Moroney Sue: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 05 November 2014. Volume:701;Page:679. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour):Well is it not interesting? After all of that debate before the election on this very bill when the Government members wanted to talk and talk and talk now they want to close the debate down. Well I think New Zealand families will be able to see exactly what is going on there.Hon Ruth Dyson: There’s a word for that that you’re not allowed to use.SUE MORONEY: Ha ha! There is a word for that; we are not quite allowed to use it in this context.Clause 5 is the part of the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill that does need extensive debate because this is where the duration is actually spelt out in this bill. This is the contentious part of the bill because this is the specific point of disagreement between the people who are voting for this bill and the people who are voting against this bill—the duration.What clause 5 does is it actually stages the implementation of 26 weeks’ paid parental leave into stages. People might recall that this was a part of the bill that caught the public’s imagination. When my bill was first drawn from the ballot at Easter 2012 the then Minister of Finance Bill English—he is still the same Minister of Finance today—said: “Oh you know it’s just completely unaffordable—completely unaffordable.” So the idea of staging the implementation of this became an incredibly important part in the public debate because people could see that I as a member and the Labour Party actually were taking a very responsible approach to this. Actually the Labour Party’s policy was to get to 12 months’ paid parental leave. We did not believe that that was immediately affordable in the fiscal environment of 2012 and so we decided that the next best stage that we should aim for was 26 weeks.But again as an acknowledgment of the global financial crisis which was really at full throttle at that period of time we wanted to do it in a staged way and this is the clause—clause 5—in the bill that actually does that. It does it by bringing 22 weeks’ paid parental leave in as of 1 July next year. And because of the amendment that I have to clause 5 as well this would mean if the Government was not so mean-spirited that families in the categories that we have been outlining in the previous debate could have been enjoying 22 weeks’ paid parental leave from 1 July next year. Then in clause 5 it says that they could have been taking part in 26 weeks’ paid parental leave by 1 July 2017. And that is the impact of clause 5.I want to take some time to debunk the flimsy small contribution that the National Party members have made to the debate this evening about their reasons for voting against those families. What they have said is that families who have multiple births according to the current Government already get well supported by the Government. But here is the truth of the matter: the home help that the Minister for Social Development Anne Tolley referred to is available for 3 months. It is available only for 3 months and that is the period of time that people currently get for paid parental leave. That is the reason why paid parental leave needs to be extended for people who have had a multiple birth. It is because their home help support runs out after 3 months and that is the very reason why it needs to be extended to them.But also it is not available to all of those families who have a multiple birth. It is available to them only if they also have another child under the age of 5. So the statement from the Minister was completely misleading about the level of support that these families already enjoy. That is why we actually had the woman Donnelle Belanger-Taylor come before our select committee and tell us about her saga. I know that Jan Logie spoke about it earlier but I want to read from the written submission that Donnelle Belanger-Taylor put to our committee because I think it really catches it.She said to the select committee: “We did all the right things before we decided to have a second child. We saved budgeted and accrued annual leave. And then an ultrasound showed two little black blobs. Suddenly our plans looked inadequate. We needed more equipment more money and a bigger car yet I had to stop work a lot sooner.” Her obstetrician made her stop work at 28 weeks so her paid parental leave ran out when the twins were 6 weeks old. So at 6 weeks old they were in a growth spurt that saw her feeding the babies for 16 hours straight they were using nearly 100 nappies a week and she could not imagine going back to work but their budget was already hurting. She said: “We managed to cope until the twins were 5 months old but they were still waking three or more times a night each.”But financially she had to go back to work. She said: “We were away from home 13 hours a day commuting on the train. Every break I got I rushed over to the day care to feed them. It just about killed me. I had to resign after 2 months on the verge of a complete mental breakdown. Three more months of paid parental leave would have made a big difference. If we had been able to wait until they were 8 months I could have coped with going back to full-time work. They were sleeping better. Breastfeeding would have been less frequent so my workdays would have been shorter. I would have been paying proper taxes for the past 2 years I would have been putting money onto my student loan and into KiwiSaver and we wouldn’t be getting Working for Families. Parents of multiples in particular need more paid parental leave. Nobody plans on having twins. We have to stop work earlier we have greater risk of pre-term infants and we have higher expenses. If extended paid parental leave can’t be fully funded maybe it could be targeted at the families of multiples.”That was her plea to the select committee and the inspiration behind the Supplementary Order Paper that I have brought to this Parliament today. Colleagues who have spoken are absolutely right. That is not what we aimed to achieve with this. But I have taken the step in good faith to try to get an agreement across this Parliament that would benefit families and the Government tonight has snubbed exactly those families with its response.But it is no surprise actually. I do not know why we were expecting that it might have done something that is common sense because the Government has shown time and time again that this is not its priority that families are not its priority and that paid parental leave in particular is not its priority. It has spent more money moving the Treaty of Waitangi one block than what this bill asked it to spend in the next financial year supporting around 2800 families who desperately need the support. I am a great fan of preserving the Treaty of Waitangi but that is the amount of money that we are asking to be spent on the future of those children’s lives and there is no comparison that should be able to be made on that. That figure is less than half—it is about a quarter—of what John Key wants to spend on his referendums about a New Zealand flag that we do not even know most of the country might not even want and yet the Government would rather spend money on that sort of folly than address the issues that are actually affecting us as a society.Clause 5 is the provision that would make the difference to those families. It would bring in 22 weeks on 1 July next year. Think about what that means. It means that families who have possibly just had their first ultrasound and possibly just found out that there is more than one black blob in the ultrasound would if this bill was passed tonight have extended paid parental leave of 22 weeks for their newborn children. It means that the families who will not know at this point in time that their baby is going to be a premature birth which is before 37 weeks’ gestation would be entitled to it as well.