Hon RUTH DYSON (Minister of Labour) Link to this
I move, That the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. This bill implements the Labour-led Government’s policy to extend the paid parental leave scheme to self-employed individuals who are not currently covered by the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act. In doing so, the bill furthers a number of our Government’s objectives to support working parents on the birth or adoption of a child. These include ensuring that the paid parental leave scheme is accessible to a wider number of individuals, enhancing equity by allowing employed people to access paid parental leave irrespective of whether they are employees or self-employed, enabling a self-employed parent to take leave with a period of income replacement, and supporting the health and well-being of new mothers and babies.
Self-employed mothers will be eligible if they have worked an average of 10 hours a week or more during either a 6 or 12-month period immediately before the expected date of delivery or adoption of a child. Self-employed mothers will have the same right as employees to transfer payments to their eligible partners, who may be either self-employed or employees. Self-employed people will be entitled to paid parental leave if they are engaged in more than one type of work consecutively and/or if they have a break of 30 days or less between engagements. Like employees, they will be required to stop working while receiving payments, but they will be able to maintain a level of oversight of their business during the leave period.
Parental leave payments for the self-employed will equal their average weekly income, up to the maximum rate for employees—currently $357.30 per week before tax. Those who make a loss, or who earn less than the minimum wage for at least 10 hours a week, will be entitled to payments for 10 hours a week at the minimum wage rate.
The bill also provides that employees will become eligible for a subsequent period of parental leave and parental leave payments if the expected date of delivery or adoption is at least 6 months after their return to work from a previous period of parental leave, rather than the 12 months as at present. This provides fairness between first-time parents and parents of subsequent children. This will extend eligibility to paid parental leave to a small number of employees who are currently ineligible. The bill provides that self-employed women will be eligible for parental leave payments for second and subsequent children 6 months following previous parental leave payments.
The bill also includes a new provision that explicitly provides that employees or self-employed persons may apply to the Employment Relations Authority for a review of a decision made by the Department of Labour about their eligibility for a parental leave payment. It also enables the department to approve applications for payment where there are technical problems with the application. Currently, these applications must go to the Employment Relations Authority before they can be approved. That amendment will save applicants from having to go through that process. However, the department may not approve applications if the problem is in dispute between the employer and the employee.
The bill returns to the House with a small number of technical amendments. It clarifies that when a self-employed woman goes on parental leave before her expected date of delivery, the calculation of average weekly earnings will reflect only those weeks during which she was working. So her lack of earnings while on parental leave will not affect the final rate of parental leave payment. That amendment is consistent with the calculation methods applied to employees who take parental leave before the due delivery date of their child. It will provide guidance to the Department of Labour when exercising its discretion to approve irregular applications for parental leave payment. It clarifies that a parental leave payment will end for the primary applicant if the entitlement is transferred to his or her spouse or partner. It also clarifies that failing to provide information requested by the department under the principal Act is an offence. It will extend the time period within which offence proceedings relating to misleading the department may be commenced to within 6 months from the first time the alleged offence became known, or should reasonably have become known, to the department.
I also advise the House that I will be introducing a Supplementary Order Paper in the Committee stage to resolve an issue of inconsistency that was identified in the later stages of scrutiny of the bill in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. That will allow persons who meet qualifying criteria both as an employee and as a self-employed person to apply for entitlements in respect of parental leave from their employment, and to apply for parental leave payments based on earnings from their work both as a qualifying employee and as a qualifying self-employed person. This amount will be capped at the same maximum amount as would be available to a person who was solely an employee or a self-employed person. This amendment will provide consistency with the current situation for employees with multiple employments, who are entitled to paid parental leave in all jobs for which they meet the eligibility criteria and can apply for paid parental leave up to the maximum amount payable.
Other technical amendments on the Supplementary Order Paper are made to ensure clarity in the administration of the Act. These include the definition of net income being amended to make it clear that trustee distributions are included as net income, and time off work while on accident compensation or parental leave, or in any other approved circumstances, being included as time working as a self-employed person. These hours are included when determining whether a self-employed person is eligible for parental leave payments. Again, that is consistent with the effect of the legislation for employees who are off work in those same circumstances.
Most submitters supported the bill as it is. It does not discriminate between employed or self-employed workers, it encourages more choice for workers in their role as parents, it encourages self-employed women to return to the workforce after having a child, and it recognises that many self-employed people are not high-income earners and may be in as much need of access to income replacement during parental leave as employed people are.
Some submitters supported the concept of paid parental leave for self-employed persons and made suggestions for improving the provisions relating to the self-employed, while others sought the broadening of the scope of the paid parental leave scheme as a whole to lengthen the duration of paid leave, increase the level of payment, and include other parents not currently covered by the scheme, such as casual and seasonal workers, and parents who assume the care of children via customary adoption or whāngai. An evaluation of the entire scheme is currently under way, looking at the experiences of women, partners, and employers, and also at those who are ineligible for the scheme currently. That will assist our Government to consider further some of the broader issues raised by the submitters.
The changes contained in the bill will be monitored after their implementation in order to contribute to the findings of the evaluation of the wider scheme currently under way. In the meantime, I welcome the select committee’s report on the bill and thank all members for their work. I also extend my thanks to all those who took the time to make submissions. I commend the progress of the bill to the House.
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) Link to this
National will be supporting the report back of the bill, because in many ways it is the recognition of a failure of the original scheme created by the Labour Government. National members pointed out when the original scheme was developed that this was a major deficiency. We said that the exclusion of the self-employed was essentially discriminatory—that Labour was looking after only those people who were employed and that it was completely ignoring the tens of thousands of parents who are involved in their own businesses as self-employed. That was our major objection. [ Interruption] The junior whip who is interjecting knows the truth of that. The interesting question we have to ask ourselves is whether it took a close electoral fight for the Government to say: “Mm, maybe we need to change our position on this one and extend the support.”
