Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Every year about 280,000 Australian women have children. All of those women deserve help and, under the former government, all of those women did receive help. Today’s debate is about a subset of those women. It is about the 62 per cent of those women who are in paid employment immediately prior to having their baby. That is 170,000 employed women who have children and who, under the regime which this government proposes to put in place, will inevitably suffer a serious loss in their salary. They are the women who should be helped. They are the women who the coalition wants to help. They are the women who Unions NSW wants to help. They are the women who members opposite know ought to be helped but who, they know in their hearts, will not be helped by the mickey mouse paid parental leave scheme that this government has introduced.

Of the 170,000 employed women who have babies every year, some 60,000 return to work within the recommended six months. They return to work too soon, invariably because of financial pressure. They are the women who desperately need help. They are the women who the coalition will help. They are the women who will miss out under the mickey mouse scheme which is being put forward by this government. Labor’s mickey mouse scheme gives those women just 18 weeks, not the 26 weeks which everyone knows is the minimum that should be spent at home by mothers with newborns. It gives them just the minimum wage, not the wage that those women are earning, not the wage that those families need and not the wage that those families need if they are to sustain the kind of life that they are used to and if they are to meet the commitments that every Australian family almost inevitably and necessarily has.

Unlike the government, this coalition is proposing a fair dinkum paid parental leave scheme. Our scheme is for 26 weeks. Our scheme is at the actual wage of the mother, capped at $150,000 a year. It is real money, it is real time and it is a real benefit for the women of Australia—a benefit that they are not getting from this government.

See this speech in context