Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

When I had my triplets in 1999, I had access only to unpaid parental leave. When you unexpectedly discover that you're having three babies instead of one and end up having to go on parental leave at 18 weeks instead of at 38 weeks as planned, the financial crunch is real. I was lucky that my husband worked and was able to support me and our surprisingly rapidly growing family. But for many of the women I saw at Homelessness Service, Catherine House and Vinnies, that had not been the case. In many instances their homelessness could be directly traced back to an interrupted career due to caring duties for children. This gap in employment not just impacted their immediate financial security when they had young children, just as the family expenses were going up; it also had long-term implications. For some of them, the lack of paid parental leave meant they couldn't maintain their job. This meant a gap in income and an immediate financial impact but also a loss of superannuation and career momentum that had long-term impacts on their life's journey.

Having to find a new job after a career gap is difficult. This financial security also impacts other life decisions such as whether to have another child or whether to leave a violent or unhappy relationship. So, when they turn up at the doors of Catherine House or Vinnies or any other homelessness service, whether they're in their 20s, 30s or 40s or part of the fastest-growing demographic experiencing homelessness—women in their 50s and over—the impact of unpaid career gaps and forced job losses is so often a major factor in why they become homeless.

The Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022 implements the first step of the Albanese government's paid parental leave reforms. It expands access, improves flexibility and encourages shared care between parents. The bill is necessary because of the limitations of the existing scheme of parental leave. The current parental leave pay takes the form of an 18-week payment to the primary carer. The eligibility criteria for this system limits access for non-birth parents. It restricts parents' choice about how they structure leave days and transition back to work, and it disadvantages families where the mother is the primary income earner. The current scheme also fails to provide support for fathers and partners to access paid leave, further limiting choices for families and denying them the opportunity to be the primary carer for their children.

To address some of these weaknesses in the existing system, this bill replaces the parental leave pay and the dad and partner pay with a single 20-week scheme, with two weeks reserved for each parent on a 'use it or lose it' basis. It introduces gender neutral claiming by removing the notion of primary and secondary claimants and the requirement that the primary claimant must be the birth parent. Essentially this change will leave it up to families to decide how they want to utilise their leave. It allows parents to take payment days in multiple blocks as small as a day at a time within two years of the birth or adoption. This means parents can use their paid parental leave to structure their working schedule around their needs.

The bill also introduces a more generous $350,000 family income limit, under which families can be assessed if they do not meet the individual income limit, and allows eligible fathers and partners to receive the payment regardless of whether the birth parent meets the income or residency test. Around 181,000 Australian families will benefit from the changes in this bill. Crucially, this includes around 4,300 families who will gain access they would not have been eligible for under the existing scheme. We are opening up support, choice and flexibility to more families because that's the Labor way.

When I attended the government's very successful Jobs and Skills Summit last September, I lost count of how many speakers raised the issue of women's workforce participation. At our local Boothby jobs and skills forum, local businesses, not-for-profit organisations and individual participants also identified the importance of tapping into the skills of women who want to return to work as part of the solution to our national skills shortage, and the importance of women being able to maintain contact with their employer as well as the importance of employers wanting to maintain access to their skilled female workforce. Paid parental leave was seen as a win-win. Leaders from industry, the public sector, NGOs and unions talked about myriad benefits that come from greater participation in the workforce for women, to their organisations and to Australia more broadly. They spoke of the untapped potential of so many women, the untapped potential in their individual lives and the untapped economic potential of a wasted resource.

As of the 2021 Census, there are more than 25,000 families with children living in Boothby and an unknown number of families and individuals who might be planning at some stage to have a baby. These families come in all shapes and sizes and various configurations of parents, step-parents, children and step-children, a bit like mine. This represents the diversity of Australian life. It goes a long way to explaining why this bill is necessary.

As the Australian family has evolved to, in many ways, become more inclusive and more diverse, so, too, must our social policies. That's why we've updated the paid parental leave scheme to make it more flexible and to make it work for more families. Paid parental leave reform like this will make it easier for more women to remain attached to the workforce when they have children. It will allow them to have more choice in their lives to shape their own futures. It will allow families to make decisions about what suits their individual circumstances but also encourage both parents to take the opportunity to be the primary carer in that special time of life of a new child. And this is key: it is also good for babies and toddlers to have the opportunity to spend quality time with both parents. It will be good for families, good for women, good for men, good for employers, good for the economy as a whole, and, of course, good for children.

The Albanese government has listened. The introduction of this bill into the parliament is the most significant step to improve the scheme since the establishment of the parental leave scheme by Labor in 2011. Just as it took a Labor government back in 2011 for paid parental leave to become a reality, it has once again taken a Labor government to improve it and update it to ensure that it remains fit for purpose. Strengthening our paid parental leave system reflects this government's commitment to improving the lives of working people. It will help support better outcomes for children by allowing their parents more financial independence and choice. It will help advance women's economic equality, a driving passion of mine. And, of course, it has taken a Labor government to update this scheme so that it actually reflects how Australian families live in 2023, because the needs for many in Boothby have changed since paid parental leave was first established over a decade ago. Labor is the only party in this place that accurately and responsibly reflects these changes and can channel them into policies that improve people's lives. That's what this bill does. This bill is just the first step in our reform of paid parental leave to improve the lives of Australians.

The changes that I outlined earlier commence from 1 July this year, but they are just a stage 1. The second stage, to be implemented by 2026, will expand the scheme to 26 weeks. This will move us closer, in a responsible and equitable way, to being global leaders when it comes to paid parental leave. The changes brought about by this paid parental leave bill send a clear message that treating parenting as an equal partnership supports gender equality. This government values men as carers too, and we want to see that reinforced in our workplaces and our communities. It's about getting the policy settings right so that families can make the choices that best suit them. It's about removing barriers that disallow fathers and partners to spend time at home with the children. When fathers take a greater caring role from the start, it benefits them, it benefits the children, and it benefits the mums—it benefits the whole family.

The government's paid parental leave reform is good for parents, good for children, good for employers and good for the economy. It gives families flexibility and choice about how they want to make arrangements for caring for their children. It's good for gender equity, enabling and encouraging men to spend time as carers during the important early life of their children; it's good for women, enabling them to maintain their link with their employer and avoid the career gap that so often tips them into poverty in later life; and it's good for employers, enabling them to maintain a link with their female employees that they have invested so much time and money and training. It's good for Australia by supporting flexibility for families and unlocking the female workforce as we face a shortage of skilled workers across all sectors. I commend the bill to the House.

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