Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) Link to this
As National has made clear in the first reading debate, through the select committee process, and at the second reading, we support this legislation. Our major concern previously, when the legislation of 2002 was introduced, was that it cut out self-employed people. It is pleasing to see that the Government has finally seen sense, albeit belatedly, and is now including them.
I did signal last week that I intended to introduce a Supplementary Order Paper that would essentially provide an option to self-employed people to either take the welfare payment as it is provided for in the legislation—clearly a form most preferred by the Government in its passionate desire to turn as many people in the nation into welfare beneficiaries as it possibly can—or have the choice of taking a tax deduction. There is a reason why that Supplementary Order Paper is not on the Table today to be debated. I took advice from the Clerk’s Office on whether it would be within the Standing Orders to take such an approach. The difficulty is that to effect such an option does not so much mean changing this legislation, which is about welfare payments, as actually changing the Income Tax Act itself. I am advised by the Clerk’s Office that that is outside the scope of the bill. That is why a statement I made last week cannot be fulfilled today.
However, I am signalling more generally that that is National’s preferred approach. The reason is that it fits the way that self-employed people see themselves. They do not actually want to go through all the rigmarole, compliance costs, and bureaucratise of applying for welfare payments; they would much sooner, as part and parcel of their business accounts, simply make an additional claim for a tax deduction or tax rebate. That would be much simpler, much more straightforward, and involve far fewer procedural issues than this provision applies. But the Government has simply rejected that option and will not follow it. It is much more likely that that is one of the approaches that National would provide for the future.
The fiscal effect, of course, would in essence be the same as this. We would, obviously, intend the claims to be, in essence, of the same size, but we would provide choices in the means of delivery—one that suits the Government’s mania to turn all New Zealanders into welfare beneficiaries, and the other that respects the way in which self-employed people actually live their lives, which is that they would sooner deal with the issue through the normal accounting process.
However, turning specifically to the purpose in general here, members will note that two things are being sought in this bill. One is, obviously, the extending of the parental leave period for self-employed persons, which is covered in clause 3(1). Clause 3(2) reduces the minimum period—and it is important to get this right—before an employee is entitled to a subsequent period of parental leave from 12 months to 6 months. It would be useful for the Minister, Ruth Dyson, to give a more complete explanation of this.
This is not the situation that came up some time ago when the paid parental leave period was increased from 12 weeks to 14 weeks, and when the time of application from when first employed was reduced from 12 months to 6 months. That is an issue in the past. I am not contesting that particular point. This is more specifically about subsequent claims. On the face of it, one would ask how this could actually be. A question that could legitimately be asked is how a person can make a claim in just 6 months. Logically, one would normally expect there would be not less than 9 months between periods—the self-evident period between births cannot be less than 9 months.
I presume the provision is in there for adoptions, primarily. One could imagine adoptions arising in a period of less than 9 months post the previous claim for parental leave. I presume that actually is the intention of that provision, but certainly the Business New Zealand submission was also rather surprised at the change of the 12 months down to 6 months, it could not quite see the point of it, and it suggested that the 12 months should apply. As I say, I appreciate it is quite a different issue from the one that arose a couple of years ago, but it is at best curious and, as I say, one would assume essentially deals with the issue of adoptions.
The other point that one notes in clause 3(2)(c)—“allowing a right of review by the Employment Relations Authority in respect of entitlement to a parental leave payment.”—is that if a Government has a welfare system, then I guess this is the way to go, but it is actually quite a complicated compliance cost. It shows the whole approach of the current Government to add layers of bureaucratise to the system—like the prospects of substantial legal fees for both parties, and so forth. I presume it would be the intent of the Government to have those matters dealt with fundamentally by mediation, but I see in the bill that it has also added the right of review, and all the cost that that implies. Again it might be useful if the Minister explained the purpose really of adding in an additional right than is necessary.
I make it clear that National is supporting the intent. It was my intent, as I indicated last week, to provide the option, but the Clerk’s Office has said that such a Supplementary Order Paper would have been out of order; so I did not do that. I have had to signal that point for the future. But we do have some concerns about the change from 12 months to 6 months, or at the very least we would like an explanation as to why it is there. I noted the Minister indicated the reason that I gave is not the reason. As I say, Business New Zealand was rather puzzled, so it would be useful to put on the record of the House why it is there, and the other matter, I guess, the Minister may choose or not, as the case may be, to respond to.
LINDSAY TISCH (National—Piako) Link to this
Members will know that in the past National has opposed paid parental leave, and the reason we opposed it is that it was unfair; there was no equity. It was very much designed around those in employment. We are a nation of small businesses, and the people who invest in their businesses, the business owners, were the ones who missed out. Many business owners are women. In our view it was quite discriminatory that a self-employed person who owned a business was not eligible to participate in the paid parental leave scheme. We have taken that point over a number of years. We see a change now, and we welcome this opportunity whereby self-employed people can be part of the paid parental leave provisions.
The purpose clause states that the main purpose of the Act is to entitle certain self-employed persons to parental leave payments. So that is a welcome change, and I tell the Minister in the chair, Ruth Dyson, that we think it is a good move and we support it.
But I want to pick up on the point that my colleague Dr Mapp talked about in terms of subsequent periods of parental leave, which comes under subclause (2)(a) of the purpose clause. I note that the New Zealand Retailers Association’s submission gave an example of eligibility for subsequent periods of parental leave. It gave the case of a mother-to-be who starts work on 1 January. She is 2 months pregnant at the time, and the baby is due on 1 August. On 1 July she starts her 14 weeks’ maternity leave, having been employed for 6 months—that is, 7 months to the due date. She returns to work on 8 October, and by 8 April the following year is eligible again. So that is a very important point to take into account. The association says that even allowing 1 month spare, she could deliver her next child as early as June, starting her leave in May. The employer has the same struggle for temporary replacement, in July of one year and May of the next year, and so it goes on. The employer is faced with the repeated, and very real, costs of recruitment, training, and lost productivity.
I do not know whether the Minister has seen that submission, but it demonstrates what can happen in practice. In the workplace, those who are employing staff want some certainty and continuity. Under this provision now they are quite happy to extend it to self-employed persons, but, at the same time, there was an argument that the period of 6 months was too short and it should remain at the original 12-month period. For businesses whose employers are offering that service, and now have to provide it by legislation, that is not an unfair argument. They are happy to comply with the law to provide paid parental leave, but say there should be the 12-month provision. Not only the Retailers Association but also Business New Zealand, which represents a huge number of businesses throughout the country, recommended that 12 months continue to be the minimum period that must elapse before an employee again becomes entitled to a period of parental leave.
The industry makes a strong point, and I do not think it is unfair that that should happen. National looked back at the reasons why we did not support paid parental leave at earlier times. We think the new provision overcomes that, but we argue that 6 months is too short and that the 12-month provision is fair and equitable for all those concerned.
Hon RUTH DYSON (Minister of Labour) Link to this
I would like to take the opportunity for a brief call to clarify the questions that both Mr Tisch and Dr Mapp have raised, which demonstrate two things to me. The first is their continued opposition to paid parental leave in principle, which I find totally gobsmacking. I cannot believe that a party can continue in this day and age to oppose financial support to a new mother primarily, or a new father, when a new baby is either born or adopted into their family. This provision is a fundamental point of social security for families, and for the National Party to continue to oppose it, and, at the same time, demand the extension of the provision, really beggars belief.
I will clarify the point raised by Dr Mapp, and I do trust that he was not on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, because for a member to have gone through the entire select committee process and still remain so ignorant of such a basic point in the legislation would be of major concern. So perhaps he was not on the committee; I certainly hope so. The point is that it is not 6 months after the birth of a previous child; it is 6 months after the person has returned from parental leave, and parental leave is still, unfortunately, a lot longer than the current provisions for paid parental leave. It is not in Europe; in Europe they have 14 months paid parental leave. In New Zealand we have 14 weeks. So, obviously, if we were saying someone could have a child 6 months after the birth of a previous child, we would be challenging more than just the legislative framework in New Zealand!
Darren HughesYes, that would be PC gone mad, I hasten to add. So it is 6 months after the return from parental leave, which is obviously a lot longer than the paid parental leave provisions.
