Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to continue speaking about the Paid Parental Leave Amendment Bill 2014. I was speaking about the importance of this bill in cutting the regulatory burden on small business. From 1 July 2014 this bill provides that employees will be paid directly by the Department of Human Services, unless an employer opts in to provide parental leave pay to its employees.

Today I say to members opposite: think again about the burdens on small business. Think again about their needs and embrace this amending legislation, because it gives small business the choice. It gives an enormous advantage of some $44 million in savings to businesses and there is no merit for not agreeing to this amending legislation, as Labor has in the past.

Why are the government cutting red tape? Because it helps drive jobs. Small business is the engine room of our economy. Small business grows jobs, grows prosperity and builds confidence. We must take the regulatory burden off small business, to grow the jobs that our country needs. We understand how important this is. That is why we are abolishing the carbon tax and the mining tax. That is why we have an unashamed focus on our red tape repeal day. We want to do everything we can to boost small business and this bill is an important part of our firm strategy.

As I mentioned, the small business sector is the engine room of the Australian economy. When the Howard government was in power, around 53 per cent of people were employed in small business. Today, this number has dropped to only 43 per cent. Under Labor's watch, over the last six years, some 519,000 jobs were lost in small businesses across Australia. We are determined to reverse that. I ask members opposite to consider the cost of their continuing opposition of this important legislation.

There has been much misinformation about our Paid Parental Leave scheme from those opposite and in the media. Let me say this: Labor's campaign against our genuine Paid Parental Leave scheme shows how out of touch it is with what is happening across the rest of the world. Labor's Paid Parental Leave scheme is paid at the minimum wage for only 18 weeks. But the World Health Organization has identified 26 weeks as the minimum period of exclusive care for optimal maternal and child health outcomes.

I refer to the comments made by the former Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, the member for Jagajaga, last Thursday in this debate when talking about the importance of bonding with babies. What a shame she was not prepared to acknowledge that bonding requires the full recommended period of six months instead of short-changing women, to only 18 weeks.

Of the 34 countries in the OECD, 33 offer paid parental leave schemes. None of these countries derive its rate of payment of parental leave from the minimum wage. The scheme that Labor is sticking by demonstrates that we are lagging behind the world's economic powerhouses. Frankly, that is not good enough. It is not good enough for women, it is not good enough for families and it is not good enough for our economy. Our policy will allow Australia to catch up with the rest of the world and to lift our productivity.

I also want to draw the attention of the House to an article written by Anne Summers in The AgeandThe Sydney Morning Heraldon 6 May entitled 'Most mothers worse off on PM's leave scheme'. I referred earlier to how much misleading information there is in the media and this is yet one more example. This article contends that most mothers will be worse off. Unfortunately, Ms Summers has got her facts badly wrong. I actually addressed that in a letter to the editor. I want to put those facts on record here today. Ms Summers argued that 25 per cent of women who earn less than the national minimum wage will get a pay rise while on the current scheme, in contrast to low-paid women, who, under the coalition's scheme, will only receive leave calculated at their actual wage or, as she puts it, 'a raw deal.'

Ms Summers has got her facts badly wrong. The fact is that, under the coalition's scheme, mothers will be provided with 26 weeks paid parental leave at their actual wage or at the national minimum wage, whichever is the greater. Unlike Labor's scheme—and this is a very important difference—recipients of our Paid Parental Leave scheme will also receive superannuation.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, around 80 per cent of Australian women earn a salary of less than $62,400. The average salary for women who work full time is around $65,000. This means that women who earn the average full-time salary will be more than $21,000 better off under the coalition scheme because they will receive their actual wage over 26 weeks, instead of the minimum wage of around 18 weeks, and also because the coalition scheme includes superannuation. Under the government's scheme it also means that a woman earning the average full-time female salary of $65,000, who has a child at 26 years of age and another child at 29 years of age, will be around $50,000 better off in retirement than she would have been had she been under Labor's scheme.

The other very important thing that we will do is remove the ability to double-dip whereby recipients can access paid parental leave as well as their employer's scheme. This is a terrible waste and like so much of the waste we have seen under Labor we will address this double dip and eradicate it. We have made it very clear that paid parental leave should be a workplace entitlement and not a welfare payment. Prime Minister Abbott has every reason to celebrate the wonderful advances this policy will deliver for women, for families and for workplace productivity. So I say to the likes of Ms Summers that when it comes to adding up the benefits of the coalition's paid parental leave scheme Ms Summers's politically skewed assessment unfortunately has little credibility.

I also want to address some of the misleading statements that are continuing to be peddled by members opposite. Last Thursday we did hear this from the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, who made some disparaging statements in relation to millionaire plastic surgeons who receive paid parental leave. We have heard some similar comments from the member for Jagajaga. Like health care, all women should be entitled to paid parental leave. Let us not create a class warfare over a basic workplace entitlement. All babies matter, all families matter. So let us stop the attacks on some women and recognise that that first six months where a woman, and in some cases a man, has the opportunity to bond with their child is incredibly important, and our policy proudly stands by that incredibly important principle.

I also think it is very important to point out that, being a workplace entitlement and not a welfare measure, it is similar in fact to other workplace entitlements like sick leave, long service leave and carer's leave. Surely Labor is not proposing that those particular aspects of workplace leave be paid at the minimum rate. As the Prime Minister said last week, only two per cent of women in the workforce earn more than $100,000, so to characterise our scheme in the way in which members opposite are continuing to do does them no credit.

One of the great aspects of our policy that I am incredibly proud of is that we have included superannuation. I think every woman across this nation needs to understand that we are proudly incorporating superannuation in our paid parental leave scheme. As I have said, that will result in an incredible difference in terms of the way in which women will benefit from our scheme. Unfortunately, what we have seen from Labor is a scheme that does not reflect the recommendations made, it does not reflect what is going on in the rest of the world, and I very proud that we are championing a scheme that treats women seriously, that reflects the seriousness of women spending this valuable time with their children and makes such an important investment in workplace productivity.

Just like our paid parental leave scheme, our budget includes a range of important measures to help families. Over the next four years the Australian government funding for public hospitals will increase by some 40 per cent, more than $5 billion a year. The government is investing record recurrent funding of $64.5 billion in government and non-government schools over the next four years. Patients will be contributing $7 towards the cost of standard GP consultations but that is in order to make Medicare more sustainable. Let us not forget that 8.6 million concession card holders and children under 16 will only pay this contribution for the first 10 visits, so there is a very important safety net. We are abolishing the carbon tax, which will save households on average $550 a year. We are helping small businesses. We are cutting the company tax rate by 1.5 per cent, which will again give small business another important opportunity to cut costs and to grow jobs. We are creating the world's biggest medical research endowment fund, a $20 billion medical research future fund. We are proudly supporting young people who earn or learn. We are supporting older people going into the workforce by giving businesses an incentive of $10,000 to employ a person over 50 who has been unemployed for more than six months. So we are driving those incentives to support young people, to make them feel valued, to give them the confidence in the workplace, and investing in older people as well. We are very proud of the support that we are giving to mothers through our budget and in this wonderful paid parental leave scheme that we are championing.

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