Dowie Sarah: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDowie Sarah: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 08 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9467. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): Thank you very much for the opportunity to rise and take this call on Part 1 of the Employment Standards Legislation Bill. And it is very much a pleasure because of course this part primarily extends paid parental leave from 16 weeks to 18 weeks in April this year.I understand that the Labour Opposition must beat its drum and say that paid parental leave was its idea and that it is pushing the Government to accept this change but I want to put it on record that there is support on this side of the House for paid parental leave and that when you are in Government you do have to balance competing priorities under different portfolios and you have to be fiscally responsible. The Government has looked at this and in a very considered way decided to extend paid parental leave to 18 weeks and I am sure given the benefits of paid parental leave—it gives more time to mothers and primary carers to bond with baby and it allows time to increase the probability of success in breastfeeding and all of those wonderful things that are associated with raising a child and increasing that bonding process—that it will continue to be on the minds of Government members. But we will look at that in consideration of balancing our competing priorities and will continue to govern this country in a responsible way.I want to turn particularly too to the extension for mothers and primary carers of pre-term babies which is something that is dear to my heart obviously as the mother of two premature children. That extension will be a very good help given the hurried nature of having a premature baby. You are not expecting it of course. It happens all of a sudden and rarely are you prepared for a pre-term baby. In fact I was myself seen as a high-risk fast cooker of babies in my time and so by the time my second came along at 36 weeks I was somewhat more prepared. But it still is a shock even if you are waiting for it and to have that extra financial support will be of great help when you are in places like neonatal units trying to balance getting things ready for when you bring baby home and dealing with the emotional stress of medical conditions or whatever it is that you are dealing with when having a pre-term child.So the extra financial support of an extra week of payment for each week prior to the 37-week gestation mark that the baby is born prematurely is going to be an extreme help for those families who have pre-term babies as well as the extra extension to 18 weeks for those with a more normal birth at post - 37 weeks. It will certainly help families get that extra financial support and help baby during that time.The other thing that I think is fantastic about this part is the keeping-in-touch hours. I am a strong advocate for keeping-in-touch hours—40 hours to allow employees to stay in touch with their work their place of work and their career to keep their hand in while they are on paid parental leave. It really plugs the gap to allow people to come back to work. There has to be mutuality obviously between employer and employee but it allows those primary caregivers to stay in touch with their career and maintain confidence in their role.There are lots of different times that the keeping-in-touch hours would be brought into play—for training extra data entry or handing over a case. In my case in a prior life to being a politician obviously I was a lawyer. Sometimes you do need that ability to go back into work for a short time to hand over a case that may have raised its head and that you had not prepared for prior to leaving to have your baby. And especially in the case of having pre-term babies the—