Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Rolled gold—also a very high-taxing scheme, I think was the other point. I often get lectures from those opposite on Labor's tax policies. I think the idea that you would say, 'We're going to have an ambitious paid parental leave scheme, but we're only going to do it if you accept a huge tax on corporations,' was a terrible way to treat a very important area of social policy. In 2012 the then opposition leader Tony Abbott—he had so many roles it is hard to keep track—described it as a welfare scheme. This isn't a welfare scheme; it is about supporting parents and protecting people's workplace entitlements. We then had the legislation to prevent paid parental leave double dipping. Again, it was treated as some sort of a welfare payment and they said people didn't deserve it. It was all brought down to whether you were a worthy recipient or not.

Talk about going in every single possible direction! All that mess led us to nothing. Which scheme are we amending today? We are not amending the 'rolled gold' Tony Abbott scheme; we are amending the Rudd-Gillard scheme. And that's because it has taken six years for this government to take the policy area of paid parental leave seriously at all. While I commend the changes that are being made with this legislation, it is not the huge change that we saw when this legislation was first put through the parliament.

Think about the challenges faced by families on a daily basis when they deal with Centrelink. For some families, their first engagement with Centrelink is when they go to claim paid parental leave. We know that parents have huge trouble accessing childcare subsidies. We've heard stories in the last few days of Centrelink offices being closed down. This makes it even harder for families to access paid parental leave entitlements. I know a family who, when their childcare subsidy took seven months, were told it was because of a technical issue. They asked Centrelink what that technical issue was, but they still don't know.

I worry that, as we continue to change these schemes, it creates more and more pressure on an understaffed Public Service. It creates more and more pressure on those who work in Centrelink. It creates more and more pressure on IT systems, which we know are well and truly behind the modern IT systems that are needed to run the complex social security architecture that Australia relies on in 2020. Indeed, when I recently visited Centrelink, they referred to it as 'the mainframe'. That's a term I haven't heard in a very long time. I think that gives a really good sense of the ageing infrastructure that sits below our social security system. I have much more to say on how to improve all the other parts of our family welfare system, but I will end it there. Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker.

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