Newman Muriel: Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Newman Muriel: Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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Dr MURIEL NEWMAN (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 I want to address an issue that arises in the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper which not only extends the provisions of paid parental leave to 14 weeks from 1 December 2005 but also includes medical practitioners as a group of women who may work in one or more different jobs so that when one adds up all the different employers that she works for she is entitled to paid parental leave. 
In the previous call I took on Part 1 I raised the issue that teachers had been given that privilege and this Supplementary Order Paper extends it to doctors. I would like the Minister in the chair the Hon Marian Hobbs firstly to explain to the Committee why this provision did not include nurses because nurses are a huge and very important part of our workforce. It seems bizarre to me that if we look at the medical profession and give them privileges over women who work in other fields of endeavour who are not treated to the same assistance why it is that nurses have not been included. Maybe it is a slip-up maybe nurses are meant to be included but on my reading it does state medical practitioners and it does mention doctors in particular. I would like the Minister to clarify that. 
However the more important issue is why it is that teachers and women in the medical profession are included but not women who work in all the other types of jobs that are so important to New Zealand who would actually qualify if we aggregate their employment. The discrimination that the bill brings in for those women—and we have already heard a lot about the self-employed women who are being discriminated against by this bill—is one of the reasons why some of our parties in Parliament simply cannot agree to support this bill. 
I come back to a central point and that is that the bill is anti-business. Small businesses would find this sort of law extremely difficult and very damaging to their well-being and even survival in many cases. It really does worry me that Labour is bringing in laws that right now when the economy is going well we do not feel the effects of but when things start to tighten as they inevitably will—all of us know that—then these laws will actually in some instances be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. 
I would like to know from the Minister why it is that when all these other women of New Zealand who work in part-time jobs can have that aggregated up to constitute a full-time job self-employed women have not been included in this legislation. What is the reason for Labour giving out a welfare benefit to women in employment when on the one hand we have this bill that encourages women in the workforce not to stay at home to look after their babies and raise their children—probably they cannot afford it and secondly it is an incentive to keep them in work—but on the other hand Labour does not want solo mums whose kids are at school even to take on part-time work which is what our laws used to be before Labour took office. We have the Government saying on the one hand to women in the workforce not to stay home and look after their children—it is saying to them to go back to work and giving them some money to make sure they do—then on the other hand we have women who could work but there is no encouragement at all for them to go back into the workforce to provide some of the jobs that New Zealand so desperately needs at the moment. I think that this bill is a mixture of bizarre factors.