I conclude by saying that this bill is a very good extension of our existing paid parental leave scheme. We will continue to review and extend it. I would like to know, by the end of the Committee stage of the debate—or, if it is not possible for the National Party to get its head together and agree by that time, maybe by the third reading stage, which will hopefully be later this week—whether the National Party still opposes this scheme, and whether it will repeal it if it is ever in the unfortunate position of being the Government of New Zealand. In the end, National members cannot have it both ways. They cannot continue to oppose a scheme in principle, call for its extension, and then say they will vote for one part of it. National is either for it or against it, and New Zealanders deserve to know what the National Party, if it were ever leading the Government, would do with this paid parental leave extension.
LINDSAY TISCH (Senior Whip—National) Link to this
I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. There have been three outstanding speeches from National—my colleague Dr Mapp took a second call—and in that time it became very evident that National was supporting this bill. Yet—
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) Link to this
Would the member be seated, please. I am on my feet. The member is starting to lead into a debatable issue, and that can be taken care of when I call the next speaker.
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) Link to this
It is an absolute pleasure to be here today to support the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill. While we were in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee I found it very reassuring, and a blessing for this environment, to find out how National, Labour, and New Zealand First members could work together constructively on legislation that benefits this country.
No. It was first time I could see commonality between all parties, and it was a long time in coming. That select committee has gone through a lot of legislation that we could not agree on, but we found that things changed overnight as parties looked to their political whims—especially in respect of certain pieces of legislation. But today we are demonstrating how politics in New Zealand can work, and how people can come together for the right reasons. It is a real pleasure to be part of that environment.
Contrary to the comments of Minister Dyson, who throughout her speeches has been trying to label the National Party as being against this process, and to portray it in a way that is totally incorrect, the National Party is moving forward and developing policy that is for everyone. When we look at the purpose clause, we see that it covers basically one page of the bill. But it is a good synopsis of the whole legislation. When we look at the word “purpose”, we have to consider what that means.
The Labour Government has no purpose; it has no idea what it wants to do in this country, and it never will. It is just a Government that taxes and spends. When I look at the purpose of this legislation, the key word for me is “self-employed”. Why is that the key word? Why do we have legislation that has provisions for the self-employed as its purpose? It is because Labour did not deliver for self-employed people when it put forward this legislation in the first place. It tried to deliver only for those who were employed—the people whom they thought would vote for them. What happened then? Three to 4 years later new legislation—an amendment bill—has come forward that has organisations like the Nurses Organisation and Business New Zealand all standing up in front of the select committee and saying the same thing: “Deliver for self-employed people just like you delivered for people who are in employment relationships.”
So the purpose of the legislation concerns self-employed people. We should not need to have legislation that dictates to self-employed people. It creates a distinction in this country between those who are employed and those who are self-employed. A true Government would not have created that distinction in the first place. A true Government would have kept the purpose of that original legislation in 2002 for all New Zealanders. Not all dogs are treated in the same way, but all New Zealanders need to be treated in the same way.
Clause 3, “Purpose”, states: “(1) The main purpose of this Act is to entitle certain self-employed persons …”. Even the word “certain” dictates what Labour thinks about self-employed people. It does not give to those people the same credibility that it gives to employed people. They have to wait 3 or 4 years for their justice. Then, when they receive that justice, they are called “certain” self-employed people. Labour is saying it does not want all self-employed people; it wants only “certain” ones—the ones whom it can control, and the ones whom it thinks will benefit from it. That shows a Government that has no purpose. Just as the legislation does not need a purpose, this Government has no purpose. It has no idea what is going on. It just looks around for whatever the latest poll indicates might be a purpose. What does the latest poll say? Let us talk about the polling in respect of Telecom, for example, and how great the purpose of the Government has been in respect of people and their shares. That shows a lack of purpose. Labour will change its mind if it thinks that it is more than just employees who are at stake—if the Nurses Organisation and Business New Zealand come together.
I have to give credit to the Department of Labour. It was brilliant during the select committee process. As a new member of the House, I would like to give credit to all the Government departments that my constituency has worked with.
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY (NZ First) Link to this
New Zealand First has always strongly supported the principle of paid parental leave. I mention the word “principle” because we did not always agree with the details of the legislation that went through the House earlier. David Bennett raised the question of why the self-employed were not included in that legislation. I say to David, who is a new member, that when we sat through hearings on the legislation it was very obvious that the philosophy of many of the instigators behind the paid parental leave movement was that it was all about employment rights. That is what drove them.
From New Zealand First’s point of view that is not the fundamental issue. The fundamental issue is how we can create policy settings that will ensure the best quality of the next generation, and how we build a nation that will maintain its strength and competitiveness. One of the things we well know is that the strength of the bond that is established between parents and child in the first few months endures over a whole lifetime. Yet what had occurred in our society was that employment conditions had become such that many parents—particularly mothers—had to go back into paid employment within weeks of their child being born. We saw that that was not creating the healthiest society, and that we needed policy settings that would allow for a different approach.
So New Zealand First, from the outset, has always argued that the self-employed should be involved in and included in this type of legislation, because of the philosophy we are attacking it from. It is about how we continue to rebuild and get the best nation into the future. So we are very, very pleased that the sorts of statements we were making back in the time when the initial legislation came through have been finally heard.
I make one comment before I finish. Over this weekend I will be fortunate enough to have my first grandchild born. I am very, very pleased that the parents of my first grandchild, Catherine, will receive the benefits of the provisions that are in the paid parental leave legislation that has been put through in the last few years.
PAULA BENNETT (National) Link to this
I sat through the submissions on the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill, and I was absolutely thrilled to hear the ones that came from a variety of places and a variety of people. I stand quite proudly in support of this bill. I would like to address a few concerns to the Minister in the chair, Ruth Dyson. What I am interested in discussing, and hearing about from the Minister, is the bigger-picture stuff.
I do agree with this bill. I think it is very important that we are identifying predominantly those mothers who are having babies and need our support to take time off and then go back into their businesses. I certainly support the purpose of this bill, which is to give those parents the opportunity to provide one-on-one care and still be able to have an overall administrative insight into their businesses. What I do ask, though, is that we look at the bigger picture of where we are heading with women and children in society and how we could have identified some of those things as we looked through the bill, because it really is about women having children later in life, and it is equally about their employment opportunities.
The call from the Prime Minister earlier this year was to see women having more input into the workforce and being “more productive” I think were her actual words. Although I am sure we could all take umbrage at the words about women being more productive, I do ask how we can look at helping women to get back into the workforce. I would like to talk a bit about adaptive parents—those parents who adjust their employment and their businesses to be able to raise their children. They are the women who do need that flexibility and need a Government that supports them with what is happening. They also come up with the bigger picture of what is happening to our children as they are raised more and more in day-care facilities—and I do not think that any of us know the effects of that. It is a question that I think we really need to be asking.
One of the things that came up in the submissions—it was quite interesting, and I would like the Minister to comment on this, as well—was that paid parental leave be paid in a lump sum. At the moment it is paid over 14 weeks at, from memory, $357 a week. The purpose of this bill is to support those parents financially while they take time off. What came up from a couple of the submitters is that it would have been helpful for them to have the money in a lump sum. The select committee looked at that, and it is something that I felt quite strongly in favour of but I could not convince my colleagues at that stage.
If the money were given as a lump sum it would mean that parents would have the choice on how they spend the money—whether they supplement their income, whether they pay for their mother to fly from Dunedin to Auckland to help them in the first 3 or 4 weeks, or whether they use it to buy the new pushchair, or whatever. A lump sum would give them a bit more freedom, and more opportunity to think about how to spend it. So I challenge the Minister to talk to us about the bigger picture and the changes that are happening in society. I feel that the amendments to the bill could have gone a lot further. How do we feel about broadening it out and giving a payment to all parents, whether or not they are in employment—self-employed or in paid employment? How about the baby bonus scheme? How about making the amount $5,000, which is about the equivalent of 14 weeks divided by $357? How about rewarding those people who are doing something for the future of our generations? This could be helping anyone from any ethnic and employment status. I say it is time we started supporting those who are taking that huge, momentous step of becoming parents, and it is time we acknowledged that role. I do not think we do acknowledge parenting as an important role, and that was certainly evident when the original paid parental leave legislation came before the House and we did not include paid parental leave for the self-employed.
I think we are thinking too small. I do not stand before members right now, saying that I have all the answers, but I would like to hear from the Minister about some of the bigger-picture stuff that we as a society currently have to look at. Those questions are not even being asked, let alone answered by the current Government.
MARK BLUMSKY (National) Link to this
I thank our whip for the opportunity to partake in the Committee stage debate. I am one of the few who has been and will be speaking who was not on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and has not been part of the process to date.
