Lees-Galloway IainHon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Thank you Madam Chair and I thank members for their contributions and thank the Hon Nikki Kaye for her questions. I would just like to clear up a few misunderstandings I think that members of the Opposition may have about the way paid parental leave operates. The Hon Judith Collins asked why the person who did not give birth to the child should not be able to contribute and then made the comment that fathers should be involved. Well the way that the paid parental leave legislation works right now is that actually both parents can take leave from work at the same time; one on paid parental leave one can be unpaid.Hon Judith Collins: Oh unpaid.Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Yes that's correct. You heard me right—well done. Also it is possible to transfer. The member asks rightly what about fathers. If the mother has the primary entitlement to paid parental leave it is possible to transfer and it's actually the transfer that the Hon Amy Adams' amendment relies on and I'll come back to that in a second. So it is actually incorrect to suggest that the second parent the father or somebody other than the parent that gave birth to the child is not entitled to paid parental leave and does not have the opportunity to contribute to the raising of the child through that system of paid parental leave. So let's just get that cleared up right away.Nikki Kaye asked rightly why are we not supporting Supplementary Order Paper 3 this evening. Well the problem—and this is often the case with an Opposition Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) dealing with something that is reasonably complex—is that the Supplementary Order Paper is somewhat flawed. Now we have had only a few hours to consider this. The Supplementary Order Paper was only tabled at 4.15 this afternoon which did not give our caucus an opportunity to consider it but it also means that we have had only a few hours to consider the Supplementary Order Paper.However in the little bit of time that we have had to consider it this is what we have discovered. The clauses that are drafted all leverage off the transfer provisions in section 71E of the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act in a way that is incompatible with the preconditions for transfer contained in that section. In particular section 71E(2)(a) requires that the proposed transferee has or intends to have primary responsibility for the day-to-day care of the child;". However it is incompatible with the concept of primary responsibility for there to be two people with primary responsibility for the same child at the same time. In legal terms the primary responsibility qualification in section 71E(2) is the key point. It falls over there because while the SOP's new section 7(4) says there can be two primary carers at the same time by virtue of a transfer that would only work if you actually transfer and since you can't have two people with primary responsibility at the same time you can't transfer.So the SOP that has been brought to the committee tonight at the last minute is flawed. That doesn't mean that the issue that it seeks to address is not one that is worth considering. This is why on the Government side we have said we do want to consider this because—Brett Hudson: Put it in select committee right now.Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: I'll get to that Mr Hudson. I will get to why we're not going to select committee in a moment. So we do want to consider this and we welcome the opportunity to work with the National Party to come up with an amendment to the legislation that actually works because this one doesn't.Some members—Brett Hudson I heard—said why not take it to select committee. This bill that the Government introduced is a bill that extends paid parental leave. That is a matter that has been to select committee twice before and that is why we are supporting the very good Supplementary Order Paper 2 in the name of Sarah Dowie because it supports the purpose of this legislation which is to extend paid parental leave. Sarah Dowie's Supplementary Order Paper extends the keeping-in-touch hours. That supports the purpose of the bill that the Government introduced. Amy Adams' Supplementary Order Paper addresses an entirely different policy matter that needs more consideration than we can give it at the committee of the whole House tonight. It is a different policy that is not addressed in the bill that was introduced by the Government. It would be inappropriate to decide to take this bill to select committee to address a policy matter that actually stands outside of the bill as it was introduced.I want to acknowledge Sarah Dowie for finding a way to improve the bill and support the purpose of the bill. It's a very good Supplementary Order Paper from Sarah Dowie and I'm sad that the National Party haven't talked about it more today because that was a good amendment that we had an opportunity to work together on and I'm looking forward to Sarah Dowie having the opportunity to present that Supplementary Order Paper to the committee. I thank members for their questions. That is why the Government has taken the position that we have.That's why unfortunately we cannot support Amy Adams' Supplementary Order Paper this evening but I want to extend once again the offer to the National Party. This is an interesting policy idea. We do think there are fish-hooks in it. We have raised concern about the fact that the impact would be to reduce the overall amount of paid leave that is available to spend time with baby and of course spending time with baby is what this is all about. We recognise the fish-hooks but we do want to have a conversation; this is not the bill to progress that policy."