Hipkins Chris: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 03 December 2014. Volume:702;Page:1085. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka):I understand that we are debating new clause 6—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): That is exactly what I just said.CHRIS HIPKINS: —in the current debate. That is what he just said. I was busy reading the clause and so I did not want to get it wrong right from the beginning.I have a few questions for the member in the chair Sue Moroney regarding clarification around how she arrived at some of the provisions in this particular new clause. The new clause replaces 16 weeks with 22 weeks effectively for those who give birth to two or more children as a result of one pregnancy—twins or triplets or even more than that; or for those who have a premature baby born before 36 weeks of gestation; or finally for those whose child has an impairment that would entitle them to a Government-funded disability support service.What I would really like to ask is particularly around Government-funded disability support services and I wonder whether the member in charge of the bill could clarify for me what some of those support services would be and in fact whether increasing the period of paid parental leave would likely have any impact on the Government-funded support services that they might get. Various support services might have a range of tests that one has to meet in order to get them so could extending paid parental leave in fact result in someone not being eligible because of the fact that they get paid parental leave and are thereby disqualified from getting paid parental leave if you like?I just want to get perhaps an explanation from the member in charge of the bill that we would not be doing that with this clause. I would hate for the situation where we created a circular problem that made it impossible for somebody to qualify under that particular provision. I do not know this area very well so an explanation of the sorts of disability support services that might be available would I think be very helpful to the Committee.I think that the provision extending paid parental leave for those who have premature babies and for those who have multiple births is a very sensible one. It will significantly reduce the cost of this bill of this legislation. Although I personally would like to see the Government spending more money on providing financial support to parents with new babies I want to congratulate the member on the steps that she has taken to try to get some compromise with the Government.I wonder whether in fact she could elaborate on the steps taken to try to achieve that so that we can actually have some surety that these particular amendments will be able to succeed. As I said although it would not be my first choice to reduce the number of weeks I personally support the original intention of the legislation which was 26 weeks’ paid parental leave for all parents of newborn children. This does raise some wider issues. I think that one of the questions really should be whether in fact those parents who fall into this category—have multiple births have children with disabilities or have premature babies—once we get to that point of 26 weeks of paid parental leave whether in fact the overall concept of paid parental leave should be changed to reflect those additional needs and the additional costs that those families are likely to face.I think it has raised an interesting debate that might be picked up further down the track. I think those are quite interesting issues. I suspect that they probably did not get picked up—or maybe they did come up earlier on during the debate. The member in charge of the bill might be able to elaborate on those further for us. I will leave my questions at that. The first one certainly is a relatively technical question which I would quite like to hear from the member in charge of the bill on.