National has a philosophical difficulty with the way this legislation is being delivered. I say that because most self-employed people—and I know this from being within the legal profession—were seeking tax deductibility. That has been sought for many, many years. I acknowledge that National did not give that while in office, and indeed it should have. But that is what self-employed women, in particular, were seeking, and professional women and businesswomen made numerous submissions on it. I know for a fact that the Hon Ruth Dyson knows the truth of the matter. She has heard those submissions herself.
The Government says that it would sooner make someone a welfare beneficiary. Try as it might, Labour cannot duck the reality of that. This is a welfare benefit. Ask any self-employed people whether they want to become a welfare beneficiary and I can almost guarantee what their answer will be. It will be no. They would much prefer a tax deduction.
There are a number of reasons why that is the case. The first, which I have mentioned, is that self-employed people do not want to be welfare beneficiaries. The second reason, however, is that tax deduction is fundamentally simpler. All we would have to do is modify the Income Tax Act to provide a tax deduction for the costs of childcare, in particular, because that is what would really be involved. It would be a simple line in the return of income and the profit and loss statements of the particular business concerned. That is how business people think. They would just incorporate it as part and parcel of their instructions to their accountants when the annual tax return and annual accounts are being prepared. Would that not be so much simpler? Would that not be so much easier than this particular complicated, bureaucratic process?
I notice that the Minister was quite proud of the fact—and made special reference to it—that there had to be new amendments to provide for criminal proceedings. That is truly the mind of the bureaucrat, is it not? It is the nanny State—that in all ways we have to give bureaucrats, officials, and officers of Government the power to prosecute people, bring them before the courts, and monitor them, and to send inspectors out whenever the bureaucrats want them to be sent out. The bureaucrats’ small minds came up with that kind of plan. We know where the small-minded bureaucrats in this Parliament exist—they exist on the Government benches. They are happy and comfortable in being small-minded, pettifogging bureaucrats. That is their comfort zone, that is their experience, and that is the approach they would sooner have. National members trust people and say that we would sooner give the public the opportunity to work out how to conduct their affairs in their business, as they think fit. I would not even go so far as to say that this is like the curate’s egg—good in parts. I suppose I have to acknowledge that at least the extension of paid parental leave to self-employed people is a step forward. But there was a far better way in which do this—one that fits the way the self-employed operate, think, plan, and develop their own lives and businesses.
I note that in this Labour Government very few people have any experience at all of being self-employed.
Darren HughesIs this not bizarre? The junior whip is objecting to the fact that I am pointing out that very few people in the Government have had experience of being self-employed, and he accuses me of some sort of gutter politics of envy, or something. Frankly, it is quite bizarre. We know people by the company they keep. If Government members are embarrassed about being referred to as having had no experience of being self-employed, and if they feel so guilty about it that they have to make petty interjections, I can only say what a sad and unfortunate world they inhabit.
The point I was trying to make was that although very few people over there have had experience of self-employment, there are two or maybe three in the House right now. I see the Hon Jim Sutton and Mr Shane Jones, who I know have had the experience of running their own businesses. They would well know that self-employed people do not want to become welfare beneficiaries. How often have I heard Mr Shane Jones, in particular, say in this Parliament—and, indeed, in other forums—that welfare has been the enemy of Māori people, in particular, and that to create beneficiaries out of people who have a proud record of independence detracts from their sense of independence? I have to say to the member that there is a better way.
National will support the bill going to the next stage. I signal that we would like to provide an option during the Committee stage to give self-employed people at least the choice between going down this path—the path of being made a State dependent; a welfare beneficiary—or the pathway of the straightforward, simple, low-compliance, rules-based approach of a tax deduction. I ask Government members why they would not at least give people that choice. They should at least give people a choice. That would preserve their preferred bureaucratic-rich, nanny-State approach to the welfare system, and it would also say to self-employed people that the Government has at least some understanding of the situation they are in and acknowledges that they would prefer to have a tax deduction.
So I give notice to the Government that we will be putting up a Supplementary Order Paper to give the Government the opportunity to give people a choice—a two-pathway approach to delivering what is, objectively, the reasonable measure of supporting self-employed people and the raising of their families and reducing the costs of that to some extent.
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) Link to this
I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak in the second reading of this very important bill. I congratulate the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, whose members worked constructively to ensure the bill could be reported back to the House expeditiously.
I was going to say that it was very pleasing to have so much agreement in this House until I heard the speech made by the member opposite. He seems both to support paid parental leave and to oppose it. I thought we had moved on. Certainly, that was the impression we had when the bill was introduced, and from members opposite who were on the select committee. I thought we had all reached a point where we agreed that it is essential to ensure that all women and parents—whether or not they are employed or self-employed—do not feel pressured to put their working lives ahead of starting a family. I thought we had finally got the National Party to adopt a Labour Party policy. I thought its members had finally put aside their ideological reasons for opposing it, because it has not always been the case that they have.
I am one among many thousands of women who campaigned for 10 years for the right for mothers to have time off work on pay at the birth or adoption of a child. I did think we had moved on and I am sorry I was wrong about that, because I recall very well some famous comments made by members of the Opposition parties. Dr Brash said that he would scrap paid parental leave if National became the Government. Anne Tolley said the scheme was discriminatory and unfair and that National was likely to scrap the scheme if it got back into power, and so on. Jenny Shipley brought in a baby bonus as a sop to women who were campaigning. So I am disappointed; I did think we had moved on. I thought we had understood that it was really important in this country that we were modern and accepted that future generations have to be supported by giving all women and parents the right to have time off on pay at the birth or adoption of a child. It is a very common-sense policy and it shows the fairness of Labour’s policies.
