Logie Jan: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 05 November 2014. Volume:701;Page:670. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green):I am really pleased to be able to take a call in this Committee stage. I think it is my first substantive call right through the Committee process so thank you. After having gone through the 3809 submissions that were presented on the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill and the 2 years and 3-month journey it has been to get to this discussion of the purpose of this bill which is to provide 26 weeks’ paid parental leave to parents in this country it feels as if it is something this Committee should spend some time talking about and really discussing. I have got to say that the Green Party policy is to support 13 months’ paid parental leave. For us ideally the purpose of this bill would have been to extend the duration of parental leave payments to a maximum of 13 months. I know that in the current context of the debate—where the member Sue Moroney who has brought to the country this offering that has been so well supported by the population has had to reduce it down with Supplementary Order Paper 15 to provide leave only to families who have had a premature baby or multiple births or a child born with disabilities—it just feels really sad because we know what a difference 26 weeks makes.The country knows what a difference 26 weeks makes. When the Government members and the Minister for Social Development Anne Tolley stood up before and said that there is no doubting that everyone in this Chamber is committed to the well-being of children but we just have different ideas around how to get there 99.6 percent of submissions said 26 weeks. So when the Government is saying that its view is different it is the view of the 0.4 percent; it is not even the view of the 1 percent. It is the view of the 0.4 percent. Come on! Our country can do better than this. It is not really a matter of just weighing it up. If we weighed it up there is the evidence and there is the National Party up in its ivory tower in a position of privilege ignoring all of the evidence and all of the people. Come to the party people! It is not good enough.The Minister said that she agreed with the Green Party that 13 months was the best thing like the member sitting in the chair Sue Moroney agreed that what National is offering is the best thing for the country—she is nodding vigorously in disbelief of the statement. She also listed all of the things that the Government is offering to families with children with disabilities families who have multiple births and families who have premature children. They get extraordinary largesse from this Government. It really beggars belief that there is poverty in this country. Really when you heard all of those things the Government is providing it is like: “What? What are these people complaining about? Where is the problem in this country?”. Well the problem was detailed to us through almost 4000 submissions through heart-rending stories of what is happening in the struggle of families in New Zealand. The existing supports Minister are not enough. They are not serving our families and they are not serving our society and our children. We keep on saying this and most New Zealanders believe it: if we invest in our children we invest in our future. We invest in our well-being into the future. This is not about the cents now; it is about our future.I would like to go to the specific story that Sue Moroney mentioned of one submission from a woman with twins who presented in front of the Government Administration Committee. She had to go back to work when her twins were just 5 months old. She had to leave work every 2½ hours to breastfeed during that time all while her babies were both still waking at different times every night to breastfeed. Can you imagine that? That meant having no sleep going to work and breastfeeding while trying to work. That is not in the best interests of those children. That was a recipe for disaster for that mother and that is not sensible or constructive for that workplace. Without any surprise that was something that she did not manage to continue so she left her job. She resigned after 5 weeks of trying to juggle that because 5 months after the births was just too early.Three years on when she submitted to the committee she was still working part-time outside of the IT industry in which she had trained and contributed significantly to before the birth of her children. She estimated that going back so early and not being able to sustain that employment had cost her family about $70000 a year and it had cost the IT industry a skilled worker. We have a shortage of skilled staff in the IT industry. So this is something that—by crazy short-term thinking or blind political dogma of not wanting to be beaten by the Opposition putting forward a good idea which is the only reason I can see why you would not be supporting this bill—is costing our businesses our families and our babies.All of the research tells us that a minimum of 6 months’ paid parental leave really benefits bonding and attachment and we have heard other speakers talking about that. You cannot repeat that too much. We know that that attachment in those early years has consequences right throughout people’s lives. It has consequences for their mental health. It has consequences for their ability to focus and therefore their ability to contribute to the workforce. It has huge consequences. We can help that bonding by providing 26 weeks’ paid parental leave. It also improves health outcomes for mothers and babies which reduces the burden on our health services which are straining to the point of breaking as they are at the moment. It reaches the World Health Organization’s guidelines for exclusive breastfeeding. We can see in that example of the mother with the twins just how really difficult it can be to try to maintain that guideline of 6 months while you have already gone back to work. I think it is asking too much to be honest.Another thing that we have not really talked about so much in this is that through the submission process there was a lot of support from employers for the paid parental leave period being 6 months. Where it has been at 14 weeks and even at the 16 and 18 weeks it is really difficult for them to manage because it is too short a period of time to get in a replacement staff member. So mostly they are just filling in over that time with other people doing extra work and having work not done and it is reducing the productivity of workplaces. It is also putting extra strain on other colleagues in workplaces. So employers are finding it more difficult to manage and they said that 6 months is the kind of period of time when you can go through that recruitment process and get somebody in for a short term and it would work for them. It is a win for business. It is a win for society. It is a win for babies. It is a win for women. But the Government is siding with the 0.4 percent. What is that about—really?The other aspect of this which I think is really important to mention is around the importance of maintaining women’s attachment to the workplace. We saw that in the example of the woman with her twins—going back to work not being able to manage and having to lose that job. That has now affected her entire career path. Rather than being able to go back and manage in a job and to keep on the same career trajectory—