Holidays (Parent-Teacher Interview Leave) Amendment Bill

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity—albeit for 54 seconds. So in that time, it might be just enough time to remind the House of what this bill is about. This Holidays (Parent-Teacher Interview Leave) Amendment Bill is to ensure that all parents or caregivers of children that attend education are able to attend their parent-teacher interview and access leave. We propose four hours per year for them to be able to do this. We know that when our parents or caregivers can come together with the kaiako or the teacher and plan, goal-set for their children’s year or education year, we know that that helps to lift educational outcomes for our tamariki. That’s why this Labour Government supports this bill, and that’s why I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. One of the interesting things about being a member of this Parliament is the remarkable juxtapositions that occur on any given day, and here is a day on which the Hon James Shaw has overseen the delivery of the Climate Commission’s final report to Government, and then, suddenly, here we are discussing something so trivial and minor and unnecessary as this bill, the Holidays (Parent-Teacher Interview Leave) Amendment Bill.

I want to remind members, because I think that the member whose name this bill is in now, Terisa Ngobi, probably took the bill out of the ballot—this was a bill that was originally in the name of the Hon Jan Tinetti, before she was elevated to the dizzy heights of her Cabinet responsibilities. One would wonder why she was elevated to the dizzy heights, given this bill, but that’s a whole different story for another day. This is a bill that actually was probably intended as a ballot-stuffer, hopefully never to have been drawn from the ballot—hope against hope, the sort of bill that an MP puts in after a few drinks one night, thinking, “Oh, that’s kind of a good idea; let’s put it in the ballot. Let’s see if we can get it past the caucus”—must have been a really rough, rumpty caucus day that day—“put it in the ballot, cross our fingers, and hope it never gets drawn out.” Because this is a bill that is utterly, totally unnecessary. This is a bill that is a problem that isn’t a real problem at all.

I want to remind members of the House, and also people who may still be listening after Jamie Strange’s speech, that this is a bill that would allow for employees who have school-age children to be given paid leave—paid leave—to go and attend parent-teacher meetings and interviews. Now, this is just remarkable. One wonders if there is anything that this socialist Labour Government doesn’t think employers should have to pay for. Is there one possible thing that they think employers should not have to fork out for? No, it seems that employers have to pay for an extra week’s sick leave. They have to pay for an extra public holiday. They have to pay for domestic violence leave. They have to pay for, soon to be, the Orwellian fair pay agreements that are not fair, where there won’t be much agreement, and will be very easily repealed, by the way, as soon as the change of Government occurs in 2023, so don’t get too used to those old national awards coming back into favour.

So here we go—

💬 Chris Bishop: National awards!

That’s what they were. Christopher Bishop is probably too young to remember what national awards were, but they were—

💬 Chris Bishop: I wasn’t born.

You weren’t born! Well, back in the last millennium, in the days when the trade unions were rampant, and the trade unions and the trades hall used to do these sorts of things, this is what happened, and this is what they want to take us back to.

But coming back to this bill, this is a bill that is very murky, very unclear, and I’m not sure—because I listened to the last 54 seconds of the sponsor’s speech, and I listened to the full nine minutes of her speech some weeks ago, and not once, not once—and I see the Attorney-General sitting in this House—not once did she mention the Attorney-General’s report on this bill, which says, amongst other things, that “I have concluded [this] Bill is inconsistent with the right [of] freedom from discrimination affirmed in s 19 of the Bill of Rights Act.” Not once did the member refer to that—not once. So there was a fundamental flaw in this piece of legislation. Not only is there a fundamental flaw in it, it’s a bill that has no real need.

Maybe we shouldn’t help. Maybe we shouldn’t help the Labour socialist Government in this way, but the last time we had a really socialist Government was Helen Clark’s time, and one of the problems that Helen Clark had—it was actually her ultimate downfall—was that she started to get very prescriptive—very prescriptive—about proclamations being issued from the Beehive from the ninth floor. People will remember—Chris Bishop was probably still at school; kindergarten, maybe—that in those days there were, in the dying days of the Helen Clark socialist Labour Government, proclamations issued from the Beehive that said, “You must have low-energy lightbulbs—no ifs, buts, or maybes.”

