Roche Denise: Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill (No 2) Taxation (Parental Tax Credit) Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoche Denise: Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill (No 2) Taxation (Parental Tax Credit) Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 15 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:18016. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENISE ROCHE (Green): I rise to take the final call for the Greens on the Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill which I note has been divided up into two bills: the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Taxation (Parental Tax Credit) Bill. The Greens will be supporting these bills. We have stated very vocally through the course of yesterday and last night and also this morning that we have some concerns about that and we do. However these steps forward are steps forward not back and we do need to congratulate the Government on actually taking these steps.However we do have some concerns as well around the use of urgency which I would like noted for the record. There is nothing in either of these bills that deems that we should be doing this process under urgency. In terms of the paid parental leave extensions the extension to 16 weeks does not kick in until 2015 and the extension to 18 weeks up from the current 14 weeks does not kick in until 2016. Extending the parental tax credit for some babies—not for all babies but for some babies—applies only for babies who are born after 1 April 2015. So we could have had a process where we had submissions on these items. We could have heard from the Child Poverty Action Group because some of us went to the post-Budget breakfast this morning and we did hear from the group there. What it is saying is that this Budget is not delivering much at all for vulnerable families and our poorest children. I remind the House that there are 285000 children living in poverty in Aotearoa New Zealand. This bill does not address anything to do with them.So although we do support the bills going through—we will be voting in favour—we do have some beef with them. The parental tax credit for example discriminates against children of people who are on benefits and it says that those children can stay inpoverty. This Government has directed that tax credit only to those who are working. With paid parental leave yes we will support the extension to 16 weeks from next year and 18 weeks the year after. However we recognise that the National Government is surfing a wave of the popularity that was generated by Sue Moroney’s member’s bill for 26 weeks paid parental leave. The Government has made some tiny steps towards that in order to undermine her bill. We support 26 paid weeks off work in order to spend time with your baby. However our policy goes further than that. We suggest that it should be 13 months but we will support the National Government’s bill because it is a miniscule step in the right direction.I am just going to quote from the Human Rights Commission’s submission on Sue Moroney’s bill the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill which advocates 26 weeks’ paid parental leave. It said that there were some issues around accessibility to paid parental leave. It is good that this Government has picked up the idea that we should be extending it to seasonal and part-time workers but again I note that is not going to happen with this bill. It is potentially not going to happen until 2016. So these carrots are there but we have not got there yet. The Human Rights Commission said that “The issue was also picked up by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women … [where it said we have to] ‘introduce appropriate legal measures to ensure parental leave … as well as paid leave for seasonal or fixed-term workers with multiple employment relationships...’ ”. We will support this bill because it is better than nothing but you can be sure that nothing is what the poor get from it.