Bennett Paula: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Bennett Paula: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
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PAULA BENNETT (National) 
: 
 I rise to support this bill. Self-employed people work hard. They are the backbone of the country. They are the people who take the risks and they are the ones who put themselves out there say they will stand up for something and give it a go. They struggle against the bureaucracy that actually makes it more and more difficult for them to run their businesses. Instead of supporting small businesses we find a Government that in general just keeps piling on more and more taxes and more and more paperwork that needs to be done and making more of a burden. 
The risks those people take currently when they are trying to employ people are embarrassing and should be embarrassing for us as a country. Time and time again in my previous role in the recruitment field I spoke on a daily basis to employers and to those who were looking for work and I heard the same story from small employers. They said it was too hard and too risky to take people on. They said if it did not work out then their small businesses with profits being absolutely tight and often non-existent could not afford to look at taking other people on. These were plumbers retailers and people who had stepped out there and were trying to do their best even though they had often been badly burnt. I spoke to one couple who had a plumbing business. The business had expanded and they had taken on a couple of employees. They were willing to train some young people in the business and put them through everything but they said they could not do it because of the extra costs. They could not take the risk. They reverted to running the business just by themselves. 
The National Party has advocated strongly for this amendment. Self-employed people deserve recognition. I have been told by many people who are in this position that when they step out and take 14 weeks off to have a baby they may use this payment to get an accountant to step into their business part-time and oversee it for them. I was talking to a hairdresser who said that this legislation would give her the opportunity to employ someone on a part-time basis to step into her business and work on her behalf. The difference between these people and the ones who are in employee roles is that more often than not rather than just keeping their own income people say they will use this money to pay other people to do their job while they step out of their business. The thing the National Party is most excited about with this amendment bill is that it starts to give the self-employed some choices. The National Party advocates hugely for choice—that is what it is about for us. 
When we talk about choice we can refer to rural women. I notice that the previous speaker identified rural women as an important group. We do not find it often but as has already been stated this is something we agree on. We agree on this bill but we also agree that our rural women are equally as important as women who live and work in the cities. Rural women deserve this recognition and deserve this amendment bill because they are our true backbone. They are the ones who not only run the rural businesses—because we girls know what really happens out on the farms—and get out there and work in the cowsheds but also run the households as well. They are the ones who really work their fingers to the bone. 
David Bennett 
: Keep the guys in line. 
PAULA BENNETT 
: They keep the guys in line as one of my colleagues has just said. Rural women did however ask for a lump sum. This is not a new concept to the National Party and we were interested to hear it come through in some of the submissions. As it is part of our philosophy what we really liked about it was that again it just opened up those sorts of choices. Rural women said to us that a lump sum would give them choice in how they use the money and in what they do. I have worked out that the $347.50 a week adds up over the 14 weeks to just over $5000. 
One of the other things that rural women identified was that they have problems getting specialist care in the rural areas. We could go into that because that is a shame on us in itself but it is not what we are here to discuss. They said they may even choose to use that lump sum if they get it for specialist care. One woman said that if she received a lump sum it would give her the option of flying in her mum or her mother-in-law from another part of the country. She would have the money to be able to get that level of support. Others talked about how expensive it is to have babies with all the equipment and everything else that they need. They stated that having a lump sum would help them to pay for some of that. It is a huge advantage that these women can now have some choice. I certainly challenge our current Labour-led Government to think about how it could push that issue a bit further and to think about how it may be able to open up more choice for women. 
I suppose that element of choice is what I would like to move on to now because it is something that is rather dear to my heart and is one of the main reasons that I am here as a National member of Parliament. For me in particular it is about choice for women. I cannot be more adamant and more blatant about saying that my agenda is about choice for women. I am asking the Government to start looking at some of the bigger-picture stuff. I am asking the Government to stand up and identify that there are some real issues in our society—issues that are occurring now and will just keep growing in the future. Unless we start asking some of these questions we will never ever come up with any answers. 
They are not the easy questions and they are not the ones that we all readily have answers to. But let us not have any doubts about it—women are having fewer babies. The facts are that they are having them later and that we have a declining population. The reality is that some of those women do want to be stay-at-home parents. I do not think that we as a society recognise that any more as the valuable role that it truly is. Instead we have a push into paid work. Is that what we want? I do not really know but it is a question we need to ask ourselves as a society. 
Childcare options are something that the Government in all fairness has opened up to a bit more. It says it is opening up to those in this term. It is like putting a piece of chewing gum in a hole when there is a leak. The question and the answer are so much bigger than just the issue of childcare. How about we reward those families that decide that a grandparent will help them look after the child? How about we open up more choice in how we fund the childcare side of it? How about we recognise those parents who choose to stay at home instead of treating them like second-class citizens as we currently do? I do not know the effects of having a child in long-term day care but neither do other members and neither do we as a society. Unless we start asking those sorts of questions and unless we start doing a bit more research to identify what we are doing to our children with our changing society we are in real fear of having to fix problems later instead of looking at the big-picture stuff now and identifying how it goes through. 
I stand in support of this bill but I see it as a small part of what we need to be doing as a country. I ask for a bit of vision and for more leadership than this small amendment bill gives us. But I commend the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee which looked at the bill. I certainly thank those who brought submissions to us and I proudly stand and support this amendment for the self-employed.