Nash Stuart: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNash Stuart: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 05 November 2014. Volume:701;Page:672. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STUART NASH (Labour—Napier):There are a couple of things that the Minister for Social Development said and one in particular I agree with actually. She said that the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill will not solve child poverty that it is not the panacea to solve all the ills that are facing our children today and she is right. But that is not what this bill is about. There is no magic bullet to actually solve child poverty but this is a start. This is all it is. This is a start. The Minister actually said that she thought the Government had it about right in what it was doing. But the interesting thing is that Professor Gluckman Unicef the Human Rights Commission the Commissioner for Children—I could go on and on—actually do not agree with the Minister. The thing is that these people are experts in their field. These people know what they are talking about. In their evidence base they have massive budgets to investigate this sort of thing and they understand what they are talking about. With all due respect to the Minister these are the experts in this area and they say that the National Government has not got this right and that Sue Moroney has.The world has changed. I was very lucky. I was born a long time ago but when I was growing up it was in an era when it was almost expected that the man of the house the father would go out and earn money and the mother would stay at home and look after the children. That is what happened in my family and that is what happened with all my friends. When we got home from school our mothers were there. But as society has changed over the last 41 years since I was born—OK 43 years since I was born—we really have not changed with it. The Labour Government brought in paid parental leave in 2004 and goodness me did we get hell from the National Opposition but it was necessary. Since 2004 the world has changed even more. Ten years on out of economic necessity what we are finding is that actually a lot of women have to go back to work after giving birth. It is not their choice; they have to because if they did not they just could not provide. That is a completely different situation from what it was a generation ago. So what we have to do as a Government as a Parliament is accept that the world has changed and deal with the reality.The interesting thing is that in question time today Mr English made a very interesting point. I cannot remember who asked him the question but someone did and he said that this Government makes policy based on the evidence. Well this is not a political bill. This is not a bill Sue Moroney dreamt up because she thought she could get some votes for it. This is a bill that should be bipartisan. It should be one of these things where we come together as a Parliament and really work hard because we know it is the right thing to do. Sometimes I firmly believe that as a Parliament we actually have to look and ask ourselves what is the right thing to do. If it is the right thing to do then we do it. There is a cost to this. I acknowledge this. There is an expense and it is an expense at a time when the Government has limited money and the Government has a responsibility to allocate that money in a way that best meets the outcomes of the citizens it represents. But let me give you one example—and I am unsure how Peter Dunne is voting on this. I am not too sure. But he took a bill to the select committee on income splitting that was going to cost $500 million—on income splitting. We turned that down at the Finance and Expenditure Committee because it was unsustainable but what it did was benefit those who really did not need it. That did not benefit those at the lower end but this actually does. I sincerely hope that Peter Dunne does support this because remember that he was the man who set up the Commissioner for Children. This is vitally important to actually moving forward as a society. It is evidence-based.The other thing is that it is about helping those who live in poverty. Those are the ones who are actually going to benefit from this. We have been criticised by none other than Unicef. Most of us hold up the United Nations as an agency that is actually there to represent everyone across the globe. We sign up to nearly every single UN charter. We are huge supporters of the UN. But can I just quote what Unicef has said its mission is. It says: “We believe that nurturing and caring for children are the cornerstones of human progress.” It was created with this in mind. Let me quote what its mission is. “UNICEF was created with this purpose in mind—to work with others”—