Ardern Jacinda: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (6 Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (6 Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 08 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11806. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): Obviously given how particular the Part 1 clauses are this will be a reasonably short and concise contribution to this part of the debate. But some of the questions that were raised by the last speaker Mr Paul Foster-Bell were I thought worthy of response.One of the turns of phrase that he used when talking about the general support that this House has for paid parental leave was that we all support a reasonable amount. Part 1 sets out what a reasonable amount might be from the perspective of the majority of the House and it is based on an evidence base rather than on a finger-in-the-air test of what might be reasonable. We have traversed those various reasons why 26 weeks is what is internationally considered as a reasonable amount and obviously it is for health and wider beneficial reasons but Part 1 then sets out how we would stage towards those 26 weeks.One of the other members in this Committee just raised the question as to why it was only 26 weeks and why not 12 months. Well that actually proves a point that Labour has been trying to make throughout this debate which is that Part 1 is not staged to 12 months because of financial considerations. It is Labour’s policy that that in an ideal world would be where Part 1 would take us—in fact Part 2 takes us all the way through to 26 weeks—but we have taken into account issues that were raised on the other side of the House around the financial viability of going to that point at this stage and we fell after consideration on a staged approach that first said “Let’s at least get to 26 weeks.” which is why Part 1 takes us first to 18 weeks and then beyond. But covering off—because so many people have raised in Part 1 the costings question which is relevant to Part 1—I do want to just clarify that the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) itself has anticipated the cost of the first staging of this bill to be roughly 0.7 percent of the additional net spending budgeted for 2016-17.So it seems completely inconsistent to me to hear from that side of the Chamber that there is an issue around the affordability of Part 1 when in question time today we had Gerry Brownlee who was asked by our finance spokesperson about the $20 billion I believe it was roughly required for the Defence Force as to whether he had spoken to Bill English about that massive amount of spending. If I remember correctly his words were that there was an absolutely stupendous surplus that was available to the Government because of its pristine financial management which meant that it was possible that that $20 billion could be invested in the Defence Force. So how is it that we do not have enough within the Budget to allow Part 1 to be enacted—0.1 percent of spending relative to the 2016-17 Budget—but on the flip side we can not only afford $20 billion for the Defence Force but also afford tax cuts next Budget as well? So this is not an issue of it not being in Part 1—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I am going to ask the member to narrow up things.JACINDA ARDERN: I just wanted to respond to the issue that has been raised there but also I want to come to the work contact hours which no one has raised so far. Within Part 1 we did originally have a raft of provisions around maintaining work contact hours during parental leave. It has not been removed because that is not a good provision; it has been removed because that was picked up in the Government’s bill where it extended paid parental leave to 18 weeks after of course we had had this debate in the House extensively prior to it which led of course the Government to finally accept that the general public wanted to see that extension. So that is why those provisions have been removed and I think rightly so.I think it is fair to say that we could talk at great length about the trade-offs or the costs that come with not having paid parental leave that are not factored into MBIE’s calculations. We could talk at great length around the different stages of development for a baby from 18 to 22 weeks but actually all that Part 1 is doing essentially is setting out the phasing in of those two stages of paid parental leave. It is a very narrow part and I think probably everything that needs to be debated has been. Clearly on this side of the House there are simply different priorities and that is why we have prioritised the idea that this could be done it could be staged and it could be made effective—