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The final sitting block of the 53rd parliament begins
The final sitting block of the 53rd parliament begins

The BulletinAugust 16, 2023

Heat rises as sitting days before election run out

The final sitting block of the 53rd parliament begins
The final sitting block of the 53rd parliament begins
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The valedictories have begun. There’s legislation to get through and legislation that won’t make it. There’s still time for questions about the shop though as the frantic final sitting block begins, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.

Sorry, not sorry

Things got pretty heated in the house yesterday as the final sitting block before the election began. Associate housing minister Willie Jackson had to apologise in parliament, while finance minister Grant Robertson refused to apologise after calling National finance spokesperson, Nicola Willis a liar. Robertson is deeply frustrated by the media reporting of Willis’ suggestion that Robertson and Chris Hipkins had disagreed over the date the GST policy would be in place and that being the reason there was an error in the material sent to media. Willis has said she won’t be pursuing the matter. Meanwhile, the Working for Families campaign pledge that accompanied the GST one on Sunday warrants further examination. As the Herald’s Thomas Coughlan writes, Labour has copped criticism for delaying a lift in the abatement threshold for Working for Families credits to 2026 if re-elected. Critics say the adjustment does not account for inflation since 2018. As Coughlan writes, it means some families may still be worse off after the change triggers in 2026, because of how fast incomes have risen.

Bills, bills, bills

Beyond the theatrics of the House, the pace of legislative work is now at full throttle A bill to lower the voting age to 16 for local government elections was introduced yesterday while the House agreed to move into urgency last night in order to get through 12 bills, all at various stages. Included in that list are the bills to bring about the Resource Management Act (RMA) reforms and the bills linked to the water reforms formerly known as Three Waters. That ties off two chunky pieces of reform for Labour. National is promising to repeal all of it if they win the election, with a promise to move on the RMA reforms bills before Christmas.

Blunt realities for communities at risk

A third proposed statute that the Randerson report recommended form part of the RMA reforms, a climate change adaptation bill, will not be introduced before the election. Earlier this year climate change minister James Shaw had expressed some hope that it would be. Instead, Shaw has requested that parliament’s Environment Select Committee look into community-led retreat and adaptation funding and begin that before the election in October. As Newsroom Pro’s Jono Milne writes (paywalled), an expert working group charged with designing a managed retreat system as part of the adaptation bill also delivered its report yesterday, “with very little government fanfare”. Despite that, Milne thinks it’s unlikely that the report’s “blunt words” about the very real realities of climate adaptation will remain stifled and that the lack of fanfare reflects the report’s proximity to the election. The report states that “Where the evidence shows a community is likely to be wiped out in as few as 10 years…the only rational response, in the absence of a feasible, cost-effective alternative, will be to relocate the community to a safer place.” The report recommends that be done by persuading people to go in the first instance, but if that doesn’t work, it recommends using new legislated emergency powers, with no right of court appeal.

80-hour weeks, going to the “supermarket all the time actually” and farewells

While there were plenty of heated exchanges in the House yesterday, there was also time for chats about which MPs regularly do the supermarket shopping. It is entirely reasonable to believe this line of questioning has been prompted by Tara Ward’s masterful satire last week on the subject of Tauranga MP Sam Uffindell’s visitation habits. National MP Tama Potaka said he “goes to the supermarket all the time actually”. Coincidentally, on the same day Uffindell said he didn’t have much of a chance to shop because he works 80 hours a week, outgoing Green MP Jan Logie also described an 80-hour work week as an MP. As long-time readers know, I love a good farewell interview tour and valedictory speech. MPs of all stripes tend to reveal it’s not all heat and partisanship and speak a few truths. Logie and National MP Jacqui Dean don’t disappoint in this episode of The Front Page. Logie and Dean are two of the 17 MPs giving valedictory speeches in the next nine days. Appointment viewing schedule here. Paul Eagle, Marja Lubeck and Jmaie Strange did theirs last night. Former Green MP turned independent MP, Elizabeth Kerekere has told Stuff she won’t be holding back as she gets ready for her valedictory speech tonight saying she wants to “set the record straight” on her fallout with the Greens.