Then there was another one that said, “You must have low flow shower heads.”—you must have low flow shower heads. And now we have, under this Jacinda Ardern socialist Labour Government, a proclamation that says, “Employers must pay for their employees to go to parent-teacher interviews.” It’s a proclamation, and it’ll come from the Beehive and it’ll be carved in stone, and the only people who will be cheering for it will be those socialist members on the other side who have reached the pinnacle of their trade union delegate role, come to this Parliament back through the back door of the Labour Party, and here they are now in the House, bringing the rhetoric of the trades hall back into this Parliament. I can tell you, Madam Speaker—I’m not wishing to bring you into the debate—that this piece of legislation is completely farcical.

What’s actually not clear about this legislation is it gives an entitlement to four hours a year of paid leave per employee, but what it doesn’t make clear is whether that’s four hours per year per child or whether that’s just one lot of four hours per year.

💬 Nicola Grigg: Details—details, schmetails!

Now, I guess the—yeah, exactly; Nicola Grigg’s so right to say that’s just detail. Of course, this socialist Labour Government, they aren’t remotely interested in detail. If there’s anything that an employer might pay for, then it’s not sacrosanct from this Government. They seem to think that employers and business people have an unlimited, infinite capacity to pay for their hare-brained ideas. Look, what happens in the real world—and some of us have been in business; some of us have been employees and employers, and we know that, actually, in the real world, these sorts of matters are sorted out. They are sorted out on a sensible, rational basis between good-faith employees and employers, and these matters are settled. That’s the way it has always operated. It’s a question of give and take. It occurs up and down the country every day of the week.

What will happen if this piece of legislation goes through is it’s the forcing of a red-tape, prescriptive, “though shalt do”, finger-waving approach from the socialist Labour Government, and what that means is that employers will actually push back on it. The perverse outcome of this piece of legislation, should it ever be passed—and the real acid test will be whether the Government actually votes for it, and we don’t know that yet. All we know is that the member has been given leave to introduce it, and it’ll be interesting to get to the final stages of this debate to find out whether the Government will actually vote—the Greens will probably vote for it, but I’m sure that the Labour Party might have a dose of reality somewhere along the line.

So, look, one of the things that I just want to say in conclusion—because I’ve spoken for longer than I thought; I thought it was a bill that probably didn’t need much. But here is a piece of legislation. There’s no groundswell, there’s no clamouring in the streets, there’s no public debate. This is an issue that is simply created, made up; a bill that was put in the ballot, a new member has picked it up from a Minister who’s risen to the dizzy heights of Cabinet, and now this poor new member has to actually try and guide it through the House. Well, it’s probably not a pathway for the dizzy heights of Cabinet for that member. So, on this side of the House, we firmly, resolutely, and strongly oppose this bill, and so too, hopefully, will the Labour Party.

Well, thank you, Madam Speaker. What a pleasure to follow after Mr Simpson, almost as good as following after Mr Bishop. But I have to say that the first 54 seconds of this debate were a whole lot better than the last nine minutes that we had to sit through.

The previous speaker referred to the old National; well, I’ve got news for that member: this is no longer the party of John Key and Bill English—you have lost that for sure. Also the fact that he seemed to want to provoke me into outing myself as a socialist—I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to get on that billboard with my comrades. So, yes, I am a proud socialist, and please make me that meme.

I don’t think the sky will fall in by letting parents attend the parent-teacher interviews for their children. It was real good fortune that this bill was pulled out of the biscuit tin by one of my awesome and talented colleagues of the class of 2020. No doubt we will all see them in Minister jobs as well, so rising to those dizzy heights that some have fallen from, and you can feel the bitterness when they talk about it, which is absolutely—anyway, this time of night.

But anyway, I am talking about this bill for the whole reason that I’ve had a bill in the ballot for a while now, and I would like it to come out. So I’m hoping that some of that magic of the new member might rub off on me while I’m talking—so, yes.

