piece of legislation under this new Labour-led Government is an extension to paid parental leave. This has been a long battle with many barriers that have been put up, especially by members from across the opposite side of this House, and I’d like to take this moment, if you would allow me, to acknowledge the former colleague Sue Moroney for all of her work, for having championed paid parental leave for many, many years. Sue—she fought an amazing campaign. She had the support of the majority of this House, and we know that this is not the first time that we’re actually debating this paid parental leave legislation. At the very last moment when this paid parental leave was brought to this House, it was financially vetoed by the former Prime Minister the Rt Hon Bill English. So now we can complete her legacy in this House.

I’d like to also spend a few moments to address the previous member who spoke on this bill—a kind reminder to the Hon Amy Adams that this is not the first time we are debating paid parental leave in this House. This is not the first time that we have introduced it for first reading and gone through the whole process: select committee, second reading, third reading. This is not even the second time, the Hon Amy Adams, that we are going through this process; this is indeed the third time we have discussed paid parental leave. We have had regulatory impact statements, we have had departmental reports, we have had thousands and thousands of members of the public submitting on paid parental leave. Can I just kindly remind the Hon Amy Adams and the National Party that this is the third time we have debated paid parental leave. It is a no-brainer that extending paid parental leave to 26 weeks will ensure a better start in life for our babies. I’m glad to know now from the Hon Amy Adams that the National Party have done a U-turn. They’ve finally seen the light and will be supporting this bill at first reading.

Paid parental leave is an investment. It is an investment in our parents, it is an investment in our children, it is investment for all of New Zealand. It will have long-lasting benefits for our children and for Aotearoa New Zealand. We value our people, we value our mothers, and we value our fathers. Our parents and our children will be at the heart of everything that this new Government will be implementing. Parents in Aotearoa New Zealand can look forward to the passage of 26 weeks’ paid parental leave. This is something that the Labour-led Government promised we would deliver on in our first 100 days, and in order to support our working families and our newborn children in a better way, we will be delivering on that promise.

This Government is committed to major investments in housing. We are committed to major investments in education, in health, in police, and in infrastructure. We are also committed to protecting our environment, creating more jobs, and lifting the incomes of families and reducing child poverty—the very first time that we will have a Minister who will be looking and monitoring to ensure that we reduce child poverty. And we will continue, at the same time, committing to all of those by making sure that we keep to being a financially and fiscally responsible Government, as Labour Governments have been before us.

As Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern stated earlier on today, “No one should live in a car. No one should live on the streets. No one should have to beg for their next meal.” No one—no child—should be experiencing poverty. I’ve seen this first-hand in my area in South Auckland. I’ve seen mothers who have come to me, and these mothers live in cars. They live in garages, and I’m glad to be part of a progressive Government that will be addressing inequality, that will be eliminating and looking towards ending child poverty. New Zealand should be a fully inclusive, supportive society, and this is something that this Government is actually focused on: building strong families and ensuring that our children are supported in this journey. The Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill is about recognising the importance of bonding between infants and their parents—between Speakers of the House and infants. [Mr Speaker holding a baby] It is about making sure that our children have the best possible start in life. It is about doing what is right.

I agree with Plunket, who have been in operation in our country for over 100 years. They have been strong supporters of paid parental leave for many, many years, and I quote from Plunket: “the benefits for society of extending paid parental leave will outweigh the costs over the long term”. Enhancing opportunities for infants, securing and ensuring that they are attached to the family unit, is really crucial, especially in the first six months of their lives. Increasing paid parental leave, according to Plunket, is something that will ensure that we will look at saving costs in health and saving costs to our welfare benefit system. The simple fact is New Zealand is lagging behind the rest of the OECD in paid parental leave. We are one of the lowest countries in the OECD for paid parental leave as it is now. Even when we extend it to 26 weeks, we will still be behind the UK, which is currently offering 37 paid parental leave weeks.

Paid parental leave will be increased to 22 weeks by 1 July next year, 2018, and it will go up to 26 weeks by 1 July 2020. Paid parental leave is a key part of our families package—the Labour Party’s, that is—and I say that it is indeed a pleasure to stand here to be part of a Government, three parties, where Labour, New Zealand First, and the Green Party collectively are proud of supporting this paid parental leave bill. It is the right thing to do for our children, for our parents, for our whānau, and for our mokopuna.

Today marks the start of a progressive, inclusive, empathetic, and very strong Government. I am proud to support the work of my former colleague Sue Moroney, and I’m glad to be part of a Government that will see her vision realised. This begins our work programme to give New Zealand families the best start in life, and, in the words of Sue, and I quote, “It is simply about priorities, and the priority should be [our] families and giving [our] children the [very] best start in life.” Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you to the Labour Government for clapping as I stood. Mr Speaker, knowing how often you have said to us on so many occasions that we should not rise and read our speeches, I can assure you that I won’t be. I’d like to, obviously, acknowledge the person who has just resumed her seat, the Hon Jenny Salesa, and say to her I am very pleased that we have another strong voice in the South Auckland area. The member and I have often worked together on various things, and it’s always good to see someone who has such a nice personality, although she does read her speeches, come through and become a Minister.

💬 Hon Chris Hipkins: Oh, Judith, you were doing so well. Why did you have to spoil it?

Ha, ha! That’s because I know my job. That’s because I know my job, Mr Hipkins.

I would like to talk about this bill, because I think this is an excellent bill, and I’ll tell you why I think it’s an excellent bill: because it’s actually National Party policy for the 2017 election. I’ve got it here, for those on the other side who might have missed it, but it’s our policy. It’s always good to be able to support a Government or a party that wants to support the National Party’s policy. Of course, it was the National Government that increased paid parental leave last time, and it’s great we’ve been hearing tonight—

💬 Hon Member: Twice!

Twice, in fact. Of course, a miserable Labour Government, which left office, thankfully, in 2008, was not, actually, nearly as generous as a National Government—but we are so used to that.

I think one of the things that I thought was so interesting is how everybody tonight has talked about our departed former MP Sue Moroney. And I think we should acknowledge the work that Sue did. She was always an effective member of the Opposition. She worked hard, she tried hard, and she got dumped so far down the list of the Labour Party that she just gave up and went home—except actually she is now apparently going to work for the Public Service Association, so good luck with that over there in the Labour Government. I think Sue might want a bit of utu, because, frankly, why wouldn’t she?

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Well, she’s not like you.

But anyway, apparently they didn’t like her when she was the whip. Watch out, Hon Ruth Dyson. They didn’t like her when she was the whip, and look what happened to her.

So let’s just talk about this bill again, our National Party policy that the Labour Government has kindly taken up for us. It is—

💬 Hon Member: Not as good as ours.

Not as good as ours. It’s good to note that New Zealand actually has one of the highest participation rates for women in the paid workforce in the OECD, and we could do better, personally. And I think the whole paid parental leave issue is one that does enable women, in particular, and men, to continue to work in the workforce, have a job, and have a family and raise the children. As a mother, who has, in fact, raised a child when I was working full-time in my own law firm with no parental leave—terrible employer, of course, to myself—the fact is that it is quite a big, tough call for a lot of small businesses, particularly if there is a client-solicitor relationship or some sort of client relationship there. It is tough, but I believe that New Zealand businesses have, overall, really embraced the concept of paid parental leave, because they can see that, obviously, so often it’s the best woman for the job, in my opinion. I think many of us often think that about it.