I want to comment on Mr Mapp’s point about tax deductibility. It is not fair, because it advantages women who are well off. Those who are not well off cannot afford to wait until the end of the year to get their money back; they have to live from day to day to feed their baby and family. The Labour Party adopted this system because it was a fair policy. This bill builds on the paid parental leave scheme that was introduced by a Labour-led Government in 2002 and extended in 2004. It extends the benefits of paid parental leave to self-employed women. Yes, it was our policy before the election, and we have acted very quickly to deliver on it. The Prime Minister outlined it as a priority in her reply to the Speech from the Throne at the beginning of this Parliament.
One of the important changes to the bill that I think will benefit many women is the right of employees and self-employed women to become eligible for a subsequent period of paid parental leave after 6 months of a return to work from a previous period of parental leave, rather than 12 months as it is at present. Some important issues picked up by the select committee and outlined by the Minister will be addressed in the Supplementary Order Paper the Minister is to introduce.
I was surprised, because there was a large amount of agreement in the select committee and I thought we had made some progress on this matter. I was going to say that it is a good day in this House when we have so much agreement about something so important to our future. At least I think we will get the bill voted on. If that is the case, then this is a good day for women, for parents, and for families.
JO GOODHEW (National—Aoraki) Link to this
I rise, very keen to support the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill, but I take issue with the suggestion that I might support it for reasons similar to those of the Government. This measure is belated recognition of a gross oversight—that is, excluding self-employed persons from the opportunity to benefit from paid parental leave. Why would they have been excluded? Let us look at the history. This bill was not the brainchild of the Labour Government. Laila Harré proposed this idea, and, at the time—wait for it—Helen Clark, the Prime Minister, said: “Over my dead body!”. That is exactly what she said. But it seems that times they are a changing.
So when this legislation was introduced it was to support new parents with a policy that would give them some income replacement for a short period of time. As my esteemed colleague Wayne Mapp has said, we in the National Party are, of course, philosophically opposed to extending welfare benefits to people who would much rather have had a tax cut. That would have served them just as well, instead of their having to line up for something they could well call a benefit. Already far too many people are receiving benefits and being dependent upon this Government for income, when in fact they are very hard-working people who would just like to keep the money they earned in the first place.
The Working for Families package, as my colleague has indicated, is a great example of that. So National would have preferred tax cuts as a form of supporting new parents, and we would prefer to have less of the bureaucracy associated with all the machinations of how this measure will be determined.
However, when the original bill was passed that excluded self-employed parents, we saw the injustice that it presented. Small businesses make up 95 percent of businesses in New Zealand, and many of those small businesses comprise couples—those many, many couples involved in small businesses that keep this economy going—and they have the same rights to income replacement and to support as new parents. However arbitrary it might seem, self-employed parents were excluded in the original bill. But no, it was probably not arbitrary; it was probably just an example of the clear bias amongst Government members towards employees and away from the self-employed. That is the union leaning coming out again, I suspect.
Well, that woke them up, did it not? They do not like being called unionists. Thank goodness this amendment to the bill addresses that—I am so relieved that they are awake!
How many people might benefit from this amendment? Well, 66,412 women of fertile age in New Zealand are self-employed. That was quite a stunning number, I thought—66,412 women of fertile age. Of course, whilst those women are the people who will bear the children, there will be fathers involved—the other side of the parenting equation. It has been estimated that 2,173 self-employed parents will apply for paid parental leave each year. It is not too bad really, but it is still an injustice that those people were going to be excluded prior to the amending of the original bill.
It is clear that this amendment, like the original bill in the option it introduced to benefit families, will be taken up mainly by women. Of note amongst the 19 submitters to the bill at the select committee were the largely women’s organisations. Those groups included the National Advisory Council on the Employment of Women, the New Zealand Federation of Business and Professional Women, the New Zealand College of Midwives, the New Zealand Nurses Organisation, the National Council of Women of New Zealand, the Family Planning Association, and Rural Women New Zealand.
It is very important that this bill acknowledges the different challenges faced by self-employed parents compared with those who are employed. This bill allows self-employed people to continue to maintain a level of oversight of their businesses and to perform occasional administrative tasks. Why is that important? That is very, very important. Although they will cease from the physical side of their self-employment, it is important they will still have the opportunity to undertake that oversight of their businesses. The investment on the part of those who are self-employed is not only monetary; it is an investment in terms of time and in terms of passion—an enormous amount of passion goes into those 95 percent of New Zealand businesses, those small mum and dad businesses, those young parent businesses. No black and white rules should preclude the aforementioned—that is, the level of oversight of their businesses and their ability to perform occasional administrative tasks.
The last point I wish to make is in regard to the importance of this amendment bill to the people of my electorate, Aoraki, because it is largely a rural, provincial electorate. Many young families working on farms, and many young couples, particularly in our burgeoning dairy industry, need this assistance. They are self-employed—75 percent of those working in the agriculture sector are self-employed or close to it—and those farming families were certainly screaming loud and clear that it was not fair to discriminate against the self-employed, and that they too should have the opportunity for assistance and support as young parents.
Federated Farmers Vice President, Don Nicholson, expressed his delight when this bill went to the select committee, and described it as removing “a gross inequity that has been in place since taxpayer-funded paid parental leave for employees was introduced in 2002.” Certainly, the farmer organisations were vociferous at that time in their condemnation of the exclusion of self-employed people. Those hard-working young parents, often with low incomes, felt extremely hard-done-by when they were excluded. I am very happy that they will now find they are amongst the lucky New Zealanders who will have this assistance when they have babies.
