Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

I want to highlight a couple of things before turning to the substance of the policy at hand here. First, we have had a couple of speakers say that speakers on this side of the chamber were not addressing the substance of the bill, so I am very happy to first turn to the substance of this bill. One of the speakers opposite actually said that he doubted speakers on the side had read the bill. I have read the bill and I have read the EM. The first thing I can point out is that there is an issue with the financial impact that is in the explanatory memorandum.

On page 3 of the EM the financial impact is said to be '$0.7 million over five years'. But then when you go to page 4 it says:

The additional cost to Government to implement the measure is $7 million over five years.

It repeats that on page 16. What sort of competence do we have from a minister who puts an explanatory memorandum on the table that has a decimal point in the wrong place—an additional zero and a decimal point? Is it $0.7 million over five years or $7 million over five years? Figures matter in this. I just cannot fathom the incompetence. I thought perhaps there was an issue on the website but then I checked the explanatory memorandum here on the table. How can we have this situation? This makes a difference to what the financial impact of this bill is.

But more than that, it makes me actually question the veracity of some of the other figures in this explanatory memorandum, which those opposite have been parroting. In 'Analysis of cost/benefits' on page 17 it states, amongst other things, that the 'Total by cost category' for 'Administrative Costs' is '$48 million (savings)' and repeats that in the 'Total by Sector'. But, as the Bills Digest points out, these figures do not have references. I will quote from page 2 of the Bills Digest:

The Government's reason for making the change is to 'ease administrative burdens on business'.

The footnote says that this is from the explanatory memorandum, page 3.

The Government estimates that the total annual (national) savings to employers from removing the paymaster requirement to be $48 million., though it is unclear how it arrived at this figure.

I think any reasonable person, when they start seeing figures where one is right and one is wrong, would start questioning the veracity of the figures that are used elsewhere.

On that point, I have heard those opposite, as I said, parroting from the Bills Digest. One thing that is clearly missed by I think all of them is, if you look at page 7 of the Bills Digest it states:

While there is clearly some opposition to the paymaster role among employers, there is evidence from a Government evaluation of the early impacts of the scheme … that employer experiences in implementing PPL have generally been positive.

Again you have to question the veracity of the evidence-based policy making that has gone into this bill that is before us today. It cannot get its figures right and it cannot reference figures, yet we are meant to just believe them. This is something we have before us that obviously those opposite are happy to believe without interrogating it. I would like to interrogate it and if I get an opportunity I will.

But just the same it is the fact that it was Labor that introduced this country's first ever national Paid Parental Leave Scheme. I find it incredulous that some of those people opposite, like the last speaker, would follow a Prime Minister who said it would be over his dead body that paid parental leave would ever be introduced. We know that 340,000 women have accessed paid parental leave since it was introduced in January 2011—I will go into some of the details about my own electorate—and around 40,000 dads have accessed dad and partner pay since January 2013. Since its introduction it has been administered by employers, and the employer role was included to help employers maintain the relationship with their staff when they are on leave. That is why we adopted in the 2013 election campaign a position that would enable businesses with fewer than 20 employees to streamline administration and have Centrelink make payments to your employees whilst they are on leave.

That is the situation for the substance of paid parental leave as it stands at the moment in this country. Again, I find it incredible that some of those opposite would come up here and try to lecture Labor on paid parental leave. They cannot even get their own side to agree. I cannot believe the last speaker had the audacity to say that everyone on his side supports this policy. It is absolutely not the case. When they get their house in order then they might try and convince the rest of the electorate about it. To quote a couple of choice ones, the member for Tangney said on 17 September 2013:

I do have significant concerns … I think there are better ways to attack the overall problem: having affordable and easy access to childcare.

That is not me; that is one of their own side. The member Mitchell spoke said this morning we should not be conflating this bill with policy issues over paid parental leave—I do not think his colleagues got the memo on that one. He was very scathing saying that issues were conflated—'to conflate issues' in this debate because this is about small business. He would know because he said in his article in May 2013 in that reputable IPA Review:

Is it a good idea to levy a 1.5 per cent charge on the country's largest businesses in the current global economy? Will the new tax improve Australia as a destination for investment and make our firms more globally competitive? I would argue the opposite. Any new levy of this size will add substantially to the cost of doing business in Australia at a time when our country is already less internationally competitive than it should be.