When we see that, as mothers, we know that mothers can do anything, and we also know that the people who actually look after children, who raise them up, are far more realistic about life generally and far more forgiving of people’s foibles, because when you’re doing what you have to do as a parent, you’re working, you often have broken sleep through the night, and you learn to sleep in three- to four-hour blocks, normally, and you actually either survive with that or you don’t. And I want many women to see that to come back into the workforce after the paid parental leave is really important.

There is some international research that indicates that the longer that women take paid parental leave for, the less likely they are to come back to the workforce. I think that’s something that people should be able to discuss, and to think, “What’s going on there?” Is it that women do, in fact, as mothers away from the workforce, lose the confidence to come back? Maybe they have learnt that they don’t want to go back, but I actually think it’s got a lot to do with confidence, myself. Certainly, when I had my own law firm I often used to particularly want to employ women who were coming back to the workforce with children. Apart from the fact I knew they could do anything, and actually really loved being at work, the big issue I noticed was quite a lot of women coming back to the workforce after they had left to have children underestimated their own value as to what they could add to the workforce, and often simply just weren’t sure that people would take what they said. They’d lost a lot of confidence. So I think there’s a lot that we could talk about with that.

In particular, it’s a bit of a shame this is not going to select committee, so I—as a new member of a select committee again—could actually partake in that discussion, because I think this is important. It is not just a matter of saying, “Oh, go and have this leave or these other things.” It’s actually also about giving people the confidence to do the job, but also knowing that they are valued and that their time as mothers and their work as mothers and their experience as mothers is something that adds to their value into the workforce. So, personally, I think it’s a great thing to be able to have this.

I well remember when the first bills came through, when it was first introduced back in the old days of a miserable Labour Government, and it wasn’t open at that stage to people in small businesses—as in, self-employed people.

💬 Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: How did National vote on that bill, Judith?

Because it didn’t actually involve self-employed people—people who are self-employed, like I had been, who were in fact being asked to pay for things.

💬 Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: So because you didn’t get it, you voted against it?

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order!

No, no, it’s about being fair. I know that Mr Iain Lees-Galloway will never have the experience of life that I have. He needs to, perhaps, just consider—and he would be a much better person if he did—that it’s all very well to make silly little comments from the sidelines, but sometimes he’s actually expected to do something. So I’m looking forward to him actually doing something now that he’s a Minister. I think it will be an interesting experience that may even be new for him.

So really, this bill is an exceptionally good piece of National Party policy ably taken up by the Government—

💬 Hon Amy Adams: Not that ably.

—but having said that, missing, as my friend the Hon Amy Adams has told me, some of the better, the kinder, and the more caring parts that we would have put in.

It’s so good, Mr Speaker, to see you so embracing children in the House, as well.

💬 Hon Amy Adams: Literally.

Ha, ha! I thought the baby was very good and didn’t cry either, by the way. I thought it was excellent—I see very good parenting going on there. But I well remember when I first started in Parliament. It was a mere 15 years ago; I was then 22.

💬 Hon Members: Ha, ha!

OK, 22 in my mind. Anyway, I can well remember the Rt Hon Jonathan Hunt—and the Speaker and a few others may well remember that we would have had the call about a stranger in the House at that stage, and it would have been a very difficult situation. My good friend Katherine Rich—who, many will remember, actually became a mother twice as a member of Parliament—found that some of the nastiest comments were unfortunately directed to her by people who today are professing to be such advocates for women in the workforce and mothers in the workforce. People like Katherine were given a very hard time.

If you want to talk to someone like the Hon Ruth Richardson, who was, in fact, one of the very first mothers with babies in Parliament—I also remember that Mrs Tirikatene-Sullivan was one, too. The difficulties that they faced from an extremely male-dominated, hierarchical situation, where there was no thought about children being part of a normal working environment, seem utterly bizarre today. Certainly, growing up on a farm like I did, with my mum and working on a farm, me working—or not really, actually; mostly getting in the way. But kids on farms are used to their parents working, being in the workplace, and learning not to end up in a dangerous situation or anything else. So I don’t think it’s that difficult.

I personally think, as a former employer, that I really loved having kids come into the workplace, and I’m really pleased to see them here today. I think when they’re two it might be a little challenging, but, you know, it won’t be me that’s having to do that job. I just think it’s great to see kids being part of our Parliament, because, actually, isn’t that why we’re all here?

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Thank you very much. Can I acknowledge my colleague that just resumed her seat. It’s always great to follow the Hon Judith Collins. I was going to say Tizard—sorry, I beg your pardon. It was a bit of a mind blank. It’s been a while since I’ve been here, and considering you’re only 37 years old, I don’t know how I made that mistake.

It’s always a joy to follow the Hon Judith Collins because it’s a juxtaposition between just hilarious and extremely outrageous, some of the statements that are made by the honourable member—for example, to hold up a leaflet around the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill and now say that this is National Party policy. Can we just clarify—I need to go back, because there will be some National Party members over there who will believe Ms Collins that this was National Party policy.

So let’s be clear about what has happened. First of all, let’s be clear that this bill has had two select committee hearings, and in the last one there were 6,755 submissions. Of those submissions, 99.94 percent were in favour, hence why this Government—this New Zealand First - Labour Party - Green Party, collegial, really positive, moving-forward-with-a-plan Government—is not going to cost the taxpayers more money. We already know what the taxpayers believe and want—6,755 submissions; 99.4 percent.

Now, let’s get to the comment that this is actually National Party policy. Let’s remember that it was Sue Moroney that forced—forced—National into extending paid parental leave because of the 26 For Babies campaign. Let’s get real. All those other young members over there, the new members of the National Party; you need to listen up, because you don’t want to believe the spin. The worst thing you can do is believe your own spin, all right? That’ll catch you out with the facts every single time.

So Sue Moroney ran, and across the country there was the 26 For Babies campaign. The previous Government convinced Sue Moroney, because she was a good, decent, honest woman who believed in collegial cross-party consensus in this House, to hold off bringing her bill back to this Parliament. It was a gentleman’s agreement, and what did the previous National-led Government do? They undercut her bill by bringing in legislation of their own. They convinced her to not bring it back to the House, they convinced her to delay the bill on the Order Paper, and they undercut her. That is how this became National Party policy, if it ever was. It’s one thing to campaign on it; it’s another thing to actually get up and do the work. So this is the Government that’s going to do the work.

Can I thank my Cabinet colleagues. Can I thank the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway for working with New Zealand First, and can I thank him for the acknowledgment of fathers inside the bill. Mr Seymour may stand up a little bit later, and he did actually contribute the last time this bill was in the House, which is why it’s no surprise to the Opposition members that the last time the bill was in the House he stood up and gave a contribution taking to task any mention of fathers not availing themselves of paid parental leave.