In the submission presented by Rural Women New Zealand its representatives were very concerned about the possible bureaucracies of this system. I can tell members that their concern was warranted. They would rather have had a lump sum payment—we would say some tax relief to leave the money where it started—and said that such a payment would be useful because there would not be all the machinations of working out how those people were actually going to take the benefit from paid parental leave.
In summing up, I want to say that, yes, National is very supportive of the bill, and our philosophy has not changed. It does not matter what the Government says; we have not changed our philosophy. We saw inequity, and this Opposition party is very keen to address that inequity and support this bill, because it was simply not fair if the Government bias towards employees, which excluded the self-employed, was allowed to be perpetuated. I am therefore pleased to support this bill.
SUE BRADFORD (Green) Link to this
The Green Party is very pleased to be able to speak in support of this bill as it has been reported back to the House. I thank the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee for the time it has put into the consideration of the bill, and into the result before us today. As I stated in the first reading of this bill and in other paid parental leave debates, the Green Party has always been in favour of paid parental leave applying to self-employed workers, and it is great that we are one step closer to that today.
As we debate these extensions to the bill, I also acknowledge the original work of the “mother of paid parental leave” in this House, Laila Harré, in shepherding the original bill through. That was no mean feat. The National Party and its doom-merchant allies at the time believed that civilisation as we knew it would end if the original bill were passed. Even Labour at the time was lukewarm on the bill, and ensured that it was far more restrictive than it should have been. I am pleased to hear today how far the National Party has come.
The legislation has been extended once already, and now we are looking forward to further improving the Act so that eventually it will become legislation of which we can all be proud. Even after this bill is passed, improvements are still needed regarding eligibility for paid parental leave, the level of paid leave, and the length of leave that can be taken. A number of those issues will probably need to be addressed before New Zealand can ratify the relevant International Labour Organization conventions on paid parental leave, but at least we will now have a system that does not discriminate between workers, based on their employment status.
Although I was not a member of the select committee I did sit in on the committee that did the work originally, and many urban and rural submitters were rightly angry at the inequity of self-employed working parents being denied the ability to take up paid parental leave. The arguments put up then were around the complexities of dealing with the issues of self-employed workers. Although no legislation is simple, the fact that once the Government had the political will to make the changes, the complexity arguments, strangely enough, evaporated. Unlike some bills, this bill has been returned to the House largely intact, and it seems that really there was general support from most of the committee at least. The Minister of Labour, Ruth Dyson, and the Prime Minister both stated that the bill would become law on 1 July 2006, and I am pleased that we are on target to achieve this. Those women who timed their pregnancies to fit with the passing of this legislation—and I believe that there were some—will not be disappointed, unless their babies are rather too premature.
In addition to extending paid parental leave to self-employed workers, the bill also deals with three other important issues. Firstly, it reduces from 12 months to 6 months the minimum period before an employee is entitled to a subsequent period of parental leave and a parental leave payment. I am pleased to see this change. It helps those parents who may be adopting again before a 12-month period, and also those parents who themselves have another child within 12 months of the earlier one being born. With the complications of premature birth, 6 months seems a good period to select for the purposes of this bill.
Secondly, the bill gives power to the department to accept applications for paid parental leave even if there are irregularities in the application. This is very important as it is often those who are in the greatest need of paid parental leave who have difficulty in filling out the application forms.
Thirdly, the bill gives review rights on paid parental leave to the Employment Relations Authority. This is also an important step to ensure there are cost-effective review and appeal mechanisms for the paid parental leave system, and the Green Party endorses this measure.
In regard to one of the suggested amendments to the bill made by the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, I still have some concerns with new section 2AD in clause 8. Along with some submitters I was concerned that the original wording discriminates against those workers who, because of their precarious employment situation, move, even concurrently at times, between self-employed and employee status. My concern is that these workers’ entitlements should be based on the sum total of their work, not just on one status or the other. Frankly, I am having difficulty deciding whether the proposed amendment of the committee to this provision makes the matter better or worse. I would be grateful if, at some stage during the second reading or Committee stage of the debate, the Minister or one of the select committee members could explain to the House the impact on these workers of the original clause and the amendment.
So what does this bill not do, and what still needs to be addressed if we are finally to have International Labour Organization - compliant legislation? First is the issue of the right of working mothers to breastfeed. I attempted in the previous paid parental amendment legislation to have this included, but was told it was outside the scope. It seems that it is outside the scope of this bill, as well. This is a real shame. In the mid-2003 review of the paid parental leave scheme the Human Rights Commission stated that providing a legal framework for the right to breastfeed at work need not be complex. It advocated that the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act would be the best vehicle for this. I strongly urge the Minister to ask her department to undertake work on this issue to develop further legislation as soon as possible.
Second is the issue around whāngai and other customary adoptions. The commentary on the bill acknowledges that there were submissions on these matters but again submitters were told that this was outside the scope of the bill. We are told by the Minister today that the Government is looking into this, but this is not good enough. The “looking at” seems to be taking far too long. It is time for the Government to engage on this deeply and carefully in consultation with iwi, hapū, and whānau, and with Pasifika and other cultural groups, with a view to extending the legislation to cover these situations as soon as practicable.
Third is the continuing problem of casual and seasonal employees. These are the most vulnerable workers in this country who often miss out on many employment rights and, of course, also miss out on the right to paid parental leave. I join with Peter Brown, who constantly reminds this House about the plight of these workers, and acknowledge that although it may be too hard to deal with these workers solely through this legislation we should perhaps look at some other legislation and take a complete look at the situation of casual and vulnerable workers, and perhaps even begin to consider some slight reregulation of the labour market to eliminate the exploitative practices around casualisation. Where genuine casual and seasonal work is needed, we should be ensuring that those workers are entitled to all the rights that permanent workers enjoy, such as paid parental leave.
