Brown Peter: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Brown Peter: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:630;Page:2622] 
PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 I would just like to clarify a few points at the start of my contribution. The first one is that I and New Zealand First recognise that Laila Harré was the first member to bring this issue before Parliament. But as I recall—and I am 100 percent correct on this—the thrust of her bill was that employers would pay for paid parental leave. That simply was not acceptable to New Zealand First. I remember we told her that that was not acceptable and in fairness the Labour-led Government picked up the bill and made it much more workable in our view by funding it through taxpayer funds. That is the way it should be. 
The first bill was passed in 2002. New Zealand First supported that. We supported it wholeheartedly. We were told at that time that the self-employed were excluded because of complications and what have you but that they would be included in an amendment bill in the not too distant future. That amendment bill came about in 2004 but again it excluded the self-employed. We thought that was totally unfair. There is no real major difficulty in including self-employed people in this legislation. As the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee found out it is a relatively straightforward bill and very little has been changed in the select committee process. 
Sue Bradford I think referred to new section 2AD inserted by clause 8. I hope I heard her correctly. She took issue with the fact that as it is written here a person who is both an employee and a self-employed person cannot get a combined entitlement. The select committee raised this issue—indeed I think I raised it first at the select committee. I might be proven to be wrong on that but I know that virtually everybody on the select committee supported that concern. I was pleased to hear the Minister say that she will produce a Supplementary Order Paper at the Committee stage that will address that concern and allow people who are both employees and self-employed to combine their work efforts so that they can get the maximum entitlement. I think that will address Sue Bradford’s concern. I hope it does. We have not seen the Supplementary Order Paper as yet of course but we will await it with some excitement. 
For the 4 years that we have had paid parental leave we have done a huge disservice to self-employed people—a huge disservice. That is why New Zealand First is quite delighted that we are in the throes of passing this bill today. Basically some very highly paid employed people have been entitled to paid parental leave and some relatively low-paid self-employed people have not had any entitlement. We think that is grossly unfair and we really cannot understand why it has taken so long for the Government to get its act together and address this issue. 
I think the National Party member made some comment that this is basically a women’s bill. Well in essence because the bill will affect mothers I suppose one could accept that rationale. But believe it or not thousands upon thousands—indeed I suggest millions—of men are concerned about this issue. I read recently—and I wish I had brought it down to the House—what a good start this measure gives young kiddies because they have a person at home who is being paid for so many weeks. That is reflected not only in the mother’s viewpoint of the whole thing but also in the father’s. This is a very important bill for fathers so I think it is wrong of us even to imply that it is really a women’s bill because that is not the case. 
New Zealand First has one degree of concern. We tried to get it addressed during the select committee consideration of this bill but were told that it was a bit difficult and that there were reasons for not doing it. Our concern relates to when a person goes on paid parental leave and the employer has to by law hold the job open for 12 months—although the parent will get only 14 weeks’ pay. The employer has to hold the job open for 12 months but during that time the parent—the mother or the father—could take a job elsewhere. Indeed we were given an example of a person who was working somewhere down south for a competitor I think. The original employer was holding the job open for 12 months only to discover that the person he was holding the job open for was working for his competitor. That seems to us to be totally unfair and totally against the spirit of the whole thing. It is still the law that the job has to be held open. Meanwhile the employer may be filling the role with someone who may not be right up to speed—who may not be of the right calibre or have the right experience for the job—simply to keep the spot open for the original employee. 
New Zealand First believes that that issue really must be addressed. The reason that people cannot indicate to their employer that they are leaving and might not return is that they would forfeit the payment. We think there must be a way of overcoming that. Employers have a right to know as accurately as possible whether a staff member is coming back. It would really brass employers off to find out that they had held a job open only to find that the employee had gone somewhere else. As I say the example given to the select committee whereby someone was working for a competitor is quite a sore point with New Zealand First. 
We are absolutely delighted that this bill is proceeding. We think it is in the spirit of the original bill of 2002. We question why it did not come to fruition a lot more promptly. There is no major complication in giving paid parental leave to self-employed people and we are absolutely delighted that we are doing this now albeit 4 years too late. New Zealand First supports this bill.