In this country, 1 percent—1 percent—of fathers avail themselves of paid parental leave. In Sweden, when we were able to identify and encourage fathers and allow them, in a socially acceptable way, to take this leave, that percentage jumped to 25 percent. I would hope that once we pass this bill through, once we acknowledge as a nation that 26 weeks is the minimum that our babies should expect—the minimum that our babies should be cared for and acknowledged and supported by their Government—we will then work forward, because we are a progressive, collegial, positive Government of New Zealand First, Labour, and the Green Party, and we are going forward and we will encourage fathers to participate more.

As the Minister for Children now, one of the things that I know we need to do better is to engage fathers in the lives of their children—fathers who are under stress, families who are under stress. We need to acknowledge more, as a Government, those equal parental rights—those parents and their importance to every child. The mention in the explanatory note of the bill acknowledges them as equal parents. I’m so pleased, and I thank my colleagues for actually making that change for us.

This has been a long time coming. It’s been a long time coming not because we haven’t discussed it for a long time—it’s been discussed again and again and again. It’s been a long time coming because, for whatever reason, the previous Government decided that things like a flag referendum at $25 million, things like a Saudi sheep farm in the Middle East, were more important to fund than our children—were more important to fund than to bring in financial support from the State to say that “for those 26 weeks we believe in having a parent at home, and we’re going to support you to have that choice.” The previous Government used to trumpet that word “choice”. Everything was about choice, except when they didn’t agree with it.

So we’re really, really pleased. New Zealand First is very, very pleased to stand and support this bill through urgency. And it is urgent, because our families need it. Our babies need it. Our mothers and fathers need it. They need the security to know that as soon as possible they can plan for this.

The Hon Amy Adams stood and said again and again and again that there’s no regulatory impact assessment—there’ve been two. The Hon Adams stood up and said that there’s no financial mapping—there have been two sets. If the previous Government says that it was their policy, did they not price it out? Are they saying that they didn’t price it out? There have been two sets of financials go through this House. How did the Rt Hon Bill English do a financial veto if there wasn’t already financial mapping? Upon what basis did he do a financial veto on this bill if the Hon Amy Adams said that there is no financial mapping? How can those two things be true?

So let’s just go and fact-check what we’re talking about here. That’s what I’m asking the Opposition to do. Don’t stand and just start putting out piece after piece after piece because it makes a nice sound bite. People can go away and check what was said before. They can go away and check your actions before. That’s what the Opposition now needs to be careful of—nine years of Hansard, nine years of actions, like the financial veto on a bill that 99.94 percent of submitters said they were in favour of. Twenty-six weeks for babies—across the country they marched, went to meetings, held coffee meetings, and showed up with postcards, posters. It was a full campaign. That is the only thing that took the ice out of the heart of National.

I am pleased to hear that the National Party is going to vote for it, but let’s just be clear on our rhetoric. We know where this came from. We know whose policy it was. Don’t take it away from Sue Moroney and the amazing work she did. Let’s get our rhetoric right and in Hansard. Kia ora.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I want to just congratulate the four presiding officers that have been elected by this Parliament—yourself included, Mr Assistant Speaker.

It is interesting because I actually kind of agree that this is an important piece of legislation, and so to have a piece of legislation that’s before the 52nd Parliament—the very first piece of legislation that’s come to this House—as one that National is supporting the Government on I think is significant. But I want to reiterate one of the reasons why we are supporting it. We campaigned on increasing paid parental leave to 22 weeks. So in our time in office, we increased it from 14 weeks to 18 weeks. We campaigned on increasing it to 22 weeks. Can I tell the House that when the debate was going on about increasing it to 26 weeks at that time, one of the biggest concerns, particularly from small businesses, was jumping significantly from 18 to 26 weeks, and the importance—so whether it was chambers of commerce, or whether it was local small businesses or medium-sized businesses, which actually make up the majority of our economy, it was the ability to transition and take such a leap.

So we support this legislation. I actually think it would be useful for the Government to have considered some of the other areas that we believe were important in supporting new families with newborns. Some of that absolutely is aimed at the dad, or the second parent. It’s really unfortunate that hasn’t been included in this bill, and that’s why I think that the lack of scrutiny and the lack of an ability for the public to submit in the select committee is a real concern. But I want to come back to that.

Some of the other things that we had included, as well as our kind of incremental steps to increase paid parental leave, campaigning on 22 weeks—one of the things that I think is really important is the ability for both parents to take paid parental leave at the same time. This is a comment that lots of my friends made when they had their children—the fact that one of the parents was able to have time off was great. Actually, you know, when I had children, you weren’t entitled to paid parental leave, and the reality was if you were self-employed, you had no rights to get any paid parental leave. I think some of the changes that we made in our time in office actually made the paid parental leave system far more flexible, far more realistic, and far more practical for real Kiwi families. That’s something I’m particularly proud of.

One of the things when you find out as a family or as an individual that you’re expecting, as I did with my first pregnancy—the last thing you want to have to worry about is: how are you going to pay the bills? So paid parental leave absolutely is critical. I applaud the Government for making this a priority, and the fact that National is supporting it—because we campaigned on it. But the thing you shouldn’t be proud of is the fact that this is not going to a select committee.

So there are a lot of new members in the House, and I want to congratulate our “class of 2017”, particularly from National, but across the House. I want to say, one of the things that is absolutely the most critical job you do in Parliament is your work on a select committee, and the biggest job you do on a select committee is listen. You listen to the submitters, whether there are five of them, whether there are 50 of them, or whether there are 5,000 of them. I remember when we were debating the resource management law amendment, the power of the select committee process was so, so clear to me. When we were sitting in Auckland, a person had come before us, a member of the public who had driven for five hours to appear before the select committee so he could have his say in our democratic process—he could have his say. He was allocated five minutes because, literally, we had hundreds and hundreds of submitters we were hearing. He turned around and drove for five hours home.

That Government—you have taken away the opportunity for ordinary New Zealanders to have their say on this legislation. And you say it’s the same bill. Rubbish! Read the titles—two different bills. Actually, what you may have done is incorporated some of the things that real New Zealand families want: greater flexibility.

So one of the things, as I say to the new members in the House—the select committee is a critical part of your role, whether you are a Labour MP, whether you’re a National MP, or whether you’re a Green MP. The ability to scrutinise legislation, to listen to the public, to ensure, and to actually make the legislation better than when it was originally drafted—you’ve just removed that opportunity for the public to do that. So you’ve removed the opportunity for families and you’ve removed the opportunity for employers, and I think that’s absolutely outrageous. Your first foray, your first piece of legislation in this House, and you’ve removed the right for ordinary New Zealanders to have their say. So, yep, you’re an inclusive Government—congratulations! Remember this record. The very first piece of legislation you brought to this House—no scrutiny, no select committee, pushing it through in urgency. And I love the fact that the Greens are sitting there so quietly—so quietly.

Actually, when we were in Government we worked incredibly hard. We worked incredibly hard with the Business Committee to ensure that the use of urgency was absolutely minimised—absolutely minimised—because we understand and we believe that it is an important part of our democracy and is what makes our Parliament so successful and, actually, revered across the world. There are other parliaments who say, “We want to learn from your select committee process.” because in other parliaments they don’t have the same scrutiny of legislation.

