Collins Judith: Parental Leave and Employment Protection mendment Bill — Second Reading 
Collins Judith: Parental Leave and Employment Protection mendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:621;Page:16288] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 Following on from the Minister who is promoting this bill I think that it is good for members in the House to think about the people who do not benefit from this bill—those who are ineligible for these taxpayer-funded benefits. They are all self-employed women. I know that it is very difficult for Labour Party members to understand that. They do not know much about self-employed women and they do not know an awful lot about mothers. Having myself been a self-employed woman who is also a mother I can tell members that it is a very very tough job as a self-employed woman running a business employing staff to have to go without any assistance while one’s staff gets the benefit of that particular assistance. That is the first point. 
The second point is women in part-time employment who are job sharing. They will miss out. Women in casual employment part-time or full-time will miss out. Women who cannot find formal employment or choose not to engage in formal employment will miss out including women who choose to stop work to “have a family”. These are the women who are just going about being good mums. These mums and dads will miss out but they will have the privilege of paying for someone else to have his or her particular choice to continue to work in the paid workforce. That would be fine if this bill were not so discriminatory. 
More women will miss out. Women who for many reasons have had a new employer within a very short period of time will miss out as will women who cannot have children or choose not to. Those women and men who face infertility who cannot have children get to know that they will pay for the privilege of other people—they get to pay for that—and they do not get anything off their taxes for it. 
Then there are the spouses of women who fit the above criteria and all the spouses who do not fit the above criteria. All those spouses all those people miss out. The National Party is very very pro people working very pro women working very pro men working and very pro fairness. We will not support this bill because it is discriminatory against self-employed women and all those other women and their spouses who I have just mentioned. This bill is discriminatory. [ 
Interruption 
] All those women—and I suggest that that member consider that he has not lived enough life to know what he is talking about in this area—have the joy of paying extra taxes so that they can have the joy of having to pay for locums and replacements to come into their business to cover for them and they get to pay the extra taxes so that their staff do not have to. 
This would be a great provision if it included all women in this position but it does not. It is very very discriminatory. It is completely pro union. It is against the self-employed person. Yet so many women in New Zealand are self-employed—particularly in the rural sector. About 75 percent of people working in the rural sector are self-employed. For those of us who know something about farming and farming life and having been brought up on one—and I let Mr Hughes know that—and having milked cows at the age of 9 I can tell that this particular situation will not do one thing for the farming women of New Zealand. It will not do one thing. All it will do is one bad thing and that is to get those women and their spouses to pay extra taxes but they do not get the benefit of it and that is so unfair. 
Let us look at some of the comments that New Zealand farmers have made about this particular bill. They are direct quotes. “New Zealand couples should think carefully about the commitment required to raise a family. I do not think that paid parental leave encourages careful planning and commitment. Our society is looking more and more towards Government to solve every problem that life presents—a path that is unsustainable for the taxpayer.” That is a really really good and independent attitude. 
 Here is another one: “I do not imagine that rural wives who work unpaid on the land will find it easy to access the benefits proposed.” Well that person was right. Here is another one: “We want all taxation to be lowered and let people look after themselves like we do.” That is what the farmers are saying. Here is another one: “Just another way of taxing businesses.” Farmers have a way of putting it do they not? They really do. They do not muck around they do not use all the flowery language. They just say it as it is. Here is another one: “Paid parental leave is a discriminatory provision that needs revising.” That is a very fair comment. Here is another one: “The paid parental leave payment in its current form is discriminatory against all mothers who choose to stay in the home to care for their families”—is that not right I ask United Future—“especially farming wives who are often needed to help in the smooth running of the farm.” This could apply to all wives who are part of the self-employed business. They are being doubly penalised—in that by staying in the home they are already forgoing a wage packet and now because they are not part of the regular workforce they are not eligible for the paid parental leave payment either. This bill is discriminatory. 
What did the Social Services Committee in its majority verdict say on this bill? Of course the National Party did not agree with this majority report. The only discrimination that this Labour-Green select committee wanted to be concerned about was possible discrimination and I quote from page 8 of the commentary on the bill: “Another submission raised a wider issue relating to eligibility for parental leave entitlements and sought clarification on whether the legislation could be interpreted to exclude lesbian gay or transgender workers.” That is fair comment. 
It then went on to state that because gay lesbian and transgender couples cannot at the moment adopt a child under the Adoption Act this would be something that might be discriminatory against those people. Well it might and that is certainly an issue. But what about the greater discrimination against those mothers who seek to stay at home to look after their children when they are young? I say good on those mothers. It is certainly something that a lot of us did not really want to have to do because it is a very tough tough job. Being a mother is the toughest job in the world. It is certainly the one that we are not given any assistance on except through what we have learnt from our own parents. This is an aspect where that discrimination is being carried forward in this bill. 
Why is it that we cannot care about self-employed women? Because certainly the Government’s response has always been: “Oh well there might be some problems with their taxes or something. They don’t know how much income they earn.” But my goodness that same Minister who is promoting this bill knows how to get them for their accident compensation payments. This Government knows how much those people earn for income tax purposes. It is income tax because these people actually work for their money. They do not get golden handshakes from the Waipareira Trust. They do not go around signing forms illegally. They do not do those sorts of things. They are just decent hard-working New Zealanders. They are getting the privilege of paying for this sort of discriminatory legislation which shows that this Government does not care a scrap about these decent ordinary New Zealanders.