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Labour pledges to introduce four weeks of paid partner leave if elected (Image: Getty)
Labour pledges to introduce four weeks of paid partner leave if elected (Image: Getty)

The BulletinAugust 15, 2023

How does Labour’s new partner’s leave promise stack up?

Labour pledges to introduce four weeks of paid partner leave if elected (Image: Getty)
Labour pledges to introduce four weeks of paid partner leave if elected (Image: Getty)
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The party announced a new campaign pledge this morning, with partners of a newborn’s primary carer entitled to four weeks paid leave by 2026. It would undoubtedly be meaningful for many but New Zealand would still lag on support offered to new families, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.

Labour pledges to introduce paid partner leave for parents

Cast your mind back to the beginning of the month, before you’d read the word “boondoggle” more times than anyone should, and you will recall paid parental leave being a topic of discussion. Specifically, questions about why Labour voted down Nicola Willis’ shared leave bill which would have allowed spouses and partners to split the current paid parental leave allocation of 26 weeks. The move was described as petty politics by Willis. Law expert Claire Breen interrogated Labour’s decision at the time and judged it “a lost opportunity”. Breen hoped the conversation about sharing parental responsibilities would not stop and her wish has been granted. The probable answer for why Labour voted against Willis’ bill arrived this morning, with an announcement from Labour that if elected, the party will introduce four weeks of paid partner leave. The leave will be able to be taken concurrently or consecutively with the primary carer’s leave and is additional to the current entitlement of two weeks of unpaid leave. It will be phased in, starting with two weeks leave for partners from July 1, 2024, and increasing to four weeks by July 2026.

Policy would take us from bottom of OECD ranking

As the Herald’s Claire Trevett reports, the policy has been costed at $35m in the first year it is offered, rising to $70-$75m a year once the full four weeks is being paid. It would cost a total of $230m over the first four years and be paid for entirely by government. A number of employers in New Zealand currently top-up paid parental leave and also already offer paid partner leave but it’s been a perk and not a guarantee. The policy, according to OECD data from 2022, would catapult New Zealand up from the bottom of the list based on the number of weeks offered for secondary parents, to 5th equal. Just a note here — the terms fathers, mothers, paternity and maternity leave are used by the OECD, not me, and both National’s and Labour’s policies refer to parental leave and partners. For the sake of presenting the data, I’ve used the OECD’s splits which utilise those terms.

New Zealand ranked 22nd equal out of 43 countries based on pay

Based on the 26 weeks of paid parental leave (classified as maternity leave by OECD) currently offered, New Zealand ranks 7th equal in the OECD but that’s a bit deceptive when you look at the average payment rate. The OECD calculates the average pay rate as the proportion of earnings replaced by paid maternity leave over the length of the entitlement for a person earning 100% of average national full-time earnings. By that measure, New Zealand slides to 22nd equal out of 43 countries. Stephanie Pow, founder of Crayon, a startup focused on reducing financial stress for parents, suggests (paywalled) New Zealand has “some of the worst policies in the developed world for childhood and parenting.”

 

New Zealand really lags when full leave offerings taken into account

The OECD data also splits out maternity leave and other forms of parental leave like child care leave. Japan, for example, offers a year of paid childcare leave for both parents, although not at a full 100% pay rate. The country is looking to introduce a raft of measures that increase parental leave and childcare entitlements as it grapples with a declining population and low uptake of the current paid paternity leave offering. As Bridie Witton wrote following Christopher Luxon’s crack about New Zealanders needing to have more babies, this country’s birthrate has also hit record lows. “The factors which steer people’s family planning choices, such as extremely high housing costs, childcare costs, and the high cost of living, are not tipped in favour of childrearing,” she wrote. Here’s where we’d stand compared with other OECD and EU countries across all forms of partner leave including childcare leave based on average pay rates if Labour were to be elected.

As my father would say when we’d weigh up the merits of things, Labour’s election pledge is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. For many, it will be far better than that, given we effectively start from zero unless you’re lucky to work somewhere that’s embraced the mutual benefits of making life easier for families. As Newsroom’s Jo Moir writes, revealing the announcement was brought forward, “Labour’s paid parental leave policy goes further than what Willis proposed, and it is good policy that will make a meaningful difference to parents.”