Bennett Paula: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Bennett Paula: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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PAULA BENNETT (National) 
: 
 I would have liked to see the Labour Government take the opportunity to address the situation where people who are going on paid parental leave are not able to tell their employers whether they wish to stay in their job. Since we are amending the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act it makes sense to me that perhaps we could have addressed the anomaly that is out there at the moment. What is happening is that when people go to take paid parental leave to be eligible for the payment they have to say they will go back into their job. They have to have the full intention of going back to work. 
We have not covered this with the self-employed persons either. It may be that someone intends to run down the business in order to start a family or have more children. However people cannot tell us that because they will then not be eligible for the payment because it is for the duration of the 14 weeks. People who said they were closing down the business and would no longer be running it would not get the 14-week payment. What people will do instead is say they intend to take the 14 weeks off and then go back into the business and it is at that point that they may run it down and close it or sell it. That is not such a big issue for people who are self-employed but it is a huge issue at the moment with unemployment being at its lowest in a long time—as the Government likes to tell us—so it means we have not got as many people out there looking for work. 
In my mind when people have a baby they fit into three categories: those who intend to leave their work and not return and instead raise their children at home themselves; those who intend to take leave and are not quite sure what they will do and whether they will return; and those who have the complete intention of returning after a short period of time. 
Those people who fit into the first category—who have no intention of returning to their jobs—cannot resign because then they will not be eligible for the 14 weeks’ pay. It is important that we address those issues because what is happening is that those employers who are covering the maternity leave are having to take on temporary employees. They have to keep the job open—and that makes sense to me; we need to keep the jobs open for those women and I certainly support that—but what I am saying is that being able to take on only temporary employees cuts down the current labour-market force that is available to them at that time. It is a much smaller proportion of people who want to do temporary work. 
What we could have done while looking at this Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill was address some of those other issues. This is where we come back to the issue of the lump sum for everyone. If we were paying out the lump sum it would not matter whether someone was intending to take the 14 weeks off. It would be a lot more straightforward. At the moment people are in a situation where they almost have to lie. I have certainly employed staff myself—I come from the recruitment field and it is mainly women whom I employed in that business—who would say they did not think they would come back to work but goodness knows they could not resign. They had no intention of coming back but did not want to resign because then they would not be eligible for the 14 weeks’ paid parental leave. Who can blame them? It is an expensive job and I do not blame them for getting the 14 weeks’ pay. In fact I say they deserve the 14 weeks’ pay and I certainly am all for self-employed persons getting it as well. 
However if we were to give a lump sum and not have all these restrictions around it as my learned colleague pointed out it would cut down so much of the administration cost and would actually cost the country less—that has to be a good thing. It would give people freedom of choice and they would not have to mislead their employers. In the case of the self-employed it may affect their employees. Assuming that it is not a big business and that self-employed people have perhaps only one or two working for them such people may have the complete intention of closing down the business or selling it in order to start a family but in order to be eligible for the 14 weeks’ pay they have to say they are going back. That is where we are almost making liars out of people. 
I think it is a shame we are not addressing a bigger and wider issue which is how we support women into—