Mapp Wayne: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental  Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Mapp Wayne: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental  Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:628;Page:584] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 National will be supporting the bill to the select committee but I think that Dr Cullen had a bit of a hospital pass there. The Minister in charge of the bill perhaps did not arrive in proper time to speak on it but I note that Dr Cullen did canvass the issues quite widely.  
This bill is belated recognition of the issue and it is all very well for Dr Cullen to say that the Government was going to fix this issue at an early time. Well that was not the case. It took time for them to recognise that reality and it is 3 years since the original legislation was passed into law. I acknowledge that it has been reasonably popular legislation and I guess the question we have to ask ourselves is why it took Labour 3 years to do this. Is it because it is dominated by unionists— 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: What! 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: —who like the Minister tend to look at the world through only the eyes of employees? They cannot really see broader than that at all. The failure to include the self-employed was one of National’s major objections at the time. My colleagues Anne Tolley and Dr Lynda Scott put this directly in their speeches at the time. Dr Lynda Scott asked in 2002 what rural women and the self-employed got from the original bill. Well she had the clear answer—they got a big fat nothing. That was the truth of it. So this legislation is belated recognition and frankly National takes some credit for the fact that the bill is here now. We raised this issue up and down the country. I was at meetings held by my colleagues who were concerned about this. I read some of the submissions at the time. I know that in my former legal profession this was a real concern of women lawyers. I know that my colleague Judith Collins raised this issue at an early point because women in the legal profession had been campaigning for years and years to get some form of recognition.  
One of the flaws of Labour’s argument its philosophical approach is that they did have choices—in particular the self-employed. What Labour is doing here is providing a benefit from the welfare system at a set figure of $375 according to the commentary on the bill. The alternative is a tax deduction. These are hugely different things because they speak volumes about the philosophical approach of the parties. Self-employed people actually do not want a handout from the State; they do not want to be turned into beneficiaries by this Government. Maybe the select committee will look at the options that are available because I am prepared to bet that many of the submissions that will come from the self-employed because that is who will be making them primarily will say that maybe a tax deduction might be a better way of doing it. Just think of the advantages: under the beneficiary system there is a whole range of inspectorate systems.  
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: How can people have a tax deduction if they’re not in paid work? 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: The bill has labour inspectors checking to see whether people are taking time off work whether they are still involved in the work and how much they are involved in the work. It is all there in the bill if the Minister would care to look. That is exactly what New Zealanders hate—particularly the self-employed. They hate the intrusion of the State into their lives in that particular way. I point out to the Minister that that is the advantage of a tax deduction. It gives people choices—something Labour seems to struggle with in reality.  
We need only to think of the way people run their businesses. We do not have labour inspectors checking to see whether every particular little tax deduction in one’s tax return is proper; it is all done through an efficient and effective system called the “IRD”—very efficient and low compliance costs through the department. The interjections made by the Minister of Labour simply show her lack of understanding of the world of small business the world of the self-employed who want choices and who do not want the intrusion of the State and Department of Labour inspectors into their lives.  
I ask the Government to take on board the issues that are raised in the submissions. There will be proposals to treat this in a different way because in reality it is very hard for those who are self-employed to absent themselves completely from their business. They want some supervisory role. They will be ringing up the office checking on things. Women at home will be wanting to do that. They do not want to have to get approval from the Department of Labour to see whether they can do that. They just want to be able to do that and get on with their lives and at the very minimum they should have the choice between a tax deduction and receiving a State benefit. I can imagine in some instances people might actually want a State benefit but women who are self-employed who are taking time out to have a family and still want to be involved in their business ought to have the choice of a tax deduction as well.  
National is supporting the bill to the select committee. We see this legislation as a belated although inadequate measure. We understand that the Government will say this is all part of its commitments made in the election campaign and so forth. I just ask the Government whether it really went out and talked to self-employed women. Does it understand how self-employed women think about their lives think about the way they run their businesses think about the way they run their households and then ask whether self-employed women actually want to become beneficiaries of the State? Because that is the dependency mindset that the Government would put them into.  
I have a particular role that has gained a certain momentum—that is political correctness eradication. One of the key issues is that New Zealanders say they are sick of the intrusion of the State into their lives. That is a key way of looking at political correctness. So what does the Government do? In the guise of assisting women—and that is a good thing—it loads on more bureaucracy. That is the very thing that New Zealanders do not want more of. I ask the Government to take note of the submissions understand that people in self-employment operate differently from employees and give them choices because that is the sort of thing that will be put to the select committee when it hears the evidence on the bill.