So on this particular bill—the very first one you’re introducing—you are ripping off New Zealanders for having their say. And it’s an important say because, as I said, one of the things is flexibility. I would have liked to have seen a greater level of flexibility for families to be able to look at how they look at their paid parental leave, how they take their leave together, and what their options are, and, actually, some of the best information I got when I was the Minister for Women was about families who were dealing with the challenges of juggling work. Do you know what? One of the biggest challenges to support women into employment or to return to work was how it was going to work for their partner.

I think you’ve lost an opportunity to do more to support women into employment by taking a narrow focus, as you have. If you had taken the time, you know, 1 July—absolutely, I’m with you. I want that to happen on 1 July next year. You had the time and you chose not to take it, which is really unfortunate.

One of the things around scrutiny—and you’ll learn this as a Government—is the information that comes from Treasury, the officials’ advice. So, unfortunately, in this particular case, the scrutiny is narrow. Fiscal impacts are set out in the Cabinet paper and social impacts are touched on, but there is no assessment of the broader impacts, for example, on employers—particularly small or medium sized enterprises—or on women’s employability. I would have thought they were fairly critical things for the Government to consider and absolutely for the Minister to have considered. We have a very high participation rate for women in employment in New Zealand. I think that’s a record that is fantastic, and the fact that businesses, in particular, have not had the ability to be involved and to provide input into this bill may be a detriment to the very women that we are trying to support in supporting an increase in paid parental leave. I think that would be a crying shame.

I do want to say, in addition to not having a select committee—I just want to come back to the comment about the Green Party, because, of course, it is the Green Party who has the Minister for Women. Every time we had urgency, they talked about transparency and they talked about public participation. The Prime Minister herself has talked about being an inclusive Government. I’m not sure how you can be inclusive when you don’t include the New Zealand public.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. Congratulations, Mr Deputy Speaker, on your appointment and—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Assistant Speaker.

—sorry, Assistant Speaker—and congratulations to all of the new members who have been elected to this House and, in particular, the new parents who are here in this House. I think it will be an interesting challenge to take on your role as new parents as well as being new parliamentarians. But I am very confident that with the approach of the new Speaker to make Parliament even more family-friendly, we can lead by example and, hopefully, extend that out into the rest of New Zealand.

I’m so thrilled. This is the first speech I’m giving in this House as part of this new progressive Government between the Labour Party, New Zealand First, and the Green Party, and I’m really excited about what we’re going to be able to achieve together. I think it’s a fantastic opportunity finally in New Zealand to really achieve the full benefits of MMP, where multiple parties can work together constructively to represent the views of a wider range of New Zealanders. And having won, of course, the majority of the votes, I think New Zealanders are going to be pleasantly surprised at how much of what progresses through the House during this term of Government actually appeals, and represents what is a consensus, to most people in New Zealand.

So I am absolutely thrilled to be speaking on this bill, the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill, as my first speech as Minister for Women, as was referred to by the previous speaker, the Hon Louise Upston, who has previously been the Minister for Women. The Green Party believes that parenting is one of the hardest and most important jobs that one will ever do, and as a country I think we have to recognise that we all benefit when we support parents to give their kids the love and attention they deserve early on in their lives.

As the previous speaker raised the issue of the Green Party, I think I will address that first before I speak to the bill, which is that the Green Party has at times been critical of the use—not so much the use—the abuse of urgency, which was particularly prevalent in the first term of the last National Government. I suppose that those members might not remember, especially those who weren’t there for 2008 to 2011, but in fact the National Government in their first term absolutely abused the urgency process time and time again to curtail a select committee process to pass through legislation that had not already been through a select committee process, when in fact this bill—although it may have confused the Hon Louise Upston because the title is different and the dates are different, in fact, it is the very same legislation that progressed twice through this House with the majority support of members in the previous term of Government, but was then vetoed by the then National Government, who now claim to have campaigned on this legislation as policy.

So it’s a little bit disingenuous to hear the faux outrage from the Opposition, who must be terribly frustrated to find themselves in the position of Opposition, but it is really disingenuous to be criticising this process when, in fact, we had two full select committee processes on this very legislation, with over 6,000 submissions—

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: It was years ago.

—last year with 99 percent in support of the legislation. So I think that people have had their say, in fact. Thousands of people had their say on this legislation, and why would this new Government waste any time, particularly when the Opposition is supporting the bill—and, you know, finally it caught on and campaigned on it a little bit too late—after nine years of not having implemented it.

But look, there is clearly majority support for this legislation in the House. We have heard from the public. There has been a very long campaign. And I want to acknowledge all of those people and organisations that have consistently and tirelessly pushed successive Governments to adopt better paid parental leave: 26 for Babies; the Council of Trade Unions; Sue Moroney, who was a tireless champion of this; the National Council of Women; Playcentre; Plunket; Tick for Kids; UNICEF; and, going even further back to when we were originally campaigning for 12 weeks’ parental leave, the Hon Laila Harré, who helped bring that to New Zealand in the first place.

I want to acknowledge—this has been a long campaign. It’s continually building. What it is about is a change of paradigm of how we understand work in our society. I think this is something the Opposition should pay a little bit of attention to, because during their nine years in Government, I don’t know if they ever really got to grips with the fact that there is a whole lot of unpaid work that makes this society work and happen—like, nothing would happen. The paid economy, which they pay so much attention to, could not exist without the contribution and care of people like parents—and mothers in particular—who are not paid for their work, yet that care and support of children is the very work that enables our society to flourish.

Paid parental leave is also a critical part of closing the gender pay gap, something that I am particularly committed to and will, on behalf of the Green Party, ensure is progressed in this term of Government—closing the gender pay gap in the core Public Service. And of course we’ll be working to close it in the wider Public Service and in the private sector. The gender pay gap is particularly pronounced for Māori and Pacific women, and I think they need to be acknowledged. There are many women in our society who are not being paid fairly for their contribution and there are even more women who are doing this unpaid caring work, and that is what paid parental leave does. It is the Government recognising that to us as a society, there is a value to paying parents to look after their babies in the first few months of their lives.

Finally, I note that some members in the Opposition have raised the issue of whether or not there are sufficient incentives for fathers and other parents to take the benefit of paid parental leave. I do think this is something this Government will be investigating. We would like to incentivise more fathers to take advantage of paid parental leave, but, in fact, we don’t need to wait for that. We can work on this with potentially future extensions to paid parental leave, which we can be working towards. In fact, the longer the parental leave is, the easier it is for both parents to take part in it, because there is an obvious need for women to spend time breastfeeding their babies. That is part of the reason why the 26 weeks’ leave is recommended. It is because of that benefit to the child of the first few months of bonding with the mother in breastfeeding, but the longer we have paid parental leave, the more fathers are able to take part in that and help contribute to parenting.

So I’m thrilled, as part of the Green Party and as part of this new, very positive, very progressive Government, to be speaking in favour and voting in favour of this legislation tonight. I think it’s a wonderful sign of what the next three years will bring for Aotearoa.

