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

The legislation will be introduced very soon, in a matter of weeks. The date of effect will be in that legislation but I will need to wait for the introduction of that legislation. I understand the point about planning, but the legislation will include a start date that will allow a very significant time for planning.

Again, the legislation is not as you have described. You have described, here, legislation as would have been based on the 2015-16 budget measure. The legislation that we will produce, very shortly, is based on a principle that every Australian mother will have 18 weeks paid parental leave at the minimum wage, at least. What that legislation does is fix a problem in the present system where there are very large amounts of money that are able to be received jointly through an employer Paid Parental Leave scheme and the $12,000 taxpayer funded amount by a group of parents at the very high end, on a comparative sense, of the income scale.

What this legislation seeks to do is different from that which was announced in the 2015-16 budget. It refines that very significantly by trying to deal with that problem.

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