Beaumont Carol: Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBeaumont Carol: Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 15 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17946. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): We are rising on the Labour side to speak in favour of this bill the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill. We are acknowledging that there is a small improvement being made here for paid parental leave—something that Labour has long championed and something that as we have already heard tonight we see needs to be significantly lifted to 26 weeks. My colleague Sue Moroney has worked tirelessly on this matter as has 26 for Babies. This is a small step a very small step but it is a deeply deeply cynical one I have to say.This is coming from the party that voted against paid parental leave every single time. It voted against it every single time. Its members have been filibustering for weeks now to stop Sue Moroney’s bill the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill from actually getting in front of this House because they know that it has the support of the majority of MPs in this House. And it has threatened to veto that bill once it is passed. That is that party over there. So this bill is deeply cynical. It is because it is an election year and it is because National knows that it is on the wrong side of this in terms of the public because the public support paid parental leave.Of the submitters on Sue Moroney’s bill 99.6 percent were submitting in favour of it. The public support it because we all know that paid parental leave is vital for our families. It is vital for ensuring that children get the best start and it is also good for those children’s mothers who are the primary caregivers because it enables women to better balance paid work and family and it gives women choices. These are reasons why paid parental leave is so important. It is also important for babies to bond with their mothers particularly. All of the evidence shows that bonding is about ensuring that a child gets the best possible start—health-wise emotionally and developmentally—so that bonding is important. Those are the reasons why paid parental leave is vitally important except that we are talking here about 2 more weeks next year and 2 more weeks the year after when what we need is an immediate boost to 26 weeks which enables women to do 6 months’ exclusive breastfeeding and really facilitates that.Again all of the evidence shows that breastfeeding is really important. The World Health Organization has long promoted 6 months’ exclusive breastfeeding when that is possible. This bill will not help that. It will be a small step—a very small step.It is important that we support our children and families and the Budget supposedly talks about doing that. This is where this part has come from. Supporting children and families is a vital investment in our future but our Best Start package is a much more significant step to doing that. It is a much more significant start for our families because under what the Government is proposing the most vulnerable will not actually benefit. The most vulnerable will not be getting that extra tax credit—14000 are excluded we understand. I noticed that widened eligibility was referred to in the speech which I have to say I think is really important but casual workers—some of the most low-paid workers potentially—do not even get on the horizon until 2016. I have just heard Minister Simon Bridges say this in his speech. Again the things that potentially would have helped the most vulnerable are being excluded from the bill we are debating here tonight.While we are talking about supporting children and families nothing in today’s Budget does anything to help the 285000 children living in poverty because there are no plans. There are no plans to increase jobs so that people can get ahead. There are no plans to lift wages. There is nothing in the Budget that deals with those things which are really about supporting families and children because children live in families. As an alternative Labour has very clear plans in these areas—a target around increasing jobs and a target of unemployment dropping to 4 percent by 2017 and lifting wages immediately. We have economic development plans around lifting value and productivity in our economy to ensure that we can provide quality jobs. We will be moving amendments in the Committee stage to try to improve this bill which is a small improvement.