Hudson Brett: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave and Work Contact Hours) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHudson Brett: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave and Work Contact Hours) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 16 September 2015. Volume:708;Page:6740. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]BRETT HUDSON (National): I rise in opposition to this bill but before I canvass the reasons why we will oppose the bill I would like to reiterate some comments that my colleague Sarah Dowie made. I would like to acknowledge Sue Moroney the member sponsoring the bill. Her position on this issue is very very clear absolutely honest and fundamentally based in integrity. This is the second iteration of her bill. We can argue that semantically it is not the same as the bill that was recently defeated but it none the less is still canvassing very much the same sorts of areas. I think it shows that Ms Moroney absolutely believes that there is a need and absolutely believes that we need to address it.The main thrust of my contribution is not that as a basic proposition the idea of additional parental leave is a bad thing. It is about how much in what form and who gets it. Sue’s bill is all about 22 to 26 weeks for parents which can actually be shared between the two parents of the child but National is going a lot broader than that. We are looking at the different sorts of childcare arrangements that families might use today or might choose to use in the future. It could be argued that although no one would try to say that we are offering 26 weeks we are offering additional flexibility and additional weeks in a different way. What we saw as of 1 April this year was an increase of 2 weeks to 16 weeks a year. As of 1 April of next year that will increase to 18 weeks.I will acknowledge the leader and strong whip of the ACT caucus David Seymour for his very timely and well-thought-out contributions. I acknowledge some amendments he has made to the bill that is passing through the House that will see additional paid parental leave for preterm births which is something that I know was dear to Ms Moroney in the first iteration of her bill. I think that is still relevant to the concerns that she is looking to address now. Mr Seymour’s changes which we have adopted will mean that for every week ahead of the 37 weeks of gestation that a baby is born an additional week of paid parental leave will be added to whatever the paid parental leave allowance is. I think that is a very good and pragmatic change to make.I will just hark back to a point that Mr Seymour made when he advocated for those changes. He did point out that although families choose to have children they certainly do not choose to have children who are born premature so they are faced with a situation they cannot plan for and perhaps cannot address so it is quite right that the State might look to provide some additional assistance.In terms of what the National Party is doing outside of just looking at extra weeks on their own we are looking to extend Home for Life entitlements to whāngai parents grandparents and permanent guardians. That is something that is not addressed by Ms Moroney’s bill. We are extending paid parental leave to more workers casual workers seasonal workers and workers who have more than one employer working arrangements that are not captured in existing provisions of paid parental leave. We have already extended the parental tax credit from $150 a week to $220 a week and extended the validity period from 8 weeks to 10 weeks. We are basically instituting and looking to institute additional measures that are giving parents more choices about what is important to them.There are some parents who actually choose to return to work earlier and the move we have made with the parental tax credit is helping the parents who are looking to make that choice. So when I think of what we are doing it is not about a gain or a battle between the number of weeks of paid parental leave. It is about looking holistically at the different family arrangements the different care arrangements and the different situations. Although Ms Moroney is proposing one thing what this Government has done and is doing is different. But it is still having a very tangible and positive effect on families and their choices in raising their young families. We will oppose this bill but I do commend Ms Moroney for her obviously deeply held views on this matter. Thank you.