- Hon Brooke van Velden
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child.
The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning.
"It includes a change that will help people who have taken on the care of a child unexpectedly.
"Currently people are required to stop working when they become a primary carer to access parental leave payments.
"For example, a man and his partner were informally looking after a child and when final parenting orders were made, he resigned from his job to be the primary carer for the child and gave his six weeks' notice.
"This man was declined parental leave payments because he did not take parental leave, or stop working, from the date he became the child's primary carer.
"This is a small, technical change that will make a huge impact on affected Kiwi families and diverse parenting arrangements e.g. caring for extended family. This change can be made now to improve the scheme and remove unnecessary and unintended stress for people who find themselves in this situation," says Ms van Velden.
The Bill makes other changes to health and safety law that fix problems with legislation, clarify unclear provisions, and ensure provisions are fit for purpose.
"I want to make sure businesses and organisations are focused on addressing the things that cause harm to workers. They should not be caught up in unnecessary steps or trying to interpret and navigate complex or perplexing health and safety rules and regulations.
"That is why I am undergoing a wide-ranging public consultation on health and safety, to see where the issues lie.
"In the meantime, this Bill clears up some of the existing legislative provisions, which is necessary to ensure efficient regulatory systems.
"Collectively, these small changes will make it easier for Kiwi families to understand the law and comply with government requirements," Ms van Velden says.
Media contact: Florence Faumuinā, 021 804 382
Note to editors:
Other health and safety changes:
- The Bill clarifies existing requirements for the highest-risk industries such as mining, chemicals, or petroleum, to notify WorkSafe about the failure of safety critical equipment or processes.
- It clarifies that in situations where safety-critical equipment or processes fail, this is a notifiable incident, even if no one was directly imminently exposed to danger.
- The Bill minimises the risk of unjustified delays before parties receive notice from WorkSafe of any enforcement action and become able to file a private prosecution where no enforcement action or prosecution is being taken.
- The regulator will only be required to make reasonable efforts to establish whether a relevant regulator or regulatory agency is taking or intends to take enforcement action regarding a situation, rather than having to contact more than 100 entities.
- It will assist in reducing the number of invoices for ACC CoverPlus Extra customers, by allowing customers to receive all their levies for a year in a single invoice.
- This will improve the ACC customer experience, administrative efficiency, and the equity of levy collection.
