Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBudget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 15 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17931. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) BillFirst ReadingHon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Labour): I moveThat the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill be now read a first time. The Government is committed to doing its part to give children the best possible start in lifeand this bill represents part of a considered and responsible package of measures that will help to reduce some of the stress placed on families when a new child arrives. The measures are intended to provide increased targeted support within current economic conditions for working parents with newborns. In the first year of a child’s life—particularly the first 6 months—it is important for newborn development to get full-time personal care. It is also important for parents and caregivers to get support to manage budgetary and other pressures. Monetary support can greatly assist with allowing the time and space for mothers or caregivers and children to develop close bonds and to reduce parental and family stress. All of these things combined support children’s health and development and improve short- and long-term outcomes for the child and society.Encouraging mothers’ and caregivers’ ongoing attachment to the labour market has broad economic and social benefits and can support a stable family environment for children to grow up in. There are issues however with the way financial support is currently provided to families with newborns. These issues can contribute to poor outcomes for children and make it difficult for some working parents to stay connected to the workforce after taking time out to care for their children. The Government is introducing this bill as part of a suite and a range of measures to enhance the paid parental leave provisions and the parental tax credit to ensure families with a newborn are supported to give that child the best possible start in life.Before discussing the proposals in the bill I would like to take the opportunity to talk about the other measures this Government will be consulting on in the near future that are related. These measures are aimed at broadening the number of people who will be eligible for paid parental leave and making the system more flexible for families. It is important to ensure New Zealand’s parental leave framework better reflects modern working arrangements and today’s diverse family structures. The measures proposed will be consulted on with stakeholders later this year with the intention of being implemented on 1 April 2016. For example people with permanent guardianship arrangements that are not formal adoptions under the Adoption Act are ineligible for parental leave. Similarly seasonal or casual workers who also tend to be amongst the lowest-paid in our society are currently ineligible for paid parental leave despite often having had a long work history. We will be looking to amend the law so that it better reflects the arrangements in the modern workplace and the home. However I want to make sure we have all of the details of this right. We will be talking to people far and wide over the coming months to make sure that we have a fit-for-purpose piece of legislation to introduce to this House.The bill before the House today makes changes that we can put in place now to help parents with newborns. The bill increases the number of weeks of paid parental leave from the current 14 weeks to 16 weeks from 1 April 2015 and to 18 weeks from 1 April 2016. The new time frames will apply when the actual or expected date of delivery of the baby—or in the case of adoption the date on which care for the child is assumed—is on or after the date of the change. The bill also increases the maximum amount of parental tax credit payable on the birth of a newborn to $220 a week up from $150 a week currently for the first 10 weeks following birth—again up from 8 weeks. So from 1 April next year parents of newborns will be able to claim a total maximum payment of $2200 per newborn.The bill also changes the abatement formula for the parental tax credit so that it is abated against each dollar of family income earned over an entire year rather than for the period the parental tax credit is paid. This change means the parental tax credit amount will reduce faster as income increases. It brings the effective abatement rate for the parental tax credit in line with the abatement of the family tax credit and the in-work tax credit. This will better target parental tax credit payments to lower and middleincome families ensuring that they receive a greater slice of funding over time. The total fiscal cost of both the extension of paid parental leave and the changes to the parental tax credit is more than $183 million over 4 years. Additionally we will be spending a further $30 million to increase eligibility. These changes alongside other measures in Budget 2014 will help to improve the lives of families and children while also being fiscally responsible and recognising current economic conditions. I commend this bill to the House.Hon DAVID PARKER (Deputy Leader—Labour): TheNew Zealand Herald said in respect of this National policy that it was the “Great Brain Robbery”—stealing ideas off the Labour Party but in reality a pale shadow of them. The credit for this policy in respect of children and paid parental leave should go to Jacinda Ardern and Sue Moroney. They are the ones who got this up on the political agenda so much so that the National Government was scared and decided that it would implement a shadow of it. This bill the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill which has just been presented under urgency—and I have not had time to read it in detail yet because it really has only just been tabled minutes ago in the House—is the first piece of legislation considered under the Budget the Budget in which the Government has had to fudge it in order to get back to Budget surplus and fund this. The National Government does not like that truth but it is the truth.What are the clearest fudges that we have found so far? Well we know that compared with last year’s Budget the Government has got $560 million less as the Crown’s share of Canterbury’s share of local infrastructure costs. It has gone down in terms of the Government’s Budget by $560 million. That is a week after the Christchurch City Council produced a report—Hon Clayton Cosgrove: KordaMentha.Hon DAVID PARKER: —an independent report from KordaMentha to say that its share of those same costs were going up so it is just not credible for the Government to say that those costs are going down. Further than that we have also uncovered a document that shows that the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Gerry Brownlee had a deal with the prior chief executive of the Christchurch City Council and the Mayor of Christchurch that they would not review the numbers until after this Budget and until after the election. That is really cynical—really cynical.The second thing that we have uncovered is that we now know from the dodgy announcement by Judith Collins in this Budget reflecting her personal conduct as a Minister that the Government has overcharged ACC levies by $120 million this year which overstates the surplus this year by $120 million. So it says that it is going to reverse that out next year but it has kept it for this year. It did a similar thing last year.The other area that is a bit dodgy is that the Government is putting $375 million into transport spending in Auckland in addition as a loan robbing the future National Land Transport Fund and funding it out of a notional interest-free loan. If the Government really wanted to do that this year it should have booked that as an additional capital expenditure this year rather than having this pretence at an interest-free loan.Health spending has gone down in real terms. I have crunched the numbers with the help of some of our staff since this announcement was read out. We know using Treasury’s own model that health spending is going backwards by 2.3 percent in real terms. It is going up in nominal terms from $14.4 billion to $14.7 billion and that is total Crown spending on health or core spending. Using Treasury’s own model and taking into account inflation and demographic changes in real terms according to Treasury’s own model that is a 2.3 percent cut—a 2.3 percent cut. So this Budget surplus—yes it is real and it is good. Governments have to be prudent and get back to surplus. But it is a fiddle. The Government has fudged it. It has fudged it.In respect of this particular measure it is half of a best start. Half of a best start is what I would call it. The Best Start package from the Labour Party is better than this. In fact there is no one person I am told by our spokesperson—and I am sure this is correct—who would be better off under this package compared with Labour’s Best Start package. In other words the Best Start package is better for everyone who is better off under this package.There are a couple of things that stand out as being wrong with this package and I should not be surprised by this. The most vulnerable in New Zealand do not get anything out of the measure that we are passing today. That is despite the fact that those New Zealanders who are most vulnerable have faced increasing power prices increasing rents—in some parts of Auckland rents have gone up by 40 percent—and despite those very real increases in their costs which for those people have actually gone up more than the cost of living. The cost of living is an average across the country but the costs for these vulnerable New Zealanders have gone up by more than the cost of living and yet this package does nothing for them. Despite the fact that we have got 285000 children living below the poverty line the only really significant policy in respect of child poverty in New Zealand in this Budget this year after all those rising housing costs rising rents rising electricity bills and increasing numbers of children living in poverty is that the most vulnerable children in New Zealand do not get anything—anything—not 1c. They do not get one dollar—not in this year not in the year after and not in the year after that. They get nothing.In a country where we have got rising inequality the Government denies it. We heard the Prime Minister misrepresenting those statistics again today in the House in his Budget debate speech. He stood up and said that the Bryan Perry measure of income inequality which is the ratio of low incomes to high incomes has not got worse according to him. Well actually it has got a bit worse under the Government. It has not got as bad as it did in earlier times but it has still got worse. He says that because of that we have not got rising inequality. That is just such a facile argument. It shames me that we have in New Zealand this country that used to have low levels of child poverty a Prime Minister who stands up and pretends that we have not got rising inequality in New Zealand.New Zealand used to be in the best quarter of the OECD advanced nations in the world when it came to income inequality. We are now in the worst 40 percent. So we have moved from being in the best quarter in the world to the worst 40 percent at a time when the OECD as a whole has been getting worse. There was a bad trend internationally and New Zealand beat that bad trend by being even worse than the bad trend. The only push against that trend of income inequality rising in New Zealand in recent decades in a material sense was the last Labour Government through Working for Families which of course at the time the Prime Minister called communism by stealth.Even the Bryan Perry measure which shows a disgraceful increase in income inequality under-measures income inequality because it excludes capital gains and other irregular income which are concentrated amongst the wealthy. That is absolutely clear from the data series. We have proven that in the House. We have actually even forced Bill English to admit it but the Prime Minister pretends it is not the case. That is income inequality as measured by the Bryan Perry figures which are credible but they are only a subset of income and therefore they under-measure income inequality and yet we know it is still getting worse.The next thing to say in respect of that is that when you have income inequality that is at the level it is in New Zealand even if it does not get worse from year to year overall inequality does get worse because every year the consequences of that inequalitystack up. You see that so clearly in New Zealand. Seventy-five percent of New Zealanders think that those gaps are widening in New Zealand under this Government. They are absolutely right and the statistics prove it. The number of children living in poverty whatever measure you use is going up. The number of people who own their own house is going down. It is the lowest it has been in 50 years. We should not be surprised because this Government runs New Zealand in the interests of the wealthy who do well out of those settings of rising inequality because they get to own an ever-higher proportion of the assets in New Zealand including a higher proportion of our houses.As for this bill we will be supporting it. It makes things a little better than they were. It is only half of a best start. It is a pale imitation of it. It does not improve the lot of the most vulnerable and it does not deal with the terrible imbalance that we have in our economy. That is all I have got time for at this first reading.DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): It is not the matter that that was all the previous speaker David Parker had time for; that is all that that speaker knew. Where is Sue Moroney at this point in time? The leader of the Labour Party’s push on paid parental leave does not even get to speak for the Labour Party. The Labour Party does not care about paid parental leave. It comes into this House and says that it is doing it but that is not the case. Paid parental leave is something that this Parliament and parliaments across the world have been looking at for a number of years. It is something that the Australian Parliament looked at and passed last year and it is something that has taken on a very big emphasis in this Budget and what has been done in that $500 million for families which is the heart of the Budget. That is what New Zealand families have been wanting to see.We have delivered a strong economic message and we have built a surplus for New Zealand going forward of $372 million in the most of difficult of times. That is a great achievement. At the same time investing in the young people the families and the communities of our country going forward is incredible from a Government in the most difficult of times. I would like to thank Minister Simon Bridges for leading that off. He has done a fantastic job in bringing this legislation forward today. It is something that we will look forward to in the future as something that will deliver for our young people going forward. When that is coupled with free doctors visits for under-13s it is something that many families in New Zealand will see as a complete package. It is a package and a plan that delivers real and constructive benefits for New Zealand families. It is a package that looks at what is important to those young families who are building the future of our country and building those young people who will be the future to build this country even stronger.It is not a “Great Brain Robbery” as there is nothing to nick from the Labour Party. This is a Government that is delivering for families at a time when it is needed. We look forward to seeing this legislation pass through this House. New Zealand families will welcome this Budget. They will welcome the prudence of the Budget and at the same time the huge investment in our families going forward. The Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill is a good bill and is for the benefit of all New Zealanders. Thank you.JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): That speech from David Bennett was an absolutely pathetic contribution to this debate and it proves that National started working on this policy based on some of the analysis provided by the Inland Revenue Department in April. April at best is when National decided that perhaps public pressure had finally come to bear on it and that it was time that it started having a little look over at this side for the policies that would benefit families.Budgets should be about people. That is absolutely what Budgets should be about. They should be focused—if we are indeed moving into surplus—on how we can ensure that hard-working New Zealanders are enjoying the spoils of any of the prosperity that we are supposedly moving into. Our disappointment on this side of the House is that New Zealanders by and large are not benefiting from any recovery. They are not. Even this Budget is a “fudge-it Budget”. It is an attempt to make it feel like some families are going to get some small scraps from this Budget. The Government could have done so much more. It could have done so much more.I am happy to point out where there are elements of this Budget that would have been a vast improvement particularly for families and particularly for newborn children. In particular when it comes to a little bit of the papering over that has happened it has especially happened for our most vulnerable children—the 285000 children living in poverty in New Zealand. Out of this Budget they have got a bit of a clear Duraseal cover over the top of that issue but what we needed was step change. What we needed—and what has been called for for some time—was an action plan that was focused on the well-being of all children. Paid parental leave and changes to tax credits should have been one part around income of a plan that should be focused on lifting the well-being of all of those children. As Plunket said: “Poverty continues to hamper progress for all children. Plunket would like to see a coordinated plan to genuinely tackle child poverty using measurable child poverty targets.” That is what it said in respect of the Budget. From Unicef: “UNICEF NZ encourages the Government and all political parties to commit to a comprehensive plan to address child poverty with targets measurement and clear accountability …”.That is exactly what this Labour Party will do in Government. We already have a bill that sets out exactly how we would do it and we would do it with more than just our Best Start policy because we recognise that our Best Start policy is just one part of a much wider plan that is required. But let us do a little bit of policy comparison. If indeed it has been talked as “Best Start - lite” let us see where in particular—unfortunately—the Government’s plans have not addressed some really key areas. It has done a little but it is still no cigar. So let us look at paid parental leave. Currently we have got 14 weeks of paid parental leave. The Government has proposed extending that to 18 weeks. It is good to see an extension. Labour’s policy has always however been 26 weeks since we have been in this. We have been pushing hard for 26 weeks. Sue Moroney has done an enormous amount of work—Grant Robertson: That’s right—26 for Babies.JACINDA ARDERN: —in conjunction with 26 for Babies to try to get that Government to move an inch on paid parental leave. It is disappointing that we have not seen it go all the way to 26 weeks because 26 weeks is what evidence and research says we should be doing. In fact Labour has said that ideally we would like it to be a year but we recognise that that would take time and so 26 weeks is our policy and unfortunately 18 weeks just does not cut it when it comes to what the research clearly tells us benefits children. In fact Growing Up in New Zealand a fantastic piece of research currently under way—the biggest update on longitudinal studies since the Dunedin study—has shown us that parents currently try to bring together every bit of leave they are entitled to scrimping to try to get that little extra bit of time. Having 26 weeks would make a massive difference and we want to pay tribute to the work Sue Moroney has done to eke 4 weeks out of that Government. So that is part of our Best Start payment.What about the parental tax credit? We should first acknowledge the origins of the parental tax credit. Jenny Shipley came up with it in the 1990s when she recognised that there was a large chunk of parents—60 percent—who were not eligible for paidparental leave. Actually the small tweaks the Government has made although laudable actually will not make a big dent in that eligibility. We had 60 percent of parents who were not getting anything so she stepped in and said that she would create this little tax credit which still went to a narrow group. Not every parent who does not get paid parental leave gets a parental tax credit and it does abate—let us be very clear on that. So she introduced that at a rate of $150 a week for 8 weeks. The change this Government has made in these proposals is to increase the rate to $220 and to increase the length to 10 weeks for the group of parents who are eligible. It has changed the eligibility—it has reduced it. It has reduced it now so that it is more in line with families who might be eligible for the family tax credit or in-work tax credit. So basically if a family out there does not get that it will not get the parental tax credit. That is the message now.Let us compare that with the Best Start payment. Best Start said: “Look the parental tax credit is kind of fudging things. It is not covering everyone who is not getting paid parental leave. It is not near-universal. Why don’t we just scrap it and start again?” and that is what Best Start did. Best Start says: “Actually for parents who don’t get paid parental leave and who earn under $150000 we want all of you to receive some support when your baby first arrives.” Ninety-five percent of parents receive the Best Start payment and they receive it at a rate of $60 a week. The families who do not get paid parental leave get it for 12 months. For families who do get paid parental leave it kicks in after their paid parental leave ends. On every count the Best Start payment helps more families it helps them for longer and it is more generous.And here is the kicker. Here is the thing that makes the biggest difference between Best Start and what the Government has proposed. The Government’s proposals exclude our most vulnerable low-income families. They get absolutely nothing from the package that the Government has introduced. Roughly 14000 parents who we know are living below the poverty line are still excluded from this Government’s plans. Best Start left none of those children behind. In fact it said to those children that we will support those kids until they are 3—not just for their first year but for 3 years. So the 50000 children living in poverty would benefit from the Best Start package for 3 years.That is a big difference between what Labour proposed and what this Government is proposing and that is what distinguishes what Labour is about and what National is about. We wanted to lift the well-being of all children but with a special focus on the most vulnerable. The National Government has said: “We want to do a little bit of a lift for some.”