Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Just to make sure that the shadow Treasurer understands: Australia is finally catching up with the rest of the developed world and delivering our first national paid parental leave scheme—never done by those opposite; 12 years they had in government to deliver paid parental leave and of course they refused. We will be delivering this scheme from 1 January next year. Eligible Australian parents will be able to get 18 weeks of paid parental leave paid at the federal minimum wage. This has been a very, very long time coming and will be particularly welcomed by casual workers, part-time workers and those self-employed workers and contractors who at the moment do not have access to paid parental leave.

I recall meeting a young family in Sydney not long ago, both of the parents working in casual jobs. They had had a baby who needed to stay in hospital because of health complications, they were trying to manage being in the hospital with their newborn baby, with both of them doing shift work. The mother was trying to breast-feed her baby. She had no access to paid parental leave. In the end she just could not do it any longer and had to give up her job. It is for families like this that this government is delivering Australia’s first national paid parental leave scheme, because at the moment less than a quarter of women in low-paid and casual or part-time jobs have paid parental leave compared to three-quarters of women on higher wages. This is a major change for Australian families, one that we are so pleased to be able to deliver. Of course we announced during the election campaign that we were going to make an additional change that will be particularly beneficial for dads. Dads will be able to get extra paid paternity leave so that they too can spend more time at home with their newborn baby. We know this Leader of the Opposition was famously heard to say that paid parental leave would happen over his dead body, but it is this government that is delivering.

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