Kedgley Sue: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Kedgley Sue: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
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SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 When I listened to the Prime Minister speaking about the need to increase women’s participation in the workforce and to encourage two-income families I felt a sense of unease. It reminded me of the wartime rhetoric when the Government of the day briefly decided it was convenient to have women in the workforce when the men were away at the war. Members should not get me wrong; the Green Party strongly supports women being able to participate in the workforce if they so wish and their being supported if they make that choice. We strongly support the Government’s investment in childcare and its efforts to improve the quality of childcare and to introduce paid parental leave greater holiday leave and pay equity in the workplace. But we do not want to see full-time motherhood or parenthood even further devalued or even greater economic and social pressures put on parents to work full-time even when their children are very young. 
 Listening to the Prime Minister’s speech people might not realise that nearly 70 percent of mothers in relationships and almost half of single mothers are already in the paid workforce and many of those women are in low-income jobs such as the cleaners we MPs see coming to work as we go home after a late-night sitting. Their wages are so low that they are forced to work long hours and often at night at the expense of being with their families. We can only hope that their never seeing their kids is not part of the “future of our dreams” that the Prime Minister advocates for New Zealand families struggling on a single income. 
Already motherhood has been so undervalued in our society that many people do not regard it as real work. Already mothers or fathers who choose to parent full-time feel under stress and attack. Many women say they do not believe that staying home while their children are young is a real option not only because of the enormous difficulty of trying to live on one income but also because of the loss of financial independence and loss of identity that full-time mothers and fathers experience in our work-focused society. The truth is that women and men who choose to parent full-time are penalised on all sorts of levels for being full-time parents. They are not entitled to paid parental leave and they are looked upon in market terms as if they have vegetated or are dropouts from the workforce. If they are sole mothers on the domestic purposes benefit they are stigmatised as bludgers attacked in public singled out by politicians and the targets of all kinds of abuse. The clear impression from some politicians in this House is that single mothers are layabouts who spend their days down at the TAB or local pub—and this from politicians who claim they value motherhood. 
But while most people in New Zealand would agree that caring for children is one of the most important and productive activities that there is our society does very little to value it unless it is done by someone other than parents and the family. It is one of the great ironies of our society that people who look after other people’s children—nannies and childcare workers—are paid albeit poorly but parents and relatives who look after their own children their own mokopuna are not paid a cent which forces them into a state of financial dependence on their spouse or the State. Since the demise of the universal family benefit we have had no payment that values childcare for its own sake which is one reason why the Greens want to bring back a modest universal child allowance. We believe that it is time we put some of our money where our future lies. 
The Prime Minister’s rationale for getting more women back into the workforce seems to be economic just as it was all those years ago in World War II. She wants to raise our gross domestic produce rates to the average of the top five OECD nations and to get women’s participation in the paid workforce up to the level of that of the top Scandinavian economies so that we can raise our standard of living—the implication being that full-time parents will drag down our GDP rates and therefore our whole economy. Everything it seems is now viewed through an economic lens. Everything is geared to improving our economy not our quality of life. Indeed the Government seems to be so obsessed with improving New Zealand’s economic performance as measured by GDP that it seems to be losing sight of the quality-of-life issues that are so important to New Zealanders and are identified in every survey over the last decade. “Working for Families” is in danger of becoming “Families for Work”. 
The fact that parents are not paid and therefore do not contribute to the GDP per capita seems to be a main driver of the Government agenda to get women or more women back into the workforce and the Prime Minister was quite clear about this in her statement to Parliament on Tuesday. So the message goes out: let us get more women into the workforce because then they can contribute to the GDP. And of course the GDP will also rise because childcare will then be done by paid workers. 
The problem with this vision is its extremely narrow focus—its narrow view of what is valuable to society. It reinforces the already widely held perception that worth is measured by whether money changes hands not by whether it contributes to genuine well-being and quality of life. There was no mention in the Prime Minister’s speech of the importance of parents being able to spend time with their children when they are young or the cost to children when they cannot or the value to our society of well-adjusted stable children. This is just one illustration of why the Greens say GDP tells only half the story; it is only loosely connected to well-being and quality of life. We need to change what we value rather than becoming a nation of dual-income wage slaves with no time for our children or our communities. 
I was glad to hear the Prime Minister say yesterday to clarify that she stands for choice for women and the rights of parents to choose to work in the home or in the paid workforce when their children are young. But in the same answer she said that the Government wanted to encourage two-income two-earner families. That seems to be a contradiction because if our whole society is geared around two-earner families if it is virtually impossible for a family to survive on one full-time wage then in reality there is no choice for parents. And this approach also makes single parents even bigger victims as people think that if they cannot stay home to look after their kids why should single parents be able to. 
At present many families do not have the choice of living on a single income and the Government’s policies seem all about getting more workers in the workforce with little regard to how much they earn once they are there. The Green Party is determined that a full-time wage should be sufficient to allow families the choice of having one parent working while children are young. That is why we believe that it is so important to raise the basic minimum wage. We want to make it easier not harder for parents to spend time with their children when they are young and that is why we have been pushing for the universal child benefit and flexible working hours member’s bill that I have in the ballot which would guarantee that parents could work flexibly or part-time without being penalised when their children are young. We hope the Government and other parties in this House will support the bill when it comes to the House. I hope too that the scapegoating of single parents in this House will cease and that we will begin to offer support not punishment to single mothers. 
 In 1990 Gordon Campbell noted in a  
Listener 
 article: “It’s election year politicians are already out DPB bashing playing on the widespread hostility towards solo parents.” His article could have been written yesterday. It seems to be open season against domestic purposes benefit recipients. I view as shameful Don Brash’s suggestion that single mothers on the domestic purposes benefit should have to go back to work when their children are 5. Do Don Brash and his National Party believe that all women should be forced to go into the paid workforce when their children are 5? Of course he does not! He and his party are only too happy for upper middle class mothers to be full-time parents even when their children turn 5 10 or whatever. It is only single mothers who will be denied that right under his vision and policy. We know that children of single mothers are one of the most vulnerable groups in our society. Are these already deprived children also to be deprived of the opportunity to have a parent at home when they are young? 
But as my colleague Sue Bradford pointed out early in the week the Government seems to be competing with the National Party in targeting single mothers. Like National Labour continues to discriminate against the children of beneficiary parents through its Working for Families package and like Don Brash it wants to punish sole parents and impose penalties on mothers who cannot or will not name the father of their child. Overall the Government continues to say that sole parents should have as their primary goal in life a return to the workforce as soon as possible neglecting the reality that bringing up children well is a full-time job.