Strange JamieJAMIE STRANGE (Labour—Hamilton East): Thank you Mr Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to take a call on the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Shared Leave) Amendment Bill. Also like others I'd like to acknowledge the member Nicola Willis for bringing this bill to the House and for raising this important issue that we are debating today.I feel like it would be useful like other members have shared in this House to share a little bit of personal experience. I find that it is important that as MPs we do that from time to time so that people know we are real people. In 2008 my wife and I had our first child. At the time my wife was working as a school teacher. I was studying and working part-time while I was studying. My wife received 12 weeks' paid parental leave. That was the amount at the time; it was 12 weeks. So she received that 12 weeks and basically gave up her teaching role and I continued to study and work. Needless to say our income was fairly modest at that time. We made the decision for my wife to do her very best to stay at home to look after the kids. We ended up having three more. We had four under five which was a bit of a blur really. I wouldn't recommend that to be honest. It was a challenging time but that 12 weeks of paid parental leave was absolutely vital for the early years of the life of our first son.There was an MP in the House at the time—Sue Moroney; Labour MP—and she was campaigning to see that increased from 12 weeks. She was successful in that in terms of getting support—I believe it was from the Hon Peter Dunne at the time—to increase paid parental leave to 26 weeks which is what we currently have. I agree with the previous Green member Jan Logie in terms of the benefits of having one of the parents at home with the child. It's incredibly challenging at the moment for a lot of people to be able to do that and a lot of that I'd put down to rising house prices. Also we acknowledge the challenges around the cost of living at the moment but certainly the cost of rent and the cost of mortgages has gone up a lot which means that it is very difficult to have a parent staying at home if the couple does want to go down that route. Personally I think it is still the preferred route in my personal opinion to have a family member at home. We used to see a lot of that back in the 1940s 50s 60s and 70s but particularly in the 80s we started to see a few changes in the area.This piece of legislation—I guess building on that—talks about having some flexibility in that so that it doesn't have to be just as it was in my case the mother at home. At that time I could have also got some paid parental leave and we could have shared it so I understand where the member's coming from. She certainly makes her arguments very clear in terms of the benefits of that flexibility.Personally after the election I'd like to see the Government of the day look into this issue because I think it's an issue that is worthy of working with officials on and actively looking into in terms of what the member's brought to the House today. So I do hope that in the next term of Parliament this is actively looked at. I would like to go on record by saying that I would like to see the Government of the day do that. Mr Speaker thank you for the time today.