Bradford Sue: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Bradford Sue: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:631;Page:2936] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 We have said all along as the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill has progressed through the House that the Green Party is delighted to support the extension of paid parental leave to the self-employed. During consideration of the initial paid parental leave legislation we advocated alongside many submitters that self-employed workers should be included within the bill’s coverage. It is great that we have finally achieved that today and I would like to thank and congratulate the Minister of Labour the officials the submitters the members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and everyone who was involved in finally getting this legislation through Parliament. 
Although the main purpose of the bill is to extend paid parental leave to the self-employed that is not its only purpose. It also reduces from 12 months to 6 months the minimum period before an employee is entitled to a subsequent period of parental leave and a parental leave payment. It gives power to the Department of Labour to accept applications for paid parental leave even if there are irregularities in the application. It gives review rights on paid parental leave to the Employment Relations Authority. I am very pleased to see the reduction from 12 months to 6 months of the period of eligibility between periods of paid parental leave. It helps those parents who may be adopting again before the 12-month period is up and also those parents who themselves have another child within 12 months of the earlier one being born. The changes to ensure that there are cost-effective review and appeal mechanisms are also supported by the Green Party. 
Although we are totally supportive of the bill it is not the end of the struggle to have a world-class best-practice paid parental leave system in this country. In fact we are still only about halfway along the path towards delivering such legislation. We can be very proud of what we have achieved so far—we can even pause briefly for a half-time break. However the journey is not complete and further legislation will be required to extend the scheme to make it world-class to make it best-practice and even to make it comply fully with our international obligations. I am pleased to see by Minister Dyson’s comments today that she also acknowledges we have not reached the end of the paid parental leave journey. I am glad she reminded us that the entire paid parental leave scheme is currently being evaluated and that she hopes the evaluation will identify areas of further improvement in the future. 
As I said earlier in this debate even after the bill is passed I believe improvements will still be needed with regard to eligibility criteria the level of paid leave the length of leave and how much is paid. A number of those issues will probably need to be addressed before New Zealand can ratify the relevant International Labour Organization conventions on paid parental leave. 
What other areas still need to be addressed? I mentioned three earlier. The first is the issue of the right of working mothers to breastfeed. Again despite a number of submissions and the views of the Human Rights Commission on this issue it has not been included in this bill. I strongly urge the Minister to ask her department to undertake work on breastfeeding in the workplace and to develop further legislation in this area as soon as possible. 
The second issue is around whangai and other customary adoptions. This matter also seems to have been consigned to the too-hard basket—once again—in this bill and in previous paid parental leave amendment bills. It is time for the Government to engage in this issue deeply and carefully—in consultation with iwi hapu and whanau and with Pasifika and other cultural groups—with a view to extending the legislation to cover those situations as soon as is practicable. 
The third issue is the continuing difficulty that casual and seasonal employees have in accessing paid parental leave. Those are the most vulnerable workers in this country. They often miss out on all sorts of employment rights and of course they miss out altogether on the right to paid parental leave. We should no longer allow through our legislation the cancer of casualisation to continue to grow and we should not turn a blind eye to the inability of those particularly vulnerable workers to access basic employment rights like this one. 
In conclusion I reiterate that the Green Party is pleased to support the third reading today. We are pleased that the Government has acknowledged the discrimination against the self-employed that was enacted through the previous legislation. We also support the additional matters that are included in the bill and we look forward to the day when we fully comply with International Labour Organization standards. 
Finally I would like to say a word or two about what Dr Mapp and Paula Bennett were speaking about. I was struggling to identify the nature of the Business New Zealand submission to which Dr Mapp referred as I did not sit on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and was not privy to that submission. But it appears that both National MPs were talking about the whole issue of parents who choose to stay at home rather than enter the workforce. 
That is an issue of deep concern to the Green Party and I am sure to all of us and I would love to engage in that sort of social policy debate in this House. It raises issues for me about whether the National Party would support or at least begin to think about supporting things like a universal child benefit or even a form of universal basic income or citizens’ income. That debate is happening in places like the European Union and I think this Parliament could usefully engage in such a debate. I am not sure what National’s policy is on tax-free income for the first $5000 or $10000 of income or on further financial incentives for people who choose to have babies. That is happening a lot now in those European countries where populations are decreasing. 
I would support a debate on all those kinds of issues if that is the sort of debate that those members are calling for. It would be a very useful discussion for all of us to have because we should be supporting the choice of mothers to stay at home if that is what they would like to do. It is really sad that so much of our ideology now is about driving mothers into the workforce. I would hate to see bills like this one being used as part of that ideological push because it is very important that those of us who choose to stay at home and look after our children can do that.