Ewen-Street Ian: Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Ewen-Street Ian: Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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IAN EWEN-STREET (Green) 
: 
 I rise to give this contribution on behalf of my colleague Sue Bradford who was prepared to give it last night but cannot be here today. All of us in the Green Party are of course delighted that not only has Sue Kedgley’s member’s bill on flexible working hours been drawn from the ballot but also that the Government has seen fit to support it to a select committee. That is wonderful news. I certainly hope that Labour will go all the way and help us make sure that the Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill becomes law—if not in this Parliament then at least early in the next one. 
From both a worker’s and a parent’s perspective it is critical that the parents of babies and young children are given backing in law to allow them the ability to work shorter hours if they are required to. All parents and particularly mothers who have gone back to work when their babies have just been born or when their children are very young know how hard it is to cope with the dictates of full-time hours and inflexible working days. I have experienced the stress and tension of working a regular 40-hour-a-week job to support my family with two really young ones in childcare and two older ones at school as well. At the time I was lucky enough to have an employer who allowed me to start very early and to have a shortened lunch break so that I could leave by 3. But it was an utterly exhausting business and it would have been wonderful to have had the right to negotiate for shorter hours and/or more flexibility about when I actually worked. 
Many mothers and fathers are in this situation today as a higher than ever proportion of parents go out to work—often for economic reasons above all else. With the Government’s current massive emphasis on paid work as a solution to the problems of single parenthood it is just as well that it has seen fit to support this bill. If it had not the irony of the contradiction would have stuck in the craw somewhat. Solo parents in employment face a particularly tough time in trying to balance work childcare after-school care and all the work that still needs to happen once parents get home. If we are to keep advising and pushing people on to the domestic purposes benefit out into the employed workforce the least we can do here in Parliament is to give them the right to request reduced part-time or flexible hours from their employers. 
I would also note in speaking in support of this bill that there are particular jobs and professions that will particularly benefit from the bill’s application once it is passed. For example the Nurses Organisation has recently pointed out that it would help solve current nurse and midwife shortages if younger women in those professions were allowed to have more flexibility once they became parents as difficulties with childcare arrangements are often cited by them as reasons for leaving the profession. 
I am also pleased that my colleague Sue Kedgley has included a clause stipulating that parents of disabled children will be able to have the proposed new law apply until their child turns 18. This is very practical given the realities of life for working parents of children with even moderate impairments much less major ones. 
In a society that is so focused on all of us getting out to work we must maximise the possibilities of balance between the requirements of employers and the real life needs of our children our partners and ourselves. Paid parental leave is one critical part of this equation but so are measures such as a much higher minimum wage increased support for breastfeeding in the workplace and legislative encouragement for flexible working hours. While unions continue to do their best to improve conditions for their members in these respects this will never be enough at least not in the foreseeable future. With the impact of 1990s de-unionisation still with us all too many employees still do not have a union to bargain for them and even for those who do having a law like this will help enormously in achieving particular improvements for workers who are also parents of young and/or disabled children. 
I look forward to the day when we in New Zealand are mature enough to begin to match countries like some of those in Europe where employees have the legal right to request more flexibility in their working arrangements when they have young and/or disabled children. I hope this will happen before the end of 2005 and I wish my colleague’s bill speedy and successful progress through the House.