It is nice to be part of the National Party in supporting this bill. This is the second time I have had the pleasure of actually supporting a bill that the Labour-led Government has brought forward. I put it on record that I will not often personally be doing this. In fact, there is a bill coming up soon about microchipping dogs, and I can assure members now that I will not be standing and supporting that bill during its Committee stage. I did note when I did my reading on this bill that 19 submissions were made on it. I can assure members that there will be a helluva lot more than 19 submissions on the dog microchipping bill that is coming before this House very shortly.
The member beside me, Paula Bennett, raised something I have some real sympathy with. I remind members that I did not sit on the select committee, but I have been privileged to have worked very closely with a business partner who was self-employed, is still self-employed, and had the joy of having a fantastic boy not that long ago. If I look at her case I know for a fact, because of the conversations we had in the process, that the $357.50 that we are supporting as the leave payment would make a real difference to her situation. But I have to say—and it is specific to her situation—that she wanted her mother-in-law to move in while she was—
Yes. She has a really nice mother-in-law—not like the mothers-in-law they may have on the other side of the Chamber. The biggest problem for her was that they had just spent money on doing up the baby’s room. Her husband had spent considerable capital on making sure that in their new house they had a baby’s room. They did not have any money to do the third room in the house, which they could well have put a lump sum towards to make that room habitable for the mother-in-law to live in. That mother-in-law living in their house, giving support to the new mother, would have made a real difference as she could then go to work and take the pressure off in her self-employment role.
In regard to the purpose of the bill, after reading the documents I just add that there is a provision that I do like being included, and that is the new provision that explicitly provides that an employee or self-employed person can apply to the Employment Relations Authority for a review of the decision made by the Department of Labour about his or her eligibility for the parental leave payment. I think it is handy to have the opportunity for that debate if there is a question mark over eligibility.
The thing most close to my heart when I read the purpose of this bill was the magic words “self-employed persons”. I congratulate the Labour-led Government on the fact that it is finally acknowledging the role and the importance of those who are self-employed.
Yes. It has been a 4-year process—2002 to the year 2006—and I suggest that many self-employed people have been hugely disadvantaged by the fact that the Government has taken far too long to get this bill before Parliament. But I do think it is fantastic. In the time I have been here I have very rarely heard members on the other side of the Chamber talk so positively about those who are other than employees. Too often in this Chamber one would think that the only people who cared and mattered and had a heart and a life were those who were employees, not those who were employers or, as in this case, self-employed. We have to take our hats off to those who have the courage to be self-employed. We have to take our hats off to those who pick up the challenge and give it a go.
Today was a glorious typical Wellington day. I sat out in the beautiful sunshine having a quiet lunch with a friend, and I told her I was to have this wonderful opportunity to speak on this bill. I talked about being self-employed, and she raised a very good point with me. She said it was sad that too many of her friends were saying to her that benefit day was pay day. Benefit day is not pay day; benefit day is a privilege. The benefit is not one’s pay. I stress again that I congratulate the Labour-led Government and its partners on the fact that they are finally recognising the value of those people in the workforce who are not just employees.
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) Link to this
I sought an additional call on this part because I want to reflect on the point made by Paula Bennett that picked up on an issue in the Business New Zealand submission—although amongst our group we had substantially discussed this issue well prior to the Business New Zealand submission—and Part 2 picks up on it again. It is what this legislation is all about, and, indeed, what it is intended to be about: employees and self-employed persons. That is the Government’s schema. So it is quite fascinating to read the submission from Business New Zealand, which, after all, would be pretty concerned, one would think, about the level of Government expenditure, and so forth. But on this issue it decided to look much more broadly, stating in clause 2.1 of its submission: “The current paid parental leave scheme, linked as it is to taking parental leave with payments available only to women in paid employment, has the inevitable effect of rewarding women in the paid workforce as against others who have may have opted to care for children at home or whose periods of paid employment are relatively infrequent and therefore fall below the threshold.”
I believe that if we stepped back and looked at the scope and range of what one might say are family friendly policies—not just of the current Government but of parties generally, and I am sure the United Future Party members, if they were here in the Chamber, would be interested in this kind of thing—we would see that they would be particularly concerned to ensure that our system of community incentives, delivered, effectively, via the Government, does not exclude people. In fact, that is precisely what this legislation does, notwithstanding its improvements, and we will certainly be voting for that. But I think that Business New Zealand actually has raised an important and wider question. Paula Bennett referred to it as the baby bonus approach to things—and I well remember when I was a student the infamous suggestion in 1974 by Roger Douglas for a baby bonus. I guess one would have to say he was a bit before his time at that point, because it actually proved to be one of the reasons why Labour lost the election in 1975. [Interruption] I am sure Mr Gosche might remember that particular point in his history in South Auckland.
But the view has changed. Ideas develop and the way our society develops has also changed. I do note a practice of women increasingly making the choice, where they can, not to be in the workforce when they are raising children. That is a difficult choice. Families often have to put themselves through significant financial hardship to do that, but they are willing to do so because it is seen as being advantageous for the raising of children. I think that most people would acknowledge that. The advantage of taking the Business New Zealand approach, and the one suggested by Paula Bennett, is that it does not discriminate but actually celebrates parenthood. The community at large, through the agency of Government, says that it can help parents, that it can give them tangible and meaningful financial assistance, and it was noted that the equivalent of $5,000—a reasonable sum, in fact—would make a real difference to their living standards, particularly for families on low incomes. One would think that the Government would be thinking of this, and that with the Families Commission, and so forth, this would be the sort of thing it would be examining.
Ironically, it comes from Business New Zealand, because under its current leadership Business New Zealand is, I think, taking a much broader view of how societies develop, and I applaud it for doing that. That has been an important change. It is a point of leadership that it has taken. So I say to the Government that this is the sort of thing that, with all its hundreds of bureaucrats, it could seriously examine for the future.
MOANA MACKEY
CHRIS TREMAIN (National—Napier) Link to this
I rise to speak to Part 2 of the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill and to say, as we have said on a number of occasions, that National supports this legislation. I particularly want to speak to section 1A inserted by clause 6 and to clause 7(2). Section 1A(c) in clause 6 focuses on where this legislation is actually going to. It states that certain employees and, in particular, self-employed persons are entitled to up to 14 weeks of paid parental leave. That is the important part of this legislation.
My first question, though, is whether this bill will actually help to lift economic growth. One of the key reasons for National supporting this legislation is that it is one of the few bills that have come through the House in the last 6 or 7 years that actually do something to assist those people. Why is that? In a small way it will assist self-employed parents, the small-business owners, who are responsible for the majority of innovation, entrepreneurialism, and risk-taking, which are things that are necessary to take this country forward and, indeed, to deliver on Dr Cullen’s goal of getting us into the top half of the OECD. It is those families who are very important.
One has to ask oneself why that particular provision was left out of the legislation in the first instance. I was not part of the Government at that particular time, but from what I hear it was just that self-employed people were not considered important enough.
There were a number of things. The fact is that self-employed parents are critical, for two really important reasons that I want to focus on. The first is that parents assist their children to do things that they themselves are good at. I take as an example sportspeople and families who are interested in sports. Their children tend to be successful at sport. Families who have a musical background and are part of the arts tend to encourage their children to learn to play musical instruments and to be successful in the arts. Is that a fair comment? It is the same with children from violent homes. They tend to find it difficult to break the cycle of family violence.
The point I am making here is that children from families with self-employed parents who are business owners tend to end up in business. They are led down that track because their parents have been involved in business. They are predisposed to being entrepreneurs themselves. They are predisposed to being risk-takers. These are the children we need to be encouraging into business, because they are the next generation. They are the kids who will get into business and help take this country up the OECD rankings. We need to make sure that mothers who are self-employed are supported. So there is a very key reason for this legislation to be supported.
The second point is that self-employed mothers and fathers—parents—face much larger difficulties when taking time out of the workforce than do employees. Obviously, employers are very aware of when somebody is having a child and know they will have to plan for it, but they are not in the same position as an employee who can just take time off. Employees can apply for 6 weeks’ leave and take time out. An employer, or a self-employed person, has significant difficulty in taking time out of the workforce. That is just a fact. Business does not stop, particularly if the self-employed person is a one-man band, and there are plenty of examples of those in the workforce. It is extremely difficult for such people to take time out. So in that respect we definitely support this legislation.
