te Heuheu Georgina: Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill — First Reading 
te Heuheu Georgina: Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:617;Page:13366] 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU (National) 
: 
 I rise to endorse the position of the National Party which opposes this legislation. We did so when the provisions were introduced some years ago and we do so now for a number of reasons. Although those reasons have largely been traversed by colleagues in the House I would like to make my thinking on this known as well. I will take three or four points that the Minister made in her speech and see whether they hold up in light of what National sees as the shortcomings of the bill. 
 The Minister said that the underlying philosophy—I am not quoting her words exactly but this is as I heard them—is to provide high-quality working lives for parents. I do not think any member in this House would dispute that. This Parliament should always be trying to see whether it could put the right supports in to provide just that sort of thing for parents whoever they are—in fact for all hard-working New Zealanders. 
The problem with this bill—and therefore the problem I have with the philosophy as espoused by the Minister—is that unfortunately these provisions do not apply to all parents. Why not? If the underlying philosophy were a good one then surely this Government in putting aside $68 million to extend the paid parental leave provisions ought to have seen whether it could extend them across the board. It did not. That is typical of this Government. It picks those people who it thinks are its sure-fire voters and therefore we get people left out. I do not think that philosophy holds when we look at the actual provisions of the bill. 
The Minister also said that the review of the paid parental leave provisions has shown that employers are happy because they have happy staff. That presumably means they have a more settled working environment. But the Minister made no mention at all of the fact that this is a cost on employers. Employers know that and that is why many of them—particularly those with small businesses—are reluctant to employ women. We on this side of the House have gathered a lot of anecdotal evidence that basically states that although employers are not meant to discriminate against female workers it is going on. If they can possibly get away with not employing a young woman they will do so. Who can blame them? Why should anybody expect them to keep a position open while someone goes off on leave or to bear the cost of taking on someone temporarily so that the work spot is open when the parent returns? 
But that is only part of the cost that employers bear. Under this Government we have seen more and more costs put on business. Business realised quite some ago now that this Government is not its friend; employers are realising that. So when the Minister said that employers are happy I do not know what employers she was talking about. She said that employees are happy as the legislation reduces the financial stress on families during the period of paid leave. Yes we can certainly see how that might be a benefit. 
However the Minister made no comment at all about ongoing costs to families and those are massive. There is ongoing health-care and childcare. I was talking to a woman today who is part of a two-parent working family with three children. In effect she pays $12000 to put 1.8 children in childcare for 1 year. There are costs all the way through this scenario of having children and rearing them. This Government has not proved to the House that the best spend of hard-working taxpayers’ money is in this area. 
I heard one of the members on the other side of the House say that mothers are winners. Of course they are and so are fathers especially good fathers. Fathers are winners too. Parents are winners. It goes back to what I said at the beginning. If that is a truism—and of course it is—then we should be looking to see whether we are treating all parents all mothers and all fathers equally. Clearly this bill does not do that. 
The cost to extend these leave provisions is $68 million. It would have been better if this Government had tried to be more equal across the board. It has not done that. Quite frankly who does that $68 million belong to? It belongs to every single taxpayer in the country and a lot of those taxpayers are self-employed. They run both small and big businesses—but in particular small business. Why should this Government use the taxes of hard-working New Zealanders across the board to benefit only those people it thinks ought to benefit? 
Those are the people whose votes the Government will be buying through this legislation and whose votes it intends to buy tomorrow when it showers around the country more of our hard-earned taxes—more of the hard-earned taxes contributed by ordinary middle and low-income New Zealanders. Michael Cullen has hoarded that money so that in the year before the election he can shower it all over the place but unfortunately he will not do it in a way that is equitable. It is impossible to do that anyway. 
But there is an answer. The answer is to leave that hard-earned money in the pockets of the people who worked for it. That is what National would do. Quite frankly those people are better placed to decide how they should spend their taxes and their own money. This $68 million worth of taxes that is being allocated to extend these paid parental leave provisions are the taxes of workers across the board but only some in the community will benefit from them. That is not fair. It is patently unfair. What the Government will do tomorrow will be unfair—it will take taxes from every worker and dish the money out to those people it thinks ought to get it. That is totally unfair. 
John Key 
: The privileged few. 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU 
: Well the Government will give the money to those whose votes it feels most confident of getting. That is patently unfair. 
The polls show that no matter how much money the Government dishes out tomorrow—and that in itself is scandalous—it will not work. Nothing this Government can do now will turn those polls around. It should leave New Zealanders’ money where it should be—in their own pockets. That is what a National Government would do. These kinds of provisions encourage reliance on the largesse of others. The Government wants to exercise that largesse. It has no right to collect those taxes and then to spread the money around the community as it sees fit. We oppose this legislation. It is a scandal and the Government should know better. It does not and it will pay for that.