Moroney SueSUE MORONEY (Labour): It is a pleasure to rise in support of the regulatory systems amendment bills. The bill that I particularly want to speak to is the Regulatory Systems (Workplace Relations) Amendment Bill.First of all can I start by congratulating the officials. In particular I want to congratulate the officials who worked on the paid parental leave aspects of this bill. As the member who just resumed his seat Scott Simpson said these are technical amendments. Actually it is fascinating to watch how people's lives by virtue of living are complicated. Trying to actually get a legislative fix to address all the issues about having a baby—making decisions about when to go back to work and when to not go back to work and when your annual leave will be taken—and all of those complications are things that the officials worked incredibly hard on to make sure that no parent and therefore no baby would be disadvantaged because we did not have the law written quite as it was intended. My personal thanks go to those officials. I really look forward to working much more closely with them after September to bring about the things that this bill really should be bringing about—that is extending paid parental leave to 26 weeks. We did not get there but I think that this bill with its technical amendments around paid parental leave will mean that the legislation is in good shape so that when Labour takes over the reins in September we will very quickly be able to introduce 26 weeks' paid parental leave.But I cannot actually even comment about that without putting on the record what a travesty it is that in a couple of weeks' time we should be looking forward to paid parental leave actually being extended to 22 weeks. If Bill English had not used a financial veto to get in the way of the democratic vote of this Parliament—to vote to make sure that there was no vote on a bill that was winning in this Parliament to extend paid parental leave to 26 weeks—on 1 April this year we would have seen every eligible family being eligible for 22 weeks' paid parental leave not 18 weeks as they currently are. So I want people to remember that it was the new Prime Minister who actually overturned a parliamentary majority to rob every baby born after 1 April 2017 this year of the 4 weeks' additional paid parental leave they would have been entitled to—and should have been entitled to—if democracy had been allowed to run its true course in this Parliament. But instead—Andrew Bayly: Back to the issue.SUE MORONEY: Well they do not want to speak about that on that side.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member must remember that she is here debating this bill not what is not in this bill and what was not even promoted as part of this bill in this package of legislation. I allowed an aside which is fine because it is Thursday afternoon and I am feeling generous but the member now needs to come back to the bill that we are debating.SUE MORONEY: Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker. Instead we are here debating this very dry bill. Although it fixes up some technicalities it will not support families to get any more paid parental leave than what they are currently entitled to. So I look forward to a time when we can be debating exactly those measures. I want to place on record how difficult it is to get the technicalities right. In particular we worked on the technicalities via a new provision that came in last year which was the idea that the parents of pre-term babies get an additional entitlement to the parents of babies who are born full term. That change has helped some of the most vulnerable families in our community. So I want to recognise—and celebrate actually—what I think is a great step forward for those families. It is a bit sad that the Government had to be pushed into doing that but none the less it got there in the end. The parents of pre-term babies are now entitled to an additional week of paid parental leave for every week that that baby is born pre-term. I have certainly personally heard from a number of families for whom that has made a great deal of difference. When baby unexpectedly comes early they have the right and the eligibility to take additional paid parental leave and not have to worry about going back to work before baby is even out of hospital for example. Those things make a real difference to people's lives.So there were some technical changes that have taken place in this regulatory bill to get that right. This is a new feature of our law. We did not recognise a different eligibility for pre-term babies and their parents before; we now do. The officials have worked hard to make sure that the additional leave does not disadvantage families in other ways in terms of their decision making about returning to work and in particular with working out how to integrate the keeping-in-touch hours which I still think is the wrong phrase. I just do not like that idea of the keeping-in-touch hours. Again that is the relatively new notion that a parent can be on paid parental leave and work a certain number of hours back in the workplace just to keep their hand in if you like and perhaps keep up to date with some training that might be going on during their period of paid parental leave so that when they come back they are not disadvantaged and are able to apply for a promotion or do those things that their workmates would have had an opportunity to do in the meantime.I want to commend this bill to the House. I want to recognise that we are making some progress on the issue of paid parental leave and supporting families in that way but not nearly enough for Labour's liking. In September we get to fix that.