Sally Sitou (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

When my mum gave birth to me more than 40 years ago she had to return to work full time two months later. That was because my parents needed two full-time incomes to pay the mortgage, pay the bills and put food on the table. She could not afford to take any more time off work. She also couldn't be sure she would have a job to go back to if she took additional leave. My mum juggled the sleepless nights and tiredness that comes with having a newborn while having to front up to work five days a week. She struggled with wanting to spend time with her newborn while needing to earn enough money to support her young family. It was a dilemma that many working mothers of her time had to endure, because few had access to employer parental leave schemes and no-one had access to government supported paid parental leave.

Contrast that to the experience I had when I became a mum 35 years later. With a combination of the government's paid parental leave scheme and generous paid parental leave offered by my employer, I was able to take 14 months off to care for my baby full time. It was both the most enjoyable and the most difficult 14 months of my life. But I got to make those choices—choices about when to go back to work, choices about going back to work full time or part time. I was fortunate to be in a position where I could make choices based on what was in the best interest of my family and my son. I was able to make those choices because of the financial security provided by the paid parental leave schemes I was able to access.

My mum didn't get to make those choices. Her decisions were governed by our family's financial situation. I'm grateful to her and my dad for working so hard to give my brother and me the opportunities they never got. My mum is an amazing mum and I think an even better grandmother. She spends time patiently teaching my son how to write Chinese characters. Instead of reading books to him she makes up short stories to teach him about Chinese culture and history. She spends hours making his favourite meals. And I'm grateful she's been able to have that time with my son, just as I was able to spend quality time with him in his early and formative years.

Australia's paid parental leave scheme was introduced in 2011, a legacy of the Rudd Labor government. At the time of its introduction we, along with the United States, were the only ones in the OECD that didn't have a statutory paid parental leave scheme. So, it was a long-overdue reform. It's now become such an entrenched and important social policy that you sometimes forget there was a time when we did not have this scheme in place. It's a scheme designed to support working parents—mums and dads—and that's an important point to make here. The government's paid parental leave aims to encourage both parents to spend time with their child to encourage bonding.

The paid parental leave scheme aimed to meet a few key objectives, which the Productivity Commission laid out in a 2008 report: to generate child and parental health and welfare benefits by increasing the time parents spend with their children; to normalise the social value of having a child and taking time out for family reasons; to counter some of the workforce participation disincentives for new parents posed by the tax and welfare system; and to increase retention rates for businesses with reduced training and recruitment costs. Put simply, it's good for parents, good for kids, good for employers and good for the economy.

There are two parts to the government's paid parental leave. One is provided to the primary carer, with minimum wage paid for 18 weeks, divided into a 12-week block that is taken continuously and a six-week flexible block. The other part is for dad and partner pay, for up to two weeks of minimum pay. In total, a family is eligible for up to 20 weeks of pay.

But we know that this scheme isn't perfect and has its problems. Countless papers and studies, not to mention numerous submissions to the Jobs and Skills Summit, have outlined its shortcomings. Business, unions, economists and experts all know that it's not doing enough to boost productivity and participation. In order to be eligible for the current scheme, the primary carer needs to earn under $156,000. We know this rule can be unfair to families where Mum is the high-income earner and the primary carer. We know it doesn't do enough to provide access for fathers and partners and partners and we know it limits flexibility for families to choose how parents transition back to work.

And we know it's not the driver for gender equality that we know it could be. Research from the OECD shows that in Australia, like in so many other countries around the world, the responsibility for caring for children often falls disproportionately on women. Typically, fathers tend to remain in full-time work while mothers work part-time or drop out of work entirely. Data from the Department of Social Services indicates that because the two-week dad and partner pay cannot be taken in conjunction with other paid leave, this can make it harder for fathers and partners to take significant time off from work to care for their newborn. The cumulative impact of this dynamic is for women to remain out of the workforce for longer, for the gender wage gap to continue to widen and for the stereotype of the female carer and the male breadwinner to continue. Treasury analysis tells us that women experience a motherhood penalty, with their earnings falling by an average of 55 per cent in the first five years following the birth of a child—that is, more than half of their income is lost—whereas men's earnings are unaffected by the birth of their child.

This bill sets out to fix some of those fundamental problems with the Paid Parental Leave scheme. It does it in a few key ways. It combines the parental leave pay and dad and partner pay schemes into a single parental leave scheme available for 20 weeks. It expands eligibility to allow an eligible father or partner to receive parental leave pay regardless of whether the birth parent meets the residency requirements or income tests. It introduces a $350,000 combined family income limit and allows claimants to take the payment flexibly within two years of birth or adoption.

At its core, not only will this bill allow parents and their child to bond but it will improve gender equality. The new scheme will remove the default position of parental leave attributing to the birth mother; instead, parents will be able to decide who should lodge their first claim. This change will be combined with two weeks of leave reserved for each parent on a 'use it or lose it' basis in order to incentivise parents to take at least two weeks each and to signal that caring for a new child is the responsibility of both parents. Eligible parents will have the ability to share their paid parental leave entitlements to suit the specific care arrangements within two years of the child's birth or adoption. Making the scheme more flexible and easier to share will help families to balance work and care responsibilities. It will encourage more men to take parental leave away from their jobs and, in doing so, will contribute to changing stubborn gender norms and improve gender equality.

We are ambitious for our Paid Parental Leave scheme. Later this year we will introduce legislation to progressively increase the Paid Parental Leave scheme to reach 26 weeks in 2026. This is the largest expansion since the scheme was introduced in 2011. The Grattan Institute has made it clear that the benefits of paid parental leave aren't just helpful for women; they are also helpful in allowing dads and partners to bond with their child, and it's helpful for children as well. The research shows that more gender-equal leave can improve family relationships by reducing parenting stress and allowing couples to build a better understanding of each other's worlds. I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to have benefited from the Paid Parental Leave scheme, a great Labor legacy, and to now be part of an Albanese Labor government working to strengthen and improve it.

I want do end my contribution by thanking two women who have fought tirelessly to get the Paid Parental Leave scheme implemented: Professor Marian Baird from the University of Sydney Business School, who spent decades researching and advocating for paid parental leave in Australia; and Jenny Macklin, the minister responsible for bringing this policy idea to fruition. I thank them both.

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