Mapp Wayne: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Mapp Wayne: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:631;Page:2849] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 In the previous part we were discussing the importance under the words of Business New Zealand and Paula Bennett of extending the whole concept of paid parental leave basically to all parents recognising that this is a position on which the nation should really arrive at—probably on a consensual basis. It would be of huge importance to supporting families particularly those on lower incomes. That of course is the general point and I will return to it perhaps in the closing debate. 
I want to focus in this debate upon Part 2 which is essentially a rewriting of the existing statute and especially on clause 18 which inserts new section 70G: “Labour Inspectors may make determinations in respect of self-employed persons”. I am drawing that to the attention of the House because it picks up on the points made by Mr Chris Tremain the member of Parliament for Napier. The importance of that clause is that self-employed people do not actually want bureaucracy. They do not envisage a whole bunch of self-important bureaucrats coming around to their businesses and asking them questions such as “Are you self-employed?” saying “Show us the books show us your work site.”; using that sort of approach. It is something that could be dreamt up only in the bowels of Wellington or in the Department of Labour. 
I guarantee that no advice was taken from the Small Business Advisory Group on that particular issue. If that organisation had been asked it would have queried whether the Government was going to add yet another compliance cost on small business. After all who has to pay for all this stuff? It is hard-working New Zealanders and principally businesses through their business tax. So the Small Business Advisory Group would have said that compliance costs of that nature could go in the bin. 
That is why National had mentioned that the better approach was in essence to have a tax deduction. There does not have to be a whole bunch of labour inspectors making determinations under new section 70G in those kinds of situations. The Department of Labour will have all sorts of tests for determining a self-employed person’s average weekly earnings. What does that actually mean? Does that mean department officials will go through all the books and accounts of the self-employed like some kind of inland revenue inspectors? The truth is that the Inland Revenue Department would not go to that kind of extraordinary extent. We already have a very good system in place to assess business accounts. Why do we not just stick with that and go for a much more straightforward and simpler system that respects the self-employed? 
The other point—and perhaps I will complete my contribution on this point—made earlier by Paula Bennett was that a far simpler approach is just to give a lump sum. I mean who truly believes that at say week 5 week 7 or week 10 the payments will suddenly stop? The answer is that they will not. People will expect to get the full amount for the full 14 weeks. Well why not cut out all the administration and all the rubbish of paying money by weekly amounts into bank accounts? Again that is something that could be dreamt up only in the bowels of Wellington—an efficient and effective system is to pay someone 14 equal payments of $378 or whatever the figure happens to be. Why not just cut through the—I will not use the word because it would be unparliamentary—rubbish and pay people a single sum? That is of benefit of course to parents but it is also of benefit to the Government because it would save administration and compliance costs. 
I guess there is only one flaw in all of that—the flaw is that Labour is always seeking ways to enable its mates to get jobs in order to boost the bureaucracy and to entrench all those Labour voters in Wellington. How does it do that? It grows and bloats the bureaucracy down here. It is always dreaming up madcap schemes to expand the bureaucracy and I guess that one of its madcap schemes is to have 14 payments monitored by Department of Labour inspectors checked into bank accounts through automatic payments opened and closed and so forth when it could go for a simple but effective system.