Tremain Chris: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental  Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Tremain Chris: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental  Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:628;Page:596] 
CHRIS TREMAIN (National—Napier) 
: 
 The National Party will support the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill 2005. We will support ensuring the scheme is accessible to a wider number of individuals we will support enhancing equity by allowing employed people to access paid parental leave irrespective of whether they are employees or self-employed we will support enabling a self-employed parent to take leave for the period of income replacement and lastly we support the health and well-being of new mothers and their babies.  
Let us examine how this amendment came about. Apart from the pressure exerted by the National Party this amendment came about by an outstanding piece of research commissioned by the Labour Government. An evaluation of paid parental leave was completed in 2003 and it “identified that the benefits of paid parental leave are not being able to be accessed by the self-employed.” That amazing piece of research uncovered the earth-shattering evidence—hold on wait for it here is a drum roll: “that self-employed parents face the same difficulties as employed parents in combining work with childcare;”. Holy heck! Secondly we found out: “self-employed parents did not receive parental leave payments despite helping to fund the scheme through their tax payments.” That research absolutely astounds me. It is research that any person with an ounce of common sense would have known. It is research that proves entirely where the focus of this Government is aimed—obviously nowhere near anyone who has the gumption to own and run their own business.  
The fact that the Government needed to conduct an evaluation of this nature is indeed quite disheartening as is the fact that it is so far out of touch with the self-employed business people of this country that an evaluation had to be undertaken to uncover that I repeat: “self-employed parents face the same difficulties as employed parents in combining work with childcare;”. No way! Do they? It is as though self-employed parents come from another planet.  
Well it is these aliens—these parents—that I want to talk about in some detail for they are not aliens to me and they are certainly not aliens to the National Party. Although they are no more important as individual human beings than anyone else in this nation they should definitely not be forgotten. Small-business people and self-employed people are an essential ingredient of this nation. They are the entrepreneurs the risk takers the innovators and the wealth creators. They are an essential element in improving our nation’s growth and our balance of payments. They are our job providers our family supporters and our community fundraisers. Small businesses are massive taxpayers.  
As at February 2004 there were 312000 enterprises employing under 20 people—209000 of those employed zero people. The Hon Dr Michael Cullen and the Hon David Cunliffe in the September 2003 landmark Government discussion document entitled—wait for this one—“Making tax easier for small businesses” make this very telling point: “Small businesses are important not only in number but also in the extent of their tax contribution. Self-employed individuals who work on their own and businesses that employ five or fewer staff contribute around 40 percent of the business income tax revenue. Most of the remainder comes from a small number of large businesses.” So at least to give them credit Michael Cullen and David Cunliffe already knew back in 2003 that self-employed people were an important ingredient of the economy. Despite this they still needed an evaluation under the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave) Amendment Act to understand that self-employed parents were an important ingredient in our country. Effectively this group of parents pays for one-third of the health budget of this country.  
So the Labour Government knew back in 2003 how important self-employed people were to this economy. What they forgot though is that those aliens actually have families as well. Shock horror! Self-employed people have families. Like I said it is earth-shattering stuff. So I tell members that self-employed parents today face far greater difficulties than employed parents. Some people might not like to notice that but it is a fact. First let me qualify this by saying that many employees out there work like they own their own businesses and I give them full credit for that. But at the end of the day employees can walk away from their jobs thereby leaving the responsibility of the replacement with the owner of the business. Self-employed people especially one-man bands do not have that luxury. They are the driver of their business; they are the leaders. They are the people who are so passionate about their business that they will crawl over broken glass to make sure that business is successful. Yet this Government forgot about them. It needed an evaluation to uncover the earth-shattering fact that self-employed parents face the same difficulties as employed parents. Holy heck! And the Government got it wrong. Any half-decent researcher would have reported back that self-employed parents face much tougher difficulties. That is why the National Party and I will support the bill.