Muller Todd: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — Recommittal Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMuller Todd: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — Recommittal Third Reading[Sitting date: 25 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1950. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): I rise to talk to the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill at its third reading. Well what an extraordinary process listening to Labour on this bill. Quite frankly the Labour Party is all over the place. At question time over the last few weeks all I have heard particularly around questions to the Minister of Finance is that we have borrowed too much to get through the tough years through the global financial crisis and that we should have been at surplus earlier—the inference being that we should have cut spending more aggressively than by our measured approach. And now all I hear and have heard particularly over the last 2 hours as we have discussed and debated this bill is typical Labour: spend spend spend. Spend regardless of the impact on the economy; spend regardless of the impact on New Zealand families with higher interest rates; spend regardless of the fact that ultimately to pay for it you need to tax middle New Zealand and small business out of existence; and spend regardless of the fact that this Government has done more for parents and children than any other Government in recent memory including paid parental leave.This obsession that somehow only the Labour Party has the moral high ground to hold a view on paid parental leave is absolute nonsense. This party has campaigned on extending paid parental leave and we got a huge endorsement from this country because of it. What I have struggled to accept and watch from members on the other side of the House particularly from the Labour Party is an absolute almost precious sense that unless their view of how paid parental leave is be applied it does not matter and therefore it does not count. Well it does count. This party has promoted it and has got it through the last Budget and it is delivering real value in terms of family support in this country.Sue Moroney: Don’t be mean-spirited; come on.TODD MULLER: It is not mean-spirited. That is far from the truth. This is a party that is committed to paid parental leave has campaigned on it and has delivered real outcomes for New Zealand. Spend spend spend—that is what we get from the Labour Party. Well guess what? It is not yours to spend. You have not earned it. The hard-working people of New Zealand have earned it and they have afforded us the privilege to spend it on their behalf.The Government has said all along—as my good colleague said earlier and I think very effectively—that we are prepared to extend paid parental leave but in a way that is affordable. We can afford more when we can afford more and we were very clear in Budget 2014 that over this financial year we would make some adjustments in that regard.This is a Government that is focused on delivering a comprehensive package of practical measures—practical measures that deliver real value to New Zealand families right here right now. It is not some utopian view whereby you can provide everything for everybody. This is a package that delivers real value that we can talk to. We have lifted paid parental leave to 16 weeks and then we will extend it beyond that to 18 weeks. For our young families we have provided the opportunity to have free GP visits. This is real stuff OK and when you get the extreme anger that we hear expressed on the other side of the House because their particular view of paid parental leave does not progress I think it is a nonsense.We can talk to a record that is very very strong for families in this country. In only a couple of months’ time we will be able to extend paid parental leave out to 16 weeks and then of course next year from 1 April we will extend it to 18 weeks—18 weeks. This is not a Government that is not supporting families. That is 18 weeks’ paid parental leave from next year and we will increase the parental tax credit by $70 a week to $220 a week. They smile and say: “Oh that’s not good enough.” but that is real money in the pockets of families in New Zealand at a time when we have got a whole lot of competing objectives. We can I think talk quite confidently to this country about our record of achievement. That is why quite frankly when we took this to the country we got the result that we got last September. I have appreciated the opportunity to spend a few moments talking about why our approach is the right one and why I will vote strongly against the bill that is front of us tonight. Thank you.