Bridges Simon: Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBridges Simon: Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 15 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17968. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Labour): We will see whether I take up Jacinda Ardern on that wee bet. What a great day for the Government and more important what a great day for New Zealanders. After projections of a decade of deficit in the public accounts we as a country are back in surplus. We are now managing the growth of this economy. What that means is that with the good management of the economy that Bill English and John Key have given us through disciplined decisions day after day year after year we can now invest more in families. This is not luck. It has not happened by having some magic tree down at the bottom of the garden that we pluck money off according to the Greens. This has happened through good management of the economy which is allowing us to invest more money in Kiwi families. We are prioritising those families first and foremost. Those families are getting the first dividends of good management of the economy today.Paid parental leave is of course part of a much bigger package—$500 million for families is at the heart of this Budget and paid parental leave is if you like the heart of that heart. It is a $172 million package—this Budget Measures (Financial Support for Newborn Children) Bill which I think is $141 million and then the rest is in a wider reform package. What a great day for Kiwi families.But let me tell you this. Unlike what we have seen in other proposals this is a considered and responsible package.Hon Anne Tolley: And a good one.Hon SIMON BRIDGES: And a good package. It is more and more—more entitlement than the status quo going to 18 weeks in two affordable steps and more eligibility. You know actually I have to say that that is perhaps the key of the wider package here. Fundamentally it is more choice for Kiwi families to decide what is best for them. What a privilege it is for this Government to be delivering this for New Zealanders—extending paid parental leave in two affordable steps widening eligibility to caregivers other than parents and of course to people in less regular work and then increasing flexibility. Twenty-six thousand people get paid parental leave now; we are increasing that by 1400 families with what we are doing.That is 1400 families who under Sue Moroney’s proposals would get nothing. They would get nothing from Sue Moroney’s package. Unlike the Sue Moroney package and unlike what we have heard from Labour and the Greens this is a considered responsible package—Dr Rajen Prasad: And minimalist.Hon SIMON BRIDGES: —which reaches more people who deserve the help Mr Prasad. Sue Moroney—she did the easy bit but she had not done the hard policy work that was required to reach more people and she had not done the thinking on the things that matter. Just extending the length of paid parental leave is not the right approach for this country. That is not what this is all about.Dr Rajen Prasad: Yes it is. Why not?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Mr Prasad says that it is. Well actually go back and listen to or read what was said by people who actually normally support Mr Prasad. Academics Susan St John and Jonathan Boston made very clear pre-Budget that more important than the length of the entitlement was targeting it to the people in need. That is what Labour and the Green Party have forgotten with their glib thinking and with their lack of hard work in this area and actually across the board in policy. This Government—and I thank the officials for their help as well—has done that hard policy work. We are doing the work to ensure that the law is going to reflect the modern and increasingly diverse families and workplaces of New Zealand so that more New Zealanders who deserve paid parental leave and the tax credits get what they deserve.Let me give you a couple of examples here to flesh this out. Caregivers other than parents—at the moment we know that it is mum her partner and an adoptive parent who are the only people who get paid parental leave. We are modernising the law to reflect the reality of families today so that permanent guardians are there and of course those like Home for Life guardians who perhaps are in a permanent foster relationship. They are currently not able to get paid parental leave. They wanted to be at home nurturing their child but they were not included and nor were working grandparents who will now be able to get the assistance they need.Dr Rajen Prasad: How many babies in Home for Life?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Mr Prasad asks how many. Well 600—600 more people will be receiving this entitlement by widening the caregivers category to a primary carer - type concept like we see in tax credits that are already in the law. That is something we will be consulting on so that every child who needs it and whose parents are meeting the other eligibility criteria like working are getting it under this bill. That is an area where Sue Moroney Jacinda Ardern and others on the left there had not done the policy work. We want to see people who are in less regular work also getting this entitlement.This is another area where Labour has not done the work because at the moment you have got to have consistent regularised and effectively if not full time work then certainly permanent work with one employer. Effectively middle-class work is where you get paid parental leave but we are intending to make this much more fair so that if you have been in full-time work for a good chunk of the year and part-time work for most of the year—and we will consult on this—you will be eligible. That will see seasonal and casual workers perhaps being eligible. We have seen examples of this. Someone who is a fish processor—a woman fish processor—for half the year who then moves on to fruit picking for the other half of the year is not currently eligible. She may have been doing that for 20 years but she is not eligible under the current scheme. But we are changing that and making a difference in that regard.Those who have recently changed jobs—a real example is when the Canterbury earthquakes meant that a woman lost her supermarket job. That same week she went to work for the very same supermarket in a different suburb in Christchurch but because it was a different franchisor she was not eligible for paid parental leave despite being several months’ pregnant. We will consult on that and change it. Again we will be widening the eligibility for workers with more than one employer because we have done the policy work and we are making sure that this is a fairer package.Finally we are increasing flexibility in the wider reforms in this area in addition to this bill which increases the length of the leave. The work that Labour and the Greens have not done—Sue Moroney: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. That is very interesting but it is not in Part 1 of the bill nor is it in fact in the bill at all—at all—what the Minister is talking about.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am—Dr David Clark: It’s wide-ranging.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No it is not wide-ranging. I am listening very carefully to what is being said. It is in context and is building a picture for the overall bill that is before us. So I am allowing him to continue.Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Currently the law on paid parental leave is an inflexible all-or-nothing position. You start your paid parental leave. You have the 14 weeks increasing to 18 weeks. You then have the option of going unpaid for up to 12 months. If a woman goes back to work for half a day—there are examples of women going back in for IT training—they lose all eligibility for the paid parental scheme. That is wrong and we want to change that and ensure that there is increased flexibility for the benefit of women in this scheme. We want to see days at work for training and those sorts of purposes and also after that 18 weeks the ability to perhaps look at part-time options—always at the woman’s discretion.It is great to be speaking on this important set of reforms that this Government is leading for the benefit of New Zealanders.