Seymour David: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave and Work Contact Hours) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSeymour David: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave and Work Contact Hours) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 25 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11283. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this bill. I would like to warp back to a couple of the contributions we have already had in this debate in particular to Clayton Mitchell who really took us back to the 1950s making his entire contribution about mothers. He spoke about mothers so much that it was getting somewhat Freudian. Well perhaps he has missed the point—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!DAVID SEYMOUR: —that this is about paid parental leave for fathers and mothers rather than just mothers. We heard from Sue Moroney a rather veiled inference that somehow men are not eligible to speak in terms of this debate. She was nowhere near as explicit or as bad as Clayton Mitchell from the 1950s. She did not mean it to come out but it came out.So let us be clear that this is a debate about parental leave. Iain Lees-Galloway in his fine King’s College debating form said that the questions are: is this bill necessary and can it be afforded? His argument was that it is necessary because other OECD countries have on average longer paid parental leave periods. Well if this Parliament made laws on the basis that we should always regress to the OECD mean then we would never ever have voted for women to be able to vote in general elections or for a large number of other policy innovations that this country has made. We also would have adopted a number of very bad public policies and it would be an example of that if we were to adopt Sue Moroney’s bill.But then he made the argument that it is affordable. Well this has always been about politics for the Labour Party. Funnily enough Jacinda Ardern in an earlier debate actually betrayed the Labour Party and showed us just how political this has always been. Jacinda Ardern told us that when there was a $2.5 billion surplus in 2002 that was when the Labour Government under pressure from the Alliance party first introduced paid parental leave—2002 was an election year remember? Then in 2004 when the National Party’s polling went up and the surplus was $5.6 billion Labour decided to introduce extensions to paid parental leave. Then when there was no surplus at all but the Labour Party did not have the burden of governing those members were keen to further extend paid parental leave. When it suits them they make the argument about fiscal responsibility and when it does not suit them they do not talk about fiscal responsibility at all.But the reality is that the current situation is not one of the Government having a large surplus. It is not time to consider such large spending increases and when the Labour Party is in Government it knows that very very well. Why is this purely political? The fact is that paid parental leave is not a reality for half of New Zealanders who have children. In this country every year there are 60000 babies born give or take a few and how many people actually sign up for paid parental leave? Fewer than 30000. So this cannot be necessary. If it is necessary then what do we say to the half of parents who have children yet do not take advantage of paid parental leave? The fact of the matter is that this is purely political it is purely posturing and it is purely vote-buying on behalf of the Labour Party.But there is one small innovation in policy in this area that I would like to take a little bit of credit for because one thing the State should do and one reason we pay taxes is to give people financial compensation in times of unexpected need such as when they have babies prematurely. I am pleased this Government has introduced additional paid parental leave for people who find themselves in unexpected situations but I am also pleased to be part of a Government that opposes wholesale vote-buying that affects only half the population that is based on the shonkiest of research and that will make no difference to most people except for the Labour Party and its polling. Well folks you are going to have to work a lot harder to make this work. I oppose this bill. Thank you.