Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Hansard source

The Border Mail in Albury. Some of my own colleagues have been talking about it in their own areas. We are seeing very savage cuts to these regional papers and to journalists who live in our communities and know our communities. They are very, very sadly being put in a position where the job loss is sad enough but they also know that for their community it is the loss of local stories and local voices as well. We currently face at circumstances the Illawarra. When I refer to articles, I am going to actually acknowledge the journalists and photographers. The photographers are also very significantly hit. I have to say, production staff and commercial staff at many of these papers are hit as well.

This is a story in the Illawarra Mercury written by Michelle Webster, accompanied by a photo by Sylvia Liber. They talked to a Fairy Meadow mum. She was particularly concerned about the impacts of the announced decision on the paid parental leave. Fairy Meadow mum Lindsey Whitford had looked at the Joe Hockey's plan to crack down on paper parental leave and the so-called double dipping. She said that she was outraged. At present, parents can access the government's scheme for their base and then, if they are able to negotiate additional leave through their enterprise agreement, they can add on to that. By doing that, parents are creating a much more reasonable time frame of paid leave out of the workplace to raise their children. Under the planned changes, if you have an enterprise agreement based paid parental leave entitlement, you will lose the government one.

Mrs Whitford is pregnant with her second child and she said that the phrase double-dipping was misleading. I will use own words:

"I just felt it was really unfair," she said. "For me, I work for a private company, it's not taxpayer-funded so it's not double dipping at all. It's actually an employer's way of hopefully retaining good employees and getting them to return to work."

The article went on to say:

"It's just such a backflip from what the government was previously offering … I was quite happy with just the 18 weeks at minimum wage, I thought anything else they were offering was good, but now that they're taking that away, it's not fair at all."

With her first child, 22-month-old Zoe, Mrs Whitfield was able to take 12 weeks of leave from her employer and then 18 weeks from the government at half pay, stretching the time at home with her new daughter to almost 12 months.

This is an example of the impact on a real family.

Finally, I want to say that in the Illawarra region as well we have been particularly hit by unemployment. Not long after the budget, the Illawarra Mercuryran another story, written by Kate McIlwain, entitled 'Illawarra jobless figures hit a high'. Very sadly, the unemployment rate for the Illawarra had hit 9.4 per cent. That is up from 4.5 per cent only 12 months ago, in April of last year. For us, it is the issue of ongoing unemployment being above the national average. It is a significant and ongoing issue. It is particularly frustrating not to see anything in the budget to actually address the opportunity for investment in both skills and infrastructure in our region.

In contrast, while Labor was in government, there was $865 million invested in our region to support jobs, growth and investment. That included $135 million in capital works for the University of Wollongong, $13 million in new infrastructure and equipment for TAFEs, a record investment of $99.3 million in facilities for schools, $140 million for a steel adjustment package with BlueScope Steel and $75 million in funding to commence the Maldon-Dombarton rail link. We have seen nothing like that—in fact, absolutely nothing at all—in either of the Abbott government's budgets for our region. That is creating serious concern for people across our area.

On investing in skills, I obviously have a bias as the shadow minister for that area. But it is a really important thing to do. There has been $2 billion in skills funding cut from last year's budget and there is nothing new in this year's budget. It is an absolute failure to do what should be a really important task for a national government; that is, to invest in the skills and opportunities for education for the future.

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