Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today in support of the coalition government's Paid Parental Leave Amendment Bill 2014. Paid parental leave is an important productivity measure that is good for families, good for workplace productivity and assists women in the workplace with realistic choices if they want to combine work with family and still continue their career. However, the current paid parental leave scheme introduced by the former Labor government in 2010 is not actually so good for businesses in Australia because in its current form it requires employers to be the pay clerks for a scheme that is government funded for eligible long-term employees.

The coalition government support the provision of paid parental leave, which is why we took to the election a commitment to deliver a genuine paid parental leave scheme that will give working mothers six months or 26 weeks leave based on their actual wage rather than the former Labor government's scheme, which is paid at the minimum wage for 18 weeks. It is a good policy and I support it because it is good for women, it is good for families, it is good for the economy at large and, as such, it is good for families and workplaces in my electorate of Robertson on the Central Coast.

Part of our paid parental leave policy, in contrast to the former Labor government's policy, ensures that paid parental leave can be paid directly by the Commonwealth government and not just via their employer. The bill we are debating today fulfils this commitment by legislating to remove from 1 July this year the mandatory requirement from employers, including small businesses, who struggle under the weight of red tape and regulation that took a stranglehold on this nation over the last six years of the former Labor government, and place it back onto the Commonwealth, through the Department of Human Services, unless there is a prior mutual agreement with both the employer and employee to opt in for the workplace entitlement to be paid for by their place of work.

Labor's scheme has imposed an unnecessary administrative burden on employers and businesses. I know from talking with hundreds of businesses in my electorate of Robertson that the current requirement to act as a pay clerk has increased costs for businesses. Many have had to absorb and wear the costs that have arisen as a result of additional paperwork and doing things like restructuring their businesses and their record-keeping systems to comply. It is no small cost. It has come with a hefty price tag of around $48 million, a price tag that is being worn by our small business sector and our not-for-profit sector for far too long.

In New South Wales alone the estimated cost of compliance borne by businesses for the fiscal year 2012-13 was almost $14.4 million. Many business owners I have spoken with on the Central Coast have shared their frustrations about the additional workload that the current administration of the paid parental leave scheme places on their staff and, often times, on themselves in the absence of being able to absorb the financial or human resource costs of the current arrangements.

This bill is a sensible amendment to the current scheme. Indeed, there is absolutely no reason why the paid parental leave scheme should not have continued to have been administered by the Family Assistance Office, which performed the task for the first six months when the scheme started. The coalition government is determined to cut the red tape and regulatory burden on business in Australia—to get the monkey off the back of business owners, who are the job generators of our nation—and to reduce the impact of the weight of the burden of more than 22,000 new or amended regulations imposed on Australians, Australian businesses and not-for-profit organisations by the former government.

We support better regulation not more regulation, and this bill is a sensible amendment to an important productivity provision for Australia. Perhaps it is because this bill is such a sensible amendment to the current scheme that Labor have previously blocked it—voting it down twice when they were in government and then moving to block the amendment again in the Senate earlier this year. But it is a fact that unnecessary regulation and red tape increase costs on business, which in turn cost families and people in my electorate of Robertson. Too much red tape and too much unnecessary regulation costs jobs.

I point out that this bill does not remove the right of employers to continue to administer the payment of paid parental leave. If they have found this to be beneficial to both their business and their employee or employees, they may continue to do so. What we are doing is creating an opt-in approach, not an all-in requirement. So this bill provides choice. In empowering business owners to make choices that they deem to be best for them and their employees we are empowering them to spend more time building their businesses, supporting their employees and giving them even more opportunity to grow, thrive, succeed and prosper. In doing so, our government is helping businesses create even more jobs and more opportunities for Australians.

Creating more employment opportunities is something I am particularly passionate about, because in my electorate, and indeed across the Central Coast, our youth unemployment rate is just too high and local job opportunities are not where they need to be. Today 30,000 to 40,000 commuters left their homes early this morning and they will return home late at night to their families because their job opportunities require them to work in Sydney or Newcastle. That is why it is important that this bill be supported in the House. We do not want to waste a single minute of opportunity for businesses who may no longer want to be pay clerks because they want to be pay creators. I commend this bill to the House.

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