Rich Katherine: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental  Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Rich Katherine: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental  Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:628;Page:587] 
KATHERINE RICH (National) 
: 
 I am looking forward to making a contribution to the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill. It is not before time that self-employed women and self-employed parents are included within this legislation. It always appeared to me to be a glaring omission from the very first legislation put before the House.  
I understand the principles behind the bill. It is very much the Kiwi way I think to look to support Kiwis when they are unwell when they are unable to work or when they are at some stage in their life where they are not able to participate. One of the things we need to appreciate is that after a baby is born many women are unable to work and are unable to participate. As a result of that I am totally comfortable with the concept of paid parental leave.  
Having said that though the fact that self-employed women were not originally included in this legislation was very hard to debate. I look back at some of the points the Minister made at the time when defending the fact that self-employed women were not part of this scheme. It was argued that it was difficult to measure a self-employed parent’s income. It was argued that it was too difficult to manage and that it would be difficult to administer. A lot of those arguments did not hold water at all. If someone is unable to work that is quite clear.  
The fact is that paid parental leave offers a finite amount being some $350-odd a week. It was not as if we had a paid parental leave scheme as overseas where it is linked to a certain level of income that one may or may not be earning at the time. It seemed to me to be discriminatory that self-employed women were not part of the scheme right from the outset. It was difficult to argue to self-employed hairdressers who might have a contract seat in a salon to women who were working in local retail shops that they owned or to rural women who were involved in the dairy industry or farming that they were not able to be part of the scheme. I think that this is a step forward which is why I am pleased that my party is supporting this bill going to a select committee.  
It is also important to tell some truth about the genesis of this bill because the Labour Government is very quick to claim credit for it. We need to remember that Laila Harré first brought this up as an issue. When the debate was first raised Helen Clark said: “Over my dead body!” would there be paid parental leave. In fact while Labour wants to claim credit for this scheme the credit lies with some people who are now outside the House.  
This bill is a step forward. I think it is important that we debate some of these issues and look further at the scheme. I am glad the bill is going to a select committee because that will give us the opportunity to detail some of the important points to do with this legislation. But if we look at the number of women who will now be included a lot of working women will be shaking their heads in wonder trying to understand why they were not included in the first place. A lot of our self-employed women are not people earning multimillion-dollar salaries. They tend to be those who have done the right thing gone out and created businesses for themselves and employed themselves but they tend to be part of small-business operations which make up some 95 percent of all firms in this country.  
If we look at those who will be captured by this bill it makes sense that we include self-employed women. Let us face it any new mum is in the same situation. It should not matter for a moment who employs a new parent. The issue is that that parent should have the same ability as anybody else to access support when it is required.  
As I look at my own situation and look back at my political life probably one of the dumbest things I did was attempt to go back to work some 2 weeks after the birth of my two children. I think it is a good thing that we take time and allow some new parents just to get on with bonding with their baby and enjoying those first few weeks. I think one of the problems we have with working currently is that a lot of parents feel they have to rush back to work at that very very important time.  
I think that the scheme we have in New Zealand has proved able to support a number of parents over the last couple of years. But we are not being fair to all new parents because until recently many have not been able to enjoy the same rights with the scheme. It was discriminatory not to have self-employed women as part of the original scheme. Some of the arguments put up in my view did not hold water and if we look at trying to track the engagement of self-employed mothers and fathers with the scheme we see that it is not that hard to do. It is certainly not as hard as that to determine whether they have had children and whether they will be engaged in work.  
It will be interesting to see the sorts of submissions we get at the select committee level. I think we will see the same sorts of groups endorsing the inclusion of self-employed women. We need to remember some of the submissions made by groups like Rural Women New Zealand. Representatives from that group made the very pertinent point that many of their members coming from the rural community and being involved in sheep and dairy farms needed that break and the ability to take time out more than anybody else in the same situation and they needed to be able to protect their incomes during such a difficult time. But they were not able to be part of the scheme. So they were paying taxes and contributing to a scheme to pay for a whole bunch of other parents who were in exactly the same situation as themselves.  
I recall receiving many many letters from rural women involved in the daily graft of a family farming operation asking why they were not allowed to engage in the scheme and saying it was not fair. Their taxes were going to support other new parents but they were trying to juggle a new baby and a family farming operation and they were not able to be part of the scheme. So I suspect we will get a lot of submissions from the rural community making exactly that point. We will welcome those submissions when they come.  
A lot of self-employed new parents are not actually wealthy individuals. One of the myths the Government side of the House wants to perpetuate is the idea that if people are in business they are wealthy and well off. That is not the case. Many self-employed people up and down the country make up what could be described as the working poor. They are doing the right thing in getting up every day to go to work paying their taxes being burdened with compliance costs and making sure that they play their part in the community but they can also fall on times when I think they deserve additional support as well. It is just as important for those parents to have the time to bond with their children and to take that time out as it is for any other employee.  
The fact that a woman happens to be her own boss was never an excuse to leave her out of this scheme. Such people are very easy to track. They were always going to gain a finite amount of income from the scheme. The arguments put forward to lock them out of the scheme were always discriminatory and quite unfair.  
I suspect we will see a lot of industry groups put forward submissions—from the hairdressers association to the legal fraternity to accountancy firms. I think a number of professional women will have a view on this inclusion and we will welcome every single one of those submissions and look forward to hearing them at the select committee. We do not know what sort of amendments and suggestions they will make but it is important that this bill gets as far as the select committee and the select committee can make amendments and improvements. If we have seen anything from this Government it is that often it will put before a select committee a poorly drafted bill that needs a lot of work if it is to make it through to being an Act that will actually work.  
For self-employed women—and for new dads as well; I cannot leave them out—this is a step forward. We look forward to the select committee process and I hope the public will rise to the occasion and put forward their views.