Thank you very much, Mr Assistant Speaker. It is true: I am very pleased to be rising in support of this bill, the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill. Let me just preface that. I do have some concerns about the process that is being used, and I do have some concerns about some technicalities that the bill does not address, but, as this House will be aware, in the past Parliament—the 51st Parliament—I was a prolific speaker on paid parental leave, having sat on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, having worked on the Government bill that progressively, and, in a fiscally prudent way, having extended periodically paid parental leave and looked to nuance it to support preterm babies and their parents. But also, I was a member of the Government Administration Committee, where Sue Moroney referred her paid parental leave bill, so I have heard it from both sides.

I have always spoken in favour of the concept of paid parental leave. Being a mother myself of two children now—Christabel, who is seven, and Hunter, who is five—I understand what paid parental leave means. I understand the benefits of it. So I am very pleased to be supporting this bill, and I was extremely pleased in the campaign as well. This bill mirrors what we campaigned on as the National Party to extend paid parental leave, along with a suite of measures to give babies and families a great leg-up when they start on the journey to having children and raising children, so that those children and those families can achieve all of their hopes and dreams in this fantastic country, which is New Zealand.

Let me digress, Mr Assistant Speaker, for one moment to congratulate you and the Speaker’s team. I have worked with you, Mr Assistant Speaker, on the Government Administration Committee, and also heard that you were there for Sue Moroney’s bill. We did work very collegially, listening to those fine submitters that came along to select committee and educated us on paid parental leave and discussed some of the issues that were facing New Zealanders as they were working through having their babies and dealing with the workplace. So we’ve worked together. I’m very pleased at your appointment, along with the rest of the Speaker’s team, which I think will be a phenomenal team. I think that all of the Speakers bring something different to the House and, as a member of the Opposition, I will be looking forward to learning more about procedure and using it to our advantage to hold the new Government to account.

In that vein, let me also say congratulations to our new members over this side of the House. We also have some fathers here—some young fathers—that have just had babies themselves. I think in some regards it’s no different for women and fathers—the challenges they face having young children—so I congratulate them for coming to Parliament and bringing the experiences that they do. Also to the members opposite, especially the new members, congratulations on your elections. And to the women that have young children over the other side of the House, thank you for your courage to bring your babies here to the House. I could not imagine doing it the same. I had terrible pregnancies and I had very challenging young children in the first years of their lives, but I think what the members opposite who have young babies have done is put this issue at the forefront of the Parliament, and I am very pleased that Speaker Mallard has taken up that challenge. So I think that Parliament will be a better place and a more family-friendly place moving forward.

Look, as I’ve said before, paid parental leave is something that I support, but on this side of the House, we do believe in fiscal prudency. That’s why when we extended paid parental leave, we did it in a very measured way, and when we costed out our policy, we costed it out at $60 million for a couple of weeks’ extension. So to extend it even further would bring it up to around about $120 million. I think what the Government will start to learn is that when you’re looking at one issue in isolation, which may be a very good issue to look at in isolation, there are a suite of measures that can also help to give baby the best start in life and give families that leg-up. And, certainly, that’s what they’ll learn in Government—that it is about balancing competing priorities. You can’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Moving back to the benefits of paid parental leave, obviously extra time allows more bonding with baby. It allows for women to become more proficient with breastfeeding, and, believe you me, breastfeeding is not the most easy thing to do, especially if you do have premature babies. Again, I’ve got two myself. In saying that, even though the World Health Organization promotes breastfeeding, the bonding time taken when you are bottle-feeding your baby should not be sniffed at, either. It is still a vital time when you are holding your baby, you’re feeding your baby, you’re looking into your baby’s eyes, and really bonding to make sure that that connection’s there so that the baby has the best start in life.

Also, of course, paid parental leave is about job protection—that is important for us to progress women’s issues moving forward—and, of course, that very important financial assistance when you have a child, because, let’s face it, those little critters cost a lot of money, and it doesn’t get any easier as they get older, I can assure you. Some of the things that I am concerned about with this bill—and especially that it’s not going to a select committee process—is that the KIT hours, the keeping-in-touch hours, remain untouched. Now, one of the things that wasn’t properly discussed with respect to Sue Moroney’s bill when we were in the Government Administration Committee, was the keeping-in-touch hours. Keeping-in-touch hours are an important part of the paid parental leave system.

💬 Hon Member: We passed it.

We passed it, absolutely, and we looked at it quite significantly in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, but when you start extending out paid parental leave, what does that actually do to the keeping-in-touch hours? Keeping-in-touch hours are a really important tool in the tool kit to make sure that women do stay connected to the workplace. And, no, from what I can tell in this bill, it remains untouched.

I would like to see that go back to select committee so that we can investigate what the balance is between extending paid parental leave and perhaps extending some of those keeping-in-touch hours. It’s OK for some women—they want to keep in touch with their careers and their jobs and progress themselves that way, but they also want to have the best of both worlds, don’t they? They want to stay connected with their family and their children, but they also want to stay connected with the workplace, and that’s the important essence of keeping-in-touch hours. But if we lose that kilter, if we get out of balance, and if we start extending paid parental leave and start skewing it to one level, we could find—and the Hon Judith Collins raised this—there is some research out there that suggests that the longer that women stay out of work, the less likely they are to go back to work. Again, the select committee process is about looking at that research, seeing if it’s robust, looking at its legitimacy, and testing that theory. What does that do to the balance of paid parental leave versus keeping-in-touch hours?

Like I say, keeping-in-touch hours are a very important tool in the tool kit to make sure that paid parental leave is nuanced, that it’s fit for purpose, and that it’s flexible enough to apply to every single woman that has a child—for their circumstances—and also apply to those males that want to take time off with their babies to connect and be a good father.

The other thing that I think needs to be explored is the isolation factor. We don’t want women just to stay at home on paid parental leave and do nothing. Paid parental leave is an important part of making sure that women have the financial strength but also the time to connect with their community and get support from their peers who have also had babies going through the same milestones, and to stay connected with their community and, basically, combat any post-natal depression.

So, again, I’m pointing to nuanced issues of paid parental leave that should have been discussed at the select committee stage. I support the spirit of the bill, but there is still more work to be done.

This is a split call. I call Raymond Huo—five minutes.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. I would like to act with my colleagues in congratulating you on your new role, and I’d like to acknowledge Mr Speaker, the Rt Hon Trevor Mallard, and the baby he just held in his arms, which would serve as a good reminder that this bill is about our babies and that this bill is about our future and about the way we invest in our future. I’d like also to take this opportunity to pay tribute to Sue Moroney, who championed this move, and who worked passionately and tirelessly to make this bill what it is now.

We have been through two select committee sessions and we heard submissions—close to 7,000 of them—and 99.9 percent of the submitters were in favour of this bill, so it’s time for us to honour our commitments and it’s time for us to say to those hard-working Kiwis and mums and dads, “Let’s do something about that.”

We may set aside the politics for a little while and look at some scientific observations. The difference between the current 18 weeks and the proposed 26 weeks is about two months. During the two months, the babies will grow from the most vulnerable into babies who will stop regularly crying and will begin playing by themselves with the toys in a cot. At the end of five months, a baby will begin to develop their speech to two or three syllables on repeat—not quite as fluent as the Hon Judith Collins. By the end of 26 weeks, babies will start to roll and sit up by themselves. This is an important development for parents to be a part of, because it paves the way for a baby to crawl and, eventually, walk by themselves.