Look, this bill is the guiding principle that is really clear: empower parents to contribute to their children’s full potential. That is completely in line with one of our goals and aspirations as a Government, as stated by our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, of course. Because from the moment she came into Government and she led us into this place, she has said that she wanted to make New Zealand the best place in the world to be a child. We always hear about New Zealand being a great place to raise a family, and while that is true, there is, of course, always more to do. Our Prime Minister has said that the way we treat children, the way we look after their wellbeing, and the way we ensure the lives they lead are full of opportunity says so much about the kind of country we are. So on this side of the House we want to be that kind of country. We want to give our children the opportunities. We want to support the parents and caregivers with giving their children the best possible life.

On that side of the House they obviously don’t, because I heard that as soon as this may go through, they would reverse it. I would not think that that would be a positive thing for the workers that are seeing the support that we are giving them just to be able to go with their children to their parent-teacher interviews, get to know the teachers, get to know the environment they’re in, get to know a little bit about what occupies them when they’re not in the house.

I’m sure anybody in this House who has been through the parent-teacher interviews will actually understand the importance that those interviews can play in the lives of their children. It actually improves the life of your child. I have been really privileged, actually, because I’ve been in a place where I was allowed to have the opportunity to go and sit with my child Max—awesome child—and, you know, where I could I would learn about my child’s academic, emotional, social development. Hearing firsthand from the teachers how my child was doing, academically tracking, and being socially relative to his classmates was really important because as a parent, while I knew how he was doing at home, I had to hear from his teacher about his behaviour at school. Sometimes that could be surprising. So hence, again, the importance of that time.

It is important in that aspect to acknowledge that work has changed for many people. We have much more insecure, casualised working where it may not be that easy to have that relationship with your employer and get the time off to spend the time with your child and his or her teacher. It can bring a lot of insecurities to try and take advantage of those opportunities.

So there is a disparity in access. Once again, a lot of the work that we’re doing on this side of the House is trying to change that disparity and make this a more equal world with equal opportunities for everyone. So this bill plays catch-up with our employment laws. It recognises that the level of support for employees and, through them, their children shouldn’t be left to the goodwill of employers. It’s a standard that we should uphold for the benefit of every parent with children in school. Because this bill, at its very core, is about inclusivity.

Now this bill is at its first reading, it will come again to that hard-working select committee, education and workforce. I’m looking forward to all of the submissions and hearing from everyone why this is so important. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

💬 Ingrid Leary: Madam Speaker? Madam Speaker?

Just waiting. Giving the Green member a chance.

💬 Hon James Shaw: I beg your pardon, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Hon James Shaw.

Thank you, Madam Speaker—thank you for the prompt.

💬 Chris Bishop: It’s been a big day.

It has. I’m sorry, I lost my count. Look, I don’t think anybody in this House would argue that participation in parent-teacher interviews is a bad thing and oughtn’t to be supported. It means that people are able, as the previous speaker Marja Lubeck mentioned, to participate in their child’s education. The Hon Scott Simpson objected to the bill on the basis that he didn’t think that employers should pay for their employees to be able to participate in parent-teacher interviews with paid leave. So then the question becomes: if no one’s objecting to the principle of people participating, why do we think this is necessary? It is because clearly there are people in our society who do not have the opportunity to participate in parent-teacher interviews because they are constrained by their own economic circumstances in doing so.

The reason why our side of the House, on the Government side of the House, continuously raise ways of making it easier for low-income families, and so on, to be able to participate in things like this is pretty simple. It’s because they don’t get paid enough. It’s because their employment is too precarious and their economic situation is too precarious to be able to take that time out.

So if Mr Simpson wants the Labour Party, the Green Party to stop proposing small measures like this that make the lives of vulnerable communities and low-income families easier, maybe he could back a basic measure which enables people to be paid properly, to be paid enough to live on, to be able to have secure enough employment that they are able to take some time out from their employment to go and participate in things like parent-teacher interviews. That is the counterfactual.

In the absence of that kind of thing, then measures like this are absolutely necessary, and that is why the Green Party is supporting this bill.