—for some. For us it was about extending on both ends. Where this Government has narrowed the parental tax credit and actually left out some of those income earners who very rarely get anything those are the ones who have also been cut out today as well as those at the end.Yes John Armstrong I think said it best when he said that this is the “Great Brain Robbery”—the Labour Party brain that is. He said: “If ever an explanation was needed as to why Opposition parties like to stay mum on their policies for as long as possible then look no further than the contents of this Budget.” Absolutely! But you know what? We stand by announcing our policy in January because we know that what we announced set out a clear difference that this Government still has not been able to keep pace with. It still reverted to type on the people whom it has decided to lift. It still could have done so much better. We will continue to promote helping the most vulnerable families with no shame on this side of the House. We will make sure that we promote policies that are for the many not for the few and are ultimately focused on children not blame not reverting to type and not focused on stereotypes on who should get assistance and who should not. Instead we are just saying that if we lift children we lifteveryone. That is what Labour policy is about. That is what a Labour Budget would have been about and that is how we will hold this Government to account.JAN LOGIE (Green): It is with pleasure that I rise to take a call in this urgent debate on this bill the name of which is beyond me right at the moment. Basically the Government is bringing in under urgency—oh it is the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill—tax credits for parents and an extension to paid parental leave. Excuse me for not being over the title of the bill when it has just been put on the Table a few minutes ago and when there has been no real prior warning for this House to debate an issue that is deeply important for this country.When we have 285000 children living in poverty in this country we need to be talking about this and we need to be taking time and considering the best options for getting our children out of poverty. The Green Party believes in good lives and a fair future for every New Zealander. We believe in the vision of having every single child in this country thriving not just surviving—as all too many of them are at the moment when we put aside those who sadly are still dying of diseases of poverty in this country to our great collective shame.We know that in this country with so much wealth—so much wealth—around us we can do better for our children. This debate is part of the opportunity to consider our options to deliver that wealth. I would like to now address in what I think is quite a divided bill from what I can tell—not having read the detail in the 10 minutes we have had—one bad thing and one good thing. I will speak to the bad thing first so that I can end on a positive note. I do recognise that people I have been following on social media do not want to hear us in the Opposition just attacking the Government. They do want us to recognise what is good in here and we are up for that. We will recognise and acknowledge the things we agree with that are good for our children and we will strongly critique those things that we believe are causing harm or are not up to what our children deserve.So on that point I will first address the extension of the parental tax credit. It is a little bit hard to get our heads around what exactly this is. We have been told that it is an extension to the parental tax credit from $150 a week to $220 a week for those who are entitled but there has been a tightening up of the eligibility. That is where my quite deep concern lies at this stage because it seems to me that what the Government is doing here is actually extending the discrimination that applies to the in-work tax credit which is something that the Child Poverty Action Group has been challenging so strongly through our courts. My concern is that that same point of discrimination is possibly being extended into this parental tax credit. So although the Government is saying that this is a measure to alleviate poverty children from beneficiary families those who are in the most poverty are being excluded from that benefit on the basis that their parents are not in work.I spoke briefly after we had had notice of this provision with the academic Susan St John to ask her opinion of whether my reading of this was correct and she was saying that it is actually a little bit difficult to tell from looking on the website but it does look as if that is true. It does look from the way that the website is reading as if the bill requires people to be not receiving a benefit and to be meeting hours of work criteria that apply to the in-work tax credit. That is of deep concern for anybody who opposes discrimination for anybody who—Hon Members: Oh ha ha!JAN LOGIE: The members on the Government side of the House are laughing uproariously at the idea of opposing discrimination. I really fail to understand what is so funny about the idea of opposing discrimination. I guess their idea is that people who are not in work need to be discriminated against so that they will get into work. I am notreally sure that that bears out in fact. In the Green Party we believe that parenting is a job worth valuing and that we should be doing everything we can as a country to support our families—those who have two parents those who are in work and those who have only one parent who is actively parenting and might not be in work. That is why there should not be discrimination between those who are in work and those who are not in work but this bill does seem to be building discrimination in and extending it.I notice that the court ruling from the Child Poverty Action Group case—which was not successful—established that a ground for discrimination for the court to consider is: “First is there differential treatment or effects of persons in comparable or analogous circumstances on a prohibited ground of discrimination?”. That is the basis of being in employment. So on the surface of it it looks as if this provision meets that criteria for consideration by the courts. And if so—and this is the next ground for the court to consider—whether that “differential treatment results in material disadvantage” in that context. It looks to me like $70 a week or more actually. No it is probably not that but there is a significant difference here for those who are not in work so we are not happy with this as it reads to us at the moment and we will be looking at introducing a Supplementary Order Paper which I hope we can get support for in this House to extend this provision to those who are out of work.Government members will be pleased that I am now moving on to a more positive note to congratulate them on following the lead of the 26 for Babies campaign and the almost 4000 New Zealanders who submitted in support of Labour member Sue Moroney’s bill to extend paid parental leave to 26 weeks. I would like to congratulate the members on that committee from National who listened to those submissions and were convinced by them. I do not see how anybody could have gone through that process and not been convinced. The arguments were deeply compelling that extending paid parental leave facilitates a bonding and attachment between parents and babies. It supports families and ensures stability of incomes. It closes the shortfall between New Zealand’s paid parental leave provisions and those in other OECD countries. It improves health outcomes for mothers babies and children and 26 weeks would have met the World Health Organization’s recommendation for exclusive breastfeeding. It allows choice for women and it creates job opportunities. There are positive implications in this bill in terms of society our economy and women’s workforce participation. How could you not embrace that? So thank you National for listening to New Zealand.I would also like to thank National for the extension of the criteria and accessibility in the bill because that was my one concern with the member’s bill. I understand that when you have got a member’s bill you have to go for a narrow scope and that is why that was not in there. But it is incredibly important. The Human Rights Commission was very clear that for it extending paid parental leave to those who are in casual employment or are changing jobs is the priority for reducing discrimination. So it is fantastic to see that provision and our children and women all around the country will be thanking you for this significant step on the journey towards the Green Party policy of 13 months’ paid parental leave—13 months.Hon Members: Ha ha!JAN LOGIE: Again you might laugh because in the context of your world and the discourse promoted by the National Party that seems extreme. But in fact that was the Families Commission’s recommendation back in 2007. It actually puts it at only a mid-point in comparison with other countries in the world. It is not actually an extreme concept at all because it benefits our children and benefits our society. It is about recognising that if we start in the early years and provide a really strong foundation for our children and our families then we are all going to be better off. [Interruption]The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I am sorry to interrupt the member.JAN LOGIE: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker; I appreciate that after the unruliness on that side of the House. Those members do not understand the importance of children to our society and the importance of the first year of life. That is why the Green Party is happy to support this bill as a significant step towards our policy of 13 months’ paid parental leave.MIKE SABIN (National—Northland): I just want to commend Jan Logie in particular and the Green Party for another outstanding contribution. Does it not do fantastic things to votes for the National Party when people like Jan Logie and her friends in the Green Party stand up in this House and say that supporting working families is discriminating? That says a lot about what those people are about—that says a lot about what those people are about. If we support hard work and enterprise we are discriminating. What an absolute load of tripe.Sue Moroney: They’re just babies. They can’t do hard work—they’re only babies.MIKE SABIN: Sorry? I wonder whether Sue Moroney will be getting a call in this debate. Was she not doing some work on this? I seem to recall—let me channel that. Let me channel that. I cannot channel it over there because all the brains have been stolen apparently. There has been a bit of brain stealing. I would suggest they would have had to scramble—Hon Trevor Mallard: By the zombies.MIKE SABIN: Speaking of brain drain there is someone who had a brain drain about 30-something years ago before he came to this place.Hon Member: He tried to have a lobotomy.MIKE SABIN: That is right. Yes he could not find one—could not find one. However let us return to this very very sensible piece of legislation.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Good idea.MIKE SABIN: I am entitled to rebut interjections. The New Zealand workplace is a modern and diverse place and this Government accepts and acknowledges that. This Budget actually reflects the hard work—[Interruption] Sorry what is Sue Moroney saying? I cannot quite pick that up.Sue Moroney: You only support hard-working babies. The chimney sweep babies.MIKE SABIN: Well that is interesting. That is interesting Sue Moroney because what the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill is about is supporting those who need the support. So if we talk about what Sue Moroney was proposing any household earning under $150000—like Trevor Mallard if he were to spring forth and have a child—would get this baby bonus. I know it is a horrifying thought. They would get this baby thing going on. Is that fair? Is that fair? Is that what Kiwis really expect? Actually I think that New Zealanders have woken up to the idea that this sort of non-targeted approach from the Labour Party of throwing money at a problem and believing that makes it go away is actually dead and gone which is probably why the Labour Party polling is now suggesting it is doing even worse than what the polling across many different forums has shown. I think the polling has got the Labour Party at well below 30 percent.This bill is about rewarding the hard work of New Zealand families and about supporting young New Zealand families and the children that they are bringing up in a targeted prudent responsible and sensible manner. What we know—and this is what this Government has done for a number of years now through some very very difficult times—is that if we carefully manage the Government’s finances if we take care on behalf of taxpayers of the challenges of fiscal responsibility in tough times and if we do that well and if we invest for outcomes we get good results. That is why this Budgetshows us in surplus. And if we support families that need support to do the same thing we can expect good outcomes from them. It is a targeted bill. It is a good piece of legislation. I commend the Minister of Labour for it.TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. Thank you very much. Can I thank Mike Sabin for resuming his seat. Can I thank him for his contribution because every time Mike Sabin makes a speech in this House the women of New Zealand—52 percent of voters in New Zealand—recommit to not voting for that party. They recommit every time they see that man rise to his feet in his bombastic way and the way that he minimises those things that women do inside this workforce and the way that he minimises the value of women at home and the importance of what women put into this society. We thank you Mr Sabin. New Zealand First is rising well past 10 percent based on the speeches of Mr Sabin alone so thank you so much for your contribution. We look forward to more—we look forward to more. I will go back to the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill. Mr Sabin unfortunately does not normally read bills and he has had very little time to concentrate on this one.Just quickly though with regard to the criticism of Ms Logie’s contribution the title of the bill is the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill which means that it actually is supposed to support newborn children no matter where they are. That is what the title would suggest to you. I cannot say what New Zealand First is going to do with regard to any Supplementary Order Papers at this stage because I need to consult with my colleagues but the bill may have been misnamed by the National Government if it is very very against supporting every newborn child. It possibly needs to make that clear in the title before we go forward.I do want to say that it has been a very lucky year for parents in New Zealand. It has been a very lucky year and that luck has been because Sue Moroney’s bill was pulled out of the ballot. That is what forced this bill forward. There was no way on this planet or on John Key’s planet that this was going to happen without that pressure. You can see it in the regulatory impact statement. You can see inside that that the officials have said they have not actually been able to do any research on this bill but that thankfully—thankfully—there was already a bill there. Thankfully most of the work had been done. So I want to acknowledge on behalf of New Zealand First that this bill is here in the Budget not because the National Government has suddenly seen the value of mothers being at home—oh no. The National Government has been forced into it. So there are two reasons why it is a lucky year: one the bill was pulled out; and two it is an election year.I want to say thank you very much Sue Moroney for the work that you did on this for bringing this to the attention of the country and for making it incredibly difficult for this Government to back away from this issue. It was so difficult. The Government tried. By crikey it tried but the bill for 26 weeks of paid parental leave the campaign you ran and the women who stood up around this country and said they believe it is important that parents—not just women but parents—are able to bond with their children and that we as a country are better for it forced the hand of this Government.I am interested to see whether the ACT Party will be supporting this bill. Only recently on television we had the new leader of the ACT Party—his name escapes me; he is not well-known—stand up and say: “Don’t have children if you can’t afford it.” Do not have children if you cannot afford it. Only the rich people should breed is basically another way of putting that—only the rich should breed. So is this party—Mike Sabin: Very sensible.TRACEY MARTIN: Mr Mike Sabin is shouting out: “How sensible!”. Ladies of New Zealand Mike Sabin just shouted out: “How sensible!”. Please mark that down.Put it in theHansardin italics. Thank you. That is another 2 percent on the New Zealand First poll. Woo! Go for it Mr Sabin. Keep it coming Mr Sabin. Keep it coming. It is excellent work you are doing on behalf of New Zealand First.Can we just return to the regulatory impact statement for a moment. Let us point out the fact that the regulatory impact statement actually says that for financial reasons the return to work often occurs before a baby is 6 months old. That is why 26 weeks was important. That is why 26 weeks was the goal. But it has never been the goal. It is not the goal in this bill. It is not the goal anywhere else. Eighteen weeks is all that whoever over there actually truly believes that having a parent at home is good for a baby could eke out of this tight-fisted Government. That is all it could eke out for newborn babies because that is what the bill’s title is. It is not about parents. It is not about people working or not working; it is about newborn babies. The Government does not want to make it about that. Even when Simon Bridges stood up he made sure that he emphasised the amounts of the dollars. This was a conversation about money not about babies.If you extrapolate the figures out from this investment at the front end of life to the other end of life we will see that in those numbers an upfront investment in this part gives downstream return in multiple ways. For example it has been proven again and again and again that when women are actually given an opportunity to stay at home and look after their children and I say “women” because—actually we would have liked to have seen some sort of parity here perhaps like the Danish model where there is a requirement for men to take part in this parental leave. We are not going to push the point now. That is a conversation that the country should have and maybe that would go some way to actually minimising the pay gap. Maybe if we actually saw all these roles as equitable then we would not have this conversation that we have in business all the time because we would truly be equal when it came to the way we cared in our homes. I know that fathers are absolutely equal in the way they love and care for their children and I am sure they would like to have the opportunity to bond on some occasions with their children—to have the burden of that in most cases. So there you go. That would have been a nice conversation to have.But what we do know is that when women are well-supported when they are at home with their babies and when they feel that they have truly had an opportunity to make sure their baby is well and settled and that all is right with the world and their relationship is strong then they are better employees. Employers tell us that. Employers tell us that when women know that their children are well looked after and everything is going well and they have been given an environment of support then they are better employees. They are more loyal. They work longer hours. They stay through greater trauma. They are just more loyal. That is what businesses tell us is important especially when times get tough and you need to have conversations with your employees around needing to do some give and take.So it is a shame that the Government could not see its way clear to doing the 26 weeks’ paid parental leave to actually meet the World Health Organization’s targets to meet what has actually been designated by the World Health Organisation which says that this is the best start for newborn babies. What is this about if it is not about that? Is it about giving parents a little bit so they are grateful and letting National ride into the election? There is an awful lot of that.Simon O’Connor: That’s cynical.David Bennett: Very cynical.TRACEY MARTIN: Yes I may have a cynical view and it is because I have seen it. I saw it in the 1990s and I have seen it from this Government for the last 6 years. Drop $10 million over here into a pot and tell those people they are fine. We have seenit with the provisions on grandparents raising grandchildren and we are seeing it again here.We are obviously going to speak on all parts of the bill as we go through this evening so I would like to just highlight—Hon Trevor Mallard: Through to Saturday.TRACEY MARTIN: —through to Saturday—for the families out there who think that this is a win-win for them—all those families out there who have actually been getting Working for Families—that I think you need to tune in as this conversation goes on because there are amendments to Working for Families. The families who came to see me in 2008 and said: “We’re going to vote against the Labour Government.” which they did in 2008 also said: “Crikey we really really really hope that the National Government doesn’t touch Working for Families.” Well here we go New Zealand. Listen up because this bill starts to cut into your Working for Families. It starts to lower that support that you have had. Nothing is ever ever ever without hooks with the National Government. Nothing is ever without hooks with the National Government and as we go on to talk about this bill I believe that you will see more and more hooks come out.CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National): It is with pleasure that I stand to speak in support of the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill. Nothing I guess is more important to the nation than the well-being of families especially young families. I know from my own experience and from conversations with others that the time when you are raising a young family is probably the greatest period of happiness and the greatest period of stress that one can go through. I can remember doing the same thing with colossal mortgage rates to consider and a lot of pressures and suddenly the children needed to go to the doctor which was an added cost. National has addressed that in this Budget for children up to—what age?Hon Chester Borrows: 13.CHRIS AUCHINVOLE: Up to 13 years old and that is going to be a wonderful thing for parents. But it is not only that. We could look at the various component parts of this bill and we come to the inevitable conclusion—Tracey Martin: You can’t come up with your own policies. What a shame.CHRIS AUCHINVOLE: It is no wonder Opposition members are squeaking about it—it is a hard thing to argue against. National is taking a very wide and committed approach to doing its part to give children the best possible start in life. This is really going right back to the New Zealand I remember when I was very young. It is going right back to the key values—Simon O’Connor: That was last year.CHRIS AUCHINVOLE: Thanks Simon. No it was a little bit longer ago than that. This measure is going right back to the key values that Andrew Little will remember. They used to be part of his movement’s ambitions. This bill does allow for an ambitious New Zealand for people with aspirations and they will be able to meet them because the Government is providing an economic platform from which they can grow. I fully support this bill.SUE MORONEY (Labour): If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery can I say that I am only a little flattered—only a little flattered—by the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill. What should have been 26 weeks of paid parental leave is a miserable 18 weeks. But that is not now—not any time soon. It is not until a 2-week extension next year 2015 and a further 2 weeks in 2016. But there is good news. There is good news for New Zealanders because before then New Zealanders get to vote in an election where they can actually vote for a Government that actually gets this that actually believes it and that fights in a principled way forextending paid parental leave supporting families prioritising them and actually putting them at the front of the queue not like the National Government’s johnny-come-latelys trying to pick up Labour’s ideas and water them down thinking that that is going to do it. Well I do not think that will do it.However I do want to say at the outset that Labour will be supporting this bill because it is a little progress. It is a little progress but I will at this stage remind the members opposite that there is a superior bill in front of this Parliament which still remains in this Parliament and that they still get to do the right thing despite this poor measure that the Government is bringing in. They can actually vote for 26 weeks of paid parental leave because that bill is still coming before this Parliament and I look forward to that. I am surprised to be speaking on this bill in urgency because after all nothing in this bill comes in until 2015. So I am quite surprised. I am not sure what the urgency is over passing this bill through all stages tonight. I can only think that the Government is embarrassed by my bill which is still on the Order Paper and it wants to try to get in front of it.Well here is another issue that I want to raise. I have got to say that although I will get on and talk about children’s things because I think that is important—because that is what this is all about; this is all about the children—what I have learnt through this exercise is to never trust a Tory. I have learnt to never trust a Tory. It is a disgrace that Chris Auchinvole was on his feet and even speaking on a bill about this issue I have got to say because Chris Auchinvole was the MP who made the agreement with me on behalf of his caucus that if there was to be any extension to paid parental leave it would be done in my bill in my name.Chris Auchinvole: Oh!SUE MORONEY: Yes you did Mr Auchinvole—yes you did. That is why I will never trust a Tory. It is why I will never trust a Tory. There he is pretending that he never made that agreement on behalf of his caucus but he did. National came to me and asked for an extension because it was going to reconsider its position. National said it was going to make amendments to my bill and discuss that with me.Chris Auchinvole: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Although it is a reasonable debate and it is an important one I really do object to being called a Tory.