Logie Jan: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — Recommittal Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — Recommittal Third Reading[Sitting date: 25 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1938. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise again to offer the Green Party’s support for Sue Moroney’s member’s bill to extend paid parental leave to 26 weeks even though sadly the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill does not contain that provision any more because it was previously voted down by this Government. I do want to take just a moment to properly commend Ms Moroney for the work that she has done in the very long process of shepherding this bill through the House and providing an opportunity for New Zealanders to express their overwhelming support for paid parental leave and the care of the smallest members of our society. That support has been overwhelming and the Green Party appreciates your work and all of the compromises that you have made to try to get even the barest amount of provision through to those New Zealanders who were consistent on what they asked for through the select committee process.We have just heard from the previous member Jami-Lee Ross that when National members are out on the streets they hear New Zealanders asking for everything but paid parental leave. I would ask that member to go back and look at the submissions and consider the parliamentary process and our democratic process which presented this bill and asked New Zealanders for their opinions. I would remind that member that there were 3809 submissions made on extending paid parental leave to 26 weeks. I would just remind that member again that 3795 submissions out of those 3809 submissions supported the extension to 26 weeks—that is 99.6 percent of submissions said that they wanted 26 weeks’ paid parental leave. And even the other 0.4 percent were not necessarily against the bill; they just had some concerns around some aspects of it for some of them. So you know this is completely overwhelming support from the population saying that they wanted 26 weeks. To say that when you are out on the streets you are not hearing any support for this bill—I find that hard to believe. I refer you to the Parliament of which you are a member and ask you to listen to the democratic voices coming through this Parliament. I remind every member of this House that we are here and we set up these processes for people to participate for a reason—to inform us in the decisions we make in this House. To ignore the views of New Zealanders when making those decisions does a discredit to this institution and to every single member of it.I also go back to the process to reflect on some of the process of this. We have heard a lot of politicking tonight. It has been suggested by the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety that the member Sue Moroney has offered passion but that it has been confused with politics. I really do want to challenge that—not that the Labour Party needs the Greens to support it or defend its honour. But it really does just seem horribly unfair and misrepresentative to me when the member extended the submission time and the consideration within the Government Administration Committee to enable the National Party members of that committee who were overwhelmingly convinced by the evidence to go back to their caucus to try to get support for this bill. That then turned into the Government putting something forward in the Budget that was entirely different which I absolutely supported. We voted in support of it. I totally agreed with the extension of the provisions of paid parental leave to groups that were missing out. That was a really important initiative. But it was not what Parliament and the people of New Zealand had been discussing. There was one clear submission that asked for that to happen and I supported it but the others did not. The others were saying that 26 weeks was the fundamental thing that they wanted addressed and that is what this bill has been seeking to do.There was a huge amount of accommodation made by that member. And then the Government turned round and sought to make personal political gain from it. Then we hear that now Sue Moroney in looking at the numbers in this House went and spoke with the ACT Party about whether it would seek to have this bill go back to the Committee stage to debate some of the substance again. She was able to convince the ACT Party member of the need for 26 weeks and the democratic process and the request from New Zealanders. When the National Party heard that that was happening it called the member into the Prime Minister’s office and said: “You can’t support this bill. To stop you doing that we’ll put forward and deliver the content of this bill. But you can’t support it through a Labour initiative. We’ll do it.” That is politics. I have to say that that deeply offends me. I am not in this House to play political games. I would have thought that every member of this House was here to deliver for New Zealanders—to listen to New Zealanders and to deliver for them. That kind of politicking is not doing our job in my opinion. It is playing politics and doing a disservice to New Zealanders.Good on David Seymour as a new member for actually listening to and hearing the arguments and seeing what the provisions of the bill had been reduced down to by Sue Moroney: ensuring 26 weeks for when there was a premature birth or when there was a child with an impairment that would entitle a person to Government-funded disability support or when there was a multiple birth. So 26 weeks’ leave for those people—I am so pleased that Sue Moroney’s bill has prompted the delivery for them because who could not think that there was a clear need for those families to have time out of the workforce to be able to bond with their babies to take care of health needs to just be able to cope.The submissions that we heard during the select committee—again I want to thank those submitters because they were tear-evoking submissions for every single member on that committee. We heard of people who had missed the early years of their child’s life and had to look at photos of their babies to remember what they looked like at that time because they had had to go back to work. We also heard of people who had managed to get 10 months to spend with their babies and who had bonded with them and found a love of parenting even though they actually had not wanted to be a parent before that. They had managed to use that time to bond and connect and find joy. We can only imagine the flow-on benefits of that time to the parent to the family and most important to the child. In the submissions that we heard—to get to the point of what this is all about—the evidence was overwhelming that the benefit of 26 weeks’ leave is that it facilitates bonding and attachment between parent and baby and improves the learning and the development of the baby the health outcomes for mothers babies and children. The World Health Organization recognises 6 months as the minimum for breastfeeding.This provision supports families and ensures stability of their incomes. It allows choice for women in maintaining workplace attachment and it updates our employment conditions to recognise the contemporary world that we live in. Most of us have families and it is appropriate for workplaces to adapt to that. Twenty-six weeks makes it easier for employers to manage time out and substitution of workers. So this bill the 26 weeks’ leave provision is not just a matter of what would be nice. For $110 million which is the cost of what this would be the return to us as a country was judged by 99.6 percent of submitters as worthwhile. It is a shame on this Government that it has subverted the democratic process and is refusing to deliver that.