Paid Parental Leave (PPL) is quite a recent development.
In the 1990s you could take unpaid leave up to a year, the circumstances in which my first was born. I was amazed to find the company I worked for had to keep my job available to me for 12 months.
Alliance MP Laila Harre introduced a PPL private members bill but in 1998 it was voted down.
However, after Labour was voted in at the end of the nineties, they adopted it as general policy in 2001 to be introduced soon after.
From there the entitlement has grown incrementally.
Most recently it was extended to 26 weeks.
Now National is effectively promising another extension through their $3-6,000 child services entitlement.
The point of my post is to highlight that having two centrist parties means entitlements can only grow as they vie for your votes by promising ever more.
3 comments:
Alas Lindsay that is a fact and with the dilution of educating the coming generations on matters economic there is little hope for meaningful change.
But they might just be capable of quoting slogans in Te Reo that the future is out of reach. That will not be because of the expansion of welfare entitlement though, it will be because the rich are still getting richer.
The stealthy creep of middle-class welfare, ensuring dependency and compliance.
This is an interesting browse.
https://nzinitiative.org.nz/reports-and-media/reports/middle-class-welfare/
'Tis me!
Neo-Girl
Hello there Neo-Girl. I have a copy on my bookshelf! When I started writing letters to the paper the late Roger Kerr noticed (then CE of the NZBR - pre NZ Initiative). One day a postie bag of books arrived and that one was among them.
Got that 'driveway' in yet??
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