Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education and Childcare) Share this | Hansard source

Australia and the United States are, shamefully, the last two countries to introduce mandated paid parental leave. Therefore you would think that, when Labor introduced their paid parental leave policy in May 2009, there would have been universal rejoicing in this country. You would think that there would have been full-page ads from the unions. You would think that there would have been women, children and family advocates popping champagne corks around the country. Instead, there was an eerie silence. There was embarrassment. There were shamed faces and there was mass disappointment amongst those who had put in a careful submission to the Productivity Commission, who had begged Labor to present a paid parental leave policy that would make a difference for families who wanted to have children and maintain their careers.

In fact Labor ignored the advice of the Productivity Commission, international experience and the pleas of families. What did it produce? A cheapskate, miserable 18 weeks of paid parental leave at the minimum wage. You are actually being encouraged to take out a calculator to see if you would be better off remaining on a baby bonus payment—it depends when you have your baby—than taking Labor’s new paid parental leave option. That is how cheapskate and mean-spirited Labor’s policy proposal is. Since it is such a miserable, cheapskate scheme costing only $280 million for a year, why is it not coming in until 2011, after the election? Because I do not think anybody in the Labor Party wanted the public really to focus on what their paid parental leave consisted of. You are ashamed and the public out there are disappointed.

The coalition have said: ‘Enough is enough. We have to have a paid parental leave scheme which gives families the opportunity to have children and for the primary carer to take six months off work but still be able to pay the mortgage.’ That is not the case under Labor’s policy. Can you imagine a teacher, a nurse or someone else on the average Australian wage asking: can I survive with our $200,000 to $300,000 mortgage, on average, with a huge drop in income over six months—Labor offers only four months, of course—on the minimum wage? It is simply not on. We would see primary carers in families unable to take up parental leave. We do not think that is good enough for this country, so we have offered six months paid parental leave at a person’s wage, up to a salary of $150,000.

Advocates of big business might be out there saying, ‘We don’t like that,’ but why are we surprised? Big business has stood apart from paid parental leave and have refused to offer it, except in a very small proportion of cases, for women in the workforce, so why would it now be embracing the notion that we would extend paid parental leave across the economy to all families and asking it to make a contribution if they have a business taxable income of over $5 million? We are not surprised at the way the business sector has responded—that is, the big business sector. Let me tell you how a microbusinesswoman has responded. Anita Tuttle is a fantastic small business woman with a great little hairdressing business called The Barber Shop in Corio Street, Shepparton.

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