If you want to talk about small business, even based on the members for Mitchell's eloquent writings, and if you think that large businesses are not going to pass on costs to small businesses you are in fantasyland. I could go on with that but, as the member for Mitchell pointed out, this is about a different issue. The member for Mitchell talked about youth unemployment and how easing small business burdens will help to address youth unemployment. I will tell you what would probably have helped youth unemployment rates in Western Sydney and in other high unemployment areas of Sydney: probably not abolishing partnership brokers, probably not abolishing all those other schemes which were having a very positive impact on young people, making them employable and helping them to get placements—for instance, the Youth Connections workers who have been doing incredible jobs. Labor had previously identified Greenway as an area of high need and it devoted literarily its own task force person to manage these issues. But no, she is out of a job now, despite the fact that she made—as I am sure have many others—an immense contribution.

To go on about this friendless policy, former Liberal minister Peter Reith labelled it 'obviously bad policy'. Former finance minister Nick Minchin indicated that he, too, did not support the scheme and an unnamed National described it in words which are unbecoming to this House, words I will not repeat. Take all that into consideration and take into consideration the Prime Minister's own 'over my dead body' view of paid parental leave and his view that there should be a policy directed towards women of calibre—somehow women are worth less if they are not of calibre—then put that all to one side: we have the cost to the government of $7 million over five years—or 0.7 million, depending on what part of the explanatory memorandum you read—versus the government's Paid Parental Leave Scheme of $5.5 billion every year. So how is this saving money?

Some opposite have quoted business groups in support of this bill. They have indeed used these quotes very selectively. If you look at the substance of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry's views on the government's paid parental leave policy, the ACCI has slammed the coalition's scheme and called for greater means testing that will 'considerably improve both the schemes affordability and fairness'—that was on 5 February 2014. Peter Anderson, then CEO of ACCI said on 19 May 2013:

It is an excessive paid parental leave scheme.

We had similar comments from the then chief executive of the Australian Industry Group, who said:

… on any measure this is bad parental leave policy and its bad tax policy.

There are no friends for the government's policy. To think this will benefit small business in the long term leaves open the whole notion of how this government approaches parental leave. The last speaker and a couple before him gave us a diatribe of what women want. I will tell you what they want. I have some figures from August 2013—which will have increased substantially since, considering Greenway has one of the youngest demographics in Australia. These figures show that 3,500 parents have been recipients of Labor's PPL Scheme in Greenway alone. When this policy went through it was certainly welcomed. I remember very clearly after my baby was born in the first six months going to mothers group and nearly to a tee every one of those women from Blacktown to Quakers Hill would say that the only reason they were able to take the extra time off with their babies was the PPL Scheme. That is what they directly told me.

We know that Labor's PPL Scheme is working. It has had and continues to have a positive impact. The previous speaker liked to bang on about superannuation. What about the low-income superannuation contribution for those earning less than $37,000? Predominantly women fall into that category. There has been not a word about that; no care whatsoever about that. This means a lot in the electorate of Greenway. Two of the top 20 suburbs receiving low-income superannuation contribution recipients—these figures will be much higher now—are in Greenway: Girraween and Blacktown. It can plainly be seen that those opposite like to talk a big game when it comes to improving women's participation in the workforce. They like to talk a big game when it comes to a lot of the other factors that enable women to participate fully in the workforce.

I heard a member opposite speak about how important child care is.

Even today in The Australian I saw an article about childcare standards. The author, Natasha Robinson, says:

I must admit that I was sceptical about the previous Labor government’s national quality reforms to the childcare sector. When the reforms were rolled out, my toddler was in family daycare, and all I saw of the reform agenda was more bureaucracy for my daughter’s carer.

But then she goes on to say there have been substantive improvements to the quality of child care as a result of Labor's reforms. She quotes someone from the Community Child Care Co-operative, who says:

I have been in the sector for 30 years and I can honestly say with my hand on my heart I am seeing better quality now than I have ever seen. We are going to see different outcomes up ahead.

Those opposite, as I said, like to talk big when it comes to paid parental leave. They like to talk big when it comes to the rights of women in the work force. As we all know, it took Labor to introduce a national Paid Parental Leave Scheme. It took Labor to do that. The policy that the government is pursuing in this regard is completely friendless. Even if you just take this bill before us in isolation, the paymaster role has seen such incompetence from this minister that he cannot even get the key figures correct. There are no footnotes and no explanations about how the savings in here were reached. You cannot take with any veracity anything this minister does, because the incompetence is quite startling.

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