I move on to clause 7(2), where there is the definition: “self-employed means working in 1 or more of the following, other than as an employee:”. It further defines in paragraph (a): “ providing goods or services for hire or reward under a contract for services:”, and in paragraph (b), “carrying on a business …”. So this is defining the very fact that this legislation will deliver for the self-employed. With that small-business hat on, I want to focus on the importance of the self-employed in this legislation.
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) Link to this
In the previous part we were discussing the importance, under the words of Business New Zealand and Paula Bennett, of extending the whole concept of paid parental leave basically to all parents, recognising that this is a position on which the nation should really arrive at—probably on a consensual basis. It would be of huge importance to supporting families, particularly those on lower incomes. That, of course, is the general point, and I will return to it, perhaps, in the closing debate.
I want to focus in this debate upon Part 2, which is essentially a rewriting of the existing statute, and especially on clause 18, which inserts new section 70G: “Labour Inspectors may make determinations in respect of self-employed persons”. I am drawing that to the attention of the House because it picks up on the points made by Mr Chris Tremain, the member of Parliament for Napier. The importance of that clause is that self-employed people do not actually want bureaucracy. They do not envisage a whole bunch of self-important bureaucrats coming around to their businesses and asking them questions, such as “Are you self-employed?”, saying “Show us the books, show us your work site.”; using that sort of approach. It is something that could be dreamt up only in the bowels of Wellington, or in the Department of Labour.
I guarantee that no advice was taken from the Small Business Advisory Group on that particular issue. If that organisation had been asked, it would have queried whether the Government was going to add yet another compliance cost on small business. After all, who has to pay for all this stuff? It is hard-working New Zealanders and, principally, businesses through their business tax. So the Small Business Advisory Group would have said that compliance costs of that nature could go in the bin.
That is why National had mentioned that the better approach was, in essence, to have a tax deduction. There does not have to be a whole bunch of labour inspectors making determinations, under new section 70G, in those kinds of situations. The Department of Labour will have all sorts of tests for determining a self-employed person’s average weekly earnings. What does that actually mean? Does that mean department officials will go through all the books and accounts of the self-employed, like some kind of inland revenue inspectors? The truth is that the Inland Revenue Department would not go to that kind of extraordinary extent. We already have a very good system in place to assess business accounts. Why do we not just stick with that and go for a much more straightforward and simpler system that respects the self-employed?
The other point—and perhaps I will complete my contribution on this point—made earlier by Paula Bennett was that a far simpler approach is just to give a lump sum. I mean, who truly believes that at, say, week 5, week 7, or week 10, the payments will suddenly stop? The answer is that they will not. People will expect to get the full amount for the full 14 weeks. Well, why not cut out all the administration and all the rubbish of paying money by weekly amounts into bank accounts? Again, that is something that could be dreamt up only in the bowels of Wellington—an efficient and effective system is to pay someone 14 equal payments of $378, or whatever the figure happens to be. Why not just cut through the—I will not use the word, because it would be unparliamentary—rubbish, and pay people a single sum? That is of benefit, of course, to parents but it is also of benefit to the Government, because it would save administration and compliance costs.
I guess there is only one flaw in all of that—the flaw is that Labour is always seeking ways to enable its mates to get jobs, in order to boost the bureaucracy and to entrench all those Labour voters in Wellington. How does it do that? It grows and bloats the bureaucracy, down here. It is always dreaming up madcap schemes to expand the bureaucracy, and I guess that one of its madcap schemes is to have 14 payments monitored by Department of Labour inspectors, checked into bank accounts through automatic payments opened and closed, and so forth, when it could go for a simple but effective system.
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) Link to this
I think that Wayne Mapp is talking about something that is probably a budgetary leak. He is well ahead of Parliament and the Government in the concept of providing a new formula based on fairness and equity. Paula Bennett has also taken initiative in this area, as well. It is good to see that National is providing the leadership that we have not seen from the Government.
We are looking at Part 2, and we are glad the Minister is here today. An issue came up at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, and we have not had resolution of that issue to a satisfactory level from the Minister. The issue was in regard to a constituent who had a very sad story. He was a solo father at the time he came to the office, and about 9 months previously, while his wife was pregnant, she had injured herself. She had a highly paid job in the local hospital, and she was on accident compensation for a few of the last months of her pregnancy. Tragically, she was killed in a motor vehicle accident soon after giving birth to their third child. The father, as a solo parent, sought to transfer to himself the paid parental leave entitlement, but that payment was going to be based only on the lower income of the accident compensation payments, not the higher possible total income, on a pro rata basis. He felt very much aggrieved that he had gone through a terrible tragedy in his family life, but that the Government was not willing to recognise that and would recognise only a lower payment entitlement. We have asked the Minister for some resolution of that issue, but we have not received a satisfactory response at this stage.
However, I note that when we raised that issue at the select committee, the Department of Labour came up with an amendment to the legislation. Members will see that Supplementary Order Paper 31 in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson has an amendment to clause 20(1)(b), to clarify the circumstances of parental leave taken by a self-employed person. The time before a baby’s due date is not included when calculating a self-employed person’s earnings. So essentially the time that a person is not in work before the due date has not been included in the calculation—the calculation is based on the person’s actual income in the time before then. That is a sensible solution, and it needs to be applied in employment situations as well. However, it does not cover the case of payments for such things as accident compensation. As a Parliament, we need to be prepared to widen the extent of our legislation so that we do cover specific cases where someone could get into that circumstance.
Business New Zealand, which made some very good submissions during the process, raised the case where a permanent employee on parental leave may be replaced by an employee, who is also pregnant, on a fixed-term agreement. The new employee will be eligible for parental leave during the term of the agreement. Business New Zealand submitted that in those circumstances, the agreement cannot be terminated on grounds other than those in the agreement. So, when the temporary employee has finished parental leave, she will be able to return to her job to complete the remainder of the term of the agreement.
Essentially, it is a case where a second employee would come in and get the same entitlements as the original employee, and employers felt that they could be aggrieved in having to cover two lots of entitlements. That was another issue raised at the select committee, and we did not get a satisfactory resolution to it. The select committee was doing a rush job. It had to get its legislation on self-employment through within a certain time frame, and members were not prepared to take the time to look at individual circumstances or specific cases, or, indeed, at innovative concepts such as those Paula Bennett and Wayne Mapp have been talking about this afternoon. Their concept is innovative, because it is different from the concepts we are considering in just trying to extend to self-employed people what has been given to employment relationships.
This legislation was dreamt up only after an election campaign. It is here only because the Government saw the opposition from a number of other parties when the original legislation went through. I ask members not to think for a minute that it has been done out of regard for the best interests of self-employed people. This legislation is a cover-up that the Government felt it needed at a certain point in time. Self-employed people were never on the Labour Party’s original list of people it wanted to look after.
Hon RUTH DYSON (Minister of Labour) Link to this
I know that the member David Bennett is a relatively new member and that his time in Parliament may be brief—we have to put up with that sort of ignorant presentation to the Committee only for another 2½ years—but I draw his attention to two things. First of all, Supplementary Order Paper 31 responds to the question that the member raised, which was a genuine question and a genuine concern in terms of the constituent whose case he has just related to the Committee. The explanatory note of the Supplementary Order Paper states: “It has the effect of excluding from the calculation of a self-employed person’s average weekly earnings time spent not working while the person is on ACC or parental leave, or not working in other approved circumstances.” I would appreciate the member reading the Supplementary Order Paper and perhaps relating to me during the remaining Committee stage whether that actually resolves the case. That was my intention; that is why it is in the Supplementary Order Paper. It would be preferable for the member to do a little bit of homework—including reading the Supplementary Order Paper—before he stands up to take a call. The Supplementary Order Paper was tabled and is before us for debate right at this time. [ Interruption] That is exactly right, I say to Mr Bennett, that is where it is to be found.
The other point I recommend to the member is that before he accuses me or any of my colleagues of not supporting self-employed people, he should learn a bit of history and read some of our speeches. I have consistently said that paid parental leave of 12 weeks, as it was introduced in March 2002—and that, by the way, was opposed by National at the time of the introduction of paid parental leave—was the first step. I said that the review process that we had under way would look at people who were missing out because the legislation did not cover them, and at the length of time of paid parental leave, because it was so minuscule—12 weeks at its introduction—compared with comparable countries that we like to be ahead of rather than behind. I also said we would ensure that the process was easy. That has been done. It has been reported to Parliament, and it certainly has been mentioned in my speeches. So I say to Mr Bennett that on every point in his—fortunately—brief contribution to this debate, he was wrong. It does not do him, or his electorate, credit for that sort of ill-informed presentation to be made.