In conclusion, I want to reiterate that the Green Party is pleased to support this bill today and will do so again at the third reading. We are delighted that once the Minister of Labour and her Government acknowledged the discrimination against self-employed workers in the original bill they moved in a timely way to address these issues. We support the inclusion of the additional matters in the bill, especially the reduction from 12 months to 6 months of the entitlement period between births or adoptions, but we also recognise that there is still some way to go before this legislation can comply with all International Labour Organization standards. The Green Party will support any Government or member’s bill in the future that further strengthens this legislation and finally allows us to ratify the International Labour Organization in this area.
PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) Link to this
I would just like to clarify a few points at the start of my contribution. The first one is that I, and New Zealand First, recognise that Laila Harré was the first member to bring this issue before Parliament. But, as I recall—and I am 100 percent correct on this—the thrust of her bill was that employers would pay for paid parental leave. That simply was not acceptable to New Zealand First. I remember we told her that that was not acceptable, and, in fairness, the Labour-led Government picked up the bill and made it much more workable, in our view, by funding it through taxpayer funds. That is the way it should be.
The first bill was passed in 2002. New Zealand First supported that. We supported it wholeheartedly. We were told at that time that the self-employed were excluded because of complications, and what have you, but that they would be included in an amendment bill in the not too distant future. That amendment bill came about in 2004, but again it excluded the self-employed. We thought that was totally unfair. There is no real, major difficulty in including self-employed people in this legislation. As the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee found out, it is a relatively straightforward bill, and very little has been changed in the select committee process.
Sue Bradford, I think, referred to new section 2AD, inserted by clause 8. I hope I heard her correctly. She took issue with the fact that, as it is written here, a person who is both an employee and a self-employed person cannot get a combined entitlement. The select committee raised this issue—indeed, I think I raised it first at the select committee. I might be proven to be wrong on that, but I know that virtually everybody on the select committee supported that concern. I was pleased to hear the Minister say that she will produce a Supplementary Order Paper at the Committee stage that will address that concern and allow people who are both employees and self-employed to combine their work efforts so that they can get the maximum entitlement. I think that will address Sue Bradford’s concern. I hope it does. We have not seen the Supplementary Order Paper as yet, of course, but we will await it with some excitement.
For the 4 years that we have had paid parental leave we have done a huge disservice to self-employed people—a huge disservice. That is why New Zealand First is quite delighted that we are in the throes of passing this bill today. Basically, some very highly paid employed people have been entitled to paid parental leave and some relatively low-paid self-employed people have not had any entitlement. We think that is grossly unfair, and we really cannot understand why it has taken so long for the Government to get its act together and address this issue.
I think the National Party member made some comment that this is basically a women’s bill. Well, in essence, because the bill will affect mothers, I suppose one could accept that rationale. But, believe it or not, thousands upon thousands—indeed, I suggest millions—of men are concerned about this issue. I read recently—and I wish I had brought it down to the House—what a good start this measure gives young kiddies because they have a person at home who is being paid for so many weeks. That is reflected not only in the mother’s viewpoint of the whole thing but also in the father’s. This is a very important bill for fathers so I think it is wrong of us even to imply that it is really a women’s bill, because that is not the case.
New Zealand First has one degree of concern. We tried to get it addressed during the select committee consideration of this bill but were told that it was a bit difficult and that there were reasons for not doing it. Our concern relates to when a person goes on paid parental leave and the employer has to, by law, hold the job open for 12 months—although the parent will get only 14 weeks’ pay. The employer has to hold the job open for 12 months, but during that time the parent—the mother or the father—could take a job elsewhere. Indeed, we were given an example of a person who was working somewhere down south, for a competitor, I think. The original employer was holding the job open for 12 months only to discover that the person he was holding the job open for was working for his competitor. That seems to us to be totally unfair and totally against the spirit of the whole thing. It is still the law that the job has to be held open. Meanwhile, the employer may be filling the role with someone who may not be right up to speed—who may not be of the right calibre or have the right experience for the job—simply to keep the spot open for the original employee.
New Zealand First believes that that issue really must be addressed. The reason that people cannot indicate to their employer that they are leaving and might not return is that they would forfeit the payment. We think there must be a way of overcoming that. Employers have a right to know, as accurately as possible, whether a staff member is coming back. It would really brass employers off to find out that they had held a job open only to find that the employee had gone somewhere else. As I say, the example given to the select committee whereby someone was working for a competitor is quite a sore point with New Zealand First.
We are absolutely delighted that this bill is proceeding. We think it is in the spirit of the original bill of 2002. We question why it did not come to fruition a lot more promptly. There is no major complication in giving paid parental leave to self-employed people and we are absolutely delighted that we are doing this now, albeit 4 years too late. New Zealand First supports this bill.
HONE HARAWIRA (Māori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) Link to this
Kia ora tātou te Whare. Te Ururoa Flavell gave the Māori Party’s support to this bill at its first reading because it was consistent with our recognition of the importance of financial security for whānau. That financial security has never been more important than it is now, with record numbers of people on low incomes, record numbers of people on special benefits, record numbers of food parcels being distributed, and record numbers of children living in families that are below the poverty line. That financial security is especially urgent for Māori, particularly in light of the finding by the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples, who noted the “underlying institutional and structural discrimination that Māori have long suffered”, and who also noted that disparities continue to exist between Māori and non-Māori with regard to employment, income, health, housing, education, and the criminal justice system.
I raise the special rapporteur’s report because of the importance of this House recognising the huge impact that poverty has on our society, especially given that this Government refuses to accept the need to measure poverty or even to acknowledge a poverty line, as if refusing to acknowledge poverty will mean that people will not notice it exists. Well, folks, it does not take too much analysis to work out who is most affected by poverty, with or without a line in place. Gisborne, Whangarei, Whanganui, Porirua, and Rotorua are the regions with the highest levels of poverty and, surprise, surprise, they are all regions with high Māori populations.
