Moroney Sue: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (6 Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is subject to correctionMoroney Sue: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (6 Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 08 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11802. Text is subject to correction.]SUE MORONEY (Labour): It with a sense of strong déjà vu that I rise to take a call on Part 1 of the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (6 Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill and it is my sincere hope that we do not see a repeat of what we saw last time around. The use of the filibuster against a bill that aims to actually support families and children was I thought particularly ugly last time around only accentuated by having to listen to speech after speech after speech from Mike Sabin telling us how to parent responsibly.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I am going to start by interrupting the member and reminding her that this is a debate on this bill on this part and it is a narrow debate. Referring to previous bills and previous debates is out of order.SUE MORONEY: Thank you Mr Chair for that guidance. I will now address Part 1 which is the part that actually tells the country about how affordable this bill really is.As the member promoting the bill I have worked hard to make sure that it is affordable for the country and Part 1 expresses that. It does not say we should get to 26 weeks of paid parental leave tomorrow or even next year; what Part 1 does is say that we should implement this in a staged way that is affordable for the country by increasing paid parental leave on 1 April next year to 22 weeks. That is effectively what Part 1 does and the Government Administration Committee did a lot of work on ensuring that we got agreement and we got good official advice on what the cost of taking that staged approach to implementing extended paid parental leave would be. This is very important in this debate because of the threat of a financial veto that hangs over the head of this bill so I do want to take a little bit of time to share with the Committee and with the country what the costings were because they show how affordable it is.The officials told us that for the financial year we are about to enter into—that is financial year 2016-17—the effect of this bill would be a gross cost of $12.7 million. That is the impact of Part 1 on the budgetary year that we have just finished debating in this Parliament. I note that because it in fact equates to only 0.7 percent of the additional spending that this Government has already committed to the Budget for 2016-17—0.7 percent. That is no justification for a threat of financial veto. When the Government has already seen fit to pour $1.8 billion additional spending into next year’s Budget and this bill would take just 0.7 percent of that additional funding to fund it it is clearly not an issue about unaffordability. The Government is spending in that same budgetary year $12 million on new charter schools—you know those charter schools that are failing; the ones where the people operating the charter schools when they fail get to keep the taxpayer money. That is $12 million in the next Budget year on that initiative. This bill would cost the same amount but this bill would actually impact on 30000 babies and their families in the next 12 months. That is the estimated number of families that will be using paid parental leave in that budgetary year—30000 families will benefit from this. That $12.7 million in Labour’s view is a great investment in the future of this country.We know that if we can extend in the first instance paid parental leave to 22 weeks by 1 April next year as Part 1 asks then those children will have that ability to get that bonding and attachment going well between parent and baby. If the mother has already established a great breastfeeding regime that will not be interrupted by her having to go back to work due to financial constraints. That is going to be to the benefit of us all because the other thing the officials gave us advice on at the select committee was that when we get those things right we save money in a whole lot of areas. In fact what they told us was that we are going to save immediately $28 million as a country if we implement this bill. That is cost savings on things like not having to spend taxpayer money on early childhood education subsidies—the taxpayer paying for other people to look after those children as this Government would have it rather than mum or dad being able to be at home on extended paid parental leave able to get that bonding attachment happening and able to make sure that the bills are getting paid the financial stress is not so great on the family and all those things that submitters came and told us about at the select committee.One of the things that really stood out for me this time around in the select committee process and the submissions and why we do need to get to 22 weeks’ paid parental leave by 1 April next year is that families came and told us that this generation is having to make choices between whether they save to buy a house or whether they have a baby. Those are the sorts of decisions that people in well-paid jobs are now having to make in John Key’s New Zealand. In John Key’s New Zealand housing prices have increased so much that the families—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I am going to remind the member again that this is a narrow debate. The House has accepted at the second reading the principle of this bill; all we are debating is whether these clauses implement the principles that the House has agreed to.SUE MORONEY: Thank you Mr Chair. So 22 weeks is what we are seeking in Part 1 of the bill. It is part of a stepped approach and the approach of making this affordable so that we can get to 26 weeks but we will talk about that more in Part 2. Part 1 should be supported by parties right across this Parliament. I look forward to hearing the further debate on that and I look forward to hearing votes in support of this important measure and this important investment in New Zealand’s future.