Martin Tracey: Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMartin Tracey: Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 15 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17970. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora Mr Chair. I welcome the opportunity to make comment on the Minister in the chair’s statements. I hope that it will please the Chair that I make comments on the Minister’s statements unlike a situation that happened with a colleague of mine earlier in the week.I think the Minister has made some very very good points. It is a good thing to widen the criteria by which parents can gain parental leave because it is parents whom we are talking about. I think Minister that as long as we continue to genderise it we have a danger of making this only about women staying at home. Although certainly—Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I am very reluctant to do it to one of the people on my side of the Chamber but I have now looked very carefully at the provisions of Part 1 in this bill and the matters to which the member is referring are not part of Part 1. Part 1 is a relatively narrow debate. It might be OK to respond to a Minister who made some comments but normally it is a narrow debate around what it is in the part not about what is in a subsequent bill. I think what everyone has been talking about in the last two speeches is a subsequent bill.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I hear what you are saying. If we look at Part 1 it is about the duration of paid parental leave. There has been some flexibility. I have allowed the Minister some licence there and I would just ask the member and future speakers to be mindful about what is actually in Part 1.TRACEY MARTIN: Speaking to the point of order—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No no. If you want to speak it is your call.TRACEY MARTIN: I am sorry I am now going to have to seek your guidance. I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I am seeking your guidance. I am not trying to argue with you; I am actually trying to understand what has just happened here. For the second time this week a Minister has stood up and brought a series of things into a debate. I am responding to those things and I am not quite sure now where I am at with regard to how I respond.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): That is fair comment. You are responding on a rebuttal basis to comments that were made. On a previous point of order that came from Sue Moroney I said that the Minister was putting in context about where the bill was and how it related to this so there was some licence there. I accept that the member can make rebuttal points about what the Minister has said but then I would ask the member to come back and focus on the length of time—the duration—of paid parental leave which Part 1 is about.TRACEY MARTIN: Thank you Mr Chairperson. Again just to clarify with regard to the Minister’s comments there are some very good things with regard to what the Minister made comment about. We are pleased to see the widening of the criteria because we recognise just as the Minister mentioned that the workforce has changed. It is probably the first time actually that we have had acknowledgment from a Minister in this Government that there is a casualisation and an underemployment of New Zealanders in this country. The need for them to move from one period of temporary work to another period of work is quite marked and so this needed to happen. I will hopefully address that at some stage in the future.With regard to the extension of the period of time in Part 1 of the bill New Zealand First can only reiterate its great disappointment at the fact that the Government has chosen to do the least that it could do—the very least that it could do—for the newborn babies. I did not come up with the word “newborn”. I am not here trying to get anybody’s sympathy or create a weeping workforce out there. The title of the bill is the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill. So it is very disappointing from New Zealand First’s perspective. We say again and again and again that this is the very least that the Government felt it could do.Other members of the Government have mentioned that this is a time frame and they have joked about different time frames that have been put forward by the Green Party and so on and so forth. This is almost the least that any Government is doing—any Government that prides itself on governing a country that strives to be its best. If we look at some of the Nordic nations which I was referring to previously a year has been acknowledged as the time line in which true bonding takes place. I think Sir Peter Gluckman himself has actually pointed out on many occasions that the benefit to New Zealand as a nation from truly supporting young babies and young children in their bonding with a parent—and it does not matter which parent—is vitally important for the nation and its long-term savings in health spending and other spending.So with regard to Part 1 although we appreciate the Minister’s comments—and they certainly have addressed other anomalies that need to be addressed particularly because of the casualisation of the workforce under a National Government—we are disappointed that the Government has gone to the minimum it could do to attempt to keep a voting public behind it at the next election.