National opposed this bill. It opposed paid parental leave from the start. National members have consistently opposed paid parental leave and have said that people who receive a payment on the birth or adoption of a child are being made into beneficiaries. For that member to attack my party for extending the payment to self-employed people and to say that it has not happened fast enough is just an outrage. I recommend that Mr Bennett reads the Supplementary Order Paper, and I would appreciate it if he contributed to me directly or to the Committee as to whether it addresses the problem. If it does not, may I recommend that he uses the opportunity to amend the legislation himself. He has that opportunity as a member of Parliament. It is one of the privileges we have in this Parliament.
ALLAN PEACHEY (National—Tamaki) Link to this
I am pleased to rise and join my colleagues on the National side of the House in supporting this bill. I preface my remarks by noting that mothers are very important to the well-being and moral tone of our communities, and I take this opportunity to remind members of the House—and those New Zealanders who are listening to this debate—that Sunday is Mother’s Day. It is an opportunity for us to appreciate and show our respect for mothers, and, on some occasions, to take a moment for quiet reflection on what our mothers have meant to us.
I compliment the Minister. I believe this bill, in extending paid parental leave to the self-employed, marks a welcome departure from the Labour - New Zealand First - United Future coalition Government’s usual attitude to business, and to small business in particular. I remind the Minister in the chair, the Hon Ruth Dyson, in the light of her comments when she took the call, that actions always speak louder than words.
I will focus my remarks on those clauses of the bill that address the position of the self-employed. I support anything that will be of assistance to such people. I ask members never to forget that the self-employed are the people with the initiative, the innovation, the creativity, the ability to organise, and the willingness to take risks and to give another New Zealander an opportunity to work. They are the people who create work in our communities. They are also the people whom this Government consistently penalises with its confiscatory tax rates. The Government penalises those people—the self-employed—for the very things that make them successful.
I also welcome the inclusion of farming families in the bill. Farmers are a very special part of the New Zealand economy. They still provide the backbone of many of our rural communities. It is important that their role is acknowledged, along with that of all the other self-employed people in New Zealand.
It is also proper—and the bill acknowledges this—that a self-employed person on parental leave should be able to maintain a level of oversight of his or her business during the period of leave. Such businesses, which are the backbone of business in New Zealand communities, are very, very dependent on the organisation, the leadership, and the interest that the people who own them take in them. Those businesses cannot afford to suffer from the neglect that may otherwise occur. I ask members not to forget that many other members of our communities depend on the work of the self-employed—as I have said—and on their leadership, their initiative, and their creativity. And, most important of all, many other New Zealanders depend on such people for their own employment.
According to the bill, a self-employed person can apply for paid parental leave for more than one business. It is good to see—and I support—two businesses being treated as one for the purposes of paid employment leave entitlements. Again, that is a reflection of the nature of small business in New Zealand. It is not unusual for a self-employed person to be running more than one business and to be employing people in both those businesses. It is important that they are able to keep both businesses—or more if they have others—operating, for the benefit of everybody.
Obviously, one of the positive effects that will come from this bill will be the retention of the entrepreneurs, owners, and people who provide the leadership in their businesses, even while they are on paid leave. Again, I repeat the point—because it is important and worth repeating—that other people benefit from that opportunity. Any measure that keeps self-employed people in their businesses—and this is one such measure—contributes to the overall growth of the national economy, contributes to the good of our communities, and, above all else, contributes to the stability of our families. And it acknowledges the special role that mothers play in our communities.
PAULA BENNETT (National) Link to this
I would have liked to see the Labour Government take the opportunity to address the situation where people who are going on paid parental leave are not able to tell their employers whether they wish to stay in their job. Since we are amending the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act, it makes sense to me that perhaps we could have addressed the anomaly that is out there at the moment. What is happening is that when people go to take paid parental leave, to be eligible for the payment they have to say they will go back into their job. They have to have the full intention of going back to work.
We have not covered this with the self-employed persons, either. It may be that someone intends to run down the business in order to start a family or have more children. However, people cannot tell us that, because they will then not be eligible for the payment because it is for the duration of the 14 weeks. People who said they were closing down the business and would no longer be running it would not get the 14-week payment. What people will do instead is say they intend to take the 14 weeks off and then go back into the business, and it is at that point that they may run it down and close it or sell it. That is not such a big issue for people who are self-employed, but it is a huge issue at the moment, with unemployment being at its lowest in a long time—as the Government likes to tell us—so it means we have not got as many people out there looking for work.
In my mind, when people have a baby they fit into three categories: those who intend to leave their work and not return, and instead raise their children at home themselves; those who intend to take leave and are not quite sure what they will do and whether they will return; and those who have the complete intention of returning after a short period of time.
Those people who fit into the first category—who have no intention of returning to their jobs—cannot resign, because then they will not be eligible for the 14 weeks’ pay. It is important that we address those issues, because what is happening is that those employers who are covering the maternity leave are having to take on temporary employees. They have to keep the job open—and that makes sense to me; we need to keep the jobs open for those women, and I certainly support that—but what I am saying is that being able to take on only temporary employees cuts down the current labour-market force that is available to them at that time. It is a much smaller proportion of people who want to do temporary work.
What we could have done while looking at this Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill was address some of those other issues. This is where we come back to the issue of the lump sum for everyone. If we were paying out the lump sum, it would not matter whether someone was intending to take the 14 weeks off. It would be a lot more straightforward. At the moment, people are in a situation where they almost have to lie. I have certainly employed staff myself—I come from the recruitment field, and it is mainly women whom I employed in that business—who would say they did not think they would come back to work, but goodness knows they could not resign. They had no intention of coming back but did not want to resign, because then they would not be eligible for the 14 weeks’ paid parental leave. Who can blame them? It is an expensive job, and I do not blame them for getting the 14 weeks’ pay. In fact, I say they deserve the 14 weeks’ pay, and I certainly am all for self-employed persons getting it as well.
However, if we were to give a lump sum and not have all these restrictions around it, as my learned colleague pointed out it would cut down so much of the administration cost and would actually cost the country less—that has to be a good thing. It would give people freedom of choice, and they would not have to mislead their employers. In the case of the self-employed, it may affect their employees. Assuming that it is not a big business and that self-employed people have perhaps only one or two working for them, such people may have the complete intention of closing down the business or selling it in order to start a family, but in order to be eligible for the 14 weeks’ pay they have to say they are going back. That is where we are almost making liars out of people.
I think it is a shame we are not addressing a bigger and wider issue, which is how we support women into—
MARK BLUMSKY (National) Link to this
I apologise for interrupting Paula Bennett; she was on a lovely roll there. By definition, 2,170 self-employed persons will be able to apply for the benefit that will be made available—2,170 persons will be able to apply. I suppose, then, if one quietly looks at the facts, one could wonder whether maybe this could have been done in the first instance when paid parental leave was brought in in 2002. That was 4 years ago. I suppose if one quietly does the figures on the Minister Ruth Dyson’s numbers—2,170—one can work out that in 4 years 8,680 people have not been able to receive what she is now suggesting, and we are supporting, they should receive.
So I suppose I would love the Minister—if she could take the call—to explain to those 8,680 people why she has taken so damn long to get this bill into the House. Those 8,680 people have missed out on this opportunity to pick up the paid benefit we are discussing today. I would like to ask the Minister whether, in fact, she will apologise to those 8,680 persons—not just for, amongst other things, the leaking of the Budget, for the stupid microchipping law that may wander its way through the House, and for turning many Kiwis into welfare beneficiaries; I believe that the Minister should take this opportunity to apologise to those 8,680 persons. In fact, if I was going to round up the figure, it was 2,173 persons, which would then work out at 8,692. There is an apology coming, and I would love to hear the Minister give it. It is a word that I think is foreign to the Labour-led Government.
I would like to talk about—and I alluded to this before—the fact that I have had the privilege of working personally with some self-employed people. As members may know, I currently own a business. I refer here to the example of a woman who is very much of the self-employed ilk. She is one of those wonderful entrepreneurs who is building a future for herself and for this country. She operates a business, and I can remember the period during which she was under huge stress and concern, when she was trying to run her business while going through her pregnancy and, afterwards, raising her young child. She had no other income apart from the income she was able to earn herself in her own business, so she needed to work. She could not afford the baby care that was available, so her husband had to take some time off work and put his own career at risk, which was very disappointing.