When times are tough any threat to employment is bound to increase pressure on a household, whether people are employed in the workforce, self-employed, in casual work, in multiple employment, or in seasonal employment. Our original doubts about the paid parental leave scheme were because self-employed people had been left out when a very significant portion of the population—more than 360,000—consider themselves to be self-employed. In fact, the number of Māori who are self-employed has increased by more than 200 percent over the past 20 years. So this matter has huge significance for the Māori Party, which is the only party to have taken up the challenge of defending Māori rights and advancing Māori interests.
On another level, this whole House acknowledges the considerable anxiety being expressed by both Labour and National about the unprecedented growth in Māori political participation since the birth of the Māori Party. This is rightfully so—and not before time too, I might add. Last month Labour Party president, Mike Williams, called in his Māori MPs and their staff to work out how to deal with the rise and rise of the Māori Party. He said there was an urgent need for Labour’s Māori MPs to be “making more of an impression on the Māori electorate” and getting organised. He also criticised what he called the sluggishness of Labour’s Māori MPs, but was not prepared to accept that Labour’s own insultingly bad treatment of its Māori MPs was a major reason why Māori are switching in droves to the Māori Party. Then over the weekend National’s deputy leader, Gerry Brownlee, told a National Party conference that National needs to be preparing for the Māori Party to hold the balance of power at the next election. Again, that was an acknowledgment of the ever-increasing role that the Māori Party is playing in the politics of Aotearoa.
Yet, fascinating as all this is, the real challenge before the Government should not be in scheming to undermine the Māori Party but in preparing for the real challenge of an ever-increasing Māori population and the rapid rise of Māori who are both politically mature and self-employed. Thirteen percent of self-employed Māori are aged under 30, compared with only 6 percent of non-Māori, and that proportion can only be expected to rise, given the youthful profile of the Māori population.
So how does all this relate to the legislation before the House today? To state the obvious, Māori make up 15 percent of the population and we are growing fast. As both Labour and National have recognised, Māori people and their Māori Party are here for the long haul. That means the Government needs to start planning to deal with the increasingly high numbers of Māori men and women who are self-employed, ensuring that they can access paid parental leave, and planning to enable those Māori who are self-employed casual, seasonal, or multi-job workers to access paid parental leave, as well.
The House has been focusing on the impact of extending the paid parental leave scheme to the self-employed, but it would be remiss of us to leave this debate today without again challenging the promotion of work over and above the unique and vital role of parenting. This Government seems to have abandoned support for the critical role that good parenting plays by depriving beneficiary parents of any support from the Working for Families package and by the ruthless slashing of funding for PlunketLine from the end of next month. The Māori Party is committed to supporting all parents, whether or not they work, to ensure that all children in this country can rise out of the poverty trap to which 250,000 of them have been consigned by this Government’s legislation.
I also come to this debate aware of the message of May Day yesterday—to look out for a grave and imminent threat requiring immediate assistance, an alert used around the world to signal a life-threatening emergency, a call to distress, or a threat to life. The threat this May Day has never been more apparent, and we must take every step to provide the support and assistance that parents need to carry out the most vital role of any in our society. When parents have time for their children, so will those children be less likely to stray from their parents’ values. We all know that good parenting is critical to building a stable society and that no matter how significant any of today’s developments might be, that most important role of parenting must never be undermined.
The Māori Party will support the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill, but we also call for a wider debate on the protection of parenting as one of society’s most important roles, for both Māori and non-Māori.
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) Link to this
When paid parental leave was introduced during the last Parliament in the year 2002, United Future immediately explicitly drew the attention of this House and of the nation to the need to extend the regime to the self-employed. Accordingly, we were delighted to see the Government act on that suggestion and introduce this bill. United Future acknowledged that there would be a measure of difficulty in extending paid parental leave to the self-employed, but to have not done so would have created a fundamental inequity, if not an unlawful discrimination, in favour of employees and against the self-employed. I am pleased to signal United Future’s strong support for this bill and I hope that all parties may come to a similar conclusion. Every speaker so far in this debate, I note, has signalled that his or her party will be supporting the bill, so perhaps we will see it go through on a unanimous vote. The only members we have not heard from—and I suspect we will not be hearing from them—are the ACT party members, so we will have to wait and see what happens in regard to those members.
After all, the arrival of a new baby is a wonderful event for the parents, whether they are self-employed or employed by others. United Future would argue that it is of great importance to the nation as a whole that we ensure that that new child, that new life, is given the best possible start in this world. Each baby born represents the future of our nation. Collectively, children comprise the future of our nation and, therefore, they are our most important investment in the social capital of our country going forward. In that respect I support many of the comments made by Hone Harawira, the previous speaker from the Māori Party, concerning the need for us as a nation and as a Parliament to ensure that we give the greatest possible support to those men and women who are undertaking life’s most important function or job—that is, to raise the children of the new generation.
United Future’s dream is to see that every child in this country is given the best possible opportunity to grow up and make a meaningful contribution to our society. Therefore, it is right and just that we give paid parental leave to all parents, regardless of whether they are employed by others or self-employed, or whether they are beginning a family through the natural birth process or adopting a child. Although I am not suggesting we do this, there is a philosophical argument that when it comes to the parents of adopted children, we should certainly ensure that they receive the same support as we give to parents whose children are not adopted, because it costs a great deal of money to adopt a child. To do that would recognise and include the reality of the cost of adopting children to some extent.
