Turner Judy: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Turner Judy: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
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JUDY TURNER (United Future) 
: 
 Today we heard the Prime Minister talk about the need to mobilise the unused capacity in the workforce by providing incentives for mothers to place their young children in care while they go out to work. The justification was framed in interesting language for a Labour Prime Minister. Normally talk of increased productivity labour-force capacity and OECD rankings is the kind of thing we expect to hear from Dr Brash. However when we hear it from a Labour Prime Minister it kind of evokes images of the planned economies of the former Eastern bloc where people were treated as production inputs in a national drive to build a smoke-stacked society that was bigger and better than any of their neighbours. 
However both the right and the left are missing a crucial element—that is the economy is there to serve and to sustain families and not the reverse. Let me say it again: the economy is there to serve and to sustain families and not the reverse. As a consequence they both seem to ignore the fact that raising children is work. It may not be included in our GDP figures or our OECD rankings as Marilyn Waring pointed out and although politicians claim that the wealth of our nation is its children the creators of that wealth do not seem to deserve economic visibility for their work. 
In my opinion raising children is the most rewarding job that an adult can have. However in the view of the major parties it appears to be the least rewarding. Why else would Dr Brash launch an attack last week on those single women who find themselves for some reason or another on their own with children to feed? Because they are not only deemed to be a loss to the economy they appear to be also considered a drain on it. Dr Brash’s answer is to contract out parenting quite literally by adopting those children out. 
Again the Prime Minister’s drive to get mothers back into work implies that raising children is not productive and it may even be a waste of resources compared with the need to meet national production targets. Like Dr Brash’s response her response is also to contract out parenting but this time to childcare providers. 
This response to the skills shortage can only ever be a quick fix because it fails to address the underlying demographic causes. A more proactive immigration policy has been tried with the Government seeking to prioritise new migrants with job offers relevant to their skills. However in doing so we have discovered that when it comes to taking on skilled workers the real competition does not occur between migrants wanting to settle in New Zealand but instead between countries in the international marketplace vying for skilled labour. In that case New Zealand is just another player. 
The alternative of persuading women back to paid work may add to the labour force in the short term but in the long term it may have the opposite effect. In the coming decades the population dynamic will become increasingly top heavy as those who are reliant on State support grow larger in number at the expense of those who support them through work. Couples are already delaying childbirth longer whether due to financial pressure or a generational shift in lifestyle choices. Our birth rate has fallen to 1.9 children per family—below the replacement rate of 2.1. 
The Prime Minister has argued that if we could get the level of women’s participation in the workforce up to the level of that of the top Scandinavian countries we would close the gap between the OECD average of income per capita and New Zealand’s position by a third. Perhaps the Prime Minister would be interested to know that the birth rate in Sweden is 1.5 children per family. 
The Government’s current drive to provide childcare for new parents gives the implicit message that raising children is an economic disadvantage to be overcome rather than a life change to be savoured. Let us borrow a line from  
The Simpsons 
. If one can imagine the Government’s advertisements for this scheme would begin with words such as “So you’ve ruined your life.” 
I am sure there has been little discussion in Government circles of the chilling effect that these policies and the message they convey are likely to have on the growth of families. There is already significant societal pressure on women and men to return to some form of work after a child is born. Parents raising children at home already feel like second-class citizens—even more so in the case of solo parents after Dr Brash’s recent tirade. 
Yet we do not know what the societal impact of the contracting out of parenting to childcare providers will be. A Ministry of Women’s Affairs report last year referred to international evidence suggesting that maternal employment had negative effects for very young children. The Prime Minister referred to the “dawn to dusk” childcare to be available in the UK yet educators over there are concerned that extended hours of childcare will create psychological issues for children who spend up to 10 hours a day in school and who do not have breakfast or valuable after-school time with their parents. These are not vampires; these are our children. We simply do not know what the long-term impact of extended non-parental care will be on our children. Yet in trumpeting this option the Government generates the underlying message that if couples want to have children then they had better both be prepared to continue working. 
United Future would argue that the role of Government is to ensure that parents have realistic choices and are in a position to decide for themselves how to configure their lives based on what they think is best for them and their children. In some cases the parents’ decision will be to rejoin the workforce after they have had children and the Government does and should continue to support that choice through assistance with childcare and the like. But in other cases their decision will be to stay at home and raise their children and the Government should support that choice with the same kind of vigour in the interests both of family and of country. 
The key for the Government should be to remove some of the obstacles that families face rather than simply stacking the alternative with incentives. A good place to start would be to take a hard look at the impact of student loan debt on life choices such as starting a family and buying a home. As demographer Professor Ian Pool has noted that has to be the most antenatalist policy ever developed and United Future is committed to reducing the burden of debt on our best and our brightest. 
If those parents who choose to re-enter the workforce are doing so largely to make ends meet then we need to address that issue before we embark on a call to comradeship in order to power the great leap forward. The goal should be to create a level playing field so that parents have as much freedom as possible to choose the best path for their family they see fit. The Government’s call is to make it possible for people to make the choice—not to tell them what the choice has to be.