Bennett Paula: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Bennett Paula: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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PAULA BENNETT (National) 
: 
 I sat through the submissions on the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill and I was absolutely thrilled to hear the ones that came from a variety of places and a variety of people. I stand quite proudly in support of this bill. I would like to address a few concerns to the Minister in the chair Ruth Dyson. What I am interested in discussing and hearing about from the Minister is the bigger-picture stuff. 
I do agree with this bill. I think it is very important that we are identifying predominantly those mothers who are having babies and need our support to take time off and then go back into their businesses. I certainly support the purpose of this bill which is to give those parents the opportunity to provide one-on-one care and still be able to have an overall administrative insight into their businesses. What I do ask though is that we look at the bigger picture of where we are heading with women and children in society and how we could have identified some of those things as we looked through the bill because it really is about women having children later in life and it is equally about their employment opportunities. 
The call from the Prime Minister earlier this year was to see women having more input into the workforce and being “more productive” I think were her actual words. Although I am sure we could all take umbrage at the words about women being more productive I do ask how we can look at helping women to get back into the workforce. I would like to talk a bit about adaptive parents—those parents who adjust their employment and their businesses to be able to raise their children. They are the women who do need that flexibility and need a Government that supports them with what is happening. They also come up with the bigger picture of what is happening to our children as they are raised more and more in day-care facilities—and I do not think that any of us know the effects of that. It is a question that I think we really need to be asking. 
One of the things that came up in the submissions—it was quite interesting and I would like the Minister to comment on this as well—was that paid parental leave be paid in a lump sum. At the moment it is paid over 14 weeks at from memory $357 a week. The purpose of this bill is to support those parents financially while they take time off. What came up from a couple of the submitters is that it would have been helpful for them to have the money in a lump sum. The select committee looked at that and it is something that I felt quite strongly in favour of but I could not convince my colleagues at that stage. 
If the money were given as a lump sum it would mean that parents would have the choice on how they spend the money—whether they supplement their income whether they pay for their mother to fly from Dunedin to Auckland to help them in the first 3 or 4 weeks or whether they use it to buy the new pushchair or whatever. A lump sum would give them a bit more freedom and more opportunity to think about how to spend it. So I challenge the Minister to talk to us about the bigger picture and the changes that are happening in society. I feel that the amendments to the bill could have gone a lot further. How do we feel about broadening it out and giving a payment to all parents whether or not they are in employment—self-employed or in paid employment? How about the baby bonus scheme? How about making the amount $5000 which is about the equivalent of 14 weeks divided by $357? How about rewarding those people who are doing something for the future of our generations? This could be helping anyone from any ethnic and employment status. I say it is time we started supporting those who are taking that huge momentous step of becoming parents and it is time we acknowledged that role. I do not think we do acknowledge parenting as an important role and that was certainly evident when the original paid parental leave legislation came before the House and we did not include paid parental leave for the self-employed. 
I think we are thinking too small. I do not stand before members right now saying that I have all the answers but I would like to hear from the Minister about some of the bigger-picture stuff that we as a society currently have to look at. Those questions are not even being asked let alone answered by the current Government.