I’d just like to look at what happens to parents who can’t go to parent-teacher interviews. I was lucky enough to be able to go to parent-teacher interviews for all three of my children, because I’ve had flexible working hours, and that’s been fantastic. As the Green member has pointed out, many, many workers can’t do that, so instead they have to rely on school reports. The problem with school reports is that they’re not nuanced. They can’t be interrogated, and teachers seem to have a fairly PC language, I would say, where they can make statements about a child, and the person reading the report might want to know “What does that mean about my child’s learning? What does that mean about the environment?”

School reports can seem more like an assessment rather than the development of a relationship, and they don’t really allow parents to ask why. They also don’t allow for parents to look at teacher blind spots or for teachers to look at parent blind spots, and by that I mean if a child is being unusually quiet in class, there may be reasons that the parents can discuss with the teacher. Or if a child is playing up or if a child is doing really, really well, there will be lots of context around that that really needs to be discussed, and in Pacific culture that’s called talanoa. It’s a really, really important concept. It’s about relationship. It’s about the concept of many people being involved in a child’s life, and those relationships are the start of the process, not simply a cold, hard school report with something written on it that can’t really be interrogated or discussed.

The other thing that comes out of parent-teacher interviews is, I believe, more investment by parents into spending time with their children on really important things, like reading. When a parent becomes really interested in their child’s development, when they can participate in it through that talanoa and that conversation, that inspires parents to want to spend more time maybe reading, playing sport, or whatever.

I’d just like to reference a fantastic initiative—it’s a pilot, actually—in my own electorate, in Taieri, called Read Share Grow, which is all about parents and children spending time together reading books. I’ve had the privilege of being able to distribute some of those books, provided by the National Library of New Zealand. We know that literacy is a game-changer. We know that good literacy can lift children out of poverty or can enhance life chances across the board. So reading is really important, and reading as a way of parents and children connecting is really important, and that is one of the things that can come out of this idea of simply investing time, being able to spend time with children, and then being able to spend more time with children in their education.

On that, I’d just like to acknowledge that the Prime Minister had intended to come down to Bathgate Park School to actually participate in that reading programme and read a book to the school children. Unfortunately, she was stopped by fog. The children sent her letters, and the Prime Minister responded with a personal note, which ended up getting published in the newspaper. She has promised to come back, so as the MP for that area, I will be sure to hold the Prime Minister to that promise.

So this bill, the Holidays (Parent-Teacher Interview Leave) Amendment Bill, is a simple bill. It does what it says. It allows parents to go in working hours, and it’s not a burden to employers. Why? Because it’s only four hours per year. That’s 12 months of continuous employment, and employers will have three days’ notice of an employee intending to take that up. That’s not a huge amount of time for what is a really fantastic benefit, and as has been so rightly pointed out by the Hon James Shaw, many parents simply are not in the position to afford to take that time off.

As my colleague Marja Lubeck mentioned, workplaces are becoming more insecure, more casualised. This tends to impact on women. It is women who are often really involved as primary caregivers in developing the education of their child, along with their schools, and so this bill also supports women being able to work and being able to parent, as it does all primary caregivers. So although this is a small bill, although the change is small and it doesn’t place a great burden on the employer, it’s a really important bill for those many hundreds of thousands of workers who currently simply don’t have the wherewithal, the funds, or the licence to attend parent-teacher interviews and have that really important talanoa with the teachers so that they can get the best education for their children. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to oppose the Holidays (Parent-Teacher Interview Leave) Amendment Bill. Good lawmaking requires the member responsible for this bill to properly define the problem that they are trying to solve. This bill does not solve a problem that I have been made aware of by many parents that I have spoken to who work varying hours; some work multiple jobs. All that they have told me is that their employer or school have worked with them to make sure that they can make their child’s parent-teacher interview.

