Collins Judith: Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Collins Judith: Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
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JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 Following on from the Minister the Hon Ruth Dyson I say firstly that it is nice to have a Minister who thanks the committee because it takes a tremendous amount of work by a committee for these bills to come through. Even when not supporting a particular bill we in the National Party find that we do our best to try to help the bill along in the best possible way that we can and when there are some amendments that we can help to make. Speaking from experience which of course most of the Labour Party do not have it is very helpful to them so we do our best. 
This is the sort of bill concerning which the Labour Party should bring itself to understand that self-employed people are not the enemy. Self-employed people work have babies and pay taxes and they also need work-life balance or as the Minister has called it family work-life balance. Yet these people are being excluded and that is why we cannot support this bill. The Labour Party and United Future which is supporting Labour had the opportunity to give self-employed people a bit of a go—to give them a chance. 
Peter Brown 
: That’s right. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: New Zealand First along with National would have been happy to help out in that way. But instead Labour chose to extend the period of paid parental leave from 12 to 14 weeks. It chose to reduce the amount of time that someone needed to be in the same employment before he or she could get parental leave and it did that in preference to providing for the people who own their own businesses in this country. 
New Zealand is a country of small businesses the numbers of which are getting smaller. New Zealand is a country where lots and lots of women and men own their own businesses or set up their own practices. Physiotherapists nurse practitioners people who work in areas such as the trades people who have panel-beating shops—all these people have families too. If we are to give to one section of the community why are we not also giving to them? Paid parental leave is not based on income. It is not something that only those on a limited income can access. This is something that some of the highest-paid people in the country who happen to be employed—people for instance like the chief executive of Telecom—can access. Yet poor old Joe and Janet Bloggs who are on $30000 a year having set up a plumbing business will not be able to access this benefit because they have decided to be independent work for themselves try to build their own business and work all the hours that God has given them. They will pay for the luxury of very highly paid people getting this benefit. That is what it is—a benefit. 
We are all for some fairness in this issue. Most of us on this side of the House have some experience of working and being mothers or fathers at the same time. The two should not be mutually exclusive. We think that people who have families will obviously add tremendously to their work experience because they bring a bit of reality to their work. They understand what it is like to bring up families and often under quite severe financial difficulties. It takes an awful lot to do this. It is very very interesting that this is one bill where the Greens ACT New Zealand First and National are all on the same side. That is because of one issue which is that this bill is discriminatory. Obviously bills that are concerned with benefits need to discriminate in some way otherwise we would not be giving out anything in terms of taxpayer money for people to have children. 
We think that children are really good in this country. We want more babies. We particularly want anyone other than me to have more babies. The reason that we need people to have more babies is that we need to have our home-grown babies first and foremost. We cannot do that if we consistently take more and more money off people by way of taxes—money that they cannot afford—and then punish them because they happen to look after their own children and stay with the person who is also the other parent. That is what they see happening to them. 
There is nothing in this bill for people who have set up their own businesses. There is nothing for the plumbers the electricians or for the people who have mortgaged their homes and thrown caution to the wind. They are the people in this country who make a huge difference. There is nothing in this bill for farmers. That is important because despite all the rhetoric from some of the Ministers about high-tech—and it is true that high-tech is very important—high-tech in this country started with the farmers. We need only to look at the work that places like the Ruakura Research Centre have done over the years and that Fonterra is now continuing to do—and will do more of it overseas because of the funny rules we have here about GE—to see that these industries have been at the forefront of science in this country. The farmers have been the people who have paid for it. They are again being asked to go about their business keep on working—both women and men—have children look after their kids get them to school be in charge and pay for the pleasure of someone else being able to have some time off. 
This would be a nice opportunity for the Government instead of extending the 12-week period to 14 weeks—and what sort of difference does that make anyway except to the pay packet—to extend a little bit of taxpayers’ largesse to self-employed people. We understand that it is good for self-employed working people to be able to have families as well. They are getting squeezed by this Government. It taxes them to beggary. We have only to look at the November issue of 
North and South 
 to see that in this country now there is no point bothering to earn $60000. One might as well earn $38000 because under the Government’s scheme that is what one is paying for. It is all going out in taxes. It is totally unfair. 
This is the opportunity that the Government has. I do not understand why United Future did not help in this matter. I do not understand why given its ability to bring a bit of common sense into this bill it did not use that opportunity. United Future had the Government in the position of having to look to them to us or to somebody else to help out with this bill. United Future had the opportunity and it let it go. That is the great tragedy. 
The Government knew that it could not go to the Greens on this legislation. It knew it could not go to ACT and it could not come to National unless it would allow self-employed people to get a little bit of a fair go. Unfortunately United Future buckled. It buckled on this bill and let down the people of this country who have common sense it let down small business and it did it because it wanted to say to the Government: “We’ll roll over and you can tickle our tummy.” Coming from a farming background I can say that I would not accept that sort of behaviour. United Future has let this opportunity go. It will now have to wait until after the next election when we will have to look again at this whole issue.