Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Disability Reform) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Robertson for her question and for the very hard work that she does for families in her electorate. In this budget this government has had to make some difficult, but responsible, decisions to continue to make our family payments system both fairer and sustainable over the long term.

We know that it is important for families that we deliver to those who need it most, and we deliver it when families need it most. That is, of course, why this government delivered Australia's first national Paid Parental Leave scheme so that working parents could have some extra financial support to have time off from work when their newborn baby came along. Of course, our Paid Parental Leave scheme is fair to working women, unlike that proposed by those opposite, that would see ordinary working women and men paying subsidies of up to $75,000 to wealthy bank executives, or lawyers, to have a baby.

That is what those opposite want to do. We have seen the true colours of those opposite today, the true colours of those opposite. The member for Leichhardt, so out of touch with the needs of working women. The member for Leichhardt should be sacked: he is so out of touch with the needs of a working mother here in this parliament who needed time off to be with her baby.

This government has also done the right thing by parents by introducing the Schoolkids Bonus. We know how important the Schoolkids Bonus is for parents. It really makes a difference when parents have those extra costs at the start and in the middle of the school year. We know once again that this is what the Leader of the Opposition wants to slash. He wants to get in there and get rid of the Schoolkids Bonus, which would see parents lose hundreds of dollars every single year. We know that the Schoolkids Bonus is helping parents; in contrast, this Leader of the Opposition just wants to get out there and cut it to the bone.

This government is all about making what are sometimes very difficult choices, and this is a choice that is made in this year's budget so that we can fund the additional money that is needed for children's education. The Leader of the Opposition needs to come clean and make plain to parents: is he going to support the decisions, the difficult decisions, that this government has made in its budget, or does he have other secret plans that he is not going to reveal to Australian families?

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