Moroney Sue: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 03 December 2014. Volume:702;Page:1095. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour):Thank you for the opportunity to rise and attempt to explain why we have got a new clause 7 in the bill. I will try not to stray too much into the debate that was going on in the Government Administration Committee. It is quite hard to do when debating new clause 7 and others like it because these were debated in quite a lot of detail in the select committee. It was difficult to go through what we thought was a really robust debate and get good discussion across all parties in the select committee only to find that right at the eleventh hour it was the Government MPs who would not support the bill and therefore any of the work that we had all done together including new clause 7.New clause 7 does actually again describe I think the difference between a bill that has been drafted by a member and one that has been drafted by the Government. My double-sided two-page bill attempted to bring in 26 weeks’ paid parental leave for everyone currently eligible for it but fell short in the way that it had been drafted so we were given advice at the select committee that there were in fact a broader number of regulations under the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act that also needed to be amended to bring them into line with what I was substantively trying to do with the rest of that Act. That Act of course is the one that was brought in by a Labour Government actually in 2002. At the time there were big debates about whether we ought to have any paid parental leave at all.The regulations that are described in new clause 7 come from that period of time when we were bringing in a completely new system that we had not had in New Zealand at all so it was quite a complex exercise. It involved having the main body of the Act and regulations. Those regulations of course have been changed many times over that period of time because despite what the Government has tried to argue actually when Labour was in Government it actually not only introduced paid parental leave but amended it and improved it on three occasions during the course of its 9 years in Government. The current Government is inclined to say: “You know if you wanted to improve paid parental leave why didn’t you do it when Labour was in Government?”. Well we did on three occasions and many of these regulations are the ones that actually address that.New clause 7 on the advice from the officials would bring all of the other parts of the regulations in the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Regulations in line with having the 16 weeks that the Government—actually it is a small triumph and victory in the journey of this bill to get the Government to increase paid parental leave to 16 weeks. New clause 7 says that in a whole bunch of regulations where you have done that—and the 16 weeks will be coming in on 1 July 2015 next year—my amendment aims to increase that from the 16 weeks that the Government has agreed to up to 22 weeks in the first instance by 1 July 2015. That would be the first step.Of course as we know from the previous debate that would be for the particular three groups that I have identified in an attempt to get some improvement for a group that I think are particularly needy. In fact the Multiple Birth Association said it is not a want for the members of its association to have 26 weeks’ paid parental need; it is an absolute need. They were quite upset at the debate that happened in previous clauses when the Government said that it had a whole range of other payments already available to them. Actually most of those payments are not available to people with multiple births at all because they would get those payments if they had an older sibling for the twins or the triplets who have just been born and in many instances that just is not the case.New clause 7 is amending the various regulations. It is making sure that they would be consistent with the substantive part of the Act that I was aiming to improve. It does it in two tranches. It would bring the regulations in line with having 22 weeks’ paid parental leave for parents who have the joy of a multiple birth—can I say the joy of a multiple birth—for parents who have a baby who is born prematurely or parents who have a child with a disability.