Bennett David: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Bennett David: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
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DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) 
: 
 I just want to read my first line so Moana gets it— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The member will refer to another member by his or her full name or title. Thank you. 
DAVID BENNETT 
: Just so that Moana Mackey understands it it is with great pleasure that the National Party supports the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill in its second reading. This is not a 9-minute speech against the bill that will come to a conclusion in favour of it for the sake of public opinion. It has actually been a pleasure to be part of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and to work with our Labour and New Zealand First colleagues. Putting this legislation together has been very successful and very enjoyable. 
In coming to this Parliament I saw an institution where people do not work together. This is one bill on which people have worked together. However we have some major problems. Why has it taken 4 years for us to all work together on this bill? The answer is quite simple: Labour did not know about it. It did not conceive of doing anything to help the self-employed. Why should it help the self-employed? The self-employed all vote National—that is what Labour thinks! But Labour found that a lot of people in its unions were self-employed. Those people came forward and said they were getting hammered by a piece of legislation that did not support them. So what was the result? Labour decided to come up with a bill for self-employed people as well. So it did. But it was full of holes. 
If one looks at the commentary on the bill one will find at least four parts of it that say Labour will look at it again. All Minister Dyson could do today was read the commentary. There was no heart or soul. There was no idea of what the concept of paid parental leave for the self-employed actually meant. All we got were comments that Labour would look at those issues when it had to: “We’ll do a Supplementary Order Paper when and if we need to do it.” Why did it not do that when it put the bill together? It was because it did not know. It has no concept of what it is like to go out and earn money. 
This bill involved a number of attributes that as constituent MPs we had seen at a practical level. Earlier this year a gentleman came into my office and told me a story that we took to the select committee. The story was an important part of the redrafting of the bill. He was a solo father at the time he came and saw me. About 9 months ago his wife injured herself while she was pregnant. She had a highly paid job at the local Waikato Hospital and she was on accident compensation for the last 4 months of her pregnancy. Tragically soon after giving birth to her third child she was killed in a motor vehicle accident. The solo father sought to transfer the paid parental leave entitlement to himself. The Inland Revenue Department would pay paid parental leave based only on the lower income of the accident compensation payments not the higher possible total income on a pro rata basis. Effectively he received the parental leave payments but at a lower rate due to her being on accident compensation. 
We have taken this case to the Minister and we have not received a satisfactory resolution at this stage. We also took it to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. The Department of Labour and the select committee took it on board and rewrote the bill to bring the appropriate changes into effect. I ask members to look at new section 71C(b)(ia) in clause 20. That provision clarifies parental leave so that where a self-employed person takes parental leave before the baby’s due date then it is not included when calculating a self-employed person’s earnings. So they can be taking parental leave before the baby is born and the parental leave payment will be based on the time in income not on the time out of employment. 
That is an important change to the bill that Labour did not recognise because it did not understand the practical implications. It is an important change that we also need to see in the employer-employee section for situations where people may be in an accident compensation situation like that and not receiving their full entitlement. 
Another example that has not been sorted out by this legislation was brought to us by Business New Zealand. It brought to us the case where many permanent employees on parental leave may be replaced by an employee on a fixed-term agreement. If that employee—the one who is the replacement—is pregnant then the new employee will be eligible for parental leave during the term of the agreement. Business New Zealand submitted that in those cases the agreement cannot be terminated on grounds other than those in the agreement. So when the temporary employee has finished parental leave he or she will be able to return to the job to complete the remainder of the term of the agreement. Business New Zealand was concerned that a second temporary replacement will need to be found to replace the first temporary employee. It submitted that this situation could not arise if the eligibility criteria still operated in terms of hours worked over the 12 months. 
This Government has failed to look into the situation and deliver anything in the bill to cover that situation. The New Zealand First - Labour Government thought this issue was not big enough to warrant amending the legislation. That is symptomatic of a Government that has no concept of economic policy. This Government has squandered an economic future that was built over the last 20 years. We are in a situation now of zero growth over the last 6 months. It is a classic tax-and-spend left-wing Government that has strangled our economy. Belated attempts like this to recognise the self-employed show Labour’s contempt for those who are trying to build a better New Zealand. 
 But what can one expect from two political parties like Labour and New Zealand First? New Zealand First’s economic campaign during the election was to buy back companies like Telecom so that it could give cheap rates for telephone calls to some of the potential voters. That is the content and extent of New Zealand First’s economic policy and that is why it has butchered this economy through a failure to recognise the productive heartland of this country. 
People such as the self-employed have waited too long for fair treatment and a just basis with other New Zealanders. This Government has spoken about the concept of fairness—that was one of its first words—but it has left self-employed people out. How fair is that? Fairness is when you deliver for all New Zealanders and then you can have a situation where the strength of parenting that has been identified by a number of parties today is actually met through legislation. 
We have some other issues in this legislation that show that fairness is not top of Labour’s mind. A key one is adoption especially in the Maori and Pacific Island communities. It recognises adoption in the traditional sense but not from those communities. In this legislation all we get is: “We’ll deal with it later.” Will it be 4 years before you deliver fairness to people in those communities? 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: You are bringing the Speaker into the debate. 
DAVID BENNETT 
: But such practicalities do not faze a Labour Government. It has not looked after the people the Green Party so rightly identified as being temporary and seasonal employees. It does not worry about fairness there. It will deal with it later at some point in the future when it has to. That is simply not good enough. The people who made submissions on this bill made them on the basis of fairness and equity for all New Zealanders. They wanted to see people have that opportunity and start in life. It is with great encouragement that we support those families and we look forward to the passing of this legislation for the benefit of all New Zealanders.