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:2850] 
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) 
: 
 I think that Wayne Mapp is talking about something that is probably a budgetary leak. He is well ahead of Parliament and the Government in the concept of providing a new formula based on fairness and equity. Paula Bennett has also taken initiative in this area as well. It is good to see that National is providing the leadership that we have not seen from the Government. 
We are looking at Part 2 and we are glad the Minister is here today. An issue came up at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and we have not had resolution of that issue to a satisfactory level from the Minister. The issue was in regard to a constituent who had a very sad story. He was a solo father at the time he came to the office and about 9 months previously while his wife was pregnant she had injured herself. She had a highly paid job in the local hospital and she was on accident compensation for a few of the last months of her pregnancy. Tragically she was killed in a motor vehicle accident soon after giving birth to their third child. The father as a solo parent sought to transfer to himself the paid parental leave entitlement but that payment was going to be based only on the lower income of the accident compensation payments not the higher possible total income on a pro rata basis. He felt very much aggrieved that he had gone through a terrible tragedy in his family life but that the Government was not willing to recognise that and would recognise only a lower payment entitlement. We have asked the Minister for some resolution of that issue but we have not received a satisfactory response at this stage. 
However I note that when we raised that issue at the select committee the Department of Labour came up with an amendment to the legislation. Members will see that Supplementary Order Paper 31 in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson has an amendment to clause 20(1)(b) to clarify the circumstances of parental leave taken by a self-employed person. The time before a baby’s due date is not included when calculating a self-employed person’s earnings. So essentially the time that a person is not in work before the due date has not been included in the calculation—the calculation is based on the person’s actual income in the time before then. That is a sensible solution and it needs to be applied in employment situations as well. However it does not cover the case of payments for such things as accident compensation. As a Parliament we need to be prepared to widen the extent of our legislation so that we do cover specific cases where someone could get into that circumstance. 
Business New Zealand which made some very good submissions during the process raised the case where a permanent employee on parental leave may be replaced by an employee who is also pregnant on a fixed-term agreement. The new employee will be eligible for parental leave during the term of the agreement. Business New Zealand submitted that in those circumstances the agreement cannot be terminated on grounds other than those in the agreement. So when the temporary employee has finished parental leave she will be able to return to her job to complete the remainder of the term of the agreement. 
Essentially it is a case where a second employee would come in and get the same entitlements as the original employee and employers felt that they could be aggrieved in having to cover two lots of entitlements. That was another issue raised at the select committee and we did not get a satisfactory resolution to it. The select committee was doing a rush job. It had to get its legislation on self-employment through within a certain time frame and members were not prepared to take the time to look at individual circumstances or specific cases or indeed at innovative concepts such as those Paula Bennett and Wayne Mapp have been talking about this afternoon. Their concept is innovative because it is different from the concepts we are considering in just trying to extend to self-employed people what has been given to employment relationships. 
This legislation was dreamt up only after an election campaign. It is here only because the Government saw the opposition from a number of other parties when the original legislation went through. I ask members not to think for a minute that it has been done out of regard for the best interests of self-employed people. This legislation is a cover-up that the Government felt it needed at a certain point in time. Self-employed people were never on the Labour Party’s original list of people it wanted to look after.