Prasad Rajen: Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill (No 2) Taxation (Parental Tax Credit) Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumePrasad Rajen: Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill (No 2) Taxation (Parental Tax Credit) Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 15 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:18015. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour): This is a split call. You get the feeling that members of the Government do not really want to debate deeply the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill and the Taxation (Parental Tax Credit) Bill. I really get the impression that they just want to get out of here and not talk about this particular legislation. Of course there is very good reason why they do not want to and that is that it is not their idea and they have been forced into this. They know very well that they have been forced into adopting Labour’s policies—not just in this area but in others as well. They know that Labour’s Best Start policy was very popular and is very popular. So first they try to ridicule it. Then they had to accept that no New Zealanders were interested in this and they wanted change.Then of course the issue came into sharp focus with Sue Moroney’s bill the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill to move to 26 weeks’ paid parental leave now. It was very popular. When submitters began to say that not just the 26 weeks but the other aspects were part of a well-developed paid parental leave policy those members opposite began to get the shivers.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: What?Dr RAJEN PRASAD: The shivers. Whatever else they get with the shivers I do not know but they certainly got the shivers. They knew there was something wrong. They knew they had to fix this up. So they delayed that particular bill and they started very quickly to do some thinking around this but the thinking has been done only to a very small extent.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: The top half of the brain or the bottom half?Dr RAJEN PRASAD: Well I do not know—the very very top half maybe. Look at what they have done. It is not very generous at all. They are extending it by 2 weeks in 2015 and 2 weeks in 2016. I would expect Paul Hutchison as an obstetrician to have greater awareness of this particular area but I do not think he does. He has forgotten that part of his professional life. He has come in here and he is really interested only in Labour Party and National Party ideology. That is all it is. I still have a lot of respect for you though Mr Hutchison as a gentleman in the House but on this point I think the member has got it wrong.Some of the National members’ positioning is unbelievable—absolutely unbelievable. Listen to what the Minister of Labour said. He took only one call in the chair. He did accept Jacinda Ardern’s challenge to match us call for call but then he went to sleep. He realised that it was unsustainable. The process that National has got with this bill is unsustainable. So here we have it. We know that National members have got it wrong for such a long time. The proof is in the eating. Anne Tolley called this a travesty. Nick Smith said it was a bad model. One Paul Hutchison said this was cementing State dependency. I expect the member to withdraw that. He said that when we introduced paid parental leave it was State dependency. It is not. Those members have been caught. They have had to come to this party. It is still pretty mean. I hope that before long they will begin to really right the wrongs and go to a fully developed paid parental leave policy. This does not go far enough.They have engineered a surplus. They are trying to be political about this. They really do not have a well-developed policy around this. They have tried under the brand of vulnerable children to bring a few things in but there is no developmental approach to this at all. So there is a lot of politics in this Mr Hutchison which is what his party is playing at. There is very little policy in this—very little policy in this. If there was a lot of policy it would have been well-thought-out and well signalled. It would have gone to a select committee and we would not be doing this under urgency. They have been caught—Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Slapped together.Dr RAJEN PRASAD: Well they have at least thought about it together I say to my colleague. It is not well-thought-out. It is very mean. It is only a minimalist approach. It is some time into the future. I know they will crow about this in the election campaign but this does not cut it. I am glad they have agreed to go a little bit further but they have been forced into this and they should apologise for some of the statements that they have made in the past about paid parental leave. Thank you.