Mapp Wayne: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Mapp Wayne: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:630;Page:2616] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 National will be supporting the report back of the bill because in many ways it is the recognition of a failure of the original scheme created by the Labour Government. National members pointed out when the original scheme was developed that this was a major deficiency. We said that the exclusion of the self-employed was essentially discriminatory—that Labour was looking after only those people who were employed and that it was completely ignoring the tens of thousands of parents who are involved in their own businesses as self-employed. That was our major objection. [ 
Interruption 
] The junior whip who is interjecting knows the truth of that. The interesting question we have to ask ourselves is whether it took a close electoral fight for the Government to say: “Mm maybe we need to change our position on this one and extend the support.” 
National has a philosophical difficulty with the way this legislation is being delivered. I say that because most self-employed people—and I know this from being within the legal profession—were seeking tax deductibility. That has been sought for many many years. I acknowledge that National did not give that while in office and indeed it should have. But that is what self-employed women in particular were seeking and professional women and businesswomen made numerous submissions on it. I know for a fact that the Hon Ruth Dyson knows the truth of the matter. She has heard those submissions herself. 
The Government says that it would sooner make someone a welfare beneficiary. Try as it might Labour cannot duck the reality of that. This is a welfare benefit. Ask any self-employed people whether they want to become a welfare beneficiary and I can almost guarantee what their answer will be. It will be no. They would much prefer a tax deduction. 
There are a number of reasons why that is the case. The first which I have mentioned is that self-employed people do not want to be welfare beneficiaries. The second reason however is that tax deduction is fundamentally simpler. All we would have to do is modify the Income Tax Act to provide a tax deduction for the costs of childcare in particular because that is what would really be involved. It would be a simple line in the return of income and the profit and loss statements of the particular business concerned. That is how business people think. They would just incorporate it as part and parcel of their instructions to their accountants when the annual tax return and annual accounts are being prepared. Would that not be so much simpler? Would that not be so much easier than this particular complicated bureaucratic process? 
I notice that the Minister was quite proud of the fact—and made special reference to it—that there had to be new amendments to provide for criminal proceedings. That is truly the mind of the bureaucrat is it not? It is the nanny State—that in all ways we have to give bureaucrats officials and officers of Government the power to prosecute people bring them before the courts and monitor them and to send inspectors out whenever the bureaucrats want them to be sent out. The bureaucrats’ small minds came up with that kind of plan. We know where the small-minded bureaucrats in this Parliament exist—they exist on the Government benches. They are happy and comfortable in being small-minded pettifogging bureaucrats. That is their comfort zone that is their experience and that is the approach they would sooner have. National members trust people and say that we would sooner give the public the opportunity to work out how to conduct their affairs in their business as they think fit. I would not even go so far as to say that this is like the curate’s egg—good in parts. I suppose I have to acknowledge that at least the extension of paid parental leave to self-employed people is a step forward. But there was a far better way in which do this—one that fits the way the self-employed operate think plan and develop their own lives and businesses. 
I note that in this Labour Government very few people have any experience at all of being self-employed. 
Darren Hughes 
: Get personal. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: Is this not bizarre? The junior whip is objecting to the fact that I am pointing out that very few people in the Government have had experience of being self-employed and he accuses me of some sort of gutter politics of envy or something. Frankly it is quite bizarre. We know people by the company they keep. If Government members are embarrassed about being referred to as having had no experience of being self-employed and if they feel so guilty about it that they have to make petty interjections I can only say what a sad and unfortunate world they inhabit. 
The point I was trying to make was that although very few people over there have had experience of self-employment there are two or maybe three in the House right now. I see the Hon Jim Sutton and Mr Shane Jones who I know have had the experience of running their own businesses. They would well know that self-employed people do not want to become welfare beneficiaries. How often have I heard Mr Shane Jones in particular say in this Parliament—and indeed in other forums—that welfare has been the enemy of Maori people in particular and that to create beneficiaries out of people who have a proud record of independence detracts from their sense of independence? I have to say to the member that there is a better way. 
National will support the bill going to the next stage. I signal that we would like to provide an option during the Committee stage to give self-employed people at least the choice between going down this path—the path of being made a State dependent; a welfare beneficiary—or the pathway of the straightforward simple low-compliance rules-based approach of a tax deduction. I ask Government members why they would not at least give people that choice. They should at least give people a choice. That would preserve their preferred bureaucratic-rich nanny-State approach to the welfare system and it would also say to self-employed people that the Government has at least some understanding of the situation they are in and acknowledges that they would prefer to have a tax deduction. 
So I give notice to the Government that we will be putting up a Supplementary Order Paper to give the Government the opportunity to give people a choice—a two-pathway approach to delivering what is objectively the reasonable measure of supporting self-employed people and the raising of their families and reducing the costs of that to some extent.