It was for the same sorts of reasons that United Future supported wholeheartedly the Working for Families package. The arrival of a new child is the beginning of a decades-long process of two human beings called parents who are—hopefully—both involved with that child for decades to come, and we need to ensure that they have the financial means to do that. Providing paid parental leave is the start. Therefore, it is important that this Parliament provides ongoing support for parents as they undertake that very important work.
Contrary to some of the comments made in 2002 around the issue of the self-employed not having paid parental leave—made mainly, as I recall, by members of the Labour Government, who have, I think, travelled some considerable distance on this matter since then—there was a sort of underlying thought that self-employed people are normally better off financially than employed people. I advise the House that during my term as an MP, I have spoken about this issue to quite a number of self-employed people, including self-employed women, who employ sometimes two or three other people. Having done a whole day’s work running their business, they sit down at the dining room table every night to look after all the compliance costs that we, as a House, have lumbered on those small-business people. Some of those women have told me that they have figured out that, at the end of the day, they are actually taking home less money than some of their own staff. That is the reality for many of those people. They are highly motivated people. They have chosen to be self-reliant and to start businesses, some of which, hopefully, grow to become larger companies and great successes, but in the meantime it is really hard graft. So it would be completely discriminatory and completely unjust if such people were not to be recognised for doing that and not given paid parental leave.
To those members of the Labour Government who come from a union background, and whose speeches in the House sometimes proceed on the assumption that all employees have been immaculately conceived and that all employers are fundamentally evil people, I say that they really need to get in touch with the real world, because that is not the reality. Many of those valiant New Zealanders who set out to run their own business, be it a hairdressing salon or whatever it is, really deserve the support of this House every bit as much as those people who, in some ways, have taken the easy option—like all of us in this House have—of having their pay packet paid for by other people.
With those few remarks I am happy to signal once again our strong support for this bill. I would have preferred the amendment to be introduced a little earlier in the process, but it is better late than never. We think this is a very worthwhile, forward-looking step for the future of our nation and particularly for parents.
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) Link to this
I am very pleased to support this amendment to the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act. Members are right when they say this amendment has been a long time in coming. It certainly has not just come out of the blue, as Dr Wayne Mapp would have us believe. Of course, this bill was announced before the election, and even before that. When the last amendment to the Act was going through this House and through the select committee, it was indicated that this amendment was coming. But, as we all know, it is a lot more complicated to provide paid parental leave for the self-employed than it is to provide it for those who are employed by others.
The difference between the National Party and the Labour Government on this issue is that we have never used that factor as an excuse to do nothing. We have never said that we would hold off on paid parental leave altogether until we had covered absolutely everything. We recognised the importance of paid parental leave to parents in this country and, therefore, we started with those people who were easier to draft legislation for and now we have then extended it further. When we decided—as promised in the election campaign—that we would extend paid parental leave and reduce the amount of time that a woman had to be in employment before she received it, we were still not ready to go forward with the amendments for the self-employed. But we put the bill to the House anyway, because we wanted to put those changes in place. Here we are now, as promised, providing very important legislation for those in self-employment.
Some members of the National Party love to misquote us. I do not know whether their research unit is not doing its work properly or whether they are deliberately trying to mislead this House, but they always try to say that Labour members have said they would not support paid parental leave for the self-employed—that it would be introduced over our dead bodies. In fact, that is not true. What we said was that we would not support a levy on employers in order to pay for parental leave—that that would be done over our dead bodies. I am sure the National Party supports that position, because it would be very difficult to provide paid parental leave to the self-employed if it was paid for by an employer levy.
It is interesting to ask whether, after this debate, we will even know what the National Party believes about paid parental leave. A number of members have made 10-minute speeches in which they spoke for 9 minutes and 50 seconds about how bad paid parental leave is, how it is welfare, and how they do not like it or support it, saying it is terrible and they never supported it. Then, in the last 10 seconds of their speeches, they have said: “The National Party will be supporting the bill. Thank you.” I look forward to seeing members of the National Party who have been very outspoken in previous years about how they do not support paid parental leave, saying it is immoral and is welfare, stand up today and cast their vote for paid parental leave. Why will they do so? Because those members know that it is popular and that it is helping New Zealand families.
If any bill shows how visionless and divided the National Party is, it is this bill. Let us be clear that the National Party does not support paid parental leave. It did not support it in the 1990s—it never introduced it. People now sitting in Opposition who said then that they did not support paid parental leave will stand up today and vote for it. If any bill shows just how divided the National Party is—because we know there are Opposition members who do support it, and who have come out and said they wished the National Party—[Interruption]
Hon Tau HenareI can. There have been numerous quotes from Katherine Rich, when she had her child, saying she wished the National Party would support paid parental leave. Marie Hasler, a former National MP, urged her party to rethink its stance on paid parental leave. Members have stood up today and talked for nearly 10 minutes about how much they disliked this bill, and they then went on to say they would support it.
Pansy Wong says this is a terrible bill. Well, maybe Ms Wong would like to tell us why the party she belongs to is supporting the bill, if it is so terrible. I say to the National Party that if it wants to be in Government, it will have to start by working out what it actually believes in, and then vote according to that. I have no doubt that Mr David Bennett, who will get up next, will give us another 9 minutes and 50 seconds on how bad this bill is. Then he will sit down, after telling us that the National Party plans to support the bill.
Anne TolleyAnne Tolley put out a press release that stated how bad she thought paid parental leave was, and how she would never support it, but today she will stand up and cast the National Party’s votes for this bill. I say to the people of New Zealand that there is a word for that, and they need to think about that very carefully if they ever consider casting their vote for the National Party.
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) Link to this
I just want to read my first line so Moana gets it—
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) Link to this
The member will refer to another member by his or her full name or title. Thank you.