Yes, it is important for parents to know how their children are doing in school. But at the expense of employers? This bill is not fair on businesses, even though costs are in the small, grand scheme of other costs imposed by this Government. Increased minimum wage, new public holiday, doubling sick leave, and less flexible employment relation rules all impose major costs on small businesses. The minimum wage increase alone costs businesses over $8,000 per year for a full-time minimum-wage employee. These additional costs risk job creations. Who does the business pass these added costs on to? It is the New Zealand public. So the employers just add the costs that you keep compounding and compounding on them, to the rest of New Zealanders.

The next thing I would like to know is what other things you would like to regulate for parents. Is it going to be their sports days? Who knows? Are people allowed to go and take their pets because they consider them?

I’m a firm believer that parents should be able to make parent-teacher interviews. I do not see there is a problem here. Most schools are very flexible with it, and so are employers. ACT oppose this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is an honour to speak on this bill, as drafted by my colleague Terisa Ngobi. As we know, this bill reforms the Holidays Act to allow workers with children to take leave to attend parent-teacher evenings up to four hours per year. It’s an entitlement that is to be used; it is not to be carried over, unlike some entitlements under the Holidays Act. I believe, because I have read the draft legislation, it can be used for more than one child. It also recognises the important role of parents in children’s education. I often personally look forward to interviews with my children’s parents with some excitement as we pull up our tiny little chairs to sit around the tiny table and hear about our absolute favourite subject, our children. We usually try and book these meetings after work, and I think most parents probably do try and do that, but, for some people, after work is late at night, it’s in the middle of the night, or it’s early in the morning—it doesn’t fit the 9 to 5 regime that perhaps those on the other side perceive as a normal working arrangement.

I was actually quite surprised at the tone of the other side of the House in relation to this bill, because I do actually think that it is a very serious and very useful bill. What I did was actually mention—when this bill was first spoken of in the House by my colleague—the idea to my sister, who’s a first year teacher in Auckland. She was actually so passionate about the importance of parent-teacher interviews that I contacted her and I asked her to put some of her words and thoughts down in writing so I could convey them to you, and I’m sure, when this bill goes to select committee—which it will—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! I think the member could leave the Chair out of the debate.

Oh, I beg your pardon, Madam Speaker.

I’m sure, when one sees this matter go to select committee, that we will all see that there are many stories about the importance of this leave to New Zealanders. So if the Chair—Madam Speaker, if you—would indulge me in reading some of my sister’s thoughts out, I think they would be very enlightening to the House in relation to this bill.

She said, “I feel very strongly about this being an important thing, but hard for some families to practically be able to do anything about it. I wish more families had booked in to see me. There are studies that show that whānau engagement is super important. If a family buys into a school being a good place—and this may be counter their past experience—they hold their kids more accountable. Also, kids don’t make a fuss and can sometimes go under the radar, and that’s also a worry. Giving them their time in the sun can make all the difference at an age where they don’t know who they are just yet. One student had been misbehaving in class—going on computer games; not submitting any work; talking and socialising throughout the lesson. His mother and I had a wonderful conversation about him not being a bad kid but also about how, if he was good at a subject and had an opportunity to contribute, then he would do well. This kid trusts his mum, and her showing me that she trusted me completely changed how this student participated in class.”—this was all to do with the parent-teacher meeting.

“Not only does he actively now enthusiastically contribute, he helps out and supports other students in their learning, giving them the confidence to share good ideas, even standing with other students to help them have the confidence to speak up in class. His own work is now in the top of the range for his un-streamed class, and, when previously he had not submitted work or completed tasks, he now is doing so. This change took place the day after the parent-teacher meeting.”

Auckland class sizes are big, and having a meeting with a teacher might be the only opportunity in a year where a student is focused on the wraparound attention that they need between their parent and their teacher. Also, after a year of lockdowns, parents need to know how schoolwork and their expectations of their child work together. Sometimes kids don’t pass on things to their parents, and they are at a loss of what they need.

My sister also reflected that the day she had her parent-teacher interviews she had one particular parent who made a booking but wasn’t able to show up for that particular interview because she had a work shift. In that case, it was a real shame, because she missed the opportunity of speaking to her teacher, my sister, and hearing about how her student was doing in class. So I would like to commend this bill to the House as a way of addressing this important issue.

This debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow. Good evening.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.