Adams AmyHon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): Mr Speaker thank you. I will take a call in this first reading under urgency on the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill and note that it has been tabled only a very few minutes ago. The Opposition of course therefore are having their first chance to have a look at it. But I see that it's not just the Opposition that haven't had the chance to put it together; there is this somewhat flimsy accompaniment with the bill which is simply called a cover sheet" and which clearly has done away with the requirement for a regulatory impact statement (RIS) in the normal way which I do find somewhat interesting given the vehemence with which the Government when in Opposition insisted on due process and insisted on proper regulatory impact statements. They jumped up and down with outrage when there wasn't a full assessment and ability to understand the impacts. This cover sheet I have to note notes that there will not be any regulatory impact assessment for 100-day plan priorities. Clearly the Government thinks that the most important things they are doing don't deserve a proper impact assessment. In fact Treasury notes that the RIS contains only very minimal analysis of likely impacts. Fiscal impacts are apparently set out in the Cabinet paper but of course we haven't been given any of that and social impacts are only touched on but there's no assessment of broader impacts.So straight away the very first piece of legislation that this new Government brings to the House—firstly they're using urgency where there is utterly no reason to do so. This is a bill that takes effect—it's very first iteration takes effect—on 1 July next year. And yet straight away this is a Government that is so unready to govern that they didn't have their legislation ready and don't trust themselves to put it to a select committee where the public very properly would want to have a say. I say that because while the National Opposition is going to support the bill—and I will touch on why that is in a moment—the National Opposition can absolutely see that there are opportunities in this bill where the public would want to have a say because actually it is not just about the number of weeks which is all that Labour had in their manifesto. There are some very real issues.Now I would point out to the House that actually it was National that increased paid parental leave from 14 to 18 weeks and it was National that campaigned as well on increasing it to 22 weeks. But I would point out to the Government that actually we would like to think that given that this is an issue that they have chosen to put forward as their first piece of legislation they would want to see it work as well as they could for young parents.There are some very important issues that as far as I can tell in the limited time the Government has permitted us to see the legislation simply aren't in here. Those are issues that we included in our policy like ensuring that there is flexibility so that both parents can take some of that time off together and also ensuring that there is other support for parents and newborns which we had put in our policies around free dental care during pregnancy and more IVF funding. So even if you didn't want to go into the wider newborn support there are very real issues to look at in how the weeks of paid parental leave are allocated.I think it is really very revealing and very sad that the Government is not taking the opportunity to put this bill to a select committee. I can see—and I listened very carefully to the Minister's speech—that there wasn't a single reason given as to why this needed to be done in urgency. He didn't even touch on it. And yet here is a Government who when they were on this side of the House used to wind themselves up in faux outrage and how quickly we see how little the principles that they espoused for nine years fell to the wayside when it didn't suit them.Actually the reality is it's a rushed piece of legislation—Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: No it's not.Hon AMY ADAMS: —and they don't want the public to have the chance to have a look at it. And if it wasn't a rushed a piece of legislation Mr Lees-Galloway why wasn't it on the Table a heck of a lot sooner than about half an hour ago?This is a bill that this Opposition will support because we campaigned on taking paid parental leave to 22 weeks. We are in fact the party as I said that did extend paid parental leave not once but twice and we have always said that we wanted to see that expanded as and when fiscal and economic conditions permitted. So we have no problem with that.What is interesting though is that we shouldn't kid ourselves: these are big-ticket spending items. At least $60 million a year—at least—for the first jump and then at least that much again. Actually we don't know because the fiscal costings to the extent that they have been done—we are not being told about them. They don't want the public to know they don't want the Parliament to know and they don't want select committees to examine it. They've buried it in a Cabinet paper they haven't put out. They've refused Treasury the opportunity to do a full regulatory impact statement and you have to start wondering: is that because the numbers don't add up? Whatever the numbers are we know that it's a lot of money. As I said earlier this afternoon in the Address in Reply debate it's very easy to spend money but at some point in time the numbers are going to have to be made to add up.One point that I want to make is that the cost of doing this—yes the policy was in Labour's manifesto as it was in ours but the cost of it wasn't in their pre-election fiscal plan that they put out. Now how much did we hear through the campaign about how they'd costed everything and they were being fully transparent and they were going to be a Government of transparency? This was going to be the "people's Parliament". Well straight away the people are being shut out. They are being excluded from the right to have a say.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.Mr SPEAKER: The House is resumed. [Interruption] Order! Mr Strange—your first mention in the House is a reprimand. That's not a good thing. When we broke for the dinner we were debating the first reading of the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill. The Hon Amy Adams is speaking and she has three minutes and 57 seconds remaining to speak.Hon AMY ADAMS: Thank you Mr Speaker. I will enjoy every second of those three minutes and 57 seconds. When we broke for the dinner break I had been working through explaining that the National Opposition will be supporting this legislation because of its consistency with the position that we have taken for many years of extending parental leave as and when fiscal conditions allow. In fact it was that Government that extended it twice in our term and of course National campaigned on 22 weeks' leave in this year's election—that we wanted to extend it as conditions permitted.The point that I was making though is that this is an incredible turnaround of principle from parties who until now have derided castigated abused and got outraged over the use of urgency. Now when the National Government took urgency it was very clear as to the need and the reasons for doing so. This Government on its very first piece of legislation—and actually policy that they've had for some time; it's not a new idea to them—have taken urgency for no good reason for legislation that won't take effect until 1 July next year. Now you could say "Well it doesn't really matter." Well it does because I believe that the public can add value to this bill. I think there are a number of ways that paid parental leave works quite apart from the issue of how many weeks are available that could validly be explored and we counted a number of them in our policy.But the other thing of course which I talked before the dinner break about is the fact that this rushed and hurried and last-minute seat-of-the pants process has left this bill very light on the sorts of details that this House needs to properly scrutinise and that the public would want to see. We talked about the fact that there are no fiscals at all. There were certainly none included in Labour's pre-election information and I mentioned previously that Treasury who have a very important job in assessing these things have already noted that the assessment contains "only very minimal" and I am quoting "analysis of the likely impacts"—only very minimal analysis.Then what I didn't touch on before dinner was the fact that the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment again have noted in their comments that compressed time frames have "limited our ability to consider a full range of options. The phased nature of the extension means that there is less certainty for the costings". Now why on earth when you have a policy that Labour have been talking about for some time would you have a process that has such rushed time frames that none of the agencies who are tasked with properly scrutinising and providing information to this House—none of them have the ability to do their job? It is an absolute attack on this House in the first bill out of the gate. So that tells you a lot about where this Government sees itself and how it's going to run and how quickly it dispenses with its principles.And I want to just reflect for a moment on the Green Party who have spent nine years telling us that they do not support the use of urgency except in very exceptional circumstances. I'll quote from Gareth Hughes who just this year said that "[there's] huge room for improvement as the Hon Trevor Mallard talked about … Urgency is a particularly important one. All members of this House … have seen legislation passed under urgency when it [didn't] have to happen … It should [only] happen … in extraordinary circumstances". And how quickly they give that away for a chance to sit at the big table. How quickly the things that they told us—that they are a principled party—and the things that they stood for are given away. The first bill out of the gate: no process no select committee no fiscals and no proper assessment.So we will support the bill on its merits but I have to say: if this is how Labour and the Greens plan to run their Government then I am appalled at how quickly they've given up on the things that they told us really matter to them."