Moroney Sue: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Moroney Sue: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
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SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 It is my privilege to be able to rise in support of the third reading of the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill. It is wonderful for me to be able to note that there is wide support among parties for the legislation. It demonstrates to us that when a good progressive Government is in for long enough that actually starts to lift the bar right across the board. 
When paid parental leave legislation was introduced into the House by the Labour-led Government in 2002 there was opposition to it and there is not any longer. So that is a sign of really good progress. We are going forward as a country and we are being led through that because a good progressive Government has been in for long enough. So we want to keep that going and we want to keep the support for this progressive type of legislation which does make for a level playing field. The previous speaker said this bill somehow brings in a division between working parents and those who are self-employed. In fact it does quite the opposite of that so I am not quite sure how he made that assessment. We do have widespread support among parties for the bill. 
It was my pleasure also to be on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee which heard submissions on this bill. It was apparent that having a progressive Government for this period of time has lifted the bar among community organisations as well. I cannot recall one submitter who came in and said that we should not have paid parental leave in this country. There was widespread support among all sorts of community organisations business organisations and unions. The whole community came along to our select committee to say well done and that they wanted to see this introduced and it could not come soon enough. 
For me personally as a mother of young children and having raised them both as a waged worker and as a self-employed person operating my own business it makes absolute sense to me that there should be consistency between the approaches. Certainly in having my babies and raising young children the pressures on me were the same whether I was in waged or salaried work or was self-employed. Self-employed people who run their own businesses have a great deal in common with waged and salaried workers in this country because they are operating on a very similar level. The pressures are the same in those families and this bill recognises that. Since 2002 77000 working parents have benefited from the commitment that this Government has given to building stronger families through paid parental leave provisions and that is going to continue. It has been estimated that 2000 self-employed parents will apply each year. There is a lot to be proud of in putting this bill through this afternoon. 
The other thing that strikes me from a personal perspective from where I come from is that parents in rural areas will do very well from this bill—certainly in the areas that I am very familiar with such as the townships of Cambridge Matamata Te Aroha Huntly and Ngaruawahia. Many self-employed people who run small businesses in those small communities and also many farming families in all the geographical areas in between will applaud the third reading of the bill this afternoon and then the enacting of it. In fact when I was campaigning at the last election this issue was raised with me often on the campaign trail by self-employed people who were wishing to start families or were in the midst of raising their families and who wanted to get the same benefits that this Government has brought forward for working families. 
This bill encourages choice for women parents and families. It is not the baby bonus type of approach that has been taken by some other countries that somehow try to give a financial incentive to lure people to produce babies. It is not a baby bonus scheme. It will quite proudly ensure that families have the right resources available to them at that very precious time in a baby’s upbringing. 
It is my privilege to stand up and support the third reading of the bill. We have been through a very good and thorough process in the select committee. We heard from many submitters who had very valid points to raise on many technical issues and that helped us to ensure we got this right. I note that the previous speaker said there was bureaucracy in terms of the bill. We certainly wanted to ensure that we covered all our bases because we want to make sure this is a fair and an equitable law.