This is the essential bonding time—within the first year of birth—and the OECD report just confirmed the importance of that. The OECD report found that children have fewer cognitive and behavioural problems later on in their lives if they have essential bonding time within the first year of birth.

So this bill is good for the babies, it’s good for the mum and dad, and it’s good for the workers and employers. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill. I’m taking this call to support this bill, but before I get on to this bill, I want to congratulate you and I want to congratulate your co - Assistant Speaker. I also congratulate the Rt Hon Trevor Mallard and the Deputy Speaker, the Hon Anne Tolley.

I am supporting this bill because this bill is aligned with a policy that the National Party took into the election. I am talking about this recent general election—election 2017. Also, if you look at our record, as I was listening to a member from New Zealand First, she said that we can go and look at the Hansard for our record. Yes, definitely we can do that, and our record will show that we have always supported increasing paid parental leave, but—but—in steps that are affordable. In 2014, we committed to changing paid parental leave provisions, and we—

💬 Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I appreciate that we are allowed to make debating points in the House, but when a member so egregiously misleads the House, what remedy is there available to us?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I’m sorry, the honourable Minister, I thought that was fine. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. If you look at the National Party’s record when we were in Government, we committed to increasing paid parental leave in 2014, and we did increase paid parental leave from 14 to 16 weeks in 2015, and then we increased it from 16 weeks to 18 weeks in 2016. Moreover, that was not just about increasing the length of paid parental leave; it was more than that. So many workers—like seasonal workers, casual workers, workers with more than one employer, and those who had changed their job recently—could not enjoy the benefits of paid parental leave before, so we made some changes in that space as well. Also, more people are now able to avail themselves of the entitlement, like primary carers. It’s about flexibility and it’s about having a policy that is effective, so with that approach, as I said, I am supporting this bill. We can see our record. We have always supported increasing paid parental leave.

I am also proud of my member’s bill that was drawn from the ballot in the last term, which focused on providing a good start to newborns. Unfortunately, because the time was up in the previous term, we could not finish the first reading, but I’m really looking forward to seeing that bill coming back on the Order Paper and it going through the remaining stages. Just to remind the House, my bill is to see that all newborns are enrolled with the general practice of their families’ choice before they are six weeks of age, so that they can be provided all the care that is needed.

So yes, we want to see that all newborns get a really good and healthy start in their life, and mums get a really good restart after going through that process of giving birth. The concern that I have, which has been raised by some of my colleagues, is about the process. I do not see any emergency for this bill to go through urgency, because, as far as I understand, this Government wants to bring this legislation in from 1 July 2018, and there are a few months remaining, so, definitely, there is enough time for this bill to go through the select committee process.

Even if it is the same subject matter, people should have the opportunity to have their say. Why is this Government denying New Zealanders the opportunity to have their say? Media should not be the way for people to express their views, concerns, or even support for the legislation. As we saw, Kirk Hope from Business New Zealand—through media; I learnt through media—welcomes this change, but on the other hand, he did say that it will pose some challenges for small businesses. These are the kinds of things we want to hear in the select committee process, because it is Government’s responsibility to listen to those concerns, to listen to those stakeholders, and to provide mitigation for that concern or challenge that is raised during the select committee process. This morning I heard Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern saying that “We will take New Zealanders with us.” and that “This new Government is going to be about people.” But here, people are out—New Zealanders are out. This is their first piece of legislation, and people are not having the opportunity to have their say in this legislation.

I am supporting this legislation, but I also want assurance from this new Government that there is enough money in the kitty to support this legislation, as we haven’t seen that. So overall, yes, I have concerns that this bill should go through the proper select committee process. I support this bill. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

This is a split call. I call Michael Wood—five minutes.

Mr Assistant Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to speak. May I begin by congratulating you on your ascension to the Chair. It’s a pleasure to be able to speak under you in this debate.

It’s very pleasing that there seems to be wide support for this bill. It’s a bill whose time has come, after many, many long years of struggle and campaigning, and it’s good to see that wide support across the House. But the support at some times does seem to have been a bit confused in the course of debate this evening, and I wanted to devote just a couple of minutes to some of that confusion that has arisen.

It really started with the first contribution from the Opposition this evening, when the Hon Amy Adams, in high-brow high dudgeon as only she can carry off, spent 8½ minutes of her speech railing against the constitutional outrage, apparently, of the debate that we’re having tonight under urgency to achieve something good for the working families of this country. She spent 8½ minutes of her speech telling us how terrible that was, but then told us that she’d vote for it anyway. That was the first part of the confusion that we saw tonight.

We heard from Ms Adams but also from many of the other speakers high levels of outrage, apparently, about the process that we’re going through in the course of this bill—high levels of outrage that people will not have the opportunity to submit on paid parental leave, conveniently forgetting that twice members of the public have had the opportunity to submit on this bill, that twice they have submitted overwhelmingly in favour of exactly what the Government is proposing here tonight, and then, on the second time, when 1,600 New Zealanders submitted on this bill, it was the last National Government who ignored the submitters and who ignored the people by arrogantly vetoing that bill, after 99 percent of those submitters had said, “Yes, we want this to happen.” So please don’t come here—the National Party—tonight, and talk to this Government about process and ignoring the submissions of New Zealanders, because that is exactly what you have done, and that is exactly why we are standing here to get something done on this issue, when we could have had it done at least a year ago.

We heard concern from the Opposition about the future career of Sue Moroney. Well, I can tell you that we are grateful for the work she has done on this issue. She’s doing outstanding things and will continue to work for the working people of New Zealand. But I was confused and concerned that there was not similar concern about the future career prospects of Mr Paul Foster-Bell from the National Party. I can tell those members that I saw him in the Thorndon New World last week and he is doing very, very well indeed, and I’m a bit surprised they didn’t ask after him.

The confusion continued from the previous speaker, the National Party list MP Parmjeet Parmar from Bucklands Beach, who believes that the National Party has always supported paid parental leave. Well, fortunately, as I was preparing for this debate, I had a little look at the 2004 amendments to paid parental leave, which reminded me that the National Party, full of energy and full of vim and vigour, opposed the initial introduction of paid parental leave and then opposed the very first extension to 14 weeks of paid parental leave. Here is the Hon Katherine Rich speaking in that debate, and the Hon Judith Collins introduced Katherine Rich to this debate, of course—I imagine the Hon Judith Collins and the Rt Hon Bill English also contributed to this debate, and probably opposed it at the time as well. Here’s Katherine Rich: “I think that when discussing this bill [which increased paid parental leave from 12 to 14 week] we will … see [quite] a marked difference between Labour and National. One party thinks the future direction of this country comes from making the middle classes dependent on welfare. The other party thinks it is better to create a situation whereby people can be independent”.

There we see the very hard-right core of opposition to paid parental leave that still sits there within certain sectors of the National Party, and I think that’s at the heart of some of the confusion that we are seeing tonight. We heard it in Mr English’s speech earlier today, when any move by the Government to collectively secure the rights and the dignity of New Zealanders was sort of seen as the creeping red hand of communism. That is absolute rubbish. New Zealanders do not accept that. This Government will take whatever steps it needs to do—

💬 David Seymour: No one’s telling it like it is.

