Bennett David: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Bennett David: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:631;Page:2857] 
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) 
: 
 I want to respond to the comments made by the Minister. The Minister in the chair the Hon Ruth Dyson made comments in relation to an example that I gave and it was a very touching example from a real-life situation. The Department of Labour made an amendment to the legislation in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee to take into account part of that matter. However the committee did not take into account the full amount—that is the accident compensation component. 
I see that that is now provided for on Supplementary Order Paper 31 in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson and that is fine. 
Hon Mark Gosche 
: Apologise. 
DAVID BENNETT 
: No I have nothing to apologise for because I have just relayed that that issue had not been addressed and in fact now it has been. The point is that the Labour members actually listened to me because in the second reading I raised that issue again. In the second reading the Minister set out what she was going to address on her Supplementary Order Paper and that matter was not to be on it but suddenly it has come along. The Labour members have listened to what we relayed to the public and I congratulate them on doing so. 
But that is not enough. I want to know whether there is provision for the same ability as that in the employer-employee legislation. Do employers and employees have the same ability in their legislation? Do the employers and employees have an amendment like this as well? If they do not then there is a gaping hole in that legislation. The reason there are gaping holes is that the Labour members do not understand what the public actually goes through. They do not understand what “self-employed” means because they do not want to know what “self-employed” means. Those members have never been self-employed. If they were self-employed they would have delivered a company that has gone like this country to zero percent growth over the last 6 months. They have strangled and destroyed this country’s growth. 
How will the country provide the health and education systems we want when it will not provide any growth like that set up by National and the previous Labour Government? If we had had a Labour Government during the 1990s there would have been no growth in this country. There would have been no ability to pay for any of these kinds of welfare payments which have been made possible by the strong economic conditions that we set up in the 1990s. Labour would be apologising not to 25000 people but to 4 million people for having a country that did not deliver. I think Mr Mark Blumsky was quite right in saying that we need an apology for those 8000 people because Labour has had the economic conditions in the last 4 years whereby it could have delivered for those 8000 people but it has not. 
You have known for the last 4 years that there was a gaping hole in the legislation and did you deliver for them? No. Will you deliver for people in the future? No you will not unless you are part of— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: I just remind the member that he cannot bring the Chair into the debate. 
DAVID BENNETT 
: The fact remains that there has been a situation where this Government sat for 4 years—sat and watched. It went through an election campaign and it sat and watched those people miss out. The situation here is that we went to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and found there were gaping holes in the legislation that the Government had not addressed. It was only at the select committee when members of the National Party brought forward the reality of the situation that we got the amendments that deliver paid parental leave for all New Zealanders. So I tell all New Zealanders that although Labour does not say it is sorry they should thank the National Party for bringing these amendments forward because the pressure we put on in the select committee has mean we have the results here today. Labour members had no idea. They would never have given the amendments to us because they do not know what is going on. It was National members who brought this issue to the country’s attention and National should be thanked for doing so.