Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

Well, we have just started. So that was the 2015-16 measure. The member would also be aware that a reconfiguration of the savings around that measure was announced in the 2015-16 MYEFO. The measure that will be the subject of the introduction of legislation, which will happen very soon, is a different measure.

I am on the public record describing the new measure. Rather than what was the case in the 2015-16 budget measure, the new measure would guarantee a minimum of 18 weeks paid parental leave at the minimum wage. That is what the new measure would guarantee. What the previous measure did in 2015-16 budget was, in effect, guarantee a minimum amount which was, at that stage, $11,826, I recall, which was 18 weeks times the minimum wage. So rather than the 2015-16 proposal, which was that we would pay from the taxpayer funded PPL up to that amount, the proposal that we will put forward soon in legislation is that we will pay the residual on top of any employer paid parental leave up to 18 weeks. So every single mother in Australia—if they are a qualifying mother under the existing system—would be guaranteed 18 weeks of paid parental leave of at least the minimum wage.

The reason for both the original measure and the reconfiguration of the measure, which will be the subject of legislation to be introduced soon, is that there is a real problem that exists with the present system. As the member is aware, the access rules around the present paid parental leave system are relatively generous. They are that an applicant need only have worked for 330 hours in 10 of the past 13 months—that is to say, about one day per week. There is presently a rule that says there should be no more than an eight-week break between two working days. In fact, that eight-week break is, again, something we have announced we will change so that women who are working in physical or dangerous professions can get access when previously they have not been able to.

Those access rules also have an allied provision where the income test for a new parent must be that they earn less than $150,000 per year. The difficulty that exists in the present system is that you will have a situation often where a parent might be on an income, say, of $140,000. A standard 12-week employer provided Paid Parental Leave scheme for an income of around $140,000 might generally look like this: $32,200 over 12 weeks. And that is merely the parent of the child who is earning the $140,000; that is not a calculation of family income. But if that individual receives, as is presently the case, another full $12,000 of taxpayer funded paid parental leave, that person ends up receiving over an eight-week period a combined employer and taxpayer paid parental leave of $44,000. That is notwithstanding that that person's income is $140,000. Their family income might be significantly greater than that. It might be double that. It might be more than double that.

So the situation under the present legislation arises—and it may be that the member agrees that this is not fair—when a person on $140,000 with a generous employer Paid Parental Leave scheme earns more in an 18-week period than the median wage in Australia. That is more that the median wage in an 18-week period from the combination of the taxpayer funded PPL and their employer funded PPL. A cashier working at a supermarket who earns $42,000 and has no employer paid parental leave receives the $12,000 over 18 weeks. In fact, the person earning $140,000 whose family income might be even larger than that receives more in paid parental leave—taxpayer funded plus employer based—over an 18-week period than a cashier working at Coles receives working full-time for an entire year. That is the problem we are seeking to fix by legislation.

I must say, it is hard to conceive how that problem is not one that is acknowledged by members opposite as a real difficulty with the present scheme.

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