Beaumont Carol: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBeaumont Carol: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 28 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18439. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour)on behalf ofSue Moroney (Labour): This is a really important—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No no you must move the motion. You cannot start the debate without moving the motion.CAROL BEAUMONT: Sorry. I moveThat the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. This is a very important bill. This is a bill that has been waiting for some time to receive its second reading and that is a shame. It is a shame that we have had to wait so long to get to this point. But I am delighted to stand here and acknowledge my colleague Sue Moroney who will be speaking on this bill for the work that she has put into this very important piece of legislation and the work that has gone on in the community to support this legislation.This is a bill that is about children. This is a bill that is about our families. This is a bill that is widely supported in the community. This is a bill that New Zealanders want. This House should deliver on that bill.Children and families are at the heart of Labour’s thinking. My colleague Sue Moroney put this bill in the ballot because New Zealand has not dealt well with the issue of paid parental leave of recent times.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I am sorry to interrupt the member. The member whose name is on this bill cannot be in the House when it is her bill. She must leave. You can come back after but you cannot be in here when the bill is in your name and you were not here to lead off and to move it.CAROL BEAUMONT: As I was saying the matter in this bill paid parental leave has not been progressed in the way that it should which is why my colleague Sue Moroney put this bill into the ballot and has worked so hard on it.Under the former Labour Government paid parental leave was introduced. It was introduced in 2002 and extended in 2004 and 2006. But where we sit at the moment with 14 weeks’ paid parental leave is inadequate. It is inadequate to meet the needs of modern families. The reality is that in this country now in most families there is a need to ensure that there is income from more than one source to meet the family’s needs. Often women particularly who have children are going back to work before they might like to before the very important bonding with a young baby and before the very important breastfeeding has been established and continued for an adequate period of time purely and simply because of financial reasons.None of us I believe in this House should think that that is appropriate. What we want as a country is to ensure that every child gets the best possible start and that every baby is able to be born to be loved to be looked after to bond with their parents and their family to be breastfed where at all possible and to really have that start in life. This is what paid parental leave enables us to have. It provides women with choice.Many women as I have already said go back to work before they would like to because of financial reasons. Paid parental leave helps but 14 weeks is insufficient. New Zealand is lagging behind other OECD countries in relation to paid parental leave. In fact I think we are second to bottom in that group of developed countries with theamount that we currently provide. So this bill providing for 6 months is very very important. The way that it is being put into place or suggested is to be staggered in over a period of 3 years to ensure that we are being fiscally responsible in how we do this but to give a very clear message that we will move from 14 weeks to 26 weeks over that 3-year period.It is interesting to me and I spoke on this a lot immediately after the Budget that we saw National making a move in this direction but not going nearly far enough. The cynic in me says that that was purely and simply in response to the head of steam that has been built up around this bill around a bill that makes a real change and a real improvement to our families. It is a head of steam that means that out there in the community people have strongly supported this 6 months’ paid parental leave bill.In the Budget we got a pale imitation. Paid parental leave was extended and we voted for it because it is an improvement and because National has obviously finally realised that paid parental leave is important is a reality and is a need. But we get 2 weeks next year and 2 weeks the year after to 18 weeks’ paid parental leave and the possibility of an extension to a broader group of people.This bill talks about 26 weeks—6 months—and that 6 months is vital. The World Health Organization has long argued that where possible exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months is important to give children the best start to ensure that their immune system is well developed and it assists with the bonding process. It is very very difficult indeed for those women who manage to continue breastfeeding while they are back in the paid workforce and I want to acknowledge all of those women who do in fact do that. They go to quite heroic lengths to ensure that because it is so much better for our children.I want to also say as Labour’s women’s affairs spokesperson that an issue like paid parental leave is very good for women. It is really important for women because the reality is now that more and more women do want to and do need to manage to balance both their family responsibilities and their responsibilities in the paid workforce. Having something like paid parental leave provides a real choice and a real opportunity to have time away but to have time at a reasonable level means they can have that real bonding going on and know they can go back to their workforce and maintain that attachment to their workplace. It really does assist.Lots of women at the moment end up in situations where they do not maintain that link with the workplace they are in when they take leave because the 14 weeks currently provided is inadequate and the unpaid leave of 52 weeks is not sustainable financially and so you get people making decisions based on that.I want to again note that we could have passed this bill already but there has been filibustering by members opposite to stop us doing that. Why is that? Well the reason why is that there is support in this House for this bill. The majority of members of Parliament in this House support this bill and that is because it is the right thing to do. It is because there is the demand in the community: 99.6 percent of submitters to this bill submitted in favour.I am standing here urging members of Parliament in this House to do the right thing because what we understand is that the risk is that the majority of members of Parliament will support this bill but that the Government will veto it. The Government has a choice here. National has a choice and that is to do the right thing to extend this bill and to do it because it is affordable. It has been structured in such a way to be fiscally responsible while meeting a very real need.The Government Administration Committee has done some very good work on the costings to show that and I understand that the select committee has worked very effectively together to do that work to look at the policy implications to look at the costings and to say that for the cost the benefits of investing in this way far outweighthe costs. So I urge members opposite to consider that and to think about voting in favour and certainly to not veto this bill.On behalf of the families of this country the people who support this I say: “Support SueMoroney’s bill.” Certainly Labour strongly supports this bill. I look forward to hearing the debate in this House tonight on the second reading of the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill. Thank you.