Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Payments) Share this | Hansard source

I want to start today with paid parental leave. The minister will recall that in the 2015 budget the then Abbott government announced that they were going to end what they called double dipping and that they were going to crack down on new mothers—that was the way Mr Hockey put it at the time—and their paid parental leave entitlements. This was an extraordinary attack on new mothers on Mother's Day. It was unbelievable. The comment from many people at the time was that this was the mother of all insults from the Treasurer of the day.

I understand that Minister Porter also intends to pursue these cuts. What we know is that, if the minister gets his way, around 80,000 families with new babies will be as much as $11, 800 worse off. I am very pleased that Labor so far has been able to block these cuts, and that means that we have been able to protect new parents from cuts to paid parental leave. Of course, it was a Labor government that introduced Australia's first national Paid Parental Leave scheme, and one of the great things that has happened as a result is that 730,000 families have been given extra support to spend more time at home in those critical early months of their child's life. Labor's Paid Parental Leave scheme gives eligible new parents 18 weeks pay at the national minimum wage. It is a modest and affordable scheme that appropriately targets assistance to women on low and middle incomes.

As the minister should know, more than 75 per cent of parents receiving Labor's Paid Parental Leave scheme are on incomes of less than $70,000 a year. I understand from the minister's public comments that he does intend to reintroduce this legislation into the parliament and to try to cut support for new mothers. Given that there are many, many families around the country who are either expecting a new baby already or wanting to plan their family, could the minister say exactly when he proposes to reintroduce the legislation that will cut Paid Parental Leave? When will he put that legislation into parliament? And, in the interest of giving expectant mothers especially as much time as possible to plan for their parental leave, on what date will the proposed changes take effect?

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