Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens welcome the extension of the Paid Parental Leave scheme. Increasing the availability of leave to 26 weeks is a positive step in ensuring that parents are adequately supported in those crucial first few months of parenthood. Parents should have access to a minimum of 26 weeks of paid leave to allow recovery from birth, maximising options to establish breastfeeding and allowing parents to spend time with their infants. Extended leave provides the best chance of a good start for children in the early years and healthy patterns of shared care.

But parents shouldn't have to wait another two years to get the 26 weeks that are accepