Bennett David: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Bennett David: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:631;Page:2861] 
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) 
: 
 This bill is entitled the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill and the only reason that it provides for self-employed persons is that the Government was made to realise it had left those people out of the original parental leave legislation. So it is pretty rich for members of the Government to say that provision is something Labour always wanted to do and was part of its grand plan for the future. 
This bill is not part of a grand plan. It has taken 3 years for the Government to realise that it left out the self-employed group of people and it did something about that only when those people came knocking on the door and asked about themselves and their entitlement. The Government still has not finished the work; the previous speaker from the Government said there is still more to come. Indeed we were told in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee that four more elements were to come and by way of Supplementary Order Paper 31 in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson we sorted two of them out. One of those elements was never discussed in the Minister’s speech in the second reading but suddenly it appeared on the Supplementary Order Paper after National had raised the issue. That Supplementary Order Paper was discussed after the second part of the bill was discussed so there was nothing wrong with bringing forward an example like that today. 
There are other examples. Business New Zealand put forward a perfectly good example of a situation that could arise if an employee who took paid parental leave was replaced with someone else who then also went on to take it. The Government has not covered that sort of thing in the bill. That is not part of its grand plan. It does not intend to look after employers in that situation. It seems only to look after the people whom it thinks will vote for Labour. It does not want to look after Business New Zealand. We have seen that the Government did not want to look after those self-employed people who would have had accident compensation issues with regard to their claims for parental leave until that issue was brought before the Government. 
I challenge Government members to walk the talk and to actually deliver all the amendments now. But they cannot afford to do that. They need National’s leadership; they need us to show them what to do. The next stage of whatever they are talking about was demonstrated by the leadership shown by Paula Bennett in the Chamber today. She is providing the leadership on this issue for the next election and Labour has no one who will deliver that. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Tired old nags. 
DAVID BENNETT 
: Labour is a tired old party. The Labour members are on their last legs. Government members and Ministers stand up and make bitter comments trying to tell us that National has some kind of liability for the problem of self-employed people not being eligible for paid parental leave. The fact is that Labour has known about the problem for 4 years and it did not deliver paid parental leave for the 8000 self-employed people. That is a real shame given that the Government had that issue pointed out to it by most parties in the House at the time when the legislation regarding employees was being debated. One need only to read the speeches made in 2002 during the first reading of the original legislation to realise that Opposition members pointed out that it did not deal with self-employed people The Labour Government just waltzed on and did its thing. Four years later the Government cannot even say it is sorry to those 8000 people. It cannot look them in the eye and say it is sorry it got things wrong. No the Government blames National and says it is our fault. It looks back to last century and says it is National’s fault. What else from 20 years ago was National’s fault? It seems as though anything can be National’s fault in Labour’s view. 
According to the Government anything that goes wrong is somebody else’s fault. When will the Government take responsibility? It has been in office for 6 years but it always blames someone else. Then we will hear the minor parties say it was not their fault. They will blame somebody else. When will they stand up and take their chance to deliver while they are in Government? They will look backwards and say retrospectively it was this or that party’s fault. The reality is that the Government has failed to deliver for 4 years on this issue and only after National’s hard work and determination to push legislation through do we have legislation that will work for the benefit of all New Zealanders.