WELLINGTON: As New Zealand lawmakers vigorously debated fuel prices in parliament this week, speaker Trevor Mallard called for order while feeding baby Ttnekai his bottle.

The six-week-old son of Labour MP Tmati Coffey and his husband, born via a surrogate mother last month, was being cuddled by his father in the debating chamber on Wednesday when the speaker offered to hold him. “There are times when I can be vaguely useful,” Mallard said, adding that he tried to help care for lawmakers’ babies when possible.

The newborn joins many other babies in the legislature after Mallard relaxed rules in 2017 to make parliament more child-friendly. About a dozen MPs have had infants in a parliamentary baby boom, and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern last year became New Zealand’s first premier to take maternity leave and the world’s second elected leader to give birth in office. Her daughter Neve

Te Aroha made headlines in September when she accompanied Ardern to the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

But worker rights advocates said that few New Zealanders get the same rights to balance caring for their families with work, and they hope the high-profile parliamentary babies will bring a wider change in working conditions.

Published in Dawn, August 23rd, 2019