National can afford vanity projects like flag referendums, $3b in tax cuts & can help casinos but can’t extend paid parental leave – how terribly ugly…
Parental leave extension vetoed
The Government has vetoed a Labour Party bill which would have extended paid parental leave from 18 weeks to 26 weeks.
Finance Minister Bill English confirmed this afternoon that he had exercised the financial veto – the first time he has used it to sink an entire piece of legislation.
Labour MP Sue Moroney’s bill had broad support in Parliament and was expected to pass into law this month.
But Mr English said it was unaffordable.
“Treasury estimates the cost of this legislation amounts to $278 million over the next four years, a significant extra – unbudgeted – cost,” he said.
…it really says something about the values of a Government who put property bubbles, personal vanity projects and endless irrigation for Dairy Farms above something like extended Paid Parental Leave.
Enabling parents to be able to spend those precious first weeks with their newborn is the best start to life, that this Government can’t see that speaks volumes of what their values really are.
Sue Moroney has fought such an amazing fight to keep the issue alive for the time she has. She is a legend who deserves to see this policy changed once this bloody Government get booted out in 2017.
We need a government that genuinely cares about all NZers who will step up to the plate with the right policies to make the necessary changes so our country can be prosperous and move forward. At the movement a small group are benefitting at the expense of the majority and we now have more inequalities under the brighter future banner
Couldn’t have said it better, M Gray. >>thumbs up<<
We need to get rid of this toxic regime before they kill us all.
They want to force us all to die at work through extreme exhaustion while their fat cat mates all live high off the hog at all our expense the bloody stealers and carpetbaggers.
If Labour thinks it important, let them change it when in Govt! like it or not opposition parties always think the current Govt. policies are naff (afterall it’s their job as opposition), lets see them put this as a Labour policy going into next years election, simple. (although the NZ voters just don’t like Labour nor the Greens, less so now as they are ‘officially’ joined at the hip, lets see Labour distancing themselves from the Greens to court Winnie )
Every one knows you lie about Labour and the Greens
It’s less that they don’t care about paid parental leave and more that they’re actively throwing it in the bin.
They used a parliamentary maneuvre that has never before been used to throw out an entire bill to stop this from passing. If they cared so much about not extending paid parental leave they should have made the vote a matter of confidence and hoped their coalition agreement stood up to the test, this business of using a financial veto on an entire bill (as opposed to an amendment, which makes sense- it’s to stop amendments from being used to add in huge spending increases, like they do in the US) is fundamentally anti-democratic.
They have done us over yet again.
This will feature in the feeling good budget next year with the money to pay for it as sure as night follows day.
It will be seen as Nationals caring for families propaganda in the election run up , stolen from Labour who have sponsored this from the start.
They know it’s popular and want to stay on the winners side and will do anything to get Key his fourth term.
They will ride out the storm and it will all be all forgotten and forgiven next year.
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