Moroney Sue: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 08 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9462. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour): Thank you Mr Chair and in fact I do intend to speak to the two amendments that I have brought forward under Part 1 of the Employment Standards Legislation Bill. I was hoping and waiting really for the members on the Government side to get up and talk about how important paid parental leave is to them but I think their silence on this shows that what we have been saying on this side of the Chamber is absolutely true—they have been forced down this path. It is not something that they would have naturally come to by themselves without an awful lot of pressure going on.So it is all kudos really to the people who have made submissions the people who have signed petitions and the people of New Zealand who have really got in behind understanding what a wise investment it is in this country’s future if we put a little bit of taxpayer funding into supporting those early months of a baby’s development. New Zealanders absolutely get this in a way that the Government does not really—we get to save money. The rest of us as taxpayers stop spending money on the bad outcomes on the bad stuff—on the children being admitted to hospital unnecessarily on the children going through remedial education processes unnecessarily and on building more and more prisons unnecessarily. We can stop spending money on all that bad stuff if we get this right. The Government is not quite there yet but look it is making a good impression of it.I have two amendments. The first is to do with—the first one I want to address at least—these keeping-in-touch hours. I have got to say that there is a bill in my name that is similar but not the same. Obviously it extends paid parental leave to what it should be—26 weeks—so that is the first difference in it. But the second one is that it introduces a concept like keeping-in-touch hours but it calls it work-contact hours. I have got to say that the title “keeping-in-touch hours” just seems a little icky to me. It just feels—you know going back to work and the touchy-feely thing—a little biticky. But anyway that is what it is called in this bill and the concept I do agree with if not the title that those members have given it.However I think it does need some protections around it. This is the ability for parents—mostly women in fact—to go back to work during the course of their paid parental leave period and to not suffer the consequence that they would today of actually having their paid parental leave payments stopped. That would be the impact if a woman today was on paid parental leave and she went back for let us say a training day. Maybe there is a training course that has become available in her workplace that is a once in a lifetime or a once-a-year opportunity and she does not want to miss out on that and she goes back and she is paid for the time that she is there for that training course which is up to 40 hours under this provision.I want to ensure and the Labour Party wants to ensure that it is at the worker’s request at the employee’s request and at the mother’s request because it is the mother—or the parent who is on paid parental leave—who we believe will make the assessment as to whether it is in her best interests the best interests of her family and the best interests of the child. Because that from the Labour Party’s perspective is the lens through which we see every piece of policy and every piece of legislation: is this in the best interests of the child?We firmly believe that what the bill currently says is that it is just by this mutual agreement between employee and employer. In the real world what we know is that the power imbalance that exists between employee and employer is such that we could see the occasion when this might be forced upon the parent where the parent does not want to go back and do those keeping-in-touch hours but the employer puts a lot of pressure on. Those of us who have been working parents know the guilt that is already associated with being a working parent. It can be very difficult at times. You sometimes feel that you are not doing 100 percent what you need to be doing at home and sometimes you do not feel that you are doing 100 percent what you need to be doing at work.So in this environment with that guilt that already exists we in the Labour Party believe it needs an additional protection. The amendment that we are proposing—and we look forward to other parties supporting this—is not a hard thing to do but it is the right thing to do. It is to ensure that the application for keeping-in-touch hours comes from the parent because we know that they are going to be the person in the best position of the decision making that is going to have the best interests of their child at heart and that is what is of most importance—[Bell rung] Mr Chair.