Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I refer to the minister's plan to strip new mothers of up to $11,500 worth of paid parental leave. I remind the minister of his claim that Labor's paid parental leave scheme was not helping women stay at home longer. He said:

Importantly, there was an evaluation report done by the previous Government which showed that before and after the Union/Labor PPL scheme that was brought in post 18 weeks there was no change to people staying at home longer with their kids.

But the minister's own department has proved this to be completely untrue. The secretary of his own department, Mr Finn Pratt, said:

Certainly the high level evaluation finding is that PPL has been successful in assisting mothers to stay home with their children longer …

The evaluation said:

One of the key findings of the evaluation was that PPL had a clear effect of delaying mothers' return to work up to about six months after the birth of their baby …

The secretary of the Department of Social Services has directly contradicted the minister on paid parental leave, making it clear that Labor's Paid Parental Leave scheme is helping women stay at home longer with their newborn baby. The minister thinks that women who access both their employer and the government funded Paid Parental Leave scheme are 'double dippers'. It is a name littered throughout their own budget papers. Their own budget papers claimed that families who claim both employer and government funded Paid Parental Leave schemes are double dippers. I also remind the minister of his comments on Sky News, that he thought that new parents were rorting paid parental leave arrangements when he said, 'Frankly, in many cases I think is a rort.'

Does the minister still think that new mums and dads are double dippers when it comes to paid parental leave? Does the minister still think that new mums and dads are rorters when it comes to pay parental leave? Does the minister stand by his statement that he thinks it is a rort? Does the minister still stand by his words that under Labor's PPL there was no change to people staying at home longer with their kids? Can the minister say how many parents will be adversely affected by his cuts to paid parental leave? In what professions do those parents work?

Given that the business community raised concerns about employers not offering paid parental leave if government was not sharing the cost, does the minister share those business people's concerns? How many enterprise agreements contain paid parental leave premised on the availability of government funded paid parental leave? In addition, how many policies of employers and individual contracts offer paid parental leave, premised on the availability of government paid parental leave? How many parenting aged people are covered by those enterprise agreements, contracts and/or policies? In what industries do those agreements operate? Which industries are covered by those enterprise agreements containing paid parental leave provisions?

Given that the World Health Organisation recommends breastfeeding for six months, is the minister concerned about the public health implications of his changes to paid parental leave? For families in which the primary breadwinner is also the person who is going to be breastfeeding the new baby, is the minister concerned about the likelihood that cutting paid parental leave will mean that those families will have to send that primary breadwinner back to work sooner than they otherwise would have under the current Labor Paid Parental Leave scheme? The minister is aware of families like the family of Sienna Perry in my electorate. Sienna says that if her family had to choose between government and employer funded leave she would go back to work at 19 weeks. Her husband, who earns much less than her as a state school teacher, would have to stay home. He obviously cannot breastfeed, but that will leave them in a situation where they will be a one-income family earlier than under the present system.

Is the minister concerned about the effect on all families of cuts to the Paid Parental Leave scheme in relation to parents having to return to work earlier than was otherwise intended by those families, both from a public health perspective and from the perspective of the benefits that the Productivity Commission identified in respect of the availability paid parental leave?

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