Fenton Darien: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Fenton Darien: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 25 July 2012. Volume:682;Page:3955. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Speaker. I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak in support of this bill this very important bill the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill. I congratulate my colleague Sue Moroney who I know has worked really hard on this bill. She is supported not only by the majority in this House but also by child advocacy groups community organisations business unions and working families up and down New Zealand. In fact this bill is supported by everyone except National and ACT. But they have never supported paid parental leave. Maggie Barry perhaps needs to go and study her own party’s history. At every opportunity it has voted against paid parental leave and you do not have to go back very far in the  
Hansard  
to find out what the National Party members were saying about it including the current Minister of Women’s Affairs who made a disgraceful speech—a disgraceful speech. She actually said in the debate in 2006 around extending paid parental leave to the self-employed that it was like a benefit that women would be better off with a tax cut and that it was just extending welfare all the time. I mean it was disgraceful stuff that we have heard from the Minister of Women’s Affairs. 
Then we have heard the National Party blaming women and children for the global financial crisis. Can you believe it? Can you believe it? I have heard everything now. The truth is that this Government would far rather waste money on tax handouts to people who do not really need them than invest in future generations by ensuring that they have the best start in life. 
This bill will ease pressure on working parents and boy do they need it at the moment. It will align us with entitlements in the OECD and help prioritise the early years of our precious children’s development. Extending paid parental leave will improve the health of mothers and children. It will help working mothers breastfeed until their baby is 6 months of age which is the World Health Organization’s recommendation. It also helps prevent premature return to the workforce on the basis of financial stress. It enables women to stay connected to the workforce but have a reasonable amount of time off with their newborn babies. 
Paid parental leave is an issue about families and children but it is also a work rights issue. The need for paid parental leave has sharpened over the last 20 years as more women have entered the workforce and here I want to acknowledge all the women and men throughout New Zealand who campaigned for at least 20 years for paid parental leave. And the campaign goes on. Paid parental leave gives a worker the right to take time out to recover from birth to establish breastfeeding and to bond with their baby. We do that by paying an entitlement that minimises the economic impact that forces parents to return to work before the time is right. 
We now know from a number of evaluations that our current 14 weeks’ paid parental leave is too short. Parents are returning to work early because of economic pressures and the negative impact of that cannot be exaggerated. There are strong and proven and employment reasons for having longer paid parental leave. The goal of paid parental leave is to support both the maternal health of the mother and the baby but the current length of paid parental leave in New Zealand does not do it adequately. 
People tonight have said that most other OECD countries offer longer periods of paid parental leave than New Zealand and many provide leave at a higher proportion including Australia which has now moved to 18 weeks and it is paid at a higher rate than New Zealand’s. But unfortunately since National became the Government in 2008 it has done the bare minimum on paid parental leave. The amount has increased because it had to under the Act. It is an automatic increase. You are talking about $20 a week over some period of time. It is provided for cost of living increases only as it had to under the Act. 
After being a world leader when paid parental leave was introduced in 2002 and extended in 2005 New Zealand is now lagging behind and we know that New Zealand was criticised internationally just last week at the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women because of our record not only on progress for women but also on paid parental leave. 
All Governments have to make choices about priorities every day they are in office. We say this Government is making the wrong choices and priorities. It is wasting money on foolish ventures on consultants and on a crazy asset sale scheme. Well Labour’s difference is that we choose families and children. I support this bill.