"Daddy leave" and the parental leave bill

Labour's Parental Leave and Employment Protection Amendment Bill will be going through its committee stage this afternoon, having been introduced and taken to second reading under urgency last week. The bill essentially duplicates Sue Moroney's Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave and Work Contact Hours) Amendment Bill. That bill had already been through the select committee process and had the support of the House, but National subjected it to an unconstitutional financial veto earlier in the year. So naturally, having now lost an election over the issue, National are trying to wreck the bill with an amendment allowing the parental leave allocation to be split between parents - effectively halving its length.

They do have a point. The best overseas parental leave schemes include provisions requiring leave to be split (or rather, that no parent can take the full allocation). In Sweden, this "daddy leave" has levelled expectations around parental leave, leading to greater equality in the workplace. Employers have come to expect employees to take leave irrespective of gender, and this has a levelling effect on both pay and promotions. In 2007, the Families Commission recommended [PDF] that the then 14 weeks of parental leave be extended progressively and include a specific "partner leave" allocation. So, this is clearly something New Zealand should do at some stage. At the same time, what we're doing really badly on at the moment is duration and pay rates. I'm perfectly comfortable for the government to prioritise fixing that first - especially when that's the bit that's already been examined by select committee. When a bill is introduced in this way, under urgency, then I'd prefer to keep the scope to what's already been approved, thanks.

In the longer term, I think its likely that further extensions to the paid parental leave scheme will feature in future Labour-NZ First budgets. So we'll hopefully see a move to a split allocation in the future, in a way that doesn't effectively reduce existing entitlements.