—I know that David Seymour thinks that as well—to make sure that Kiwi families have the very best start in life.

The confusion continued later on when we heard about fiscal responsibility. Well, let me tell you this: after this bill having been to the House twice and after it having been through select committee twice, it might be good for the National Party Opposition to know that this place costs $200 a minute to run and that this Government, which has heard from submitters and which has heard from New Zealanders, is ready to take action.

It is time for more paid parental leave for the parents of New Zealand. We’re not going to stand around, we’re not going to dilly-dally, and we’re not going to veto the bill like that party did. We’re going to act and we would love your support, but either way this bill is going to pass, and New Zealanders will be all the better for it. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

Well, if this Government’s going to raise productivity, then they can’t afford to burn up $1,000 like that member, Michael Wood, just did. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this bill, and I suspect it may become a feature of this Parliament that the ACT Party stands alone in favour of the taxpayer, opposing the continual expansion of our entitlement culture and society in this country. The National Party, it’s been said, has a habit of campaigning from the right and governing from the left. Well, tonight, folks, you skipped a step, and if you don’t carry out the first step, you’re very unlikely to get to the second step.

I would like to draw members’ attention to this very helpful cover sheet on the regulatory impact statement recently implemented by the previous Government. It starts with a very simple question: what is the problem and proposed approach? Good problem definition is supposed to be the start of every piece of policy making, and, actually, the Prime Minister summed it up quite nicely in her Address in Reply speech that we will use Government to achieve things that we can’t achieve by ourselves. Well, that’s what good policy should do, but, folks, this ain’t it, because in this problem definition, it asks, “What problem or opportunity does the proposal seek to address? … This proposal implements the Government’s manifesto commitment”. That’s what it says. It doesn’t say that there’s a problem that we can’t solve alone that must be solved through the State. It says, “The Government campaigned on this and therefore we’re going to do it.” It is politics. There is no rational basis for this policy whatsoever because, if you think about it, there is no reason why people cannot anticipate the costs of having kids and cannot prepare for having kids and cannot provide for themselves when having kids.

💬 Hon Member: There speaks a father in the making.

If it is true that they can’t—if it’s true that they can’t—then we’re going to have to do a hell of a lot more than extend paid parental leave by four weeks in 2020. I just take a brief aside to respond to the heckler at the back—I can’t tell who it is—who thinks it’s OK to attack me for being a guy, mocking me by saying, “You’re a father-in-waiting.” Well, actually, I’d like to have a debate on the facts, and the facts are that there is no reason for the Government to be doing this other than that they think it is politically popular. This is nothing to do with good policy; it’s to do with finding a group of people over here who have some money and giving it to a group of people over here because we think they will vote for us. Well, the job of this Parliament is to stand up for minorities, and one very important minority—common in the Epsom electorate, I might add—is the net taxpayer in this country, who deserves defence from the continual expansion of the entitlement culture that we see too often in New Zealand. They are not going to be getting it from the National Party tonight, and what a shame.

But if we go further through this regulatory impact statement—which, by the way, doesn’t tell us what the cost is. They won’t tell us what the cost is. The cost of taxpayer money is so cheap to the Labour Party—and, apparently, the National Party tonight—that they don’t even bother to tell us how much money this is going to cost. But the regulatory impact statement says other things. There is no assessment of broader impacts, for example, on employers—particularly small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs)—or on women’s employability. “It would be important to evaluate the monitoring data to assess these … impacts once the policy is implemented.”—in other words, we don’t know what the policy is going to do. We don’t know what it’s going to do for the SMEs, which two members got up and talked about so passionately in their maiden statements tonight, saying how important they are to prosperity all over New Zealand and in the regions. We don’t know what the fiscal impact is. We don’t know what the impact will be on employability, particularly for women. We don’t know what problem we’re trying to solve, but it’s politically popular—we’re going to take a whole of taxpayers’ money here, we’re going to put it over here, and, hopefully, get some votes in the process. What a sad shame to see the National Party joining in on this tonight.

The Hon Michael Wood—Woodhouse, sorry.

Ha, ha! We got there. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, and, firstly, as this is my first intervention in the 52nd Parliament, can I congratulate you and your fellow presiding officers on your election to that very important role.

Can I also congratulate the sponsor of this bill on stealing every single one of the jobs that I have previously had. He’s expressed disappointment, and I’m certainly disappointed not to continue to be the spokesman for those portfolios, but I can assure the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway that the Hon Amy Adams and the Hon Simon Bridges are very, very good friends of mine. I have a good memory, and I know where the bodies are buried.

But, look, I do find it incredibly disappointing that the first time I am on my feet in the 52nd Parliament, during the first piece of legislation that we are debating, it is a debate under urgency. I cannot tell you how much it feels like being in a parallel universe. As for the Hon Julie Anne Genter standing up and saying, “Well, there were times when we criticised the previous Government for their taking urgency.”—I challenge that member to name one time in nine years when this previous Government went into urgency when the Green Party didn’t have a complete fit over it.

I know it’s not proper to read speeches, but I am going to quote from Hansard. Tracey Martin actually reminded us to go and have a look at nine years of Hansard, and so I have. Here’s what I found: Jan Logie, in the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill, said, “the use of urgency by the Government has again denied people that ability to participate in this decision-making process and has thus removed the depth from this discussion in [this] House. We do not even have a regulatory impact statement”. That was two years ago. We don’t tonight.

James Shaw, in his 23rd speech under urgency on the Biosecurity Amendment Bill (No 2), said to the Government that “if you want to introduce urgency on matters that are, frankly, not urgent, then you can sit here and listen to it. You can sit here and we will spin this out.” Then Jan Logie—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! The member needs to come back to the bill.

This is a bill under urgency, Mr Assistant Speaker, and I think, given the fact that I have been able to quote the plethora of speeches that have been given in this House about urgency, it behoves this House—

💬 Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is well outside the Standing Orders for a member to directly challenge your ruling in the way that he just did.

Speaking to that point, Mr Assistant Speaker, I wasn’t challenging your ruling; I was continuing my speech. It is well within the standard scope of practice for a bill that is under urgency to have the issues of urgency debated on it.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Thank you to both members. The Hon Michael Woodhouse will resume his speech, but he will come back to the bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. This is a bill that is being debated, incredibly unnecessarily, under urgency. It will, I understand, take effect on 1 July, which is nearly eight months away, and it is not that we are having urgency for the committee of the whole House or the third reading. The first and second readings—this is almost unprecedented. The first and second readings are being taken together to remove the opportunity for the public to have a say, and the reason for that, apparently, is because all this lazy Government has done is take a bill that was debated two years ago and changed the title, on the basis that 6,000 of Sue Moroney’s friends supported it, notwithstanding the fact that the estimated cost—and it was an estimate, because there were no robust numbers done—was about $240 million.

The Minister of Finance at the time ruled it out and said that he would exercise his veto, and he made that decision at first reading, which means that lots of people didn’t bother submitting to the select committee. It means the friends that David Seymour was talking about—those who may very well oppose this—did not take the opportunity to have their say.

