Flavell Te Ururoa: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental  Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Flavell Te Ururoa: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental  Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:628;Page:591] 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
 The Maori Party believes there is no greater responsibility and honour than that of raising the next generation. The privilege of parenting should be one that all parties seek to protect and support through a variety of means and this bill is one of those means. This is not to say that one must always be paid to undertake duties as a result of choosing to continue the existence of the human race kao! 
The desire of the Maori Party is for our people to go forth and multiply. Our policy commitment is to strengthen and support whanau to take up their responsibilities for child rearing. The Maori Party believes that parents—solo parents and couples—grandparents and aunties and uncles should have the choice to stay at home and look after their children their tamariki. That is their choice. We do not see this as another welfare payment. In fact it should not be because despite anything that might be said welfare is a net that entangles one—he taura ka herea atu ki te kaki o te tangata: it tightens like a noose around the throat.  
There are alternatives to welfare. We are supportive of the concept of the reduction of taxation if the family income is under the poverty line. Currently 1.9 million taxpayers are on an income of $25000 or less. Those people are paying $3.5 billion in tax -while the Government is accumulating surpluses of between $4 billion and $7 billion each year. If we could use $1.75 billion of the $3.5 billion on those 1.9 million taxpayers to give a tax discount of 50 percent to our low-income people we could achieve significant changes in the welfare and well-being of these people—and they could achieve choice.  
The primary aim of the bill is to amend the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act 1987 and to extend the 14-week paid parental leave scheme to self-employed individuals who are not currently covered. It is interesting to note that women are significantly under-represented amongst the self-employed—particularly Maori women. New Zealand Trade and Enterprise has found that only around 44 percent of applicants seeking Enterprise Awards Scheme grants were women and only 8 percent of applicants had identified themselves as Maori. 
 The December 2000 household labour force survey reported only 4500 self-employed Maori women which is about 6.4 percent of the total number of self-employed women. In addition 1300 self-employed Maori women employed others which is only 3.3 percent of the total number of women in that category. Although we are very surprised to see that Maori women are under-represented in this area we should not be because we know from bitter experience how difficult it is for Maori to access loan facilities to enable them to give substance to their entrepreneurial talents. They also lack the material assets from which they can borrow. That Maori—and Maori women in particular—are entrepreneurial cannot be disputed. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor now covers 41 countries and is the largest survey of entrepreneurship undertaken in the world. It is ironic that Maori are more likely to be necessity entrepreneurs—that is forced to start a business due to job loss or redundancy—than are non-Maori or the global average. One has to ask then whether it was a necessity to achieve international recognition as being entrepreneurial. Although we are supportive of the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill it might dull the entrepreneurial spirit and that would be another irony.  
Within the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor survey 83 percent more Maori women than men at 30 percent identify themselves as opportunity entrepreneurs—that is those able to spot a business opportunity. Again we question the irony of this international achievement. Maori women are successful at spotting a business opportunity but perhaps up until the time of this legislation they were unable to act on the opportunity because they lacked resources including parental leave and parental leave payments in order to maintain a decent standard of living. We are optimistic that this legislation will help to do something about this situation and ensure that those women can maintain their entrepreneurial spirit in enterprises by the assistance it will give them. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor survey covering female entrepreneurs found Maori women to be remarkably more entrepreneurial than non-Maori New Zealand women. Female entrepreneurs account for 13 percent of the general Maori population compared with 8.7 percent amongst non-Maori and 6.4 percent for the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor world.  
Again with all the success being heralded overseas it is sobering that despite these talents reality paints a quite different picture. The latest report of the Ministry of Social Development shows that despite improvements inequalities remain all too real. It notes that hourly wage and salary rates for Maori still trail European rates—$13.76 against $16—and literacy skills and educational achievement are also lower. That is an indictment on our national and international standing yet again. It is to our national shame that Professor Stavenhagen the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples found only 2 weeks ago that “there is also widespread concern that the gap in social and economic conditions is actually growing larger and that an increasing proportion of Maori are being left behind.”  
The Government’s own figures reveal that the unemployment rate for Maori has steadily increased over the last year from an actual rate of 8.3 percent in September 2004 to 9.1 percent in September 2005 with the unemployment rate for Pakeha still steadily decreasing over the same period. All of those figures go to show that despite the international recognition of the entrepreneurial spirit of Maori women much still has to be done to address the inequities within our society. To that extent the Maori Party supports the introduction of this bill as one means to address the inequities. 
 The bill is consistent with Maori Party kaupapa that underscores the importance of a whanau’s financial security and its implication of assistance to whanau when a parent is temporarily out of the paid workforce. We should let such parents be paid out of the annual tax take which they have contributed to. A question we have around the bill however is whether it is possible for the bill to include those in multiple or casual employment situations. There are criteria contained that restrict eligibility to mean that one must be working at least 10 hours a week in concurrent employment and also that any break between consecutive types of work is for only 30 days or less. We would like to know what that will actually mean for self-employed persons in real terms. Parenting for us is important. The Maori Party applauds this bill as it supports parenting for those people who are also wealth creators and creators of employment. Tena tatou katoa.