Moroney Sue: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 08 September 2015. Volume:708;Page:6357. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour): It is a pleasure to rise and speak to the Employment Standards Legislation Bill—a title that actually says nothing. It would be very very difficult for anyone listening to this debate to even work out what on earth would be in a bill with such an odd name that describes virtually nothing. The fact that we have just heard a speech from a Government member on a bill that Government members should be very excited about and very committed to that could not even last 8 minutes—I think it was probably about a 6-minute contribution—I think probably says it all in terms of the position the Government has found itself in. It has had to make these sorts of changes against its will. But none the less I am going to be generous and say congratulations to the Government on doing some good work on this bill.As my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway outlined before we do not think the Government has it completely right but we are prepared to work with the Government to get it right. We think there are some substantial changes that need to happen to continue to gain the Labour Party’s support for the passage of this bill through all its various stages. But I do want to particularly note at this point that the Labour Party has no difficulty voting for a bill that improves paid parental leave even though it has the National Party’s name on it.Hon Ruth Dyson: Unlike National.SUE MORONEY: Unlike the National Party which actually plays politics at the expense of parenthood at every step along the way. The amendment it has announced today I think perfectly describes exactly how mean-spirited and how political the National Party is on this issue. Just a few months ago in February this year that same Minister that National Party voted against my proposal to do pretty much what they have suggested should happen today and that is extending paid parental leave to 26 weeks for babies born prematurely. They voted against that.I was shocked to see reported in the media today that the Minister actually said out loud that if David Seymour had voted for my bill which he intended to do at that point that miserable Government would have vetoed it. National would have vetoed a bill that was going to support the most deserving of our families: families whose children are born with disabilities families where there is a multiple birth and families whose babies are born prematurely.That bill which I proposed in February of this year at its highest level of implementation would have cost $8 million—$8 million. The Government said today that if David Seymour had dared to vote for my bill it would have vetoed it—while it goes out and spends $26 million on a flag referendum that not many people want. I think that shows the mean-spiritedness of this Government. It shows the Government’s complete lack of commitment to families and it shows the lack of decent priorities it has for this country. The Government would rather invest in John Key’s vanity project than do the right thing even though it be in the name of a Labour member of Parliament. Politics is the thing that is at the front of Government members’ minds whenever they are addressing this issue.The Labour Party however does support the proposals in this bill but we do not think they go far enough and we will be dealing with that next week in this Parliament. We will be debating a bill extending paid parental leave to 26 weeks for all eligible families. We are going to be proposing that because we firmly believe that all children deserve the best start in life.I remember reading a book some years ago called Politics in the Playground: The world of early childhood in New Zealand written by Helen May. It is a fantastic book. It describes the politics going on around the funding of the early childhood education sector. I would recommend it to anyone. But I could just about write a book now called “Politics Interfering with Parenthood” because that has been my experience in this Parliament over the course of the last few years.For those who have not been keeping up here is what happened. In February after the election as a result of not having the voting numbers to get through 26 weeks’ paid parental leave for all families which the Labour Party was promoting I amended my bill so that it extended 26 weeks’ paid parental leave to families with premature babies families with special-needs babies and families with multiple births. That brought the cost right down to a figure that I really felt the Government could accept. If it genuinely was about cost—which I do not believe it ever was by the way—the Government should have been voting for that.What I was able to do was get one of the Government’s coalition partners the ACT Party to agree that it would vote for it. But here is where it all starting turning belly up: when David Seymour informed the Government of his intention to vote for my bill the Government begged him not to. Then it made him a promise that it would do what my bill did under its own name. Poor old David Seymour fell for it. He fell for it and today the Government has played him for a mug. The Government has played him for a mug because it accepted only one portion of that. So the children the babies born with special needs are going to miss out on having this extra bonding time with their parents. Although the Government will argue that there are other supports there for children born with disabilities they are not the supports that allow parents to stay in the home and not be forced into paid employment within that period of time. They are not the measures that will do that.The Government has got it wrong about bonding and attachment and how important that is. It fundamentally does not understand this. Government members are prepared to play politics with it. That is all they understand about it—the politics of it. They do not understand what it is really about.I want to read from one of the regulatory impact statements on this bill. I just want to read out the problem definition that the officials have told them about. They say the problem definition is this: “Currently some families experience poor outcomes due to financial pressure on working mothers to return to the workforce earlier than is desirable for social and health reasons. This can lead to sub-optimal bonding between parents and their children leading to poorer outcomes for children and therefore society. Secure attachment is an important predictor of resilience in later life and a large body of evidence suggest that many adolescent difficulties including crime substance abuse and mental health have their antecedents in early childhood. … Reduced time for mother to bond with children is also reported to have reduced health and development benefits and does not achieve the World Health Organisation’s recommendation of exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months …”—for the first 6 months Minister Woodhouse. That is what your own officials have advised you.This comes straight out of the Labour Party playbook about why we are promoting paid parental leave to 26 weeks or 6 months. That is exactly what your officials are advising you to do and yet you come forward with this watered-down version. Despite the official advice that you are getting from your own officials you come with this watered-down version because it is the least you think you can get away with.Because of the politics played by the National Party and because of the ability for it to dupe David Seymour there are around about 2000 families that would have been getting access to 26 weeks’ paid parental leave right now from 1 July if that Government had not played politics with their lives. If it had allowed David Seymour to vote for my bill as he intended to that would be happening right now for 2000 families. As a result of the Government watering down what it promised him it would do and for breaking its promise to him there are roughly—and this is a conservative figure—about 1000 families every year for eternity who will miss out on getting extended paid parental leave because of what the Government did.I just want to remind this House who those families are. The families that the Government has ruled out and has said are not deserving are those whose children—their babies—are born with disabilities. Their babies are born with special needs and that Government says they are not deserving of having extended paid parental leave. The other group the Government has singled out is the families who have the joy of having a multiple birth. They have twins or triplets—if they are really fortunate they may have the joy of even more children being born at one time. The pressures that go on those families are extreme and I am sad that the Government has ruled them out as being not deserving.