Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to support the coalition's Paid Parental Leave Amendment Bill 2014. This bill amends the Paid Parental Leave Act 2010. It specifically and vitally removes the administration requirement for employers to make payments to employees under the national Paid Parental Leave scheme from 1 July this year.

The bill proposes that employees be paid directly by the Department of Human Services, unless the employer chooses to make the payments and the employee consents to this arrangement. This amending legislation is imperative, as it will ease administrative burdens on businesses by reducing red tape. It is also fair. Currently, in most cases the government funds employers to provide paid parental leave instalments to their eligible, long-term employees. Why should businesses be burdened with this administrative task when paid parental leave is a government initiative and a government payment?

At the 2010 and the 2013 federal elections the coalition made the commitment that, under our Paid Parental Leave scheme, employees would be paid directly by the Commonwealth government, not by their employer. This bill implements that commitment. As a business owner for many years before becoming a member of parliament I have had practical and personal experiences with the paid parental leave scheme. I ran a small family-owned business in my electorate with 15 staff. In 2011 two of my staff members, both office workers, Carly and Catherine, had the great news that they were expecting in Carly's case her third child and in Catherine's case her first child. It was great news. There was the paid parental leave scheme that was brought in in 2010 that had bipartisan support, but what I would say is that the issue with it is that this was a new administrative burden for the business because the government was not making this payment directly to the mother. Our finance officer at the time probably spent about 20 hours researching what was involved with the paid parental leave scheme, how that $1,200 a fortnight in the hand should be administered, talking to the people at the Fair Work Commission, and basically setting up the payment took about 20 hours, believe it or not. Once it was set up it was a lot easier to implement, but once again it probably took an hour or so a week to make the payment, to issue the pay slip, to write everything up and so forth. So I estimate that probably would have cost somewhere between $750 and $1,000 for the small business that I was involved with.

One of the arguments that the Labor Party speakers have mentioned as to why this red tape removal bill should not be implemented is that it will break off the relationship between the employer and the employee. I would say in relation to that that is quite common for women that have had a child to bring the baby into the workplace after they have had the child, show the office workers, show the management—everyone is very excited about having a look at the new baby that has been born that the woman has carried for the last nine months. Not only do most women bring the baby into the workplace but in some workplaces, ours in particular, we do a regular newsletter every three months to our existing customers. We put photos of the newborn babies in the newsletter. It was great news, exciting news, that two of our staff has added to their family and brought a new life into the world and we put photos into the newsletter at our workplace to say, 'Look at this, customers, look at the great news. We have had a couple of babies in the family.' We also invited those women to Christmas parties. We always have a staff Christmas party and we had a little tradition in my previous workplace where wherever it was someone's birthday we would always get a birthday cake for morning tea. The rest of the women in the office and the men that worked in our workplace continued to celebrate those birthdays whilst they were on paid parental leave or maternity leave, so we were very engaging with the employees up on maternity leave.

What businesses generally think about that I will touch on in a moment, but what I say to those opposite that are blocking this bill in relation to removing this red tape is that most employers want to keep their employees. I know those opposite have strong links with the unions and that is not a bad thing in itself, but what I would say is that it is not always the case where the employer and the employee are at war. For most workplaces that are productive and are doing well and keep their staff long-term there is a good, healthy relationship between the employee and the employer. So to say that removing this red tape, removing this administration cost to small business, will somehow break off the relationship between employees and employers is completely wrong. Most employers are good people. Most employers want to keep their staff. They have spent years training them, investing in them, and it is important to point that out.

What do businesses think about this? Do they support this measure to remove this red tape? The majority of businesses do. I know that when I was out campaigning I spoke to hundreds of small businesses out doorknocking and talking. We had a platform leading to the 2013 election about removing red tape for small business. The Prime Minister often would say, 'If you have got examples of red tape, let me know what they are so we can remove them.' This is a classic example of red tape removal. All the businesses that I spoke to were in favour and thought it was a good practical thing to do. I also spoke to young women of child-bearing age and some mothers that I met out campaigning and explained about the red tape removal in relation to this measure. They also thought it was a good idea. So I see this amendment to the 2010 paid parental leave scheme as an election commitment. We very much support women and it is fantastic that even the current paid parental leave scheme is in place, let alone our plan that we want to implement later. It is a good thing and this is a matter of red tape removal.

We have heard a lot from the opposition about their support to remove the requirement for employers to make payments under the paid parental leave scheme but only for businesses with less than 20 employees. There is no reason for this amendment to apply only to businesses with less than 20 employees. The burden placed upon businesses by the current practice affects all businesses whether they are small, medium or large. In fact, many of Australia's leading business organisations support the removal of the requirement that employers make payments under the Paid Parental Leave Scheme. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry supports the measure introduced by this bill.

In a media release from March of this year, the Pharmacy Guild of Australia said:

… the Guild—along with many other employer groups—was disappointed that the [original paid parental leave] legislation was passed without any amendments to remove the paymaster role from small business employers.

I wonder why the previous government did not recognise this beforehand. We moved amendments to try to remove this red-tape burden. At the end of the day, this is about supporting parents and those parents are still supported by this amendment to the 2010 bill.

Under the coalition's Paid Parental Leave Amendment Bill 2014, employees will be paid directly by the Department of Human Services, unless the employer chooses to make the payments and the employee consents to this arrangement. This may happen. We do not need to legislate everyone in. We know that governments—whether it is council, state or federal—have paid parental leave schemes in place at full replacement wage, but there are some employers and private businesses that also do this. Some businesses would be more than happy to continue the current arrangements—to continue to handle the government payment directly from the government to the business to the employee. But I do not believe that we should be legislating everyone in. I think it should be a choice. I believe in freedom. I believe in choice. I believe that people should be free to do business without the burden of managing the distribution of government payments how ever beneficial those payments may be. That is why I support the coalition's Paid Parental Leave Amendment Bill today.

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