Now I’m going to talk about the bill that did get passed into law last year, of which I was the sponsor. The Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill became the 2016 Act, and I just want to touch on a couple of the things that that bill did, to make a point about why it is very important that this goes to select committee. That bill increased the paid parental leave from 14 to 16 weeks, and then from 16 to 18 weeks over time. That was important.

But more importantly, in my view, was that it extended the range of people who would qualify for parental leave. Thanks to the advocacy of David Seymour, after a bit of a misunderstanding around Sue Moroney’s bill, there was an extension—a very important extension, I have to say—for premature babies, and even now they could get up to 28 weeks paid parental leave, depending on how premature the baby was. We reduced the time eligibility to six months out of 12—if you had been working, you would qualify. Non-traditional relationships like whāngai were covered, whereas previously they hadn’t been, and they weren’t in Sue Moroney’s bill. And, of course, there are annual adjustments now set in legislation, so we don’t have to keep going back and back and improving them. The point is, the thing about a select committee process is not to rubber-stamp the Government’s intentions. It is to make the bill better, and we are losing that opportunity.

Now, Sarah Dowie, my colleague and friend, gave a very good example of where this bill could be made better, and that is the keeping-in-touch provisions, which Labour opposed and Sue Moroney’s bill did not have. I am very pleased to note that in this bill they are going to keep them, but they are not going to extend them. So we are going from 14 to 16 to 18 to 22 and, eventually, 26 weeks, but with no extension to the keeping-in-touch provisions. Now, I don’t blame Labour for not thinking about it. It wasn’t their thing; it wasn’t in their consciousness. But this is the important part of a select committee process. This bill could be better. And yes, we did campaign on going to 22 weeks, but we also campaigned on very good options for parents to share the paid parental leave, which, again, are not in this bill, and they could be.

We heard from the Prime Minister that she wanted a fairer and kinder Parliament that would have robust debate and that would have good scrutiny. That’s what a good and strong Opposition is required to do—is obligated to do—and we will do it. But a collegial approach would have been to take this to select committee, even for a couple of weeks. We have done that very successfully on some of the legislation that we passed in the last Parliament and it was made better by the public submissions, and the fact that this isn’t going to happen is a crying shame. It’s a stain on the first bill that this Government introduces. And I, frankly, cannot believe the Green Party is sitting there chuckling away, thinking urgency is funny, when we can do better. We can make better legislation.

I heard an extraordinary comment from the Hon Tracey Martin. In justification for the ropey regulatory impact statement, she said—and I quote—“It’s not going to cost the taxpayer anything, because the taxpayer supports it.” Sorry, somebody has to pay for this. It left David Seymour and me scratching our heads, but that is literally what the Hon Tracey Martin said, and this document, frankly, is a fail. It is a definite D-. It’s a “Could do better. Did not achieve.”

The wording in this makes the public, the Parliament, and even the Government none the wiser about what the cost of this important change is. The Parliament is being asked to write a blank cheque, and if that is the idea that the Labour-led Government has about fiscal discipline, it’s going to be a very long and expensive three years.

This is a poor start on a bill that we support, but we should be doing so in a much more collegial way. We do the taxpayer and this Parliament a disservice when we cannot even give the public the dignity, the opportunity, of even a couple of weeks to actually kick this around and make it better. I’m really disappointed that we have to be so critical of the Government on this very important first start, and I certainly hope they can do better.

Mr Assistant Speaker, can I begin my contribution this evening by congratulating you on your theft as my junior whip to your position as Assistant Speaker. I also want to congratulate my Christchurch colleague Poto Williams on achieving the same esteemed position as a presiding officer, the Hon Anne Tolley, and the Rt Hon Trevor Mallard. It’s a really interesting mix of skills, and I’m sure that you will work together well for the benefit of the debate and the contribution in this House. So I want to warmly congratulate you all.

I want to acknowledge the new Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway, and say what a fantastic piece of work to have in—is it 12 days since you’ve been a Minister? To have the first piece of legislation before the House on such an important topic is really, really worth commending.

I also want to acknowledge Sue Moroney, who has already had tribute paid to her. I had the privilege of chairing the Government Administration Committee, which twice looked at Sue Moroney’s bills. There were thousands of submissions. Two I can recall, out of thousands, were in opposition to this proposal, which is replicated in this legislation and is overwhelmingly supported as being the right thing to do for families, the right thing to do for better health outcomes, and the right thing to do for better education outcomes, and it was such an embarrassment that submitter after submitter told us how far behind the rest of the developed world New Zealand lagged. We like to compare ourselves with other countries and say, “We’re ahead of this.” In paid parental leave, we are so far behind.

So I just want to acknowledge the Minister and Sue Moroney and the submitters. That’s the reason why I am comfortable with this bill not going back to a select committee for the third time. We’ve had it at select committee twice. Let me tell you about the two submitters who opposed it. One said women shouldn’t have children and be in paid work. Anyone else agree with that—no? I can’t see a lot of support for that line of thinking in this House. Mr Seymour, you’re not on that side, are you? You think it’s all right for mums to have a paid job as well?

💬 David Seymour: Why are you picking on me?

I was just asking—I was just asking. Unlikely opportunity that, you know—ha, ha! The other submitter said that the longer women were away from their paid job caring for their children, the less likely it was that they would be able to remember the work that they used to do.

💬 Hon Members: Oh!

That’s right. I’m not even going to ask, because I know that Mr Seymour would think that was rubbish as well. I am really confident of that—really confident of that.

So let’s look at the fact that, overwhelmingly, thinking New Zealanders said through a select committee process that they supported this legislation on extending provisions to paid parental leave that were first introduced in 2002. That was first introduced by Labour; National opposed it. Then it was increased from 12 to 14 weeks by Labour; National opposed it. Then it was extended to cover self-employed people, by Labour; National opposed it. Sue Moroney’s first bill extending it—National opposed it. Then National increased paid parental leave from 14 to 18 weeks, on the advice of their pollsters—a highly principled decision.

The second time Sue Moroney attempted to get an incremental increase of paid parental leave to achieve 26 weeks for babies, Labour got the support of a majority of members of Parliament in this House. We had a majority to pass that legislation, so the Hon Bill English, as the finance Minister, put a financial veto over it. So I don’t want to hear the Hon Amy Adams or the Hon Michael Woodhouse or any other of those members crying crocodile tears over constitutional outrage, when a majority of members of Parliament supported a legislative procedure and a financial veto was issued over it. Then they come in here crying crocodile tears over constitutional outrage.

Mr—Madam Speaker. I am so not used to saying “Madam Speaker”, and it’s such a pleasure to be able to again. Madam Deputy Speaker, I just want to conclude by commending the 26 for Babies campaign. There have been huge numbers of people—individuals and organisations in our community—who have known this was the best next step that we could make in order to support newborn babies and their families. They’ve done an amazing amount of work. They helped us develop good policy. They challenged us and supported us. They made considered submissions to the select committee, and that’s why I remain confident that not only is this bill absolutely on the right track but I can support it going through under urgency. Thank you.