Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is wide-ranging legislation. It contains many provisions that will significantly and in many cases disproportionately impact on constituents in the electorate of Scullin, perhaps those measures relating to Cape York being notable exceptions. I say at the outset that Labor will always support prudent savings measures; it always has. We recognise that the resources of the state are finite. We are lending our support to a number of measures contained in this legislation. We should not and we will not hide from the hard work of making distributional decisions to ensure that resources are allocated on the basis of need and to achieve wider social goals, most particularly in the context of this legislation and perhaps some of its predecessors, support for Better Schools and support for the Early Years Quality Fund.

The tenor of the second reading speech in relation to the social security aspects of this legislation was pretty interesting. It was absent a sense of purpose. It effectively talked of savings for savings' sake or perhaps cuts for cuts' sake. Not all of the measures contained in the legislation are sensible or still reflect those wider resource allocation priorities and wider social goals. We see in this legislation significant threats to equity, which are troubling to me and troubling to many constituents of the Scullin electorate.

I notice the member for Jagajaga has foreshadowed that Labor will move to omit those measures from this legislation, including those relating to student start-up loans and the extension of the annual child-care rebate limit, which would make unfair and unwarranted cuts at a cost to Australian students and families. An amendment has also been foreshadowed, as I understand it, in the other place to limit the application of changes to the government's paid parental leave, in line with Labor's policy. In the limited time available to me and recognising that this legislation deals with many things, as the member for Melbourne said, I will focus my contribution on a couple of aspects of the legislation: those proposals in relation to the child-care rebate indexation, and in relation to paid parental leave. I will also briefly touch upon treatment of the student start-up loans.

Labor has always been a strong supporter of increased support to Australian families, especially all of those struggling to meet the costs of child care. Labor, when in government, increased the child-care rebate from 30 per cent to 50 per cent. This government, on the other hand, has admitted it is planning to freeze the child-care rebate gap until 2017. This is a broken promise from a government that told us before the election there would be no broken promises and no surprises. It compounds the government's plans to walk away from $300 million for low-paid early-childhood educators—critical providers of child care. This makes an absolute mockery of any claims that this government wants to make child care more affordable to families and, more generally, of its interest in meeting the great productivity challenge of boosting workforce participation, to which affordable, available and quality child care is absolutely critical. It also completely undermines the government's review of child care.

The actions of this government, in this respect—as in so many others—speak far louder than its words, particularly those words spoken before 7 September. I think of the comment, said in May of this year, of the now minister for families about the rebate's indexed changes being something that would hurt families. These are actions which will push up child-care costs for Australian families already struggling to make ends meet. I cannot see how this government can justify freezing indexation when it has repeatedly argued that it would have a devastating impact on families if it did not implement the Early Years Quality Fund. It is a cut without any trade-off.

I turn now to the issue of paid parental leave and the changes. I am very proud that Labor, through the member for Jagajaga, introduced Australia's first Paid Parental Leave scheme—a fair scheme, it is very important to note. This is particularly relevant in the present context, as the House considers provisions that will increase the financial burden on Australians of very limited financial means. Now is a good time to once again raise this fundamental question of fairness in the allocation of finite resources of the state according to need and the broader social purpose. The scheme introduced by Labor was designed to be simple for business and the recent evaluation found that most employers have found their role straightforward and easy and that compliance costs have been minimal. Labor has been listening to small business—and I am very pleased that the minister is here to do some more listening on this point—as has the Productivity Commission, in formulating our initial response and making sure that the scheme continues to work most effectively and deliver on its promise. That is why Labor announced during the recent election campaign that it would adopt a policy that would enable businesses employing fewer than 20 employees to effectively streamline the administration of this scheme. It was a balanced response; it was a proportionate response. Under this policy, small businesses would be able to have Centrelink make PPL payments to their employees whilst on parental leave.