I suppose where I am going with this is that I think it is wonderful that this bill also applies to the husband or the other partner. We do not talk enough about the fact that paid parental leave does not apply only to the mother but can also be transferred to the dad. That becomes hugely advantageous because the parents now have the opportunity to plan ahead together for the birth of their children in the knowledge that either one of them will receive up to 14 weeks’ pay to help compensate them for the loss of family income they would have incurred during that period. I think being able to plan for the family in this way gives parents a peace of mind they have not had.
Again, I take the opportunity to congratulate the Labour-led United Future New Zealand First Government on the fact that it has recognised the importance of the self-employed person to New Zealand society. For sure, 8,680-odd people missed out on this opportunity, but at least now the self-employed person is being recognised, and we need to applaud the fact that that recognition is now occurring—
Hon RUTH DYSON (Minister of Labour) Link to this
I take a brief call to respond, once again, to the single point the previous speaker raised, which was his call for an apology. The member estimated that there are over 8,500 self-employed people who have not received paid parental leave in the last little while since the Labour-led Government introduced paid parental leave. What about the 26,010 self-employed people—by his calculations—plus the thousands more employees who did not receive one day of paid parental leave during the 9 long years that that member’s party was in Government, let alone the 14 weeks that our Government has given employees and now self-employed people? For that member to come in here and ask for an apology from me needs a little rewriting of history. The member’s memory may be foggy around that time—for whatever reason, I am not sure—but 26,010 self-employed people missed out on paid parental leave completely in the 9 years that Mr Blumsky’s party was in Government—as did every single employee.
That was because National members oppose paying paid parental leave for everyone. They opposed it on the introduction of the bill in March 2002, they opposed it when we amended it in 2004. The point for which I am very sorry is that I wish we had been the Government during those 9 years, because we would have had paid parental leave for the employees and self-employed of New Zealand a lot earlier.
This is a moment of progress on the bill. We still have some people who will not be able to access it and we still have it for only 14 weeks. That is not as good as what other countries have, and we will continue to look at the gaps where those people miss out—as I promised to do when I made a commitment to the House in 2004 and subsequently introduced this legislation in 2005.
I think the National members should stop trying to rewrite history and just admit they got it wrong. Otherwise they should say to the thousands of New Zealanders who are puzzling over their position that even though they are now demanding an apology from us for not extending paid parental leave earlier, they still opposed the original legislation, which we are now extending. Mr Blumsky cannot have it both ways; he either supports paid parental leave or he does not. He cannot have it both ways. The public of New Zealand know that National opposes paid parental leave, and we will continue to remind them—despite those members’ performances in the House today.
JO GOODHEW (National—Aoraki) Link to this
I take this opportunity to set the Minister in the chair, the Hon Ruth Dyson, straight on a few things. The Minister seems not to have noticed that National members actually support this legislation, and we should be very clear as to why we are supporting it. Right from the word go, yes, we opposed paid parental leave, because we knew that a better way to deal with giving hard-working young families who are raising children a break was to give them a tax cut—not to give them a welfare benefit. The Minister raises her eyes. That very point is behind all of this. Our philosophy is not to put hard-working parents on to welfare benefits, but the reason we support this—[ Interruption]
I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I am sorry to interrupt my colleague. The Minister is interjecting at the same time as my colleague is speaking, and the Minister has an unfair advantage because of where she is sitting. We would welcome the opportunity for the Minister to take a call and speak after my colleague has spoken.
Thank you, Madam Chair. As I was saying, the issue is really about philosophy and about the fact that we believe there are better ways than this legislation to give hard-working families a fair go.
But—and let us not forget that National members support this bill—we are supporting this legislation because it was grossly unfair to leave self-employed parents out initially. Members on the Government benches may be interested to know that many of the young parents in my electorate were left out, and maybe that is why provincial New Zealand hit back at the Labour Government. We are talking about 66,412 women—we have had a lot of numbers here this afternoon—of fertile age who are self-employed. That is how many people this legislation potentially affects. We know they will not all become pregnant and have babies in the one year, but we also know that those people knew they were being let down badly by a Government that portrays itself as a Government with a concern for families. What a load of codswallop that is! What a load of old rubbish! Only some families were being left out. Small businesses, which are 95 percent of our businesses, are the sorts of businesses where young families—mums and dads—are trying to get ahead, and they too need the recognition that extending this paid parental leave to the self-employed will give them.
We have heard about the number of submissions that came before the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee when this bill was being discussed, and I wish to touch on Rural Women New Zealand’s submission. Rural Women had consulted rural self-employed women, both those working in partnership and those working in their own right in rural businesses or enterprises, and it was of the opinion that a lump-sum payment, as per the Australian system, would work well. Rural Women knows that inherent in any legislation such as this bill is an awful lot of bureaucracy. We have heard other members of the National caucus talk here today about the level of bureaucracy that is involved in this legislation, when a simple tax cut would have done.
We have also heard that Business New Zealand made an interesting submission. That group certainly could see there were anomalies that needed to be addressed and, for that reason, it encouraged the inclusion of self-employed persons within the bill. The College of Midwives wanted to have its say, as well. That group was very much in favour of “righting the inequity”, as it put it, that currently exists between the employed and the self-employed in the midwifery workforce. We heard from those groups, which represent women. Women currently, in larger numbers, look to the Labour Government for a lead and for guidance.
So it is good that I have had the opportunity to rise today and suggest to the Minister that she is looking in the wrong direction. We in the National Party support this legislation because of that inequity. We want to see self-employed persons get a fair deal. But the Minister should just remember that perhaps the bias of the Labour Government against business actually causes Government members to be as reluctant as they are to give National members credit for supporting this legislation.
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) Link to this
I want to respond to the comments made by the Minister. The Minister in the chair, the Hon Ruth Dyson, made comments in relation to an example that I gave, and it was a very touching example from a real-life situation. The Department of Labour made an amendment to the legislation in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, to take into account part of that matter. However, the committee did not take into account the full amount—that is, the accident compensation component.
I see that that is now provided for on Supplementary Order Paper 31 in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson, and that is fine.
No, I have nothing to apologise for, because I have just relayed that that issue had not been addressed and, in fact, now it has been. The point is that the Labour members actually listened to me, because in the second reading I raised that issue again. In the second reading the Minister set out what she was going to address on her Supplementary Order Paper, and that matter was not to be on it, but suddenly it has come along. The Labour members have listened to what we relayed to the public, and I congratulate them on doing so.
But that is not enough. I want to know whether there is provision for the same ability as that in the employer-employee legislation. Do employers and employees have the same ability in their legislation? Do the employers and employees have an amendment like this as well? If they do not, then there is a gaping hole in that legislation. The reason there are gaping holes is that the Labour members do not understand what the public actually goes through. They do not understand what “self-employed” means because they do not want to know what “self-employed” means. Those members have never been self-employed. If they were self-employed, they would have delivered a company that has gone, like this country, to zero percent growth over the last 6 months. They have strangled and destroyed this country’s growth.
How will the country provide the health and education systems we want, when it will not provide any growth like that set up by National and the previous Labour Government? If we had had a Labour Government during the 1990s, there would have been no growth in this country. There would have been no ability to pay for any of these kinds of welfare payments, which have been made possible by the strong economic conditions that we set up in the 1990s. Labour would be apologising not to 25,000 people but to 4 million people for having a country that did not deliver. I think Mr Mark Blumsky was quite right in saying that we need an apology for those 8,000 people, because Labour has had the economic conditions in the last 4 years whereby it could have delivered for those 8,000 people but it has not.
You have known for the last 4 years that there was a gaping hole in the legislation, and did you deliver for them? No. Will you deliver for people in the future? No, you will not, unless you are part of—
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) Link to this
I just remind the member that he cannot bring the Chair into the debate.
The fact remains that there has been a situation where this Government sat for 4 years—sat and watched. It went through an election campaign, and it sat and watched those people miss out. The situation here is that we went to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and found there were gaping holes in the legislation that the Government had not addressed. It was only at the select committee, when members of the National Party brought forward the reality of the situation, that we got the amendments that deliver paid parental leave for all New Zealanders. So I tell all New Zealanders that although Labour does not say it is sorry, they should thank the National Party for bringing these amendments forward, because the pressure we put on in the select committee has mean we have the results here today. Labour members had no idea. They would never have given the amendments to us, because they do not know what is going on. It was National members who brought this issue to the country’s attention, and National should be thanked for doing so.