Just so that Moana Mackey understands it, it is with great pleasure that the National Party supports the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill in its second reading. This is not a 9-minute speech against the bill that will come to a conclusion in favour of it for the sake of public opinion. It has actually been a pleasure to be part of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and to work with our Labour and New Zealand First colleagues. Putting this legislation together has been very successful and very enjoyable.
In coming to this Parliament, I saw an institution where people do not work together. This is one bill on which people have worked together. However, we have some major problems. Why has it taken 4 years for us to all work together on this bill? The answer is quite simple: Labour did not know about it. It did not conceive of doing anything to help the self-employed. Why should it help the self-employed? The self-employed all vote National—that is what Labour thinks! But Labour found that a lot of people in its unions were self-employed. Those people came forward and said they were getting hammered by a piece of legislation that did not support them. So what was the result? Labour decided to come up with a bill for self-employed people, as well. So it did. But it was full of holes.
If one looks at the commentary on the bill, one will find at least four parts of it that say Labour will look at it again. All Minister Dyson could do today was read the commentary. There was no heart or soul. There was no idea of what the concept of paid parental leave for the self-employed actually meant. All we got were comments that Labour would look at those issues when it had to: “We’ll do a Supplementary Order Paper when and if we need to do it.” Why did it not do that when it put the bill together? It was because it did not know. It has no concept of what it is like to go out and earn money.
This bill involved a number of attributes that as constituent MPs we had seen at a practical level. Earlier this year a gentleman came into my office and told me a story that we took to the select committee. The story was an important part of the redrafting of the bill. He was a solo father at the time he came and saw me. About 9 months ago his wife injured herself while she was pregnant. She had a highly paid job at the local Waikato Hospital, and she was on accident compensation for the last 4 months of her pregnancy. Tragically, soon after giving birth to her third child she was killed in a motor vehicle accident. The solo father sought to transfer the paid parental leave entitlement to himself. The Inland Revenue Department would pay paid parental leave based only on the lower income of the accident compensation payments, not the higher possible total income on a pro rata basis. Effectively, he received the parental leave payments, but at a lower rate due to her being on accident compensation.
We have taken this case to the Minister and we have not received a satisfactory resolution at this stage. We also took it to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. The Department of Labour and the select committee took it on board and rewrote the bill to bring the appropriate changes into effect. I ask members to look at new section 71C(b)(ia) in clause 20. That provision clarifies parental leave so that where a self-employed person takes parental leave before the baby’s due date then it is not included when calculating a self-employed person’s earnings. So they can be taking parental leave before the baby is born, and the parental leave payment will be based on the time in income, not on the time out of employment.
That is an important change to the bill that Labour did not recognise, because it did not understand the practical implications. It is an important change that we also need to see in the employer-employee section for situations where people may be in an accident compensation situation like that and not receiving their full entitlement.
Another example that has not been sorted out by this legislation was brought to us by Business New Zealand. It brought to us the case where many permanent employees on parental leave may be replaced by an employee on a fixed-term agreement. If that employee—the one who is the replacement—is pregnant, then the new employee will be eligible for parental leave during the term of the agreement. Business New Zealand submitted that in those cases the agreement cannot be terminated on grounds other than those in the agreement. So when the temporary employee has finished parental leave, he or she will be able to return to the job to complete the remainder of the term of the agreement. Business New Zealand was concerned that a second temporary replacement will need to be found to replace the first temporary employee. It submitted that this situation could not arise if the eligibility criteria still operated in terms of hours worked over the 12 months.
This Government has failed to look into the situation and deliver anything in the bill to cover that situation. The New Zealand First - Labour Government thought this issue was not big enough to warrant amending the legislation. That is symptomatic of a Government that has no concept of economic policy. This Government has squandered an economic future that was built over the last 20 years. We are in a situation now of zero growth over the last 6 months. It is a classic tax-and-spend, left-wing Government that has strangled our economy. Belated attempts like this to recognise the self-employed show Labour’s contempt for those who are trying to build a better New Zealand.
But what can one expect from two political parties like Labour and New Zealand First? New Zealand First’s economic campaign during the election was to buy back companies like Telecom so that it could give cheap rates for telephone calls to some of the potential voters. That is the content and extent of New Zealand First’s economic policy, and that is why it has butchered this economy through a failure to recognise the productive heartland of this country.
People such as the self-employed have waited too long for fair treatment and a just basis with other New Zealanders. This Government has spoken about the concept of fairness—that was one of its first words—but it has left self-employed people out. How fair is that? Fairness is when you deliver for all New Zealanders and then you can have a situation where the strength of parenting that has been identified by a number of parties today is actually met through legislation.
We have some other issues in this legislation that show that fairness is not top of Labour’s mind. A key one is adoption, especially in the Māori and Pacific Island communities. It recognises adoption in the traditional sense but not from those communities. In this legislation all we get is: “We’ll deal with it later.” Will it be 4 years before you deliver fairness to people in those communities?
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) Link to this
You are bringing the Speaker into the debate.
But such practicalities do not faze a Labour Government. It has not looked after the people the Green Party so rightly identified as being temporary and seasonal employees. It does not worry about fairness there. It will deal with it later at some point in the future when it has to. That is simply not good enough. The people who made submissions on this bill made them on the basis of fairness and equity for all New Zealanders. They wanted to see people have that opportunity and start in life. It is with great encouragement that we support those families and we look forward to the passing of this legislation for the benefit of all New Zealanders.
PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) Link to this
I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I did not want to interrupt the honourable member’s speech, but I seek leave of the House to table the New Zealand First policy that embraces our economic policy at the last election, in order that the member might learn a little bit about what has happened.
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) Link to this
It is not really a point of order, but you are entitled to seek leave anyway. Is there any objection? There is.