Beaumont Carol: Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBeaumont Carol: Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 15 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:18000. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): I actually feel slightly sad having come to the Committee stage that we have seen attempts to make this a better piece of legislation but they have just been rejected out of hand. Here we are dealing with something that really should be a cause for celebration. This bill the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill should be a cause for celebration because finally National has got it. Finally it accepts that paid parental leave is something worth supporting. It has taken a while.This bill is quite a small measure but National voted against paid parental leave when it was introduced in 2002. It voted against extending it in 2004 and I think National members might have abstained in 2007. Then you know National has been playing all sorts of silly silly games with Sue Moroney’s very excellent piece oflegislation—well supported by many members in this House—which tries to really make a difference and extends paid parental leave. We have had all sorts of requests by Mr Auchinvole to extend the time for reporting back with a view to reach some decision and then reneging on that and we have had filibustering basically for weeks and weeks and weeks to try to stop a vote from happening on that bill. Then of course finally we have had the Government putting something forward in the Budget.I assume that the Government’s intention is still to veto Ms Moroney’s bill if it ever lets it get back into the House to be voted on but what we have got here something that should be a cause for celebration is somewhat tempered by the fact that the changes are minor. Next year there will be 2 extra weeks of paid parental leave and 2 more weeks the year after. Of course in the parental tax credit provision we have seen that despite its being described as supporting “lower and middle income families” and I think that somewhere else it talks about low and middle income families it quite clearly excludes 14000 of the most struggling families. Those who are really struggling to make ends meet and those whose children are living in poverty are being excluded. So the changes are minor and they exclude the people who really need it.Of course we saw last night and this morning the Government vote against opportunities to fix those things and to stand up in this Chamber and say: “We all support families and we all understand that newborn children need the best start in life. Let us give them and primarily their mothers”—not always their mothers but primarily their mothers—“the best possible start in life.” We need to give them the opportunity to have bonding to have good breastfeeding established and to make sure that children have a very healthy and exceptional start to their life. We want all of our children to do well not just some of our children—Mike Sabin: Title and commencement.CAROL BEAUMONT: —and not just the wealthy or as Mr Sabin keeps referring to them the hard-working ones. We want that for every person and every child in the country. Children are not workers. Last night we had Mr Sabin talking about hard-working babies it seemed. But anyway this is something that we wanted to make real progress on.I have to say that this bill is deeply cynical—deeply cynical. This Government has done this only because there is an election in 4 months. It has done it only because it knows that it is so strongly supported. The campaign around Ms Moroney’s bill—the 26 for Babies people—has struck a real chord. There is a genuine need out there in the community. The Government’s measure is deeply cynical very small excludes many and is effectively an election bribe but at least it is some progress. As I said it should be a cause for celebration that National has finally understood that paid parental leave is worthwhile.What is also deeply cynical is that the Minister in the chair Simon Bridges stood there last night and started talking about how this measure is extending paid parental leave to lots of other people who are not currently covered by it. Well what the Minister was talking about was announcements about measures that were made in the Budget but are not being enacted in this bill and I understand will not be coming into effect until 2016. There were very good announcements about casual workers and seasonal workers and so on.I want to say that this bill should perhaps be called “Support for Some Newborn Children Bill”—