Macindoe Tim: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMacindoe Tim: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 23 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19377. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West):I just want to point out to anybody who may be listening that it is not the Government’s intention to drag out this particular clause clause 3 but Mr Chair you did just accept a closure motion when only four members had spoken on this side of the Chamber and there were other members seeking the call.Andrew Little: Nothing genuine about this speech!TIM MACINDOE: I can assure Mr Little that this is going to be very genuine and I am happy to tell him why if he would like to stop sounding like a foghorn and listen. A number of Opposition claims have been made. He is clearly not interested in listening. He is just going to filibuster from that side by preventing me from speaking.First of all I would like to acknowledge Sue Moroney’s husband Shane who is in the gallery. I am sure it is a pleasure for her to have her husband here tonight. I do also want to acknowledge that Sue has been incredibly lucky with members’ bills because I think she has had several drawn out in her time as a member. In my time here I have never had a single one drawn out. People who are listening may wonder. It is a little bit like parliamentary lotto. If you get lucky they get drawn out of the ballot.I think there is an important point that does need to be made and that is that the members’ bills of the Opposition cannot be used to derail a Government’s Budget. It is very important to remind everybody who is listening that notwithstanding the very narrow support for the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill in the current Parliament of members with the composition of parties that are here this bill has never been voted on by the New Zealand public. It has never been taken to the public for a mandate and therefore it is a little bit rich for the members opposite to claim the moral high ground on behalf of the 60 members of this Parliament tonight who are voting for it when 4.4 million New Zealanders have not yet had a chance to vote on it. As I say members’ bills of the Opposition cannot derail a Government’s Budget because a Government has to have the ability to budget for the long term to plan its fiscal strategy and to work out how revenue and Government spending can be organised in a responsible way to ensure that New Zealand taxpayers—who after all will have to pay for anything that a Parliament commits expenditure to—can afford it and that it has been factored in. This clearly had not been.Even more important it is worth nothing that in this year’s Budget there was $500 million of new spending for New Zealand families.Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: How much?TIM MACINDOE: There was $500 million and that did include an extension to paid parental leave and I was proud to support that. So I reject utterly any suggestion that members on this side are not in favour of paid parental leave. We are and we demonstrated that with our Budget. We also broadened the scope with the extension of the parental tax credit which meant that more people qualify. Again that is very important particularly for those at the bottom end of the scale who most need support. Thirdly—and it is allied to this—we have extended the opportunity for families in New Zealand to access free doctors visits for children. Again that is an important measure that I am very proud of. So this is a family-friendly Government and that was a family-friendly Budget but this particular measure that we are debating tonight has not had the endorsement of the New Zealand people.I also just want to make a point about the accusation of filibustering because boy that is rich. In my 6 years here I have listened to the Opposition filibuster on the Auckland governance bill to the point where there were 30000 amendments tabled most of which wanted to change the date of commencement—30000—and we had to sit here all day on a Saturday listening to that nonsense. I heard the member whose name this bill is in filibustering on the Royal Society bill which was totally uncontroversial. She had nothing of any value to say nor did any of her colleagues. I also heard them do the same thing on the Parana Park bill. If they would like me to talk about the Parana Park bill which was a wonderful little local measure for Hamilton I am happy to do so but it would not be relevant. That is the sort of thing that they did—talk irrelevantly. I point out that every member of the Government who has spoken tonight has dealt with the substantive nature of this bill. They have dealt with the issues that arise from it they have dealt with their responsibility to the taxpayer and that is the way it should be. That is not filibustering. That is responsible parliamentary debate and I am proud of my colleagues this evening.