Roche Denise: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — Recommittal Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoche Denise: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — Recommittal Third Reading[Sitting date: 25 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1947. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENISE ROCHE (Green): It is with regret that I rise to take this call on this bill because I see it as yet another lost opportunity. It seems that every time I speak in the House it is about lost opportunities.This was a great bill. I pay tribute to the sponsor Sue Moroney who brought a bill to the House that was a call for 26 weeks’ paid parental leave. I pay tribute to her skilful shepherding of this legislation through the meandering corridors of Parliament and the process the frequently Byzantine mechanisms you have to go through to get a piece of legislation back into the House. I refer particularly to sending it to the Government Administration Committee instead of any other committee which I thought was a very good tactic and then to compromise—to go through an incredible compromise with the Government—and attempt to reduce the scope of the bill so that 26 weeks’ leave applies specifically to families who have had multiple births or those who have had births where their children had suffered health or disability issues. I think that was very skilful.So today as we come to the third reading we have a gutted bill as the previous speaker Brett Hudson outlined. I think “guts” is the word of the day and I would suggest that this bill has certainly been gutted. We bring this bill back and it has been eviscerated essentially and that is a tragedy. We know for a fact through various research—research that has been canvassed; we have used the entire resources of Parliament through the select committee process to look at the benefits of paid parental leave—that investment in paid parental leave to 26 weeks or beyond can stimulate the economy even during a recession. That is according to Australian research.We know that we are not keeping up with other countries. We are 24th out of 25 OECD countries for our leave provisions on paid parental leave. If we want to attract skilled workers in a global labour market then we need to ensure that we have policies and leave provisions that will attract those skilled workers to contribute to our economy here in New Zealand.The benefits to first-time parents accessing paid parental leave and to their families to their children in those first few months are well canvassed. We know that the bonding with families means that there are fewer cases of neglect and abuse of children. We know that children who have had their parents with them in the first year of their lives have better cognition and fewer behaviour problems which means that we save money down the track. Investment in paid parental leave is certainly an investment in the future which is quite a change from the short-term thinking we see in this House.We know that paid parental leave is good for all of us and yet this Government has allowed the bill the brave bill that Sue Moroney brought to this House to be completely and utterly gutted. I have to say that Sue Moroney can take credit for the fact that in the last Budget announcement this Government has actually moved on paid parental leave at all. The fact that it will this year extend paid parental leave from 14 weeks to 16 weeks and then next year to 18 weeks is to her credit. And it is to her credit that the Government was able to see that it was going to lose votes if it did not shift on this because there are thousands of New Zealanders who want better provisions for paid parental leave. It was also Sue Moroney’s bill that meant that this Government has decided to shift on how paid parental leave can be applied and to extend the categories that it can apply to.So although we are voting on a bill that has been gutted has been emptied and is a shell of what it was Sue Moroney can take credit for shifting this Government a few tiny steps in the right direction.