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): That is not a point of order.SUE MORONEY: I am not going to continue to talk about that particular issue any more except just to note that Mr Auchinvole did not object to being called untrustworthy. To continue speaking about what Tories have had to say about this issue I do want to talk about one more Tory before I talk about children and that is Judith Collins who in 2004 said about paid parental leave: “It is another example of the Government using taxpayers’ money to try to win some votes.” That is what Judith Collins said in 2004. If she were here now if she was not on leave as she is—Hon Trevor Mallard: No no. She’s here. She’s hiding in the Beehive.SUE MORONEY: Oh she is here. Well look come down Judith. Come and take a call on the debate—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Do not refer to the absence of a member.SUE MORONEY: Judith Collins? OK. Actually I am also quite interested that the National Party has put male after male after male up to speak on this bill but in fact when it comes to my bill on paid parental leave National will not let the men anywhere near it strangely enough. National will only let the women in the party talk.What I really want to say is that this bill is a really good bill because it puts the issue right in front of the public. They can now see which Government it is that would actually prioritise families. They can see it absolutely because they know that aLabour-led Government will have 26 weeks of paid parental leave and will have it in place a long way before the Government even gets to its 18 weeks—even before it gets to its 18 weeks. The public also know that it is the Labour Party that will ensure that all children reap the benefit of policy making under a Labour-led Government.One of the big gaps in this bill—surprise surprise—from National is that it is the most vulnerable children who will miss out on any form of support from this bill. The parental tax credit that National has chosen to put more money into and to extend for a short period of time longer does not get to the people who most need it. It does not get to the families who most need it. Students people on ACC and people who are beneficiaries do not get to use the parental tax credit. Is it any wonder that child poverty is growing under that Government? Is it any wonder with those sorts of attitudes? What the Government is using this bill to do is to bring in all of its judgments—David Bennett: Prove it.SUE MORONEY: I will prove it Mr Bennett if you would just actually listen to my speech. I did hear Mr Bennett before doing a tiny 2-minute speech. He could not even talk about children and families for longer than 2 minutes. I heard him speaking and asking: “Where is Sue Moroney?”. Well Sue Moroney was doing lots and lots of media interviews because the media understands where this bill comes from. It understands what the driving force has been even if David Bennett does not want to admit it.It is a great shame that the National Government again has taken its Cabinet club approach to this bill has made all the sorts of judgments that it does and has said that there are only some families that are worthy of this support—only some. Mike Sabin called them hard-working families. He said that this bill is just there to support the hard-working ones. The hard-working babies—really? These are babies. How do they get to be hard-working babies when they are not even 18 weeks old? They are not even 18 weeks old. But Mike Sabin says that this bill is for only the hard-working babies. That is not the view of the Labour Party. We believe that all children deserve the support of New Zealanders. All children do—particularly the children who are in vulnerable situations. That is why Labour’s Best Start package is considerably better than what this Government is prepared to do.Why is that? I think it is clear. Everyone in New Zealand knows that this Government has been dragged kicking and screaming—kicking and screaming—towards supporting extended paid parental leave. It has tried every trick in the book. From 2002 the Government has consistently voted against any form of paid parental leave. It threatened a financial veto—the extreme tool of a financial veto—against extending paid parental leave. The Government has filibustered my bill to try to stop paid parental leave from being extended to 26 weeks. It has used every trick in the book to try to stop this from happening.In the end the Government knew that it was on the wrong side of the New Zealand public. National knew that it was losing votes through these popular policies but still could not bring itself to do it properly. The Government still could not bring itself to do it properly because it fundamentally does not believe in paid parental leave. The Government will never put children at the heart of its policy making because it fundamentally does not get it. Only the hard-working ones—the hard-working babies—are going to get this according to Mike Sabin. Well that says just about all you need to know about the National Government. It has been dragged kicking and screaming towards this. I am proud of my part in bringing this about and I applaud the Government for doing the smallest amount it thinks it can get away with in an election year.LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): I am very proud today to be a member of the National Government and I am proud of a Budget that has delivered for Kiwi families. This side of the House believes in the support that we are providing today in Budget 2014 for families. One of the things that is really important to me as a mother of three is that mothers and families get to choose what happens to and what works for their family and their children. I have to say that one of the things I am really pleased about with what we are introducing in this legislation today the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill is not only extending paid parental leave in terms of length but making it available to more families. We are making it available to more families.Sue Moroney: You wouldn’t have got it.LOUISE UPSTON: I did not get paid parental leave for any of my children. What we have now is a system where paid parental leave is available for more parents. We also have unlike the other side made extensions to the parental tax credit. We have increased it and made sure that more of the very vulnerable families will get support that they have never got before. So it is absolute rot for that side of the House to say that the National Government is not committed to families. We are committed to families. In this Budget $500 million supports the most vulnerable children—the most vulnerable children—in New Zealand. I am proud as a mother and I am proud as a member of the National Government that this is a Government that is backing families providing more flexibility for parents and supporting those most vulnerable children.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I understand the next call is a split call—5 minutes Carol Beaumont.CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): We are rising on the Labour side to speak in favour of this bill the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill. We are acknowledging that there is a small improvement being made here for paid parental leave—something that Labour has long championed and something that as we have already heard tonight we see needs to be significantly lifted to 26 weeks. My colleague Sue Moroney has worked tirelessly on this matter as has 26 for Babies. This is a small step a very small step but it is a deeply deeply cynical one I have to say.This is coming from the party that voted against paid parental leave every single time. It voted against it every single time. Its members have been filibustering for weeks now to stop Sue Moroney’s bill the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill from actually getting in front of this House because they know that it has the support of the majority of MPs in this House. And it has threatened to veto that bill once it is passed. That is that party over there. So this bill is deeply cynical. It is because it is an election year and it is because National knows that it is on the wrong side of this in terms of the public because the public support paid parental leave.Of the submitters on Sue Moroney’s bill 99.6 percent were submitting in favour of it. The public support it because we all know that paid parental leave is vital for our families. It is vital for ensuring that children get the best start and it is also good for those children’s mothers who are the primary caregivers because it enables women to better balance paid work and family and it gives women choices. These are reasons why paid parental leave is so important. It is also important for babies to bond with their mothers particularly. All of the evidence shows that bonding is about ensuring that a child gets the best possible start—health-wise emotionally and developmentally—so that bonding is important. Those are the reasons why paid parental leave is vitally important except that we are talking here about 2 more weeks next year and 2 more weeks the year after when what we need is an immediate boost to 26 weeks which enables women to do 6 months’ exclusive breastfeeding and really facilitates that.Again all of the evidence shows that breastfeeding is really important. The World Health Organization has long promoted 6 months’ exclusive breastfeeding when that is possible. This bill will not help that. It will be a small step—a very small step.It is important that we support our children and families and the Budget supposedly talks about doing that. This is where this part has come from. Supporting children and families is a vital investment in our future but our Best Start package is a much more significant step to doing that. It is a much more significant start for our families because under what the Government is proposing the most vulnerable will not actually benefit. The most vulnerable will not be getting that extra tax credit—14000 are excluded we understand. I noticed that widened eligibility was referred to in the speech which I have to say I think is really important but casual workers—some of the most low-paid workers potentially—do not even get on the horizon until 2016. I have just heard Minister Simon Bridges say this in his speech. Again the things that potentially would have helped the most vulnerable are being excluded from the bill we are debating here tonight.While we are talking about supporting children and families nothing in today’s Budget does anything to help the 285000 children living in poverty because there are no plans. There are no plans to increase jobs so that people can get ahead. There are no plans to lift wages. There is nothing in the Budget that deals with those things which are really about supporting families and children because children live in families. As an alternative Labour has very clear plans in these areas—a target around increasing jobs and a target of unemployment dropping to 4 percent by 2017 and lifting wages immediately. We have economic development plans around lifting value and productivity in our economy to ensure that we can provide quality jobs. We will be moving amendments in the Committee stage to try to improve this bill which is a small improvement.DENISE ROCHE (Green): It is my pleasure to take the second Green Party call on the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill which I note having now had 10 minutes to read some of it is an omnibus bill that amends both the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act and the Income Tax Act.I note that in the general policy statement that is with the preamble to the bill one of the things it says is that it is targeted to lower and middle income working families particularly the extension or the increase in the tax credit. With this legislation the tax credit will rise from $150 per week for 8 weeks to $220 per week for the first 10 weeks following the birth of a child but the eligibility has been tightened and that does give us some concern.The other concern we have with this is that although it says that it is for lower and middle income working families it does nothing for the lowest-income families. Our policy has always been to extend that tax credit to those who need it most. We will be putting forward an amendment to amend this bill to ensure that we can have that happen for those most vulnerable families the ones that are most in need.What families need is enough to live on and although we support the principle of extending the tax credit essentially what would lift them out of poverty is increased wages. This Budget I have to note has done very little to ensure that working families and those who are living below the poverty line and are in paid employment are able to get ahead. These tax credit measures are basically the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff and we really do need to be starting to think in preventative terms about raising the standard of living so that we can address those poverty issues because the costs are socialised—we all pay for them in the end.When looking at this legislation you can tell that this is election year. I know that there are people on this side of the House who have said it but for the record I willstate it again. This is an attempt by the Government to take the benefit of Sue Moroney’s member’s bill which would have put in place 26 weeks’ paid parental leave take the credit away from her and basically introduce some small measures in the interim because it is election year. I do believe and I do agree with this side of the House that it is cynical.We do support the bill—we would be mad not to—because it takes some small steps towards improving conditions and provisions for particularly women who are bearing children while they are in the workforce. But our policy is for 13 months’ paid parental leave. Though this bill is a step in the right direction to some extent it does feel like lip-service. Others have outlined the benefits of paid parental leave but I will go through why 13 months is actually what we should be aiming for. We are at the lowest scale in ranked OECD countries for paid parental leave. Thirteen months would mean that there is a longer-term approach to child and maternal health.It is interesting actually to hear the arguments that are being presented by the National Government around the parental leave provisions that it is putting forward because they are quite oppositional to what it said some weeks ago when Sue Moroney’s bill was first introduced. But I take heart from the fact that the Government has started to recognise the benefits of paid parental leave. The Greens would seek to extend it well beyond 16 weeks to 18 weeks and then to 13 months.SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I am very pleased to rise in support of the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill. As my colleague Louise Upston noted not only politically but from her experience as did members on this side of the House National recognises the real importance of children. We have heard Opposition members talk about paid parental leave in this first reading debate. We have heard some who want 26 weeks some who want a full year and some who want even more than a year. I wait for the call that we make it 3 years because that is the most important cycle. What is really important here is that National is responding in a prudent fashion to a need that we have seen for many years.Hon Members: Ha ha!SIMON O’CONNOR: Again all we hear from the other side is laughing. We have not heard any interest in children from members on the other side of the House. They would rather talk about themselves. National is proud to support children and I commend this bill to the House.Bill read a first time.Second ReadingHon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Labour): I moveThat the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill be now read a second time. As I set out in the first reading of the bill it is fundamentally about providing increased—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable Minister. [Interruption] Order! Sorry to interrupt the honourable Minister. The time has come for me to leave the Chair.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.Hon SIMON BRIDGES: As I set out in my the first reading speech on this bill this is fundamentally about providing increased and targeted support within current economic conditions for working parents with newborns. This bill provides more targeted assistance for working mothers and caregivers of newborn children to ensure families with a newborn are supported to give that child the best possible start in life.I would like to take this opportunity to outline in more detail some of the broader work we will be doing around the paid parental leave system. It is the combined impactof the changes made by this bill and the broader changes that will start to see significant benefits for modern working families. As I mentioned earlier I am developing further changes to ensure New Zealand’s parental leave framework better reflects modern working arrangements in today’s diverse family structures.The proposals will be consulted on with employees and employers and other New Zealanders later this year. Specifically I intend to consult on proposals that would see parental leave payments extended to people in less regular jobs such as seasonal and casual workers those with more than one employer and people who have recently changed jobs.The proposals would see primary carers providing permanent foster care akin to adoption such as Home for Life parents people who have permanent guardianship biological fathers and grandparents caring for grandchildren eligible for the leave providing they meet the work test criterion. The proposals would allow employees to work limited hours or days and keep up skills development during their paid and unpaid leave period. Also they would allow workers who have been with their employer for more than 6 months but less than a year to be entitled to some form of unpaid leave.I am aiming to have these changes in place by 1 April 2016. By that time this legislation will be fully implemented and better supporting families. The paid parental leave entitlement will be at 18 weeks and the changes to the parental tax credit will also have been in operation for a year by that point. The Government believes that these amendments will benefit New Zealand through providing working families with newborn children the financial certainty and confidence needed to take the time off work to care for and bond with their children. Further these changes will produce positive social and economic benefits in a fiscally responsible way. I commend this bill to the House.JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): I note that the Minister of Labour in his address said that the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill was aimed at giving families the financial certainty that would be beneficial to them and their newborn babies at that really crucial stage of development. But let us be honest. It does not do that for everyone. In fact as Labour members have pointed out through the early stages of this debate the most vulnerable families and children remain untouched by this Government’s proposal tonight and that amongst other things will be the most significant defining feature apart from the fact that our package runs for longer reaches more people and is more generous.Aside from all of those fundamental features one of the most significant is the fact that the National Government’s policy leaves vulnerable families absolutely untouched. If as National members have purported in their general statements to this House their Budget is targeted—targeted—at vulnerable families and children how is it that the poorest families in New Zealand are excluded from this bill? How can that be? That demonstrates to me that this Budget has been more about rhetoric than it has been about practice.I also want to point out that in comparison to Labour’s Best Start package which fundamentally aimed to treat as many children as possible equally in terms of the assistance it gave families the only children in families excluded from the Best Start package were those families who earned over $150000—and even then those ones might have been eligible for paid parental leave and could have received paid parental leave. The only ones outside paid parental leave who were excluded were families who earned a combined income of $150000 in the year that they were taking leave—so not a large number of families; roughly about 5 percent. Under National the families who are excluded are basically the ones who are earning roughly less than $20000 per annum. What a telling story that is so I will let that speak for itself.I wanted to see then in that context what kinds of issues were raised in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act analysis of the bill that we are debating tonight. It said under the departmental disclosure statement which we received late this afternoon that advice had been provided to the Attorney-General on whether any provisions of the bill appeared to limit any of the rights and freedoms affirmed in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. It