Mapp Wayne: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Mapp Wayne: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:631;Page:2847] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 I sought an additional call on this part because I want to reflect on the point made by Paula Bennett that picked up on an issue in the Business New Zealand submission—although amongst our group we had substantially discussed this issue well prior to the Business New Zealand submission—and Part 2 picks up on it again. It is what this legislation is all about and indeed what it is intended to be about: employees and self-employed persons. That is the Government’s schema. So it is quite fascinating to read the submission from Business New Zealand which after all would be pretty concerned one would think about the level of Government expenditure and so forth. But on this issue it decided to look much more broadly stating in clause 2.1 of its submission: “The current paid parental leave scheme linked as it is to taking parental leave with payments available only to women in paid employment has the inevitable effect of rewarding women in the paid workforce as against others who have may have opted to care for children at home or whose periods of paid employment are relatively infrequent and therefore fall below the threshold.” 
I believe that if we stepped back and looked at the scope and range of what one might say are family friendly policies—not just of the current Government but of parties generally and I am sure the United Future Party members if they were here in the Chamber would be interested in this kind of thing—we would see that they would be particularly concerned to ensure that our system of community incentives delivered effectively via the Government does not exclude people. In fact that is precisely what this legislation does notwithstanding its improvements and we will certainly be voting for that. But I think that Business New Zealand actually has raised an important and wider question. Paula Bennett referred to it as the baby bonus approach to things—and I well remember when I was a student the infamous suggestion in 1974 by Roger Douglas for a baby bonus. I guess one would have to say he was a bit before his time at that point because it actually proved to be one of the reasons why Labour lost the election in 1975. [ 
Interruption 
] I am sure Mr Gosche might remember that particular point in his history in South Auckland. 
But the view has changed. Ideas develop and the way our society develops has also changed. I do note a practice of women increasingly making the choice where they can not to be in the workforce when they are raising children. That is a difficult choice. Families often have to put themselves through significant financial hardship to do that but they are willing to do so because it is seen as being advantageous for the raising of children. I think that most people would acknowledge that. The advantage of taking the Business New Zealand approach and the one suggested by Paula Bennett is that it does not discriminate but actually celebrates parenthood. The community at large through the agency of Government says that it can help parents that it can give them tangible and meaningful financial assistance and it was noted that the equivalent of $5000—a reasonable sum in fact—would make a real difference to their living standards particularly for families on low incomes. One would think that the Government would be thinking of this and that with the Families Commission and so forth this would be the sort of thing it would be examining. 
Ironically it comes from Business New Zealand because under its current leadership Business New Zealand is I think taking a much broader view of how societies develop and I applaud it for doing that. That has been an important change. It is a point of leadership that it has taken. So I say to the Government that this is the sort of thing that with all its hundreds of bureaucrats it could seriously examine for the future.