Hon PETE HODGSONA party vote was called for on the question,
That the question be now put.
Ayes 71
Noes 48
Motion agreed to.
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 31 in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to Part 2 be agreed to.
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) Link to this
One of the points I wish to make is about the way the Minister has been conducting herself in the chair. Members will notice that on this side of the Committee there has been considered and thoughtful debate analysing not just the bill itself but also the wider issues—the issues of, for instance, whether one should do this by a tax deduction, whether one should do it by a welfare payment, whether one should do it by a lump sum, or whether one should spread it over 14 weeks. Should, for instance, people listen to the Business New Zealand submission and pay a parental benefit for all parents? Those are legitimate and reasonable questions to ask. In fact, I have even heard my colleagues congratulate the Government—it is not something I am personally prone to do, but some of my colleagues have done it.
Do members know what the Minister’s response to all of that has been? There has been a bitterness about it, has there not? The Minister has wanted to play shallow politics all the way along in this particular debate. I think I know the reason for this. The Government just squeaked into office in the last election. All those members look across—all of them, those tired old faces over there—at an energised, active, and proactive National Party. I look at my colleagues and there are 23 new members of Parliament, and they add energy to the debate. One of the things they have done—and I would like to note this specifically for this debate—is to be willing to say that, actually, the Government, in certain things, might be doing something right.
Might—indeed my colleagues have noted that. That is why we have been supporting this legislation. Is that not such a contrast? Is that not, surely, one of the things Mr Hughes, on the occasional times he is seen in his electorate, hears people on the street say: “Would it not be a good thing if Parliament acted in the interests of New Zealanders, that they were not always indulging in name calling, petty politics, and so forth?”. But that is what this Government is doing at the present moment. I have to say that that is the sort of activity Governments that are on the way out, that are tired, that are worn out, and that are lacking in ideas, tend to indulge in.
I am frankly disappointed that the Minister has not noted the fact that National supports this bill, and understands that all Governments—and I acknowledge this—get to make changes to the fabric of society. One cannot just run elections as if nothing has changed. So the truth is that National clearly will not be repealing the paid parental legislation, as amended in 2002. It is simply absurd for the Government to make that kind of suggestion. The truth is that each Government gets to make changes.
Another disappointing aspect of this current Government is that it seemingly fails to understand why it lost the 1990 election. It is still railing about the bad old days of the 1990s. Actually the public could not care less—they simply could not care less when Ministers in this Government get up on a daily basis and say: “Oh, let’s just trot out what National did between 1990 and 1996 and, indeed, National and New Zealand First between 1996 and 1999.” The public could not care less. They are interested, however, in what will happen in the future—what the future agenda for parties is.
That is why the issue of the Business New Zealand submission, which I thought was imaginative and interesting, is the sort of thing this Parliament, this place of elected representatives, should be discussing. Business New Zealand has actually put a challenge to all parliamentarians to consider what it has laid down in its submission—its kaupapa, if you will. It has said we should move beyond distinguishing people on the basis of whether they are employed or self-employed, and actually step back and ask whether we can get a more creative, family-friendly policy that would reward all parents with an appropriate level of benefit and submission.
BOB CLARKSON (National—Tauranga) Link to this
I generally support the bill. It will right a wrong. Self-employed people should be treated in the same way as employed people. I find it difficult to understand why the changes in this bill were not part of the previous bill. It is obvious to me that all workers should be treated in the same way, whether they are employed or unemployed. It could be argued that self-employed people need more assistance than employed people, because somebody has to run their businesses while they are on leave—having babies, obviously. Self-employed people are the dreamers of New Zealand. We need them to grow their small businesses into larger businesses, so that they can employ more people. [ Interruption] I tell the members opposite to shut up; they asked me to speak before. We should not disadvantage self-employed people. Their customers need to be looked after.
Taito Phillip FieldI do not know why we bother to teach Government members anything; they do not listen to us.
I still think that people who have babies should get 14 weeks’ paid assistance, regardless of their situation. That would be a lot simpler than the provisions of this bill, and the bureaucrats would not have to run around and check on people. It would save thousands of dollars.
Generally, we must encourage women to have more children. We have an ageing population, which will need support in the future. I strongly suggest that all couples have one child for him, one child for her, and one child for New Zealand—where have I heard that before? [Interruption] Members should keep quiet for a minute. David Bennett should get started. We need people like Dave to reproduce in order to help pay benefits for people in the ageing population like myself. I thank Dave.
This bill is far too complicated. It has far too many hoops for people to leap through. The problem is in defining who is self-employed, who is employed, and who is unemployed. That is confusing. I think this bill will have to be revisited in the future. Every person will need to consult a lawyer in order to see whether he or she is eligible for payment. This legislation is far too complicated. It will be a huge burden that applicants, businesses, and the Department of Labour will have to sort out. We are building another bureaucratic empire. The cost of administrating each benefit will be greater than the benefit itself. The maximum a person can get is $3,800. Can the Government assure us that the cost to businesses and the Government in administrating the payment will not exceed $3,800? We do not want to have a similar situation to the leaky homes fiasco, where the cost of administration exceeds the payment towards the repair of a house.
Boy, the member rattles on, does he not? Members cannot hear properly when they have their mouth open; that is why we are given two ears.
National supports the bill, but says a much better bill could have been found. If I had entered into contracts that were as complicated as this bill is, I would have gone broke due to lawyers’ charges.
Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) Link to this
I will just take a brief call, as the chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, to thank the other members of the committee for the good work they did. Listening to the debate, I am a little confused. It sort of sounds like this is National legislation and we should ask permission as to whether we can support it. It is somewhat amusing. I congratulate Bob Clarkson on making that very fine speech and giving us the benefit—
I think it was his second maiden speech. I say well done to Bob. As a member of the select committee, Bob quite often said he was confused about this bill. He was not alone on that side of the table, as we have experienced today. Some committee members might not have been aware that the officials told them that the Supplementary Order Paper would be put forward. I can recall the officials telling them that. I say to those new members that it is quite useful to get up out of one’s seat, come to the Table before these debates happen, and read the Supplementary Order Papers, which take care of the concerns of submitters and the select committees. It is a good exercise in learning so that one does not make a fool of oneself by getting up and making a speech that is clearly designed to filibuster on a bill that everybody supports. Why are National Party members holding up this legislation when those self-employed people whom they pretend to want to represent can get it quicker? Why are they wasting the time of the Committee by holding up the debate with endless stupid speeches? Those members are in favour of this bill. What are they going on about? Why do they not just use the wisdom of Bob Clarkson and say nothing? They should not waste the time of the Committee by making speeches that claim that this is National Party legislation, as Mr Bennett did.
For goodness’ sake, the National Party has opposed paid parental leave in every form it has taken before this Parliament except for this one. Why is that? It is because, as with so many other things, those members have finally woken up to the fact that this Government has some progressive policies that help every New Zealander out there who is in either employment or self-employment. Finally, those members have seen the light and have decided to support this very good bill.
I thank the Minister, Ruth Dyson, for the good work she has done. It is ongoing work—if we read the commentary on the bill, we see that there is more yet to be done. I am looking forward to National members supporting the next round of amendments to this bill. It will be interesting to see whether they support the bill then. Future amendments will see more benefits go to working people, and I will be very interested to see whether the select committee that I chair supports those. Those select committee members from the National Party have said they want further amendments, and we want them to make sure that they remember, when we get to the next iteration of this legislation—when we extend it to some more people—that they said those things in the commentary and in this Chamber.
It is no good for them to say that they support this bill in principle because it is for self-employed people; I want to see them to support it for all workers in this country. We will be watching the next lot with great interest to see whether they support those extensions to the bill and to the law.
Anyway, I thank the select committee members who have been forced by their whips to come here to make silly speeches. In the select committee they were quite sensible and they learnt some things as they went along. I hope to be able to guide them further in that select committee when we look at many more good pieces of progressive legislation along the lines of this one.
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) Link to this
This bill is entitled the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill, and the only reason that it provides for self-employed persons is that the Government was made to realise it had left those people out of the original parental leave legislation. So it is pretty rich for members of the Government to say that provision is something Labour always wanted to do and was part of its grand plan for the future.