said yes that information had been provided and we could find that advice on the website.I would like to just raise with the Minister and the officials that despite my searches I have been unable to find that analysis on the Ministry of Justice website and I would implore the Government that if it is indeed available it would be very beneficial to members on this side of the House if that were tabled in the House. All of the regulatory impact statements have been tabled at the same time as the bill but the last time I checked I had not seen the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act assessment. I will check again for that New Zealand Bill of Rights Act assessment but it would be very useful if members on this side of the House had that available to us.But as I said I have had the opportunity to look at the regulatory impact statements and particularly I found very useful the statement that was provided by I believe the Department of Labour. These statements are very useful. If I were to assess what they were doing they basically give the kind of analysis that is often provided in a Cabinet paper. They tend to look at the problem definition and will often then provide some analysis of the pros and cons of different options that may or may not have been presented to a Minister. The giveaway often that it is not exactly the same as probably those early briefing papers is that often the analysis in the regulatory impact statement will home in on one option and it will be the one the Government has gone for. That is a little clue that sometimes they have been written after the fact.But I find it interesting that the Department of Labour has included the following statements under what it calls “problem definition” when looking at the issue of extra support for new families. It states: “Currently some families experience poor outcomes due to financial pressure on working mothers to return to the workforce earlier than is desirable for health and social reasons.” It then goes on to say that some of the examples of this are for instance “suboptimal bonding between parents and their children leading to poorer outcomes for children and therefore society. Secure attachment is an important predictor of resilience in later life and a large body of evidence suggests that many adolescent difficulties including crime substance abuse and mental health have their beginnings in early childhood.” I want to point out that the footnote for this piece of research and evidence comes directly from Sir Peter Gluckman his piece in May 2011Improving the Transition: Reducing Social and Psychological Morbidity During Adolescence. All of the statements made in the problem definition by the department of labour this side of the House would absolutely agree with. They were the founding principles for the Best Start payment.I want to though just ask this question: does suboptimal bonding between parents and their children leading to poorer outcomes and secure attachment as an important predicator of resilience in later life stop becoming an issue at 18 weeks? That is surely the fundamental question we should be asking because the Government has said: “Yes we accept maybe 14 weeks might be contributing to the problem. An extra 4 weeks should do it.” Is it enough?If we look at the rest of the evidence that the department of labour has pulled out it goes on to say that there are reduced health and development benefits of not achieving the World Health Organization’s recommendation of exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months—for example improved outcomes to mother and specific benefits to babies such as “improved cognitive development and visual acuity reduced risks oftypes 1 and 2 diabetes reduced childhood obesity and coeliac disease reduced mortality during the first year of life and long-term benefits for cardiovascular health.” That comes from the American Academy of Paediatrics. That is a reference to 6 months of paid parental leave not 18 weeks. And wait there is more from the Australian Productivity Commission on paid parental leave. I want to point out to members who have just arrived that I am actually reading from advice provided to the Government by a Government department.Mike Sabin: Thank you.JACINDA ARDERN: No problem Mr Sabin. It then goes on to say: “not achieving child and maternal health and welfare benefits from the primary caregiver having a minimum of 6 months’ leave”—again 6 months’ leave. “The benefits include better health outcomes for mothers and infants and better developmental outcomes for children including cognitive benefits and reduced rates of infant mortality.” The Australian Productivity Commission reports that there is compelling evidence of these benefits from a period of absence from work for the primary caregiver of around 6 months—of around 6 months—and a reasonable prospect that longer periods of 9 to 12 months are beneficial.The advice that was provided to the Government pointed strongly to 26 weeks which is the very amount of paid parental leave that Labour has strongly advocated for. Yet what options were put to the Government? Not 6 months—no not 26 weeks. Instead it was always the extension of just 4 weeks. And why? What was the rationale in the paper? It said that the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill currently before Parliament which seeks to extend paid parental leave from 14 to 26 weeks in three stages basically was not something they would be putting forward as an option because of the prioritisation of Budget allocations.Let me say this: Peter Gluckman has pointed out in this report that poor attachment poor health outcomes through lack of breastfeeding all of the resilience issues and psychological issues that come about from poor early development—those things cost more than 6 months of paid parental leave will ever cost. It was about investing to save and that is where this bill has failed.DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Contrary to what that last speaker Jacinda Ardern said I say that the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill is about investing in the future of New Zealand. It is investing in our young people it is investing in our families and it is making sure that in the most difficult of times when we have now reached a Budget surplus we use that money for the benefit of our younger citizens and our families. It is a prudent Budget that brings a surplus of $372 million. Compare that with our Australian brothers and sisters and you will see that they are cutting things whereas in New Zealand we are enhancing things. We are sending out programmes for families. These are important programmes that will benefit the future of our country going forward. They will raise stronger families with young children who will have their opportunities to be successful members of the New Zealand and world communities.This bill is important because we are increasing the length of paid parental leave up to 18 weeks from the current 14 weeks. That will be staggered increasing to 16 weeks on 1 April 2015 and to 18 weeks on 1 April 2016. There is a member opposite from somewhere down in Dunedin—Dr David Clark: Sue Moroney would take it further.DAVID BENNETT: “Sue Moroney would take it further.”—that is the comment from the Labour Party. Let us have a look. We have delivered for parents. Did the Labour Party deliver for parents? No it did not. It talked talked and talked. It has notdelivered. We have delivered. We have brought home what parents wanted. This is the difference: Labour talks; we deliver. We have delivered at the right time.When we look at it there is also the extension of paid parental leave to people who are in similar permanent care arrangements such as those with parenting orders. So it is broader than just increasing the weeks. We are actually looking at a broader-based policy that actually takes into account the different circumstances that many family relationships have these days. The Minister of Labour needs to be applauded for that—for taking a very positive and open approach and looking beyond the normal family arrangement that was considered the norm. We have also extended parental leave payments to more workers—in particular those who may recently have changed jobs seasonal or casual workers and workers with more than one employer. Again that is showing the flexibility of this legislation. We are looking at carrying it through into the variations that may be portrayed in the working environment that our younger families face in this modern world.Things are not as simple as people once expected. There are different arrangements there are different measures and there are different ways that people earn their income and paid parental leave needs to take into account those differences. This legislation gives us the mechanism to do exactly that and that is something that many parents would have been looking for.Hon Simon Bridges: Did Sue Moroney’s bill make any difference?DAVID BENNETT: Sue Moroney’s bill the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill did not do that. Sue Moroney’s bill was just all talk. This is delivery—delivery—of the things that are needed for people. We are making paid parental leave more flexible. There will be some more work to be done on this with public consultation around how that can be done but basically we are making it more flexible to take into account those variations and to make sure that the parents who are entitled to it get that chance to get that paid parental leave. Paid parental leave will be good for our families. It is part of a $500 million package for our families. Labour Party members will say that this is their idea. I never once saw the Labour Party go out there and talk about under-13s getting free medical treatment. I did not see Labour Party members go out there and say that that is what they wanted to do.Tracey Martin: New Zealand First policy.DAVID BENNETT: We have got some squealing from New Zealand First. Maybe that party’s members said it but you cannot really rely on what they actually say. The reality is that this is a good strong Budget. It delivers for families. It delivers for working families—the people whom the Labour Party should have been delivering for and the people whom National is delivering for. We are delivering in many ways. One of them is through paid parental leave. Another way is through the free doctors visits and prescriptions for under-13s. That is good governance. It is prudent successful governance and it is something that many parents and families will congratulate this Government on doing. Thank you.SUE MORONEY (Labour): It is a pleasure to rise and speak to the second reading of the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill. But is the National Party ever scraping the barrel when it puts David Bennett up to speak on this bill? He does not even seem to know that it was the Labour Party that brought in paid parental leave in 2002. He is standing up there and saying that the Labour Party has never delivered to parents. At the time Judith Collins said that having paid parental leave was vote buying. Well David Bennett ought to go back and look at history and then he may be a bit better informed. I think he is probably feeling quite sad that he has had to rely on an Opposition member of Parliament from Hamilton to have someinfluence over his Government given that he cannot have any influence over it himself. But never mind he got to speak.David Bennett: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Since when has Sue Moroney been a member from Hamilton?Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I did not hear the context.SUE MORONEY: Well I rest my case I have to say with that point of order. There is another thing I would have to say about the speakers National has put up to speak on its own bill and I think it is quite sad. If I was a woman of the National Government I would feel quite affronted that the one time they get to vote for extending paid parental leave they have their men speaking. When National was voting against my bill to extend it to 26 weeks National put all of its women up to take the heat over voting against it opposing it. I think that is a very cynical use of the women in National and I feel very sad for them on that.The people whom I do want to congratulate are the 26 for Babies coalition; organisations like Plunket the New Zealand Educational Institute and Barnados a whole range of unions that are standing up for working people and a whole lot of organisations that have relentlessly campaigned on this issue. They are the victors today. They are the people who have won this victory for families and there is no doubt about that. I also want to congratulate the 3800 people who made submissions supporting my bill on paid parental leave because I think they have made a big difference here. I think they have put the pressure on the Government to take this measure.I also want to thank the thousands of people who sent this e-postcard to the Prime Minister because I think they have made a real difference for families on Budget day. John Key has probably just about had his email inbox crash with the number of these e-postcards that have been sent to him. I am sure every single person who went on and pushed this e-postcard through to John Key has made a big difference. They have made a big difference to families and they have certainly had a lot more impact than anyone on those benches opposite has made on this issue so I congratulate them. I congratulate them on that.This is a bill that the Labour Party will support because it is better than doing nothing. It is better than doing nothing but look there is not much more than nothing that the Government could have done without doing nothing to be quite honest.Mike Sabin: That makes good sense!SUE MORONEY: Well it does because the Government had pressure on it and it still has pressure on it because my bill is still coming up before this Parliament.Chris Auchinvole: It’s all about Sue Moroney.SUE MORONEY: It is still coming up before this Parliament. Mr Auchinvole I look forward to you speaking on that bill because you did promise after all that any extensions to paid parental leave would come through that bill. So I look forward to that. But what we have got to do is actually get a consensus about getting to 26 weeks because this mucking around the edges with 18 weeks—and not even 18 weeks now but 18 weeks over the course of the next 2 years for goodness’ sake! I have a bill before this House that actually gets us to 18 weeks on 1 July this year—1 July this year—which is in fact what the Government should be supporting.If the Government had really listened to the 3800 people 99.6 percent of whom supported my bill for 26 weeks then it would in fact not be in urgency. Let us face it: the measures in the Government’s bill do not come into force until 2015. They do not even start until 2015 so what is the need for urgency? What is the urgent matter that we are here under urgency debating? It is about getting a bill in front of my member’s bill. That is what it is about; that is why we are in urgency.Let us focus. Let us stop talking about the politics because I know it is all about the politics for the National Party but for the Labour Party it is about people. What—Hon Member: Yeah right! Tell us another one.SUE MORONEY: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I am finding it harder and harder to actually—it is always the case when we are debating children somehow.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I actually think that is a fair call. There has been a spirited period of members interjecting and I just think we need a little bit more decorum now please.SUE MORONEY: Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker. I am not sure what it is about paid parental leave that gets the National Party members yelling and screaming but it always does.Mike Sabin: No just when you talk about yourself.SUE MORONEY: Well I will talk about Mr Sabin who thought that the only people who deserved to get extended paid parental leave were babies who were hard-working! I cannot really understand that because at 6 months I am not sure how you can work out which is a hard-working baby and which is not. But I digress.When submitters came before the Government Administration Committee they said that 26 weeks was important. Plunket referred to that today. It has put out a press statement saying “Yeah well 18 weeks is OK but really what New Zealand families and babies need is 26 weeks.” Plunket has said that because all the research and evidence tells us that if we can get exclusive breastfeeding to 26 weeks to 6 months that will make a huge difference to the outcomes for those children. It will mean not only that they have a great opportunity to get some really good secure bonding and attachment with their parent but also that they are set up for a very healthy future.That is great news not only for that baby and that family but also for the rest of New Zealand because we all get to save precious taxpayer money on not funding more and more health services. That child gets a healthier life and we get to save money. That is a win-win. That is the win-win that comes from properly developed policy—26 weeks paid parental leave—not policy on the hoof not the politics of just trying to get away with as little as possible like this Government has done.Everyone in New Zealand knows that this Government has been dragged kicking and screaming towards extending paid parental leave. It has done everything in its power to try to stop this from taking place. It has consistently voted against paid parental leave. It has threatened to use its financial veto. It has filibustered my bill. It even asked me—and I in good faith responded—to extend the report back date of the bill. It has used every trick in the book.As recently as the end of March this year National members were voting at the select committee against extending paid parental leave. So no one is fooled about this; no one is fooled. The real shame about this is the fact that New Zealand families need a Government that will absolutely commit to this and fully understand the importance of investing properly in families. They need a Government that actually knows that investing in those early years reaps us benefits not just for those families as I said but for whole country benefits—if we do it properly.This half-hearted attempt will not deliver those benefits and that is what we need. It is becoming more and more obvious that what we need is a Labour-led Government that will take the support of families seriously and will not take half measures a Government that absolutely fully understands how important it is to invest early get it right from the beginning and save ourselves a lot of heartache a lot of problems and yes a lot of taxpayer money in the future.JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to speak again in this process of urgency on the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill. I would like to just pick up ona couple of points made by the Minister of Labour—or one primarily about the fiscal responsibility that has enabled the Government to support this initiative at this time. I really do want to remind New Zealand that this bill we are being told is going to cost about $172 million a year. That is while the tax cuts that this Government introduced have cost this country $5 billion over the last term of Parliament. The $61 billion of debt that this Government has got the country into—up from $14 billion—has now meant that we are paying $1 billion a year in interest off that debt. That is so much lost opportunity for the children and the families of this country that it really puts this $172 million bill in perspective for me—although I celebrate it because it is a step on the journey and at least it is going in the right direction unlike those tax cuts and unlike the profligate spending on American-style motorways.But to get to some of the specific points of the bill again the Green Party as I have said believes passionately in an economy that serves the people and the environment because basically that is what the economy is there for. It is a tool to serve people and the environment. This is a chance to use our shared resources to look after our children. The Green Party wants to see every single child in this country thriving. We want to use our economy in the best way that we can to deliver that for our children. Paid parental leave is a key part of that mix and we are very pleased to support it.We are also pleased to be supporting with a caveat—and I am hoping that others in the House will support my amendments—the extension or increase in payment of the parental tax credit. This tax credit recognises the need for extra financial support for lower-income parents so that they can spend time with their newborn babies and helps with the cost of things like nappies clothes and other essentials in those first few weeks of life. That is a worthy thing to do. That is going to help take some of the pressure off some of the families who are struggling so much at the moment. It will increase the payment from $150 to $220. Seventy dollars a week for lower and middle-income families is a huge amount and it will make a really big difference. The tragedy of this provision though is that it is not being extended to the families who are in the most need and who could really really make the most out of that $70 a week and for whom it would make a substantial difference to their quality of life and their ability to care for their newborn baby.The regulatory impact statement tells us that the intent of this policy provision is to increase the amount of financial support available and that is the primary objective. Secondly the intent is to target this additional support to the period around the birth of a new child. Thirdly the intent is to target this additional support to lower and middle-income families. Fourthly and sadly part of the policy intent of this measure for the Government is to minimise any impacts on work incentives as if parenting is not a job that we should be valuing above all other jobs and as if parents who are out of the paid workforce should be thinking about being in the paid workforce while their baby is a newborn. Surely—surely—that is not something that we want to be encouraging.I really would remind the House of some of the submissions—for those on the Government Administration Committee who sat through the submissions—on Sue Moroney’s Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill on paid parental leave and some of the stories that we heard about the importance of it the difference that it made not having it and the heartbreak that was wrought. We heard from a nurse working in the intensive care unit who was shocked to discover that so many parents had to leave their babies during the day to go to work because they could not take leave. That has been the reality for families in this country. The extension of paid parental leave to casual and seasonal workers will mean that that is not the reality for some women now and that is incredibly important. The same concept of need applies in this situation for the parental tax credit.We heard of one woman who could not afford to take leave as her partner was unable to be in paid work at the time so she had to return to work 24 hours after giving birth. She told us how she now has to look at photos of her babies to remember those early years and of the deep sadness of missing all of those key milestones of her baby. It is heartbreaking to think that that is how our society has been operating for so long and that we are now in 2014 where families can be torn apart in that way when we make policy choices that could prevent that. This paid parental leave provision is a step towards that. It should be 6 months because that is the breastfeeding milestone and it is the point at which the research tells us so much can be done. We actually support 13 months because that is about the establishment of the full family at that time. The parental tax credit is also a way of indicating how we want to support our families and those in the most need. When 285000 children in this country are living in poverty and when the families in most need of this financial support at the time of a newborn baby in the family are excluded it is hard not to see cruelty in that as well as a level of discrimination which the courts have recognised as others have.Mike Sabin: That’s right—discriminating against people who work.JAN LOGIE: Yes—Mike Sabin says cynically: “Discriminating against people who work.” Some people are not in a position to work and I would like to let the member know that in America there has been research done to look at women on the DPB and the reasons they are on the DPB. Over 50 percent of those women overseas were there because they were leaving violent relationships. I would like to ask the member whether he wants those women to get to a place of safety to be able to support their children and to stay out of that relationship. If the answer is yes then you should not be discriminating against those families. We should be nurturing and supporting those families. If you support ending family violence then you should support universal provision for families.