The Prime Minister visited the Botany electorate to launch National’s paid parental leave policy on Sunday morning at an indoor playground on Ti Rakau Drive.
“Today we’re announcing that if re-elected, National will gradually extend paid parental leave from twenty six weeks through to thirty weeks by 2029,” Christopher Luxon told reporters at Hippo Playground.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis said the change would cost $27 million in its first year and $124 million a year once fully in place.
The maximum parental leave payment increased to $811.05 a week before tax on 1 July, according to Employment New Zealand.
That is $146.95 short of 40 hours at the adult minimum wage of $23.95 an hour, a gap a reporter put to Willis at the stand-up.
“Our priority is extending the number of weeks for which parents get coverage,” she said.
Willis said the rate already rises each year in line with average wages.
Paid parental leave has run for 26 weeks since 2020, with up to another 26 weeks available unpaid.
Parents can already transfer the entitlement between them, but the law does not let them take it at the same time.
Under National’s policy the entitlement would rise to 27 weeks in next year’s Budget and reach 30 weeks in 2029, with a stated longer term goal of 40 weeks.
Parents would also be allowed to take their leave at the same time as each other.
Willis was also asked why National promised flexible parental leave at the 2023 election and did not deliver it in this term.
“We didn’t have it in the coalition agreement for this term of Government,” she said.
Willis assigned blame for the failure to deliver on the 2023 policy by naming the ACT Party’s Brooke van Velden.
“She didn’t prioritise this change in her work programme,” Willis said.
“I think it is a shame that it wasn’t prioritised within the minister’s programme for this term.”
ACT leader David Seymour rejected that at his own media stand-up later on Sunday.
“She hasn’t been asked by the National Party to do that,” Seymour said of van Velden.
“It’s not in their coalition documents, they didn’t try and negotiate it into their agreement.”
He said National had instead asked her to bring in taxation on digital gambling.
Seymour also said van Velden’s employment leave legislation, which replaces the Holidays Act, had already ensured parents keep accruing annual leave while on paid parental leave.
That is the same change National claimed credit for at the Botany event.
“I would just urge all the parties in the coalition, we’ve got to get re-elected together, guys,” Seymour said.
The flexibility policy has been blocked before.
Willis introduced the same idea as a member’s bill in 2023, and Labour voted it down at its first reading that August, with every other party in Parliament supporting it.
Labour MPs argued the change was not in the best interests of babies, RNZ reported at the time.
List MP Dan Rosewarne told the House a mother “might feel compelled to get back to work earlier”, while Whangarei MP Emily Henderson said babies needed at least the full 26 weeks of one-on-one care.
Willis told Parliament the position insulted every parent in New Zealand.
National’s own record cuts the other way.
In 2016 the then National Government used the financial veto to kill a Labour member’s bill extending paid parental leave from 18 weeks to 26, after that bill had passed its second reading by 61 votes to 60.
Sunday’s event came four days after Stuart Nash resigned as New Zealand First’s Napier candidate, over a text message calling National MP Katie Nimon lazy for taking time off after having a baby.
Nimon, who also travelled to the Botany playground, said Nash had since apologised to her.
“He called me on Thursday evening on my way back home,” she said.
“He just offered his apology for offending me.”
Asked whether the policy had been timed to capitalise on the row, Luxon said it had not.
“We’ve got a series of family policies that we’ve been talking about over a period of time,” he said.
Seymour was less certain.
“The timing does feel a little bit political when a policy like this comes out, given the events and the scandals of last week, and then this pops up,” he said.
The election is on 7 November.
