Upston LouiseHon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I want to just congratulate the four presiding officers that have been elected by this Parliament—yourself included Mr Assistant Speaker.It is interesting because I actually kind of agree that this is an important piece of legislation and so to have a piece of legislation that's before the 52nd Parliament—the very first piece of legislation that's come to this House—as one that National is supporting the Government on I think is significant. But I want to reiterate one of the reasons why we are supporting it. We campaigned on increasing paid parental leave to 22 weeks. So in our time in office we increased it from 14 weeks to 18 weeks. We campaigned on increasing it to 22 weeks. Can I tell the House that when the debate was going on about increasing it to 26 weeks at that time one of the biggest concerns particularly from small businesses was jumping significantly from 18 to 26 weeks and the importance—so whether it was chambers of commerce or whether it was local small businesses or medium-sized businesses which actually make up the majority of our economy it was the ability to transition and take such a leap.So we support this legislation. I actually think it would be useful for the Government to have considered some of the other areas that we believe were important in supporting new families with newborns. Some of that absolutely is aimed at the dad or the second parent. It's really unfortunate that hasn't been included in this bill and that's why I think that the lack of scrutiny and the lack of an ability for the public to submit in the select committee is a real concern. But I want to come back to that.Some of the other things that we had included as well as our kind of incremental steps to increase paid parental leave campaigning on 22 weeks—one of the things that I think is really important is the ability for both parents to take paid parental leave at the same time. This is a comment that lots of my friends made when they had their children—the fact that one of the parents was able to have time off was great. Actually you know when I had children you weren't entitled to paid parental leave and the reality was if you were self-employed you had no rights to get any paid parental leave. I think some of the changes that we made in our time in office actually made the paid parental leave system far more flexible far more realistic and far more practical for real Kiwi families. That's something I'm particularly proud of.One of the things when you find out as a family or as an individual that you're expecting as I did with my first pregnancy—the last thing you want to have to worry about is: how are you going to pay the bills? So paid parental leave absolutely is critical. I applaud the Government for making this a priority and the fact that National is supporting it—because we campaigned on it. But the thing you shouldn't be proud of is the fact that this is not going to a select committee.So there are a lot of new members in the House and I want to congratulate our class of 2017" particularly from National but across the House. I want to say one of the things that is absolutely the most critical job you do in Parliament is your work on a select committee and the biggest job you do on a select committee is listen. You listen to the submitters whether there are five of them whether there are 50 of them or whether there are 5000 of them. I remember when we were debating the resource management law amendment the power of the select committee process was so so clear to me. When we were sitting in Auckland a person had come before us a member of the public who had driven for five hours to appear before the select committee so he could have his say in our democratic process—he could have his say. He was allocated five minutes because literally we had hundreds and hundreds of submitters we were hearing. He turned around and drove for five hours home.That Government—you have taken away the opportunity for ordinary New Zealanders to have their say on this legislation. And you say it's the same bill. Rubbish! Read the titles—two different bills. Actually what you may have done is incorporated some of the things that real New Zealand families want: greater flexibility.So one of the things as I say to the new members in the House—the select committee is a critical part of your role whether you are a Labour MP whether you're a National MP or whether you're a Green MP. The ability to scrutinise legislation to listen to the public to ensure and to actually make the legislation better than when it was originally drafted—you've just removed that opportunity for the public to do that. So you've removed the opportunity for families and you've removed the opportunity for employers and I think that's absolutely outrageous. Your first foray your first piece of legislation in this House and you've removed the right for ordinary New Zealanders to have their say. So yep you're an inclusive Government—congratulations! Remember this record. The very first piece of legislation you brought to this House—no scrutiny no select committee pushing it through in urgency. And I love the fact that the Greens are sitting there so quietly—so quietly. Actually when we were in Government we worked incredibly hard. We worked incredibly hard with the Business Committee to ensure that the use of urgency was absolutely minimised—absolutely minimised—because we understand and we believe that it is an important part of our democracy and is what makes our Parliament so successful and actually revered across the world. There are other parliaments who say "We want to learn from your select committee process." because in other parliaments they don't have the same scrutiny of legislation. So on this particular bill—the very first one you're introducing—you are ripping off New Zealanders for having their say. And it's an important say because as I said one of the things is flexibility. I would have liked to have seen a greater level of flexibility for families to be able to look at how they look at their paid parental leave how they take their leave together and what their options are and actually some of the best information I got when I was the Minister for Women was about families who were dealing with the challenges of juggling work. Do you know what? One of the biggest challenges to support women into employment or to return to work was how it was going to work for their partner.I think you've lost an opportunity to do more to support women into employment by taking a narrow focus as you have. If you had taken the time you know 1 July—absolutely I'm with you. I want that to happen on 1 July next year. You had the time and you chose not to take it which is really unfortunate. One of the things around scrutiny—and you'll learn this as a Government—is the information that comes from Treasury the officials' advice. So unfortunately in this particular case the scrutiny is narrow. Fiscal impacts are set out in the Cabinet paper and social impacts are touched on but there is no assessment of the broader impacts for example on employers—particularly small or medium sized enterprises—or on women's employability. I would have thought they were fairly critical things for the Government to consider and absolutely for the Minister to have considered. We have a very high participation rate for women in employment in New Zealand. I think that's a record that is fantastic and the fact that businesses in particular have not had the ability to be involved and to provide input into this bill may be a detriment to the very women that we are trying to support in supporting an increase in paid parental leave. I think that would be a crying shame.I do want to say in addition to not having a select committee—I just want to come back to the comment about the Green Party because of course it is the Green Party who has the Minister for Women. Every time we had urgency they talked about transparency and they talked about public participation. The Prime Minister herself has talked about being an inclusive Government. I'm not sure how you can be inclusive when you don't include the New Zealand public."