This bill is not part of a grand plan. It has taken 3 years for the Government to realise that it left out the self-employed group of people, and it did something about that only when those people came knocking on the door and asked about themselves and their entitlement. The Government still has not finished the work; the previous speaker from the Government said there is still more to come. Indeed, we were told in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee that four more elements were to come, and, by way of Supplementary Order Paper 31 in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson, we sorted two of them out. One of those elements was never discussed in the Minister’s speech in the second reading, but suddenly it appeared on the Supplementary Order Paper after National had raised the issue. That Supplementary Order Paper was discussed after the second part of the bill was discussed, so there was nothing wrong with bringing forward an example like that today.
There are other examples. Business New Zealand put forward a perfectly good example of a situation that could arise if an employee who took paid parental leave was replaced with someone else who then also went on to take it. The Government has not covered that sort of thing in the bill. That is not part of its grand plan. It does not intend to look after employers in that situation. It seems only to look after the people whom it thinks will vote for Labour. It does not want to look after Business New Zealand. We have seen that the Government did not want to look after those self-employed people who would have had accident compensation issues with regard to their claims for parental leave, until that issue was brought before the Government.
I challenge Government members to walk the talk and to actually deliver all the amendments now. But they cannot afford to do that. They need National’s leadership; they need us to show them what to do. The next stage of whatever they are talking about was demonstrated by the leadership shown by Paula Bennett in the Chamber today. She is providing the leadership on this issue for the next election, and Labour has no one who will deliver that.
Labour is a tired old party. The Labour members are on their last legs. Government members and Ministers stand up and make bitter comments, trying to tell us that National has some kind of liability for the problem of self-employed people not being eligible for paid parental leave. The fact is that Labour has known about the problem for 4 years and it did not deliver paid parental leave for the 8,000 self-employed people. That is a real shame, given that the Government had that issue pointed out to it by most parties in the House at the time when the legislation regarding employees was being debated. One need only to read the speeches made in 2002 during the first reading of the original legislation to realise that Opposition members pointed out that it did not deal with self-employed people The Labour Government just waltzed on and did its thing. Four years later, the Government cannot even say it is sorry to those 8,000 people. It cannot look them in the eye and say it is sorry it got things wrong. No, the Government blames National and says it is our fault. It looks back to last century and says it is National’s fault. What else from 20 years ago was National’s fault? It seems as though anything can be National’s fault, in Labour’s view.
According to the Government, anything that goes wrong is somebody else’s fault. When will the Government take responsibility? It has been in office for 6 years, but it always blames someone else. Then we will hear the minor parties say it was not their fault. They will blame somebody else. When will they stand up and take their chance to deliver while they are in Government? They will look backwards and say retrospectively it was this or that party’s fault. The reality is that the Government has failed to deliver for 4 years on this issue, and only after National’s hard work and determination to push legislation through do we have legislation that will work for the benefit of all New Zealanders.
PAULA BENNETT (National) Link to this
I would like to address a couple of things, perhaps with the other parties in the Chamber, because I think the issues are incredibly relevant and something we need to look at. I ask the Minister to answer me, because she has not answered any other point I have raised today. I want to talk about whāngai, because adoption is covered in the bill. The bill recognises legal adoption under the law of the land but I point out it does not recognise Māori or Pacific Island adoption under their laws, if you like. Other legislation does—for example, immigration legislation and some social welfare policy. In the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee we did look at whāngai briefly and thought it was an issue we would like to look at it in the future.
I stand as a Māori woman and say that whāngai is part of our culture and something I fundamentally agree with. It is an ingrained part of New Zealand culture. We can give that lip-service or we can do something about it. So I lay down the challenge that we should be recognising the significance of whāngai and making that part of paid parental leave not only for self-employed people but also for other employees. I note that neither the original legislation nor this bill identifies that issue, and I would be very interested in hearing the Minister’s views and where she sees that going in the future.
At the end of the day, I think it is fantastic that self-employed people will be included in the legislation through this amendment A friend of mine owns a hair salon. She had three babies in 18 months—a multiple birth and another baby 11 months later.
Yes, she did that third one, and very quickly. She rang me late last week when she saw the bill was coming up, and said: “Wow! What a difference that would have made to my life.” She is self-employed and said that things would have been so much easier if she had had that leave. It would have been two lots of 14 weeks’ leave for three babies. She would have used the money to put someone in part-time to manage the business while she was away. She pointed out that the payments would not have replaced her full wage on a weekly basis but it would have given her that little bit of freedom, even to have put an accountant into the business for a few hours a week so it could be overseen while she took that time off.
In fact, with the multiple birth the babies came early at 27 weeks, so she went on leave very unexpectedly and before time. I am very pleased to tell members, as I am sure they are interested, that both boys are absolutely fine and healthy. The point is she went off work so quickly that she did not have a chance to leave things at the stage she wanted, and needed, to keep that business going. But like any good Kiwi woman she was fortunate to have networks of people out wide and far and they stepped in for her and ran that business. But this sort of payment would have, firstly, acknowledged her role as a mother, and, secondly, have stepped in to give her that support and bit of financial assistance so that she could step up and keep that business going.
It is with great pride that the National Party stands up for this. The select committee process was interesting. I take my hat off and give credit to the chair, Mark Gosche. He ran a very good meeting. I must say I had a couple of questions at different times, because the process was quite new to me. He was extremely open in making sure those questions were answered, and that at the end of the day we all felt fully informed and had put in our 2 cents’ worth. On behalf of the National Party I thank the people who made submissions. They were worthwhile. The rural women came in. They talked about how the bill would help them in their farming community. I was a little surprised at New Zealand First.
MARK BLUMSKY (National) Link to this
The Hon Mark Gosche asked why the National Party was taking the opportunity to delay the bill—which actually does not come into force until 1 July, anyway, as he would know if he read his papers. I tell him that we want to take this opportunity to speak tonight because it is a chance to remind that member in particular of some comments made by the Hon Dr Michael Cullen in his first reading speech on the bill. To quote directly from Hansard“let me simply say that, of course, it has been the intention since paid parental leave was first introduced to extend it to self-employed people. It was recognised from the beginning that, actually, the most difficult part of paid parental leave is not so much how to define who is self-employed, but how to define relevant earnings … But, clearly, in terms of the original provision within the legislation there was a recognised inequity—that not to include self-employed people was a hole. An undertaking was given right from the beginning that that hole would be filled at a reasonably early opportunity.” I suggest to Dr Cullen—
I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I am sorry to interrupt my colleague, but a dialogue is going on between two gentlemen who are yelling across the Chamber, which is completely unacceptable. My colleague is articulating a very important part of the debate, which National is supporting, and the interruptions and noise in the background are not helpful.
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) Link to this
The members will desist from calling across the Chamber. It is very distracting.
I find it quite ironic that the members were having that debate while I was quoting the Hon Dr Michael Cullen’s words back to them. I thought they would have given his words more respect.
Well, I wanted to take the opportunity to quote the Hon Dr Michael Cullen because it was missed in the process that an undertaking was given, right from the beginning, that the hole would be filled at a “reasonably early opportunity”. That early opportunity has taken 4 years to come. It is a tragedy that Dr Michael Cullen believes that a reasonably early opportunity has a time frame of 4 years. I say to Business New Zealand that if Dr Cullen believes an early opportunity takes 4 years to come, it might imagine how long it will be before it gets any tax relief, which Ministers Dunne and Cullen are working on. I was not on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, as my honourable colleagues were. But I have found it fascinating, while sitting here and listening to the debate, that the Minister has taken the opportunity on numerous occasions to suggest that National did not support the intent of the bill. I have to suggest to the Minister that that is incredibly mischievous.
That was the second time. I was taking the line that the Minister has been incredibly mischievous, and such behaviour is not becoming of a Minister in the New Zealand Government. We support the idea of supporting those who are new parents. We had a difference with the Government that related to how parents will be supported. Labour’s choice was to apply the benefit; ours was to use the taxation system. We lost that one, so we have moved on; we understand the game, and we very much support the intent of the bill. The only issue that I feel is sad in respect of this process is that there are very entrepreneurial self-employed people who have pride—who have set up a business and developed it, and have won a lot of kudos for doing that—whom, to some extent, we are putting on a benefit. That is sad, because if Labour had used the taxation system there might have been a process that it could have bought into a lot easier.
To finish, I again take the opportunity to say that it is fantastic that the Labour-led Government—with New Zealand First and United Future—is supporting those who are self-employed. It is not a position I have seen those parties take very often during my time, and it is wonderful that they have understood the importance of those people.
A party vote was called for on the question,
That the question be now put.
Ayes 71
Noes 48
Motion agreed to.