Moroney Sue: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 03 December 2014. Volume:702;Page:1091. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour):I thank members for their contributions to the debate that we have had so far on new clause 6. I just wanted to put a little bit of context around why we have got clause 6 coming forward in the shape of a Supplementary Order Paper—in fact two Supplementary Order Papers which makes it quite difficult to debate—so that members could understand that because it forms part of the history of this debate and what we have done with this bill.Before I do that can I just take the opportunity to acknowledge that I have had the first acknowledgment from the Government benches for bringing this issue forward. Gosh it has taken almost 3 years to get that but today finally a Government member actually said that this is a good debate for our country to be having. That is certainly a slight change in attitude from the Government benches so I think that is worthwhile acknowledging.We are debating these new clauses—well this new clause I should say because this is the debate on clause 6—as two separate Supplementary Order Papers for the following reason. We had very good advice from officials at the Government Administration Committee. In fact the select committee process on this bill was very robust. We had official advice from a range of ministries. It was really a very good example of having a whole-of-Government response to an initiative because we had officials from the Ministry of Education the Ministry of Health the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment Treasury and the Inland Revenue Department all in the room advising us for this select committee process. They were able to take my humble member’s bill which I think initially had just five clauses in it—I thought I could get away with you know a two-sided piece of paper that would deliver 26 weeks’ paid parental leave and found that as a private member it was not quite that simple; almost but not quite that simple.New clause 6 was something that was discussed substantially at the select committee because the officials advised us that in drafting this bill what would be best would be to describe each of the three phases of the coming in of this bill. I had designed it so that the 26 weeks would not come in all in one financial year and that it would be staggered over the course of 3 years. The advice from the officials was that that was best done by separate clauses rather than actually lumping it all together in one clause as I had done.In the normal path of things the select committee would have agreed that that was a very sensible thing to do we would have reported back the bill and it would already have had clause 6 in it as an amendment from the select committee. That could not happen because of the politics that was being played in the select committee at that time. What in fact happened was that the National Party members asked me for an extension of time to report the bill back to the House because they wanted to consider accepting my proposal. I agreed because although I sniffed the scent of a political game I did not want to do anything that would disadvantage New Zealand families from having this opportunity to actually get 26 weeks’ paid parental leave.So I took the National Party members at their word. I took them at their word because they said to me that if they made any changes to paid parental leave—any improvements—it would be done in my bill in my name because it was already in front of Parliament. What transpired is that they spent the next 2 months twiddling their thumbs playing for time using delaying tactics not considering that option at all and then they voted down the bill at select committee.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I think this is now either the third or fourth time that I have issued a warning to the Committee about the fact that this is a very narrow debate and a historical going over of what happened at the select committee—not on these clauses—cannot possibly be in order. So can I ask the member in charge of the bill to come back to the very very narrow debate that we are going to have if it is to continue.SUE MORONEY: Sure; thank you for the advice and the guidance. I probably did get a little distracted because I was talking about the reasons why clause 6 is actually in a Supplementary Order Paper. It was because we could not conclude as a select committee that what we had previously agreed on would be some sensible amendments to the bill. We could not agree on that as a select committee so I as a member had to bring them forward as a Supplementary Order Paper and one of those was in fact clause 6.Clause 6 of course had to be amended again by another Supplementary Order Paper once I had determined as a member that I wanted to try to reach a compromise. That compromise has been traversed in the course of this debate. Members have asked me what the cost differentiation is of the compromise that is embodied in clause 6. Effectively it brings the cost of this bill down from $50 million in the first financial year to just $6 million in the first financial year.