The critical difference between this and what is before the House is that this reform would maintain the important, I would even say fundamental, connection between a worker and their employer while they are on leave, while achieving the often stated aim of this government of cutting red tape for small businesses that need it the most. It is about balance, and Labor's policy got the balance right. We should not be abolishing the role of the employer in administering paid parental leave. This is very much the thin end of a very difficult wedge. This would abolish the relationship between an employee and their workplace for the period of their leave. The coalition is very fond of speaking of paid parental leave as a workplace entitlement in contrast to a welfare payment, but this turns that proposition squarely on its head.

The employer role is such a vital part of the Paid Parental Leave scheme, especially for small businesses, given the nature of the relationships they often contain. The employer role creates that fundamental link between employers and staff who take time off work. It is so important that, through this time off, staff retention rates can be a factor in the relationship being worked through directly. While the employer is on leave, the connection can take place. Conversations can continue. These are very significant events in an employer's life, when the employer will be one of few for the relevant business, and they can carry on. Retention and the workplace relationship would be enhanced by maintaining this vital relationship.

Our policy position affirms that taking leave from work around the time of birth is business as usual. It should be now accepted as a part of life, a common part of work and family life. It is vital in maximising work and family arrangements and allows employers and employees to agree on the many and varied ways that complement the PPL scheme, that build cooperative and dynamic workplaces. Fundamentally, Labor's approach to this PPL scheme and its application to small business supports and reinforces workplaces that are cooperative and fair and boosts workplace participation. Labor understood before the election—and understands now—the need to balance these competing, although not irreconcilable, differences with the needs of small businesses. The evidence that Labor got the balance right is already before us in the evaluation, but perhaps more profoundly in the lived experience, for around 300,000 women and 37,000-odd men and others who have received dad and partner pay—also in the lived experience of their new families and of their employers, who are reaping and would continue to reap the benefit. This legislation does not get the balance right. It is something that needs to be attended to.

I turn briefly to the question of student start-up loans and acknowledge that converting student start-up scholarships to loans was an initiative contained in the 2013 budget. Of course, it was a measure with a purpose: to fund Labor's Better Schools Plan to deliver equity in education. The coalition said, as we have heard in this place many times in recent days, that they were on a 'unity ticket' with the Labor Party on schools funding. That is now clearly not the case. The government has refused to commit the nearly $15 billion in additional funding for schools. We have also had no assurance that states will not cut schools funding. The coalition disparaged those cuts in government and are now embracing them without any sign that those funds will be hypothecated for education. By converting the start-up scholarships to loans and through other measures that have already been discussed in this place, the coalition is seeking to cut $2.3 billion from higher education.

The Student Start-Up Scholarship was a Labor initiative to assist students with the upfront costs of study such as textbooks and specialised equipment. It was an initiative that had been sorely lacking and provided a real incentive to meaningful participation in higher education for many. They went hand in hand, of course, with many other Labor initiatives to help end inequity in our higher education system. I am proud of Labor's record in removing barriers to education and our very strong record of investing in higher education, but this is a second-rate deal for school students from a government that has broken its promises on education, and it remains potentially a very significant deterrent to equity being fulfilled in higher education. I am deeply concerned about its impact on students from disadvantaged backgrounds, particularly many in Scullin who aspire to take up their place in higher education.

This government, it is clear, is stacked with adherents to David Cameron's Big Society agenda, which is, of course, just a nice-sounding way of planning to cut services and, more broadly, the social safety net. First amongst them is, of course, Minister Andrews. The notion is that society will somehow—although precisely how is never explained—pick up the slack and no-one will be worse off, regardless of changes to the state's provision of welfare. But, as people in the United Kingdom now know after a Conservative recession they did not have to have, the Big Society is simply a big con. It did not work there and it will not work here.

Elements of this legislation—those elements that are opposed by Labor—may fairly be seen as a step in the direction that has failed in the United Kingdom: savings for savings' sake, cuts for cuts' sake, a retreat from any concern for fairness and equity. People in Scullin will be disadvantaged by these unfair cuts if this legislation is passed unamended.

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