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!JAN LOGIE: He should. I am sorry Mr Speaker—he should be supporting those. Of course Mr Speaker would support that. I am sorry for bringing you into the debate. I would like to finish finally by telling another story that came through in the select committee when it considered Sue Moroney’s bill around the importance of this issue about a woman with twins who had to go back to work when her twins were 5 months old. She had to leave work every 2½ hours to breastfeed all while her babies were both still waking at different times of the night to be breastfed. Not surprisingly this was not sustainable for her so she resigned after 5 weeks back at work. Three years on she is still working part-time outside the industry that she is trained in. She has estimated that that has cost her family about $70000 because we did not have the policies in place to be able to support her to stay in work at that time. Sadly the 18 weeks is not quite getting us there either. We can do better as a country. Imagine if we had not had those tax cuts how much more we could be offering to our children and our families right now.LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): It is a great day for New Zealanders today and New Zealand families in particular with Budget 2014. One of the speakers before me actually asked what New Zealand families need. Well it is quite simple. If you ask most New Zealand families what they need and what they want they want certainty they want job security they want to know that they will have the opportunity for their wages to increase over time and they want to have a Government they know is looking after them. That is exactly what this side of the House is doing.This is not actually a philosophical argument about paid parental leave—although if people have been listening to this debate they may have thought that—because this side of the House has supported paid parental leave—[Interruption] No no—we havesupported paid parental leave and we have supported increases when they are affordable. The key word is “affordable”. So we now have our books balanced. We have surpluses after 5 years of struggles because of what we inherited from that side of the House.This Government’s economic management has finally got us back to a position where we have surpluses. So what is the first thing we do? The first thing we do is to put half a billion dollars into supporting families which is absolutely fantastic. More important we support families and support giving them options and choices. I do want to just remind the House that it was a National Government that introduced the parental tax credit and it is a National Government that is now looking at extending it and increasing the value of it. As the Minister of Labour said before we are consulting to find out what are the other opportunities and best ways to reach the most vulnerable parents—the most vulnerable—who are currently not supported. But that side of the House forget about that because they actually want to scrap it. They want to scrap the parental tax credit but they are very quiet about that.So this side of the House is supporting families. We are supporting them in the things that matter most and making sure that we have an economy that is growing that they have job security that they are going to get higher wages. At the end of the day New Zealand families also know that it is really important to balance the books. First and foremost that is what we have achieved despite unbelievable challenges. The Minister of Finance was today able to say that we are heading into surplus. We are projecting surpluses for many years to come unlike the decades of deficit that the other side would have taken us into. So who do we look after first? New Zealand families with this half a billion dollars. Thank you.TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker. Just to quote for a moment from theNew Zealand Heraldfrom way back in March 2014: “A study just published by theJournal of the American Medical Association … found obesity rates among 2- to 5-year-olds in America had dropped an impressive 43 per cent over the last decade.” partly attributable to mothers breastfeeding for longer. We are talking about front-ending the investment. We are talking about front-ending the investment and certainly every party in the House is supporting the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill because we all believe in parents. Like Mrs Upston I am also a mother of three children. Unlike Mrs Upston I was able to make a choice to stay at home for 15 years as a parent and—Louise Upston: I made a choice.TRACEY MARTIN: Exactly. We both made—Louise Upston: Mothers should have a choice.TRACEY MARTIN: Mrs Upston is now actually choosing to create an argument about who was better than what and there is no argument here. I merely was saying to Mrs Upston that I was drawing a parallel in the fact that we are both mothers of three and we both had an opportunity to make a choice. Mrs Upston seems to have got upset about that fact but that is the reality. We both had an opportunity to make a choice and where I am going to is—Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. It used to be a tradition in this place that people did not speak or screech as they walked around the Chamber taking advantage of their role as whips. Mrs Upston just did that continuously screeching as she went from her seat and out the door. I think that you should have pulled her up.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well it has been a reasonably spirited debate. The member is quite right. Members should not be walking around the Chamber and—Ihave probably neglected that but in the course of the debate I have probably neglected a few things. I apologise. Let us have a bit more decorum.TRACEY MARTIN: Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker. So the point I was trying to make is that both Mrs Upston and I had choice. Part of that choice in my case was about the fact that my husband earned over $65000 a year as a winemaker so we were able to actually have one parent at home—one of us at home. There was no paid parental leave for me looking after my children at that time in the same way that Mrs Upston talked about the fact that there was no paid parental opportunity for her and those were the times that we were in.But times have changed quite substantially for families where we are today and where I am coming to is to the regulatory impact statement at point 7 on page 3: “The [family tax credit] and the [in-work tax credit] are currently abated at 21.25 cents in the dollar when annual family income exceeds $36350.”—$36350. “The [parental tax credit] is also abated at 21.25 cents in the dollar; however the amount of the abatement is calculated against 56 days of annualised income rather than a full year’s worth of income; this creates aneffective [parental tax credit] abatement rate of 3.26 cents [in the dollar].” and this means that this will happen “dollar for dollar until a family’s income reaches $21216 after tax.”Why do I raise those figures? Why are they in the regulatory impact statement? Because there are changes in the family tax credit and the in-work tax credit ratios and abatement rates that are going to kick in at the same time as this bill goes through. The reason I raise those figures is that that is actually what the National Government believes are low to middle income earner rates. But let us give the Government a little bit more benefit of the doubt shall we? Let us give it the benefit of the doubt that it actually believes that $50000 gross annual middle income—and what it has done quite carefully and quite interestingly is made a large announcement about the fact that the payment rate rises from $110 a week to $200 and something - odd a week. I am sure that one of the National Party members will be so completely au fait with the numbers in here that they will be able to stand up when they take a call and make sure that what I am saying is correct.For lower and middle income working families the parental tax credit increase is $220 per week for the first 10 weeks following birth and currently it is $150 a week for 8 weeks. But this change starts to pay it back faster on a dollar for dollar basis from the moment that that income starts to get towards $21216 after tax. I think that we have not had enough time to study these numbers. We have not had enough time to study these numbers because this bill has been dropped on us. But that is a really interesting change and I would suggest that somebody out there needs to really crunch some numbers while we are down here in the House until midnight talking about the bills that this Government is going to push through under urgency.So although an extension to 18 weeks is good news it is crumbs. It is crumbs once again about which this Government is saying: “Be grateful to us New Zealand. Be grateful to us.” Let us not forget as quite rightly it has been pointed out before that this Government is the Government that in its first year increased by millions of dollars the funding to private schools. And in one of its first Budgets it did a tax swap by cutting the tax rate for the highest income earners and shifting that—yes it was fiscally neutral according to the Minister of Finance—tax loss on to those low and middle income earners who are the same low and middle income earners who will be affected by this clause.So that is why it is important for everybody to realise what is middle income according to the National Government because that is not being altered—that is not being altered. As times have got harder that threshold has not been moved upward. Somiddle-income New Zealand needs to have a very good look at this overnight and tomorrow and then come back and make sure that it understands what is going on in this bill.Can I also say that one of the other reasons why—and we are trying to get across to the National Government that actually everything is about money in this House at the end of the day. It is not our money and we all understand that—it belongs to the taxpayers of New Zealand. But it is about making sure that what you spend in one place is a good investment so that you end up actually saving money in the long term. Just like a $359 million top-down - driven Budget item for education instead of front-ending the spend so that children of 5 and 6 are actually supported in their schools once again the Government has been tight-fisted at the front end of life at the beginning of life. We already see—and the reason why I started with the quote—that the savings at the other end are so great. So it is disappointing that there is again this short-sighted vision.If you have a look at some of the Budget documents—and there are people trying to do that right now trying to catch up on what has gone on because we have only just received it—you can look at some of the very interesting spend there. It comes out of two different pools agreeably but there are millions of dollars being set aside for a PaCT tool in the education budget that could very easily have been shifted over to actually support the parental tax credit going to 26 weeks. There are some very interesting spend decisions in this Budget that have not been in the Minister of Finance’s speech that New Zealanders need to have a strong hard look at to see whether what is being offered to them this small piece that the National Government actually wants you to be grateful for is truly the ability that it has to give to you of your own money—of your own money.The National Government likes to talk about its largesse. It likes to talk about its spend of $10 million here and its spend of $10 million there. The Government has no money but that which belongs to the taxpayer and the taxpayer has made it perfectly clear—Mike Sabin: Or in some cases the ratepayer.TRACEY MARTIN: —perfectly clear—through the very hard lobbying the incredible lobbying that was done by families and mothers and people without children who said: “We actually want to stand up for newborn babies in this country. We believe that truly to provide an option we need to support increasing this to 26 weeks.”Mr Sabin of course has given us his wisdom over there from the other side of the House ranting on saying: “Goodness me! We would not possibly want to support babies and children for a year.” Of course Mr Sabin is completely uninformed with regard to the Nordic nations and the amazing job that they do of supporting their children and the support that they put into their education systems and the high success that they have. But Mr Sabin is not interested in that. Mr Sabin will follow the party line. Like he did for Kaipara he will follow the party line. He will not fight for the people of New Zealand; he will follow the line that the National Party tells him to follow.MIKE SABIN (National—Northland): I am not sure where the member Tracey Martin was going with my Nordic knowledge. I am quite happy to stand here in this House and say that I have a really limited knowledge of the Nordic approach to supporting children but I have a very good knowledge of what the National Party does to support children to support families in this country and this bill the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill is actually a very good example of it. I am actually feeling very privileged to be able to speak on this bill because according to Sue Moroney this is not a bill that men can speak on apparently.No—no; heaven forbid that the National Party might have a few fathers who stand up to speak on a bill that deals with parent—Sue Moroney: That’s not what I said and you know it.MIKE SABIN: Well it is Ms Moroney. It is actually. You were chastising the National Party because of the men who were speaking on this bill. Heaven forbid that men might have something to do with procreation of children. There you go. Call me old-fashioned but I think we do. I have got three lovely children none of whom—Hon Trevor Mallard: One of them is a hell of a lot brighter than his father.MIKE SABIN: What is that sorry?Hon Trevor Mallard: One of them is a hell of a lot brighter than his father.MIKE SABIN: Well that is probably true. What happens is an evolutionary process where the offspring become more intelligent.Hon Trevor Mallard: He’s obviously got a brighter mother.MIKE SABIN: I am happy to accept that—I am happy to accept that. He has certainly tripped that member up a few times so there you go. You must be right on song.If we look at this package there has been some discussion about the fact that this is a narrow focus on a small set of people but actually this is part of a $500 million package much of which actually goes far broader than people are acknowledging here. It has some $90 million - odd that will go towards supporting children up to the age of 13 getting free doctors visits. That will be something. That will be very good in Northland. There is $155 million to help our early childhood education centres and has this Government not done a very good job in that space? There is $33 million to enhance the work that we are doing with vulnerable children around the vulnerable children’s teams.Tracey Martin mentioned the $359 million which she pooh-poohs but actually ensuring that we have good leadership and excellent teachers in our classrooms to enhance young people’s opportunities to be good contributors to New Zealand is a very positive thing. That is front-loading. People can cherry-pick one piece or another but the reality is that this Government is doing a lot across a lot of areas but it is doing it in a prudent responsible and careful manner. That is why we are back in surplus. That is why we will grow at 4 percent next year and that is why we will continue to be the Government beyond the election—plain and simple.Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): It is pretty unusual for a member of the Opposition to contribute in the Budget debate in support of legislation but I have to say that I am very pleased that I am able to do that. The Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill is a good bill. It has not got the snappiest title. It could have been called the “Paid Parental Leave Extension and Parental Tax Credit Extension Bill” which probably would have been less snappy but the content of it is something that should be supported.The bill does not go nearly as far as we would like. It does not go nearly as far as the bill that Sue Moroney has had before this Parliament for a long time which has been to a select committee been through an extensive consultation process and in fact had 3809 submissions. There were 3809 submissions on Sue Moroney’s extension to paid parental leave bill which was drawn out of the members’ bill ballot. Of those 3809 submissions 99.6 percent agreed in total with Sue Moroney’s bill. That is not a bad record and that is why I cannot work out why we are getting this half-hearted “Labour-lite” “we’d better do something because we’re clearly in bother” “fudge-it Budget” bill. Why did National not just support a decent bill when 99.6 percent of 3809 submitters supported it?I was very interested in the contribution not actually from Mr Sabin particularly—although it was a robust contribution and I am sure that he believes everything that he said—but from his colleague Louise Upston who stood in this House and said: “This is not an ideological debate. There’s nothing ideological about paid parental leave. We’ve always supported paid parental leave.” I am a bit concerned about the member’s memory. It is quite early on a Thursday night and she has totally forgotten the voting history of her party since 2002 when we were in Budget surplus.When Labour introduced the first-ever paid parental leave provisions into legislation in New Zealand National voted against it—100 percent of National members voted against it; 100 percent of Labour members voted for it—and National members said some very unusual things during that debate. So for the senior whip of the National Party to come into this House and go shock horror: “This is not an ideological debate. We’ve always supported paid parental leave.” beggars belief because it is just not true. It is not credible.In fact I think the most credible thing that could be added to the debate is to revisit some of the quotes that were made during that original 2002 debate and consider them and the fact that here on 15 May we are only a few months away from the 2014 election. One of the interesting contributors to that debate was Judith Collins who said during the paid parental leave debate: “It is another example of the Government using taxpayers’ money to try to win some votes. Who would have thought that a Government that Government would try to use taxpayers’ money to win some votes?”.I have not heard Minister Collins—I think she is still a Minister. I have not heard the Hon Judith Collins take a call yet in this debate but I would like to hear her and see whether we can measure her contribution during the earlier paid parental leave debate which was introduced by a Labour-led Government with a surplus in our Budget when it was opposed by the National Party for all sorts of strange reasons.I would much prefer the rigorous process that the Government Administration Committee went through with actually some excellent contributions from the National members—I must admit on the public record now that I think they have contributed very well—and the rigorous attention to the money asking how much is it going to cost what can we afford when should it come in and who might be impacted best and worst out of the people who are currently entitled to receive paid parental leave.And then we looked at the broader social impacts of extending paid parental leave. We looked at the impacts on the education system on early childhood and on the health system. There was nowhere that we looked where Sue Moroney’s bill did not stack up to be a smart idea. That bill should have been reported back to this House some time ago and I think it would have got a majority of the support of this House. In fact it still might. It is a darned sight better than this bill.Why was it that the Government did not support us reporting that bill back on time having gone through a proper process with 3809 submissions a large number of which we heard and 99.6 percent of which supported Sue Moroney’s extension to paid parental leave? Why did the Government not support us getting the bill back at the right time yet weeks and weeks and weeks later here we are under urgency passing a bill that does half of it? This is like a “Labour-lite” excuse. Not only does it not do the proper job it does not do it nearly as well as the comprehensive package that Sue Moroney proposed. It introduces—what is it; just 2 weeks—a 2-week extension on April Fool’s Day next year. Why is this bill being rammed through under urgency? Why is it necessary to do it under urgency when it does not come into effect until April next year and we have already done all the work at the select committee? We would be happy to pick it up and do a decent job of it.I get really frustrated when there is no need for urgency and the public who are actually the people who are the beneficiaries of this additional support are being denied their right to have a say. What is the Government scared of that it will not put this bill through even a truncated select committee process? Some people Minister Bridges might come along and say they support it. I think the Minister of Labour should welcome the chance to have one thing that he has initiated during his entire term as a Minister being supported by members of the public. If I were that Minister I would jump at that chance.Hon Trevor Mallard: Other than Christine Rankin.Hon Simon Bridges: She might be in Parliament later this year.Hon RUTH DYSON: She might be. Simon’s eyes light up at the prospect that he has just outlined. I do not actually think it is likely.I do not understand why members of the public are not being given an opportunity to have a say on this bill. There is nothing urgent about it. It is not like the old-fashioned Budget urgency provisions that would come into effect at midnight. Remember Mr Sabin? You might be too young but your grandparents may have told you about the olden days when people used to wait for Budget day and then they would go down to the petrol station and fill their car up with petrol in case the Government put the price of petrol up that night. That was real urgency not like this measure which has no need for urgency at all. It is straight cutting the public out and I think that is a shame.I just want to quickly quote another couple of National members because I think it is worthwhile putting on the record what they really think about paid parental leave. Anne Tolley said when it was first introduced: “Paid parental leave shows how the Labour-Alliance Government is stuck in the radical feminist era of the 1960s and 1970s … and is completely out of touch with women of the 21st century and their diverse involvement in today’s labour force.” Then she said: “This is about paid parental leave that we are extending under the National Government under urgency.” She said: “This is bad legislation. It is a travesty.” Well Mr Bridges welcome to the radical feminist era of the 1960s and 1970s which you are supporting. I do not think Mr Bridges was born then. I do not think he was even born then.Nick Smith said in 2002 and I would not be surprised if Minister Smith repeated this during this debate: “I say that if a member went out of their way to draft a dumb bill this would have to be it.” I am sure the Hon Nick Smith would be happy to repeat that allegation in the House today.I think this bill is a good step forward. It is half-hearted and it is not as good as the bill we proposed but I am glad the Government has finally come to its senses on at least one issue.CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National): With regard to the last speaker Ruth Dyson who has just resumed her seat I am delighted to think that National has produced a bill the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill that Labour agrees should be supported.I am very pleased and I am conscious of the work that was done on the oft-repeated title of Sue Moroney’s “My Bill”. I thought that once it hit the Government Administration Committee it might have been ours but it seems not; it seems to have been just hers. But if Labour agrees that this Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill is a bill worthy of support I am very very pleased because I think it is worthy of support.Let us listen to the objections to it and why we did not take Sue’s bill. Let us look at it. This bill that we are speaking about now is part of a considered level of support designed to support families on a wide basis which is something I would have thought Labour would wish to be associated with. There are five parts to the package and Ireally do hope Labour will be true to its roots and will support the other parts of the package. Let us just briefly look at what they are.There is $172 million to boost the paid parental leave scheme—not too bad. We have heard about that; we will no doubt hear a little bit more. There is $42 million to increase the parental tax credit from $150 a week to $220 a week and an increase in the entitlement from 8 to 10 weeks from April 2015. There is $90 million—wait for it—to provide free general practitioner visits and free prescriptions for children aged under 13 starting 1 July 2015. It was amazing to me that there were I think three Budget speeches from that side of the House during which the leader of each party said “What are you going to tell the parents of children who can’t afford to send their children to the doctor?”. Well that has been answered.There is an additional $156 million to help early childhood education centres to remain accessible and affordable and to meet the demand pressures and increased participation towards the Government’s 98 percent target—98 percent. Surely Labour would support that. There is $33 million to help vulnerable children including eight new children’s teams around the country to identify and work with at-risk children and their families to screen people who work with children and to support children in care.Which of those elements would the Labour Party like to see cut out to support Sue Moroney’s “My Bill”? I think all those elements are important. I think all those elements are a feature of true Labour Party thinking. I think they should be supported by Labour and I will congratulate it when it does support them. Thank you.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Dr David Clark—this is a split call.Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): I rise to my feet to speak in a split call as you rightly point out to support the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill which is an important but tepid step in the right direction from an out-of-touch Government. I think that it is important to recognise that it is following Labour’s lead and it is trying to take some small steps in the right direction. It should at least be congratulated on that effort. The bill sits within a Budget that is a lost opportunity. It is a lost opportunity to present a coherent vision for the future of New Zealand and for New Zealanders. It is scattered backward-looking and incoherent overall. It lacks aspiration.The paid parental leave aspect of the Budget that we are debating right now is a 2-week extension in a year’s time followed by another 2-week extension a year after that. We know that these small steps forward take place on April Fool’s Day and I would like to personally shake the hand of the official who put forward 1 April as the day for the paid parental leave extension. They had their own private laugh. They know that this step forward is a tiny one. They know that this Government is making a fool of itself by not adopting the bill forwarded by Sue Moroney which would actually make sure that New Zealanders got a decent chunk of paid parental leave so that good parental bonding could happen and so that we could begin to look after our young people our early childhood sector. We know that they receive less funding and that they are less well supported than most in the OECD and the Labour measures in our Best Start package which this dimly imitates really take a step in that direction. These are tepid steps—these are tepid steps.I guess the bill lacks aspiration in line with a Government that has more unemployed people than it had when it took office at the height of the global financial crisis. This is a Government that has lowered real median wages. It is a Government that has overseen the highest gap between rich and poor that we have ever had since records were first kept in New Zealand. This is a Government that has produced a wafer-thin surplus. We know it has got there through artificially high ACC levies. We know it has got therethrough dressing up transport spending as a loan in order to fudge that surplus. Well the public can see through that. They can see right through it.Mike Sabin: He’s obviously forgotten about the multiple billions’ worth of deficit—Dr DAVID CLARK: I can assure Mr Sabin and others that there will be more fudges that come to light in coming days. I have spoken about some of them with tax accountants this evening and I could hear on the other end of the line that these fudges in the accounts were enough to make tax accountants blush. The ones that this Government is putting through in order to maintain that façade of surplus make tax accountants even the most hardened tax accountants blush. This is one of those wafer-thin surpluses. No one wants one of those Mr Creosote moments from Monty Python. No one wants that wafer-thin surplus to be blown out of the water but it will be in coming days as we see more and more of these fudges coming to light.This wafer-thin surplus and these tepid steps forward contrast with the future Labour Government which has a vision for a more inclusive prosperous New Zealand one that will produce better jobs—Mike Sabin: Tell us what it looks like.Dr DAVID CLARK: —higher wages and affordable housing Mr Sabin; good question. That is what it looks like. This is the future Labour Government which produced the Best Start policies that are being dimly mimicked here in this legislation. I use the word “dimly” advisedly. National’s moves here exclude from support 14000 of the most vulnerable children whom the Best Start package put forward by Labour would look after. We want a New Zealand where no one is left out and where no one is left behind. Labour has the policies to do it. We will bring out a universal KiwiSaver pro-growth tax reform and monetary policy to lower interest rates and to send savings to New Zealanders and not to overseas banks. We have a Best Start package that includes a child allowance more paid parental leave more early childhood education and better antenatal care. This contrasts with the dim copy that we have from the Government opposite with its shallow rhetoric and with the words of Judith Collins describing earlier the extension of paid parental leave as another example of this Government using taxpayers’ money to try to win some votes. That is the cynicism from opposite. On this side of the House we want to build together with New Zealanders a better New Zealand.DENISE ROCHE (Green): I rise to take the second short call for the Greens on the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill. We support this bill. We believe that it does not go far enough; I will get into a bit more detail on that in a minute. We do not believe it goes far enough. In terms of the tax credit changes we do support increasing the length of time that the tax credit is extended to—from 8 weeks to 10 weeks after the birth of a child—and increasing the amount from $150 to $220 per week. We do acknowledge and we do note that the application is much tighter than it had been.Our policy has been to extend that tax credit to all so that it targets not just those in work but those who have the lowest incomes. Those are the people who are existing on the meagre benefits provided by the State. All families face financial burden when a new baby enters the family. Those with less money struggle more. They have less resilience to the financial shock that the entry of a newborn into a family makes and the costs that they bring with them. This Government with this Budget is picking the winners and the losers and this Budget is firmly directed at the winners—the 1 percent. By restricting the tax credit to just working families the Government introduces the Dickensian model of the worthy and the unworthy poor. And it fits with the other measures this Government has introduced that demonise those who are not in paid work and that reinforce the punitive approach this Government takes to those who need Statesupport. If we are to address the income levels and the financial strain that families face when they have a newborn baby then all people need to be able to live on the income they receive.We need to get past these stopgap measures. In the regulatory impact statement it says that “poverty is one of the greatest risks to children’s health and development”. It says “reducing parental stress especially in the early years is good for children in the short- and longer-term”. These measures are short-term measures.Why are they being put in place now? Well I have to say I am a bit cynical about that. These measures have been pushed through under urgency yet in terms of the paid parental leave they will not be introduced until 2015 when the Government will up paid parental leave to 16 weeks. Then in 2016 it will up paid parental leave to 18 weeks. We suspect that this urgency is deliberate to get through this wee scrap of support for families just before the election. Of course as we saw with the filibustering that occurred from the National members of Parliament during the first reading of Sue Moroney’s Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill the National Government is keen to avoid displeasing the 52 percent of voters who are women by directly opposing the measure to extend parental leave. And judging by the flood of submissions that Sue Moroney’s bill received that bill was incredibly popular.There was of course the small matter that the Hon Peter Dunne had signalled that he would be supporting the member’s bill. So some concessions have to be made now in order to avoid him forcing the Government to threaten a veto once the bill was passed because as we have got a surplus with this Budget there would be no reason for that veto after all. I have more to say and I will be rising during the Committee of the whole House to do that. Thank you.JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany): New Zealanders are very smart. New Zealanders are very understanding. New Zealanders know exactly what is happening here. What is happening here is that the Government is exercising restraint and fiscal responsibility. It is doing the right thing for New Zealand families but doing it in a measured fashion. When we listen to the speeches from members in other parties in this House they just want to spend up large. They do not care how much of an impact that would have on the New Zealand Budget. They just want to spend up large as much as possible to win an election. This party is all about doing things in a measured fashion and that has been the approach of John Key and Bill English in the time that this Government has been presenting Budgets for New Zealanders.I have been rather appalled by some of the speeches we have been listening to in the House. We have had the double-dipper from Rodney who has been lecturing other mothers in this House on how to raise children. We have had the Green Party which is suggesting that 13 months’ paid parental leave is appropriate. I do not know why it does not just suggest 5 years because that is probably where it will get to eventually. And we have had Sue Moroney who has made this debate all about Sue. It has been all about Sue and everything that Sue has done for New Zealand families.Actually this Government is delivering for New Zealand families. This Government is delivering extra paid parental leave for New Zealanders in a measured fashion. This Government is extending the parental tax credit. This Government is investing half a billion dollars over the next 4 years into the families of this country. We are proud of that. New Zealanders know that that is a good thing for New Zealand families and the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) will pass very soon.Bill read a second time.In CommitteePart 1 Amendments to Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act 1987JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): It is my pleasure to speak in the Committee stage of this Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill which as my colleagues have pointed out in their previous addresses yes Labour is supporting. How could we not support the bill? It slowly inches ever so slightly towards the ultimate goal that we have always put forward before this House which is that paid parental leave should be extended to 26 weeks. How could we not support—Hon Trevor Mallard: That’s not the ultimate goal; that’s a decent interim position.JACINDA ARDERN: My colleague is absolutely right. Twenty-six weeks is what we were putting forward before the House—Hon Trevor Mallard: It’s fiscally responsible.JACINDA ARDERN: —as a fiscally responsible point that we could reach within budget whilst returning to surplus. We had mapped out how that could be done. Our ultimate goal based on research evidence and feedback from parents was 1 year. But we said that at this point of the game we cannot see how we are able to manage that yet. It remains a goal for us but 26 weeks is where we believe we can get to. So having the Government stand before us today and say that it wants to go to 18 weeks’ parental leave—of course we were going to support that. But we certainly have some pointers for the Government on how it could have improved the bill.We are speaking today during the first part of the Committee stage on Part 1 of the bill. Before I go into some of the detail which essentially is around stepping through the time line for the extension I want to clarify some questions around the overall cost of the elements of the package—the phasing in from 14 to 18 weeks.The Government has set out the implication in the first and second reading that we simply cannot afford to do any more than that. That is absolutely false. As even the evidence and advice provided by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment has set out and as Peter Gluckman the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor has pointed out we cannot afford not to move to 26 weeks. Not only is it about the outcomes for mother and baby around breastfeeding; it is around issues like resilience for the child and attachment issues. We know that if a child experiences attachment disorder the consequences of that down the track can cost a significant amount to the taxpayer.Infometrics in fact carried out some research into the issue of poor outcomes for children particularly looking at the effects of child poverty. It found that it costs the New Zealand taxpayer up to $6 billion per annum as a consequence of poor investment in a child’s early years. I do not use the words “poor investment” lightly. We under-invest in New Zealand in our children’s earliest years. That is based on OECD comparisons of the amount that OECD nations—developed nations—invest in children aged 0 to 5 years. New Zealand on average spends roughly half that and I do not mean parents; this is as a State. We spend roughly half what other OECD nations spend—roughly $20000 versus $40000—half. That picks up a bit once you get beyond the early years and once you get into the period where a child enters State education.One of the biggest defining features as to why New Zealand spends less than other countries is our poor paid parental leave. Most nations have recognised the benefit of investing in paid parental leave and have rightly invested in those early months of a child’s life.There is perhaps no better evidence than what you see coming out of groups like the Brainwave Trust. The Brainwave Trust is not a political organisation. It does not purport to represent any particular ideology. It is simply based on science. It emerged inthe 1990s around the period when we started being able to base more of our policies around the fact that in health we could see now what was going on and learn what was happening with the brain not just from doing scans and work once has someone had passed on. We were able to do analysis whilst someone was alive. CAT scans etc. and the ability to analyse neurological function provide a wealth of evidence about what the most important stages of development are.The most telling thing of all is that we learnt that the first 3 years of a child’s life is the most critical period of development and in particular that first year. Not only from a physiological development perspective do you see the brain grow the most in that period but you start moving beyond just the functionary stuff around the cortex to actually what goes on in your frontal lobe development—judgment trust; all of those important things that we need for a child to be able to respond to the world around it.If you are a child who is deprived of decent attachment and the ability to build trust with a parent or a caregiver that then flows on to your ability to even concentrate when you are in school the ability to trust that your next meal is going to come your way and whether or not you revert to fight or flight. The Brainwave Trust tells us that frontal lobe development is optimal—it is optimal.I hear members on the other side of the Chamber laughing at what the evidence tells us. I find that particularly interesting from a member who belongs to a trust that is involved in a child’s early years—the Home Interaction Programme for Parents and Youngsters in particular. I am sure Dame Lesley Max would be very interested to hear that Sam Lotu-Iiga is laughing about the evidence around a child’s early years of development. All of that evidence points to us making sure that no child is deprived in their earliest years and yet we know from the Child Poverty Monitor that the time when a child spends the most continuous period in poverty is when they are under 4 years old. That is why Best Start extends to the most deprived families for 3 years because we know that that is where we can make the biggest difference.Part 1 sets out the phasing for paid parental leave moving from 14 weeks to 18 weeks. I want to compare that with the phasing that we would have had under Labour’s Best Start policy—Sue Moroney: Will have when we’re elected.JACINDA ARDERN: —absolutely; as my colleague points out which we will have come September—instead of having this 14 to 18 weeks phased in from 2016. If the Government had not vetoed Sue Moroney’s bill as it clearly intends to do by what it is doing today we would move from 14 to 18 weeks from July 2014.From July 2014 we propose that we would have exactly what the Government is proposing to do in a couple of years from now. We would then move to 22 weeks from July 2015 and to 26 weeks from July 2017. The Government says we cannot afford that. The Government I must point out has spent $40 million on private schools. Private schools have got $40 million out of this Government and yet it is telling us that we cannot afford to invest a little bit more in children and babies and invest to save. I heard Tracey Martin saying this as well. This is about investing to save further down the track.I have already talked about the Infometrics report which is predominantly based on the amount we save from for instance preventable hospitalisations remedial education etc. But what about the simple fact that we spend $19000 on imprisoning someone in any given year? An amount of $19000 per year is what we spend on imprisoning someone. Some may say to me: “Well what’s the link between that and a child’s start in life?”. Well there is the fact that 90 percent of our prison population has literacy issues and an estimated 60 percent has contact with Child Youth and Family. Of all of the things that we are spending a ridiculous amount of wasted taxpayers’ dollars on youcould spend a tiny tiny proportion on a child’s early years on supporting families and on early childhood education where if you invest $1 you save $11. All of these areas are about investing to save.The Government’s argument that we cannot afford to do it is absolutely untrue. We cannot afford not to do it. These are the areas where we can really make a critical difference—not only to a child’s potential and a family’s well-being but so that we ultimately save every single taxpayer money down the track.I want to speak in my next address—I have every intention of speaking at least in total for an hour on this bill. I look forward to Simon Bridges making at least that kind of contribution. In fact I challenge him to match me call for call.Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Labour): We will see whether I take up Jacinda Ardern on that wee bet. What a great day for the Government and more important what a great day for New Zealanders. After projections of a decade of deficit in the public accounts we as a country are back in surplus. We are now managing the growth of this economy. What that means is that with the good management of the economy that Bill English and John Key have given us through disciplined decisions day after day year after year we can now invest more in families. This is not luck. It has not happened by having some magic tree down at the bottom of the garden that we pluck money off according to the Greens. This has happened through good management of the economy which is allowing us to invest more money in Kiwi families. We are prioritising those families first and foremost. Those families are getting the first dividends of good management of the economy today.Paid parental leave is of course part of a much bigger package—$500 million for families is at the heart of this Budget and paid parental leave is if you like the heart of that heart. It is a $172 million package—this Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill which I think is $141 million and then the rest is in a wider reform package. What a great day for Kiwi families.But let me tell you this. Unlike what we have seen in other proposals this is a considered and responsible package.Hon Anne Tolley: And a good one.Hon SIMON BRIDGES: And a good package. It is more and more—more entitlement than the status quo going to 18 weeks in two affordable steps and more eligibility. You know actually I have to say that that is perhaps the key of the wider package here. Fundamentally it is more choice for Kiwi families to decide what is best for them. What a privilege it is for this Government to be delivering this for New Zealanders—extending paid parental leave in two affordable steps widening eligibility to caregivers other than parents and of course to people in less regular work and then increasing flexibility. Twenty-six thousand people get paid parental leave now; we are increasing that by 1400 families with what we are doing.That is 1400 families who under Sue Moroney’s proposals would get nothing. They would get nothing from Sue Moroney’s package. Unlike the Sue Moroney package and unlike what we have heard from Labour and the Greens this is a considered responsible package—Dr Rajen Prasad: And minimalist.Hon SIMON BRIDGES: —which reaches more people who deserve the help Mr Prasad. Sue Moroney—she did the easy bit but she had not done the hard policy work that was required to reach more people and she had not done the thinking on the things that matter. Just extending the length of paid parental leave is not the right approach for this country. That is not what this is all about.Dr Rajen Prasad: Yes it is. Why not?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Mr Prasad says that it is. Well actually go back and listen to or read what was said by people who actually normally support Mr Prasad. Academics Susan St John and Jonathan Boston made very clear pre-Budget that more important than the length of the entitlement was targeting it to the people in need. That is what Labour and the Green Party have forgotten with their glib thinking and with their lack of hard work in this area and actually across the board in policy. This Government—and I thank the officials for their help as well—has done that hard policy work. We are doing the work to ensure that the law is going to reflect the modern and increasingly diverse families and workplaces of New Zealand so that more New Zealanders who deserve paid parental leave and the tax credits get what they deserve.Let me give you a couple of examples here to flesh this out. Caregivers other than parents—at the moment we know that it is mum her partner and an adoptive parent who are the only people who get paid parental leave. We are modernising the law to reflect the reality of families today so that permanent guardians are there and of course those like Home for Life guardians who perhaps are in a permanent foster relationship. They are currently not able to get paid parental leave. They wanted to be at home nurturing their child but they were not included and nor were working grandparents who will now be able to get the assistance they need.Dr Rajen Prasad: How many babies in Home for Life?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Mr Prasad asks how many. Well 600—600 more people will be receiving this entitlement by widening the caregivers category to a primary carer - type concept like we see in tax credits that are already in the law. That is something we will be consulting on so that every child who needs it and whose parents are meeting the other eligibility criteria like working are getting it under this bill. That is an area where Sue Moroney Jacinda Ardern and others on the left there had not done the policy work. We want to see people who are in less regular work also getting this entitlement.This is another area where Labour has not done the work because at the moment you have got to have consistent regularised and effectively if not full time work then certainly permanent work with one employer. Effectively middle-class work is where you get paid parental leave but we are intending to make this much more fair so that if you have been in full-time work for a good chunk of the year and part-time work for most of the year—and we will consult on this—you will be eligible. That will see seasonal and casual workers perhaps being eligible. We have seen examples of this. Someone who is a fish processor—a woman fish processor—for half the year who then moves on to fruit picking for the other half of the year is not currently eligible. She may have been doing that for 20 years but she is not eligible under the current scheme. But we are changing that and making a difference in that regard.Those who have recently changed jobs—a real example is when the Canterbury earthquakes meant that a woman lost her supermarket job. That same week she went to work for the very same supermarket in a different suburb in Christchurch but because it was a different franchisor she was not eligible for paid parental leave despite being several months’ pregnant. We will consult on that and change it. Again we will be widening the eligibility for workers with more than one employer because we have done the policy work and we are making sure that this is a fairer package.Finally we are increasing flexibility in the wider reforms in this area in addition to this bill which increases the length of the leave. The work that Labour and the Greens have not done—Sue Moroney: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. That is very interesting but it is not in Part 1 of the bill nor is it in fact in the bill at all—at all—what the Minister is talking about.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am—Dr David Clark: It’s wide-ranging.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No it is not wide-ranging. I am listening very carefully to what is being said. It is in context and is building a picture for the overall bill that is before us. So I am allowing him to continue.Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Currently the law on paid parental leave is an inflexible all-or-nothing position. You start your paid parental leave. You have the 14 weeks increasing to 18 weeks. You then have the option of going unpaid for up to 12 months. If a woman goes back to work for half a day—there are examples of women going back in for IT training—they lose all eligibility for the paid parental scheme. That is wrong and we want to change that and ensure that there is increased flexibility for the benefit of women in this scheme. We want to see days at work for training and those sorts of purposes and also after that 18 weeks the ability to perhaps look at part-time options—always at the woman’s discretion.It is great to be speaking on this important set of reforms that this Government is leading for the benefit of New Zealanders.TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora Mr Chair. I welcome the opportunity to make comment on the Minister in the chair’s statements. I hope that it will please the Chair that I make comments on the Minister’s statements unlike a situation that happened with a colleague of mine earlier in the week.I think the Minister has made some very very good points. It is a good thing to widen the criteria by which parents can gain parental leave because it is parents whom we are talking about. I think Minister that as long as we continue to genderise it we have a danger of making this only about women staying at home. Although certainly—Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I am very reluctant to do it to one of the people on my side of the Chamber but I have now looked very carefully at the provisions of Part 1 in this bill and the matters to which the member is referring are not part of Part 1. Part 1 is a relatively narrow debate. It might be OK to respond to a Minister who made some comments but normally it is a narrow debate around what it is in the part not about what is in a subsequent bill. I think what everyone has been talking about in the last two speeches is a subsequent bill.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I hear what you are saying. If we look at Part 1 it is about the duration of paid parental leave. There has been some flexibility. I have allowed the Minister some licence there and I would just ask the member and future speakers to be mindful about what is actually in Part 1.TRACEY MARTIN: Speaking to the point of order—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No no. If you want to speak it is your call.TRACEY MARTIN: I am sorry I am now going to have to seek your guidance. I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I am seeking your guidance. I am not trying to argue with you; I am actually trying to understand what has just happened here. For the second time this week a Minister has stood up and brought a series of things into a debate. I am responding to those things and I am not quite sure now where I am at with regard to how I respond.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): That is fair comment. You are responding on a rebuttal basis to comments that were made. On a previous point of order that came from Sue Moroney I said that the Minister was putting in context about where the bill was and how it related to this so there was some licence there. I accept that the member can make rebuttal points about what the Minister has said but then I would ask the member to come back and focus on the length of time—the duration—of paid parental leave which Part 1 is about.TRACEY MARTIN: Thank you Mr Chairperson. Again just to clarify with regard to the Minister’s comments there are some very good things with regard to what the Minister made comment about. We are pleased to see the widening of the criteria because we recognise just as the Minister mentioned that the workforce has changed. It is probably the first time actually that we have had acknowledgment from a Minister in this Government that there is a casualisation and an underemployment of New Zealanders in this country. The need for them to move from one period of temporary work to another period of work is quite marked and so this needed to happen. I will hopefully address that at some stage in the future.With regard to the extension of the period of time in Part 1 of the bill New Zealand First can only reiterate its great disappointment at the fact that the Government has chosen to do the least that it could do—the very least that it could do—for the newborn babies. I did not come up with the word “newborn”. I am not here trying to get anybody’s sympathy or create a weeping workforce out there. The title of the bill is the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill. So it is very disappointing from New Zealand First’s perspective. We say again and again and again that this is the very least that the Government felt it could do.Other members of the Government have mentioned that this is a time frame and they have joked about different time frames that have been put forward by the Green Party and so on and so forth. This is almost the least that any Government is doing—any Government that prides itself on governing a country that strives to be its best. If we look at some of the Nordic nations which I was referring to previously a year has been acknowledged as the time line in which true bonding takes place. I think Sir Peter Gluckman himself has actually pointed out on many occasions that the benefit to New Zealand as a nation from truly supporting young babies and young children in their bonding with a parent—and it does not matter which parent—is vitally important for the nation and its long-term savings in health spending and other spending.So with regard to Part 1 although we appreciate the Minister’s comments—and they certainly have addressed other anomalies that need to be addressed particularly because of the casualisation of the workforce under a National Government—we are disappointed that the Government has gone to the minimum it could do to attempt to keep a voting public behind it at the next election.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am going to call Grant Robertson.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): Thank you Mr Chair—very enthusiastic I am to take a call too. My colleague Carol Beaumont and others will no doubt be taking a number of calls on Part 1 of the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill.Firstly I want to address a couple of questions to the Minister of Labour and in particular I want to just help him in many ways understand what is in Part 1 of the bill. People listening around New Zealand to the debate tonight could have gained the impression if they were as he described the woman who worked part-time processing in a fish factory and picking fruit that the legislation in front of us tonight here in Part 1 was going to bring them into paid parental leave—it was going to bring them into that. It does not. I do not understand why the Minister who apparently is responsible for this bill actually does not know what is in Part 1. Perhaps he has been kept out of the process—that is possible up to now—but I think that the Minister should probably get up take a call and say to all of those people whom he has just said are going to be brought into the paid parental leave regime by this legislation that they are not. They are actually not. So the Minister could get up and—David Shearer: Why did he say that Grant?GRANT ROBERTSON: Well that is a good point Mr Shearer. Why did Simon Bridges tell New Zealanders that this bill does something that it does not? [Interruption] Yes and do the costings that we have heard about today about paid parental leave actually include those? So there is a second question for Simon Bridges.I have got another question for him—and I know that three questions will be about as many as the Minister can handle at once so I will ask only three on this occasion—and it is this. We are here under urgency on a Thursday evening passing this legislation. The Labour Party agrees that paid parental leave is something that is important—David Bennett: Get on with it.GRANT ROBERTSON: —and is something that we want to see increase. Members on the other side of the Chamber say: “Get on with it.” All right then. Who was that? It was Mr Mitchell. All right then Mr Mitchell get on with it. How about bringing this in some time soon? How about bringing it in this year? How about bringing in 18 weeks next year? No 2016—Mark Mitchell: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I am not sure why Mr Robertson has chosen to bring me into the debate. I was busy doing my work. He has chosen to do that.Hon Trevor Mallard: Speaking to the point of order—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No no—[Interruption] Order! When I am standing there will be silence. [Interruption] I am standing. That was not a point of order all right?GRANT ROBERTSON: I apologise to Mr Mitchell particularly because it was Mr Bennett so I really do owe him an apology for that. If members on that side of the Chamber are telling us to get on with it how about National gets on with paid parental leave? How about it gets on with bringing in 16 weeks now and 18 weeks next year? How about it actually commits to 26 weeks? One thing we can say is that the Labour Party has been consistent about this. Sue Moroney’s bill came in—what year did it come in; 2012 was it?Sue Moroney: Oh no I think it was drawn in about 2013 actually.GRANT ROBERTSON: Since early 2013 that bill giving 26 weeks’ paid parental leave has been before the House. The Labour Party has said that. We have a policy of going to 1 year. From the beginning of last year we have said 26 weeks and National finally wakes up. It finally wakes up and under pressure from groups like 26 for Babies from Sue Moroney and from all the submitters on her bill says yes it is going to do paid parental leave—and then it says maybe not until 2016. So we are here tonight under urgency for something that is not going to happen until 2016.I would like the Minister to get on his feet apologise to all of those people he has misled about the fact that this legislation actually does nothing to bring them into the paid parental leave regime and then explain to New Zealanders why we are here under urgency for a bill whose Part 1 does not actually come into force properly until 2016. The thing here for the Government is that Simon Bridges and National are doing this under urgency tonight only to try to spike Sue Moroney’s member’s bill. That is it. It is pure politics. It is politics as usual from National—putting us under urgency to try to claim that there is something urgent about its commitment to paid parental leave. Well National’s commitment to paid parental leave is timid. National is late in coming to the party. That is National on paid parental leave. I believe that Part 1 of this bill should be supported because it is as good as it is going to get under National.Sue Moroney has an amendment on the Table to do the right thing today and that is to go to 26 weeks now in this bill by 2016—26 weeks. That is the right thing to do. We know it is affordable. Simon Bridges when he got on his feet to take his call earlier on said that National has done the work to do this. Well actually the reality is that it isLabour and the interest groups like 26 for Babies that have done the work that have been able to come up with the costings that are real—not the imagined costings that Bill English had in 2013 but the real costings which are affordable.We have heard from other speakers on the Opposition side during the first and second readings of this bill about why 26 weeks matters. It is because that is the minimum bonding time in terms of breastfeeding and the minimum time for creating the bond between mother and baby. It puts New Zealand just up into the bottom third of the OECD. Earlier on the National backbenchers were saying what an outrageous thing it would be to go to 26 weeks and how utterly unaffordable odd and unusual it would be. Well right now we are second to last in the OECD on paid parental leave. We are second to last. The only country behind us is the United States which has none. It has no paid parental leave. We are second to last. So this timid response from National crawls New Zealand up the OECD rankings in terms of paid parental leave but National members could be here tonight with a bill that would give 26 weeks by 2016.I want to challenge towards the end of this call other parties in the Chamber to support the amendment in Sue Moroney’s name because parties like United Future and the Māori Party have said they will support 26 weeks. I understand they have agreements with the Government but here on the Table is something that is not actually in the Budget legislation right now. We are on a separate piece of legislation. It is not the Budget debate. Here is the opportunity for Peter Dunne and the Māori Party to support Sue Moroney’s amendment on Part 1 of this bill to take it to 26 weeks and to do the right thing.What we have seen through this year is the politics as usual of the National Party. Every second Wednesday night National members are filibustering spinning out the debate making sure that we do not get to paid parental leave. They have made sure that Sue Moroney’s bill does not come up. Today National thinks paid parental leave is urgent. Two Wednesdays ago it wanted to stop a bill on it. That is not good enough. New Zealand families the parents and the children who will benefit from this need some decisive action. They need a Government that is actually prepared to stand on principle. That is what the Labour Party has done on paid parental leave going back to 2002. National opposed it in 2002. National has filibustered throughout this year to stop it and suddenly it is urgent to timidly step forward to 16 weeks and then to 18 weeks. Do the right thing I say to National members. Vote for the amendment. Peter Dunne and the Māori Party should vote to take this to 26 weeks.Today is a good day for parents around New Zealand because they will get an extension to paid parental leave and we should celebrate that extension timid as it is. But today could also be the day that members across the Chamber say that New Zealand parents deserve and need 26 weeks’ paid parental leave and those members should support Sue Moroney’s amendment.DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): I moveThat the question be now put.JAN LOGIE (Green): I would like to follow on from the previous speech and also offer my support for Sue Moroney’s amendment to extend paid parental leave to 26 weeks. Obviously as I have been saying the Greens’ policy is 13 months but 26 weeks would be an honourable step towards a society where we are looking after our new families and our babies and giving the best start. Sue Moroney’s bill so far has been through the Government Administration Committee which received almost 4000 submissions and heard from so many people. The select committee heard such personal and compelling stories that convinced the majority in this House that 26 weeks was a fundamental. We as a society were saying that if we are choosing between costs for things actually New Zealanders choose 26 weeks. We have heard that message sostrongly. I absolutely support extending the entitlements. Sadly this bill does nothing to do that; it is just about the length of time. Tonight we have the opportunity to deliver those health outcomes those economic outcomes and those well-being outcomes to our mothers and babies and fathers by virtue of 26 weeks.I would like to remind this Committee again of some of the stories that came to us at the select committee that I mentioned in the second reading only a few minutes ago. Another story I would like to offer is that we heard from a woman who was in a well-paid job and was able to take 10 months’ leave because that was in her contract. She talked about what a wonderful time in her life that was and how privileged she felt to have had that time. She had not really wanted to be a mother and she had felt quite ambivalent about becoming a mother but that time had enabled her to learn to love and connect with her child in a way that she might not have been able to do otherwise.Actually what we are talking about is giving some families some mothers and some babies that ability and that gift of time to connect. Once they have connected that is something that you cannot undo and the good that flows from that is something that you cannot undo. That is something that this society has said it values and it wants. It would prefer us to spend our money on caring for our children and looking after our families. People would rather have that than a larger surplus. They would rather have that than motorways. They would rather have that than most other things because it really really makes a difference.Another story that we heard was from a woman who had extended leave again through her contract and she talked about some of the difficulties that she had had with breastfeeding and post-natal depression. She said that if she had not had that time that 6 months of extended leave she did not know how she would have coped. It is a really difficult time in the lives of so many women and babies and it is a time when we should be investing in and really providing those fundamental supports so that we show that we care and get the best outcomes as a society.I am well behind the amendment from Sue Moroney that would enable that to happen and I am quite excited at the possibility that this Parliament may be able to deliver that for New Zealand tonight. The Green Party is right in there with that vision for a better society.CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): Part 1 of the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill obviously is exciting a lot of attention—and it should because this is an important matter. In Part 1 we are talking about a staged process of making a very small but incremental improvement to paid parental leave. For that I have to say that it is a very good thing. It is good that we are making that improvement. Over a 2-year period 2 weeks of paid parental leave will be added from 1 April 2015 and another 2 weeks will be added from 1 April 2016. Finally it would seem that National members have got their heads around paid parental leave so that has to be a good thing and maybe that provides a basis to do a whole lot more.Maybe National should think now that it has got its head around it about whether perhaps it could do the right thing tonight and support Sue Moroney’s amendment on this part which actually does what is really needed—that is a good solid movement to 26 weeks’ paid parental leave. This is something that has been well considered in the Government Administration Committee deliberations on the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill. I found it somewhat disturbing that the Minister of Labour could say that there had been no work done on this and no policy considerations and all of those things. Actually the select committee heard many submissions. The select committee looked at matters like the cost. One of the reasons the Government is saying that it is doing only 2 weeks in one year and 2 weeks in the next is that that is the financially responsible thing to do. Wellactually a lot of work was done on the costings—a lot of pretty robust measures—and the costs were not that significant when you offset them against some of the savings.If you add on top of that an understanding about the investment that is being made here—the investment in the people of this country and the future of this country—then this has to be a priority surely to goodness. Paid parental leave has to be a priority. It is good for the babies. It is good that they get that best start in life. Labour has very strong policy on giving children the best start including 26 weeks’ paid parental leave because that bonding as others have said is so important in the very early development stages of that child. It is time to establish breastfeeding and to try for people who are able to to have a child breastfeed exclusively for the first 6 months which has long been the World Health Organization standard. That is for good reason—it gives children immunity. It is proven to be useful in things like ensuring that there is less chance of things like asthma and in a whole bunch of other positive health outcomes.I have to say though that I do think the motivation of the Government in making the moves that are signalled in Part 1—these very small improvements to paid parental leave—is quite cynical. It is cynical because it has tested the waters it has heard what the public is saying and it can see there is a very strong desire for change. Families need this. As well as babies needing this families need this and women need this so that they can make ends meet and manage their household budgets so that women can manage their paid work and their time as a primary carer for a young baby and so that they can have a choice about spending time with their baby. The Government has heard that and cynically has put up something but it is very very small.I think it is interesting when one looks at the Minister’s media release on this. It goes to the conversation we had right at the start of this part where there was some discussion about what the Minister was covering off in the debate. I just want for the record to be very clear that Part 1 is essentially saying an extra 2 weeks’ leave from April next year and 2 weeks thereafter. It is not talking about extending eligibility to anybody who is not currently eligible. Maybe the Minister was just getting a bit excited and putting the context there and all of that; perhaps that is what it was about.But actually I think it was more cynical than that because when one looks at the media release around this it is the same—what would you call it—fudging really. It is fudging because it talks about extending parental leave payments to more workers—in particular to people who have recently changed jobs seasonal and casual workers and workers with more than one employer. I have to put on record that I absolutely think that that is the way we need to go because there are people who are currently excluded.Labour brought paid parental leave in back in 2002 and then extended it in 2004. Labour then extended it again to the self-employed in 2007—in fact I think the Hon Ruth Dyson might have been the Minister at the time; indeed the Hon Ruth Dyson has long had a commitment to this issue as has the Labour Party. But of course there are further extensions that are required. The Minister’s media release covers some of those people—but very cynically. If a person was to pick up this media release they would think this was all happening right now. Well let us get it really clear for the record. What is happening here with this bill the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill is 2 more weeks’ paid parental leave from April next year and 2 more weeks the following April—no extension to new people. So it would be good if the Minister was able to get up and just clarify that himself to make sure that he has not misled anybody or caused any confusion on this important matter.Like my colleagues we do see that it is important to support any improvement in this area. To vote against something like this would be not only churlish; it would be tantamount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater literally. This is animprovement but it could be so much more. We could actually be really meeting the needs of New Zealand families. We could be investing in our future.Another person whom I think it would be very good if she got up and spoke given that she is in the Chamber is the Hon Anne Tolley. I have got a lovely quote from her. She may not have heard it earlier but on paid parental leave Anne Tolley said: “This legislation … shows how the Labour-Alliance Government is stuck in the radical feminist era of the 1960s and 1970s … and is completely out of touch with the women of the 21st century and their diverse involvement in today’s labour force.” She said: “This is bad legislation. It is a travesty.” Well Minister I would love it if you could get up now and explain to this Committee why in 2002 paid parental leave was a travesty but now this small move by National is somehow the best thing that the Government has done for some time. Of course the Hon Judith Collins also had a similar sort of attitude. Hers is probably a little bit more timely in its kind of implication because the Hon Judith Collins in 2004 when Labour extended paid parental leave at that stage said: “It is another example of this Government using taxpayers’ money to try to win some votes.”I wonder whether people listening to this debate might ask themselves whether this is a cynical move—a very small improvement because there is a really strong demand that has developed particularly around the bill that Sue Moroney has been championing and that 26 for Babies has campaigned around and because there is such a groundswell of support. We are so close to an election that it has to be questioned whether this is just a cynical election manoeuvre particularly when you get a Minister who indicates that this legislation is going to do a great deal more than the bill before this Committee tonight is actually going to do.But there is an opportunity. There is an opportunity for all of us here to make this right. Let us actually do what the people of New Zealand would love to see us do. Let us support 26 weeks’ paid parental leave. It is affordable; the work was done. The proposal in Sue Moroney’s bill was also to phase it in but with a much stronger benefit to families. So from July 2014 there would be 18 weeks’ leave 22 weeks’ leave from July 2015 and 26 weeks’ leave from July 2017. Let us actually do something really significant that the families of this country will really benefit from. Let us support the amendment on Part 1. Let us make a real difference.Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health): I moveThat the question be now put.SUE MORONEY (Labour): It is a pleasure to get a call on the Committee stage of Part 1 which is the part that does deal with the extension to paid parental leave—finally—by the National Government. So I am rising to support this step albeit it is meagre but from National’s point of view it is a giant step. It is a meagre step for some of the rest of us but still a giant step for National to have this part which extends paid parental leave by a further 2 weeks next year and then by another 2 weeks in the following year.I have got to say that that is giant steps for National but I am rising to ask parties to support the amendment to this part that I am proposing so that we can actually get to 26 weeks’ paid parental leave by 2016. That is what my amendment will do. That as my colleague Carol Beaumont just said is what the New Zealand public wants. We know that is what the New Zealand public wants because when it did actually have an opportunity to have a say on paid parental leave and when there was not a bill being rushed through under urgency but there was a bill going through a considered process as my bill—no I am not allowed to say “my bill”; the Labour Party bill I will call it—was doing. I know the National Party will like it being called a Labour Party bill just to remind people where this idea came from.I think what Part 1 reminds us about is that the National Government has no ideas of its own. This is its big Budget urgency item and it comes from the Labour Party. What does that tell us about how lacklustre this Government is? The fact is that it has completely run out of ideas it is tired and it is now casting around. The only place that it can find ideas from is when it looks over this side of the Chamber. That is what Part 1 tells us.My amendment will do what 99.6 percent of the 3806 submitters on the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill from the Labour Party which would bring in 26 weeks’ paid parental leave asked for. So I am urging all of the parties that have voted for 26 weeks’ paid parental leave to support that amendment because in doing that they can bring about 26 weeks’ paid parental leave as the New Zealand public has asked for. I am pleased to say that—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Order on the backbenches. I am trying to listen.SUE MORONEY: I am pleased to say that the amendment has been drafted in a way that will not compromise the National Government itself nor will it compromise any of its support parties because it has been drafted in a way that means there is no commitment to improve paid parental leave beyond what the Government is already proposing until 2016. That is long past when the confidence and supply agreement is in place for United Future and for the Māori Party. So this should cause them no concern in terms of honouring their confidence and supply agreement with the Government or with honouring the commitment that they have already made in this House to support 26 weeks’ paid parental leave.I know that the Hon Peter Dunne particularly will want to support this. I am sure he will because he is on the public record as saying that yes he is prepared to support 26 weeks’ paid parental leave but that he does not think it goes far enough. He does not think it goes far enough. So I am certain that he will be voting for the amendment that is on the Table to be voted on this evening. If he does not I think there are some real questions to be asked about whether he supports his own party’s policy or not. So I look forward to seeing what happens when we come to the vote on this part which I think will be some time away because I am sure that the Minister in the chair the Minister of Labour has had lots of questions asked of him that he will be wanting to answer.This part really does just two things and it does them 2 weeks at a time in the next 2 years. Sadly although I think the intentions are reasonably good it will not actually address the submissions that were raised at the Government Administration Committee in submissions on that other bill. I want to talk about a particular submission that really resonated with me. It is the one that sticks in my mind out of all the 3800 submissions. It was from a woman who gave us her submission in Auckland. She talked about the struggle that she had. She gave birth to twins and this submission stays with me because when I looked around the room when she was describing what her day looked like when she returned to work I swear that there was not a dry eye in the room. I think that included the officials as well and they are pretty hard to get going.What she described was that she had to go back to work after having these babies when these twins were 3 months old. At that time she had 12 weeks’ paid parental leave. Financially she had no option but to go back to work. But what was happening for her was that the twins were feeding at different times during the night so on four occasions during the night she was up feeding one or other of these twins—they were not feeding at the same time—and then she was getting up and going to work the next morning. She was taking the train and dropping the babies off at day care which she found extremely difficult to do. She found it really hard to leave them at day care. She would then get on the train and travel to work. Two times or I think it might have beenthree times during the course of the day she was then travelling by train back to their day care to feed these babies and so—Hon Member: What’s this got to do with Part 1?Jacqui Dean: Yeah hello? Lots of people do that.SUE MORONEY: What has this got to do with it? I am not sure. Jacqui Dean does not know what this has got to do with it. What this has got to do with Part 1 is that this woman said to the select committee that the upshot was that she—Jacqui Dean: Women are more resilient than you know.SUE MORONEY: Oh well look I am sorry that Jacqui Dean does not empathise with this woman’s story but after 6 weeks she handed in her notice. She resigned because she could not do it. What she told the select committee was that if there had been 26 weeks’ paid parental leave in place she believed that she would have been able to actually go back to work and cope at that stage and that would have meant that she would still have had her job. She would still have her job. When this woman came before the select committee her twins were 3 years old. She said: “If I knew then what I know now I would have got through that but I didn’t.” Today she still does not have a job. She lost her attachment and her connection to that workplace because the duration of paid parental leave was inadequate.It is still going to be inadequate for women in her position after this Government has passed this bill because another 4 weeks in 2 years’ time is actually not going to help that woman in that situation. That is what it is all about. It is all about helping parents so that they can cope so that they can actually focus on giving that attention to their child and to their baby to get the bonding and attachment going really well. Another 4 weeks is not going to achieve that and that is what all the submitters on the Labour Party bill told us. They told us that 26 weeks was what was going to actually start getting towards that.So what we have here in Part 1 is a Government that recognises that it is in trouble over this issue and it recognises that it needs to try to respond and react but it does demonstrate that it is a Government that really truly still does not get it. It still does not get it and it is a big step for National to vote in favour for any form of paid parental leave at all. I get that. I do get that and I think that is a giant step forward. But please do not think that this bill addresses the issues that the Labour Party bill has been put forward to address. Those issues are the ones that have actually been supported by Plunket by Barnardos by Unicef and by a whole range of other organisations.Plunket put out a press release today and it said that it was good to see paid parental leave being extended but it begged the Government to do the right thing and go to 26 weeks. My amendment will give the Government the opportunity to do the right thing: vote for the amendment so that it does extend paid parental leave to 26 weeks. That can be done tonight. It can be done tonight and we can get it under way. But even better than that—Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Deputy Leader of the House): I moveThat the question be now put.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the question be now put.Ayes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes55New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7.Motion agreed to.The question was put that the following amendments in the name of Sue Moroney to Part 1 be agreed to:in each of clauses 19 to 30 inclusive replace all instances of “18 weeks” with “26 weeks”.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendments be agreed to.Ayes58New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 2; Mana 1.Noes61New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendments not agreed to.Part 1 agreed to.Part 2 Amendments to Income Tax Act 2007The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I call Ross Robertson.Grant Robertson: No you don’t.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Sorry.Grant Robertson: That is normally followed by a withdrawal and an apology Mr Chair!The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I withdraw and apologise! Grant Robertson.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): Thank you very much Mr Chair. I rise to speak in my very own identity on Part 2 of the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill. Part 2 of this bill brings us to I guess the part of the bill that is somewhat disturbing for members of the Opposition. With Part 1 we are able to at least agree in principle on the question of paid parental leave but when it comes to the changes to the parental tax credit we come to a more difficult and deeper issue.The good news here is the recognition that parents need more support—that parents who are undertaking the job of raising children pretty much whoever they are need support. We all know that the costs that are in front of all parents are great. Having children is something that when it is undertaken parents realise the additional costs. All parents should get that support and that is the problem we have with Part 2 of the bill. It is because a group of parents is being excluded. What Labour decided when we brought out our Best Start policy at the beginning of the year was that we would create a system that would provide support for children up to 1 year of age for everybody who earned up to $150000 a year and we would extend that support for children up to 3 years of age depending upon the circumstances of those parents. That is to support low-income families. That is to support vulnerable children.That is what is missing from Part 2 of this bill: support for the most vulnerable children. What is missing is support for the 14000 parents who are living below the poverty line and the 50000 children who are living below the poverty line. Part 2 of this bill says that those children are excluded and those parents are excluded. The changes to the parental income tax credit do not support those parents.Jacqui Dean: What is the poverty line?GRANT ROBERTSON: Jacqui Dean seems to have a problem with that. Jacqui Dean seems to have a problem with the fact that the Government could have come to the House today and said: “We get it. We get that all parents—all parents—need support.”—all parents need support. But no only those parents whom the NationalGovernment deem valuable get support tonight not the parents who are living below the poverty line not the people who are really struggling to bring up children. They are not deserving parents for the National Government. Once again the National Government is deciding who are the deserving and who are the undeserving.This was an opportunity tonight for the National Government to bring forward to the House some kind of support for all parents or at least most parents but no it chose to exclude—Jacqui Dean: More than Labour did.GRANT ROBERTSON: “More than Labour did.” said Jacqui Dean—more than Labour did. This from the Government that told us that Working for Families was communism by stealth and then adopted it wholesale and takes credit in the House for the benefits of Working for Families. No Jacqui Dean has got it wrong. The National Government has got it wrong tonight. A great opportunity has been missed to lift children out of poverty.One of the disturbing things while listening to the Budget debate today was hearing that 285000 New Zealand children are living in poverty. The National Government skirted round that today. Yesterday in the House John Key denied that that number even existed. Here is a very specific piece of legislation that could have dealt with that very issue and the Government did not do so. I think that is a great shame.I think there could have been amendments to this bill. I know that my colleague Jacinda Ardern who is going to speak in the very near future is interested in putting forward amendments that actually bring this bill into line with Labour’s Best Start policy. What we have got here is half a best start for children—a false start for children.Mike Sabin: Oh!GRANT ROBERTSON: Well no it is. Mike Sabin disagrees. Why exclude 50000 children Mr Sabin? I want Mr Sabin and other National Party members to stand up and tell New Zealanders why it is that 50000 children miss out.JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): Well Mr Sabin finished there with an interjection saying that the Government’s policy is targeted. That was in response to Mr Robertson asking why 50000 children in poverty are not being reached by this policy in Part 2 of the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill. That was a reference to the fact that Best Start covers the most vulnerable children with its Best Start payment when those children are not covered by the extension to the parental tax credit. Let us be absolutely clear. The parental tax credit does not go to beneficiaries. They are our lowest-income recipients and they are excluded. It is a cold hard truth that members on that side of the Chamber do not want to accept. We have an amendment to expand eligibility on the Table. Alfred Ngaro is shaking his head. The parental tax credit has never gone to beneficiaries. They are excluded from the parental tax credit.Hon Member: That’s right absolutely. That’s logical.JACINDA ARDERN: Yes they are excluded. So they do not get the parental tax credit. They do not get paid parental leave.Jacqui Dean: They get a benefit though don’t they?JACINDA ARDERN: They get a benefit—yes that is right Jacqui Dean. How much is it? How much is it? How much is it? And that is why we have this issue. No one on that side of the Chamber knows how much someone on a benefit receives when they have got a newborn child. If members on that side of the Chamber want to tell me that when you have a baby you can survive on $290—because that is approximately what you receive when you are a sole parent—then that is absolutely fine; all power to you. But that is why those parents are captured by the Child Poverty Monitor as the ones who are in poverty for the longest. They are in there from the time their baby is aged 0 to when their baby is around 3 or 4 because that is when it is hard to work andraise a child at the same time especially when the baby is a newborn. Sure they might want to supplement their income. They might want to raise more money by working but if you are a sole parent and you have got a baby who is 1 week old that is a big ask. So you are limited in the amount that you are able to receive no matter whether you have got the best will in the world—the best will in the world. That is why this extension misses out those who need it most.Debate interrupted.