Roy Heather: Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Roy Heather: Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:617;Page:13360] 
HEATHER ROY (ACT) 
: 
 It gives me pleasure to rise to speak to the first reading of this bill. ACT New Zealand did not support the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Bill when it was introduced and it certainly will not support this amendment to that legislation for the many reasons I will come to in a minute. It is interesting to look around the House and to listen to what people have been saying. Only the two young mothers in the House—those closest to the people this bill is supposed to advantage—have stood up and said that they oppose this measure. That was for very good reasons—[ 
Interruption 
] I am sorry. Ms Bradford is also a young mother but she is not quite as close to being one as the other two young mothers in the House. 
This bill is discriminatory as the National Party member pointed out. It means that people will be more dependent on welfare than they need to be. Also the Government has completely failed to point out that there are people who are not covered by this bill: the self-employed and those who participate in work on contracts. The Government is yet again picking winners and showing its anti-business bias—in this case against the self-employed and contract workers. 
Steve Chadwick 
: Mothers are winners. 
HEATHER ROY 
: Mothers are definitely winners and nobody would suggest for a moment that they should be denied this time at home with their newborn babies. I was certainly fortunate enough to have this time although like the previous speaker when I had my fourth baby I went back to work after 2 weeks—as did Steve Chadwick—and I went back to work 1 week after my fifth baby was born. I was in the fortunate position of being able to work part time and of occasionally being able to take my babies to work with me. That does not mean I think I should have been paid to do that. I am surprised that Government members have not thrown up their hands in horror already and said that some mothers cannot afford that precious time at home with their babies. That is the philosophy behind this bill and many others that the Government has promoted. 
Families today are not in the fortunate position they were in during the past. I think back to the 1950s and 1960s in particular when we can say that women did have the luxury of staying at home and looking after their newborn babies. In most cases they stayed at home until their children were well into their school years. The very simple reason for that—and a reason why we should not pay people to take parental leave—is that in the 1950s and 1960s families paid approximately 25 percent of their income in taxation. Today when we calculate everything including GST that figure is much closer to 40 percent. That is the crux of the matter. Many mothers—or fathers in some cases—now cannot afford to stay at home full time with their children and that is a great shame. But the situation is easily rectifiable. ACT advocates taxation cuts and we would certainly like to see a low flat tax rate of 20 percent. If that were the case more families would have the option of one parent—either the mother or the father—staying at home. It would be a much more viable option for those families to have one parent stay home to look after the children for as long as they felt it appropriate. 
There have been several high profile examples very recently. I think of the article on the front page of the  
Sunday Star-Times 
’ 
a couple of weeks ago about Marilynn McLachlan a mother of four children and her husband who is a schoolteacher earning $55000. Not only can they not put anything aside but they feel they are moving backwards. Middle-income earning families are moving backwards and the main reason is that taxation in this country is too high. They cannot make ends meet on that sort of money.  
The taxed earnings that the National Party member also spoke about are a very important consideration. Each time tax is taken from somebody and moved through the Government departments—firstly through the Inland Revenue Department then on to the Ministry of Social Development and then back to parents in the form of parental leave—there are inefficiencies and money is lost along the way. It would make a great deal more sense to allow people to have that money in their back pocket. They are the ones who can spend it the most wisely on their own behalf.  
Employers need to be considered too because they are often left out of the equation. They are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of sex when employing people but many—as we know when we talk to small-business people as I do—will not even think about employing a young woman with childbearing potential. If a women applicant for a job does not have a child or has only one or two and expresses an interest in having more children then she is often overlooked because of the burden she would be to her employer should she decide to have children. That is a great shame and often employers will miss out on very good employees. However if they have a small business one can see their point of view. It is often very difficult for them to have to do without an employee for any length of time or to get somebody else in when they are perfectly happy with the employee they have.  
This leads on to the distrust that this Government has of employers—in particular of private employers and small-business people. In many cases we see small businesses remaining as family businesses because the owners do not want to take on the obligations that employing people would place them under. It is easier for them to keep their businesses small. Even if their business is a thriving business and may go on to do particularly well it is easier to operate as a mother and father business.  
So parental leave throws a whole lot of balls into the air. It creates an awful lot of difficulties for employers and it sends the wrong message to society. It says that it is all right to have children and that we do not have to plan for them and that we not need to think ahead and work out what we will do with those children. What sort of society do we have when we have to pay people to take time off to look after their newborn babies? I think that is a sad indictment on us. 
Sue Kedgley 
: Mothers should be paid for their work. 
HEATHER ROY 
: The issue of whether mothers should be paid for their work is a very different one. Somebody who has a baby or who plans for a baby has an obligation to think very carefully about how that baby will be brought up. As the National Party member said people have 9 months to think about these things. It is not a surprise when the baby finally arrives. Adoptive parents are in a slightly different position but for most people those 9 months give adequate time to plan and the decision making comes a long time before that as well. In my own case I am pleased to say that I have not been dependent on parental or maternity leave. I planned well ahead. I am very proud to say that I have five children and that I was lucky enough to be in the position of not requiring that money. 
But I come back to the point: if money is the question then tax cuts are the answer. The best situation is more money in people’s back pockets so that they can make the best decisions for their own families and their own lives. We in this country have had enough of a bossyboots Government that interferes in people’s lives. This Government’s days are numbered. It will have to push through its pet legislation—like parental leave—as quickly as it can because its days are numbered. ACT New Zealand will not support this bill. It is a discriminatory bill and it means that people will yet again be dependent on welfare. It sends very wrong messages to society and ACT will not support it.