How does Labour's new partner's leave promise stack up?
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
Mōrena and welcome to The Bulletin for Tuesday, August 15, by Anna Rawhiti-Connell. Presented in partnership with Z Energy.
In today’s edition: end of era as last Covid restrictions dropped; GST debate rumbles on; politicians urged to think “beyond Lambton Quay and Queen Street”; but first, Labour’s new policy of paid partner leave would undoubtedly be meaningful for many but New Zealand would still lag on support offered to new families
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.”
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End of an era as last Covid restrictions dropped
Prime minister Chris Hipkins and health minister Ayesha Verrall announced yesterday that the requirements to isolate for seven days if infected and to wear masks at certain healthcare facilities will stop today. The announcement comes as cases tick up a bit on previous weeks but are still well down on previous months and years, based on reporting (not particularly reliable anymore) and wastewater testing. The Covid leave support scheme winds up. If you do adhere to current Ministry of Health guidance, reiterated by Verrall yesterday, and stay home for five days if you’re unwell or test positive for Covid, there is no longer any financial support for businesses or self-employed people to cover that leave. As of January 2023, $764.3m has been paid out via the scheme since March 2020. The Herald’s Derek Cheng has something of a succinct closer (paywalled) to this particular era, looking to the downstream impacts of the pandemic which “will reverberate indefinitely”. I remember reading something in the depths of a lockdown that said the pandemic will end when the social licence to guard against it does. I swear it was Ed Yong but after rereading three of his seminal pandemic pieces for The Atlantic last night (and closing those tabs in haste), I can’t find it. Echoing that sentiment, the opening line of yesterday’s First Edition, The Guardian’s morning newsletter, read “Covid has become a polarising topic that many people just want to forget about.” It goes on to discuss the new variant EG.5, or Eris, that’s spiking cases around the world and the difficulties the vulnerable face on a daily basis. The World Health Organization (WHO) classified EG.5 as a "variant of interest" as might it be more contagious or severe but said, "there is no evidence of an increase in disease severity directly associated with EG.5" at this time.
Boondoggle keeps boondoggling as GST debate rumbles on
After dismissing National’s Nicola Willis’ claim that Labour had under-costed its plan to remove GST from fruit and vegetables by citing an error in the fact sheet originally distributed to media, the party continued to defend the policy. It also inevitably began the fun game of explaining what food items would and would not be included under the policy. Both prime minister Chris Hipkins and finance minister Grant Robertson sounded like they were getting to the end of their wicks on this one yesterday. Another reader responded to yesterday’s Bulletin wanting further substantiation of the statement that “experts and commentators mostly hate” the policy. Ask and ye shall receive. RNZ lined up 12 economists and tax experts to deliver their verdicts. Spoiler alert but most of them mostly hate it. Another reader raised a question about whether the policy might have broader nutritional benefits and that savings shouldn’t be scoffed at. I agree that the amounts of money government policies save people are often dismissed from lofty heights, but Child Poverty Action Group spokesperson Susan St John said that the policy is one of the “least cost effective ways for helping people who are struggling to feed their families”. Conversations about why people buy certain foods and not others can also become paternalistic and judgemental but researcher Ranjana Gupta has specifically interrogated the question of whether dropping GST would help reduce obesity by making nutritious food more accessible. Literature from across New Zealand, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom reveals it does not significantly improve affordability and healthy eating choices for such families.
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Ignore Christchurch at your peril
Chairperson of Environment Canterbury, Peter Scott, has written an open letter saying candidates who want Cantabrians’ votes need to acknowledge the “real and complex challenges staring down at us”. Scott urges candidates to think “beyond Lambton Quay and Queen Street” ahead of the election. “It’s frustrating hearing about half-baked million-dollar policies and election promises that won’t add any value to us here in Canterbury,” Scott said. It’s the second charge of ignoring Christchurch levelled at our politicians this month. As Sinead Gill wrote for The Press, National leader Christopher Luxon got a warm reception at a party meeting on August 4 in Christchurch but mentioned the Waikato and Air New Zealand more than he mentioned Canterbury in his speech.
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This would have been more useful if you had put in the effect of National's policies to those rankings. Without that comparison we don't know how effective the Labour policies are, whether they are good or just so-so!