Mallard Trevor: Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMallard Trevor: Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 15 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17990. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): The first thing I would like to do is to refer the Minister in the chair the Minister of Labour to paragraph 44 on page 9 of the regulatory impact statement where it says that there is no ability to consult after the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill has been put through because the legislation needs to be in place before November 2014 in order to have sufficient time for the Inland Revenue Department’s “systems processes and guidance to be finalised.” I am not saying we should keep this urgency going until November but what I would like to ask the Minister is why we are considering this under such shortened time frames. Why has this particular part of the bill—not the whole bill but this particular part of the bill—not been sent to a select committee for a proper examination?The paper that he has supplied to us tells us that this particular part of the bill is not urgent. It is not urgent; it could wait until November. Being realistic about elections and things it could wait until July to go through Parliament. What I want to know from any National speaker who is prepared to get on their hind legs is why the Government is pushing this through when its own officials have told it—when its own officials have told it—that this is not urgent legislation.The next point I would like to make is to jump way further into the regulatory impact statement and ask the Minister about the relative options that are set out in paragraph 45 under “Conclusions and recommendations”. I do not know whether the Minister knows but what we know is that Cabinet and the officials worked their way through a set of options in this particular area and the reason this option was chosen—I just want to check my logic with the Minister because it appears to be written down here—was that it would keep people in work and off paid parental leave. Is that the objective? That is why on the weighted choices that are set out in paragraph 45 this option won by one point—by one point—and that point came from the fact that it would keep people at work and discourage people from taking paid parental leave.I just want to ask the Government whether that is really its objective. Is that the objective of the Key Government? Is it to say especially to women: “We don’t want you to take up your paid parental leave and this is a way to stop you from doing it. This is a way to save us money on paid parental leave. We will encourage you to stay at work. We will give you a pittance for a short period of time in order to not do what’s right for your baby.”? I just want to ask what sort of ethical basis we are working on. Whom do we care about? First of all we will make a tiny—not that I am going back to it Mr Chairperson—change in one area but then we will work really hard to ensure that you do not take it up. We will work really hard to make sure that parents do not take it up. What the document tabled in the House says is that the defining difference—the thing that made this option the weighted average winner—is the fact that it would stop people from leaving their jobs to take up paid parental leave.I just ask members opposite whether they read this stuff. Do they read it? Do they care? Do the backbenchers ever hold their Ministers to account for the ethics of the Government? The Government is prepared to go out and pretend that it cares about paid parental leave but then they choose the option in this particular part of the legislation that is designed to minimise people taking up paid parental leave. That option won out of those presented to Cabinet only because it was the option that most kept people away from paid parental leave. So it is designed to save the Government some money in the longer term. It is designed to reduce the options for some people to take paid parental leave and that is the reason it was chosen. I just want to say that that is something that is absolutely disgraceful.Moving back to the paragraph that I referred to before we now know why the Government did not want to send this part to a select committee. Under paragraph 44 it says that it does not need to go through Parliament until November. We now know why the Government is putting it through now. It is because it was trying to sneak it through under the radar. It was trying to put it through this Parliament without us realising what it was actually doing. I just say that in New Zealand which has a long-term tradition of being transparent in its legislation and being clear and open and obvious about the reasons why we are doing things to take this sort of sneaky approach in the hope that all members of Parliament are like National Party backbenchers and do not read the documentation that is tabled in the House—it was hoping that we would not read it as well. And what we do know is that we do look at it.I do not often disagree with officials in their regulatory impact statements but the next thing that I would like to refer to in paragraph 45 is the targeting criteria that targets “lower and middle income families”. This option comes up top in that particular area. Well it does not—it is not the best option for targeting lower and middle income families. The reason it comes top here is that the option of targeting those who are really low-income families was excluded earlier in the paper. It was excluded earlier in the paper. I just want to say to the officials—not those in the Chamber of course; I would not address them—who were responsible for this regulatory impact statement that giving this option a rating of four which is at the top of the targeting of lower and middle income families is just bollocks. It is wrong. It is not the case.When you take out those families who are the most in poverty and do not allow them to be part of the ranking system in the regulatory impact statement on this part of the bill then what you are doing is denying the facts of poverty in this country. It might be fashionable and it might be—I do not think it is acceptable for John Key to mess around with the facts when he is answering questions in this House but it is absolutely unacceptable for the Public Service of New Zealand to become so politicised that the regulatory impact statements do not tell the truth. It must not pick up the standards of the Prime Minister in the denial of poverty in the way that it has here. It is the role of the Public Service to be full and frank in their advice to Ministers and this House. Although I welcome officials’ frankness as to their timing and I welcome their frankness as to the fact that this is designed to stop people taking paid parental leave I regret the fact that they were not prepared within this statement to point out that the people who are most affected by poverty in New Zealand will miss out entirely on this measure. It is their job—it is the job of the policy advisers of that ministry—to do it.