Bradford Sue: Parental Leave and Employment Protection mendment Bill — Second Reading 
Bradford Sue: Parental Leave and Employment Protection mendment Bill — Second Reading 
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SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 Unlike the previous speaker from ACT the Green Party is pleased to support this bill amending the Government’s paid parental leave scheme established in 2002—and as for creeping socialism I do not think that this legislation really counts. While we would have liked it to go a lot further it is great that paid parental leave will be extended from 12 weeks to 14 weeks over the next 2 years and that paternity and parental leave will now apply to people who have worked for the same employer for between 6 and 12 months. 
I do however continue to have some slight concern about the position for example of medical staff who move between employment with different district health boards and who do not appear to be covered by this bill. I will be consulting others to see whether anything might be done about that especially given that the bill specifically covers teachers who move between schools. It seems to me to be a very anomalous situation. 
The Green Party would also have liked to see a further extension to paid parental leave for at least some self-employed parents and that was a point of view supported by a number of submitters both to this bill and to the original bill a few years back. The Department of Labour notes in its evaluation of the scheme in 2003 that one of the most frequently mentioned suggestions to improve this scheme was in the area of extending it to the self-employed. 
It was heartening therefore to hear advice from the Minister during the select committee process that officials are currently considering the overall framework design eligibility criteria and payment structure that could apply to self-employed people and is actually committed to progressing that as a matter of priority. The Green Party will be doing its best to hold the Minister and the Government to that commitment as we know there are many self-employed people in both the rural and urban communities of our country who cannot understand why they have so far been denied access to this scheme. 
What I personally find hardest to understand is why it has been possible for some years now to devise systems to apply the accident compensation system to the self-employed—when that situation is incredibly arcane and difficult to implement and where there is no employer-employee relationship either—whereas with paid parental leave it appears to have been for some reason far more difficult. I trust that in the light of the Minister’s commitments which are recorded in the commentary on the bill we will see real progress on that within the next 12 months and that paid parental leave will be extended to at least some self-employed people. 
Other issues remain too of course including the problem of the minimum weekly hours threshold and the fact that the level of payments still falls well short of the standards set by ILO Convention 183 which states that payments should be set at a level that ensures the woman can maintain herself and her child in proper conditions of health and with a suitable standard of living. Women are still coming up to me as I am sure they do to many other MPs asking how on earth they can be expected to support themselves and their child or children at the paid parental leave rate. They have often taken a cut in salary or are on very low wages anyway and it is especially difficult to survive when they have no partner to support them. The domestic purposes benefit becomes their only option unless they come from a remarkably well-off background and at times people are forced back into the workforce before the 12 or 14 weeks are up which is a real pity. 
Another matter that some submitters raised during our consideration of this bill was the question of breastfeeding in the workplace. To me it seems logical that when one is considering paid parental leave one should also be looking at what happens when a new mother goes back to work after 12 13 or 14 weeks. If we are serious about supporting the health and well-being of mothers and babies and serious about work-life balance we should be doing everything we can to foster a culture—particularly among larger employers—that encourages and enables mothers to breastfeed at work within a secure safe and comfortable environment. Although we were advised by the Government that unfortunately taking action on that area was not within the scope of the bill I hope that the Government will be looking at what more it can do in this area in the near future. 
In conclusion I would like to reiterate the Green Party’s support for any measure that extends paid parental leave and for the Government’s willingness to engage in ongoing evaluation and improvements to the scheme. I look forward to the bill becoming law in the near future and the extension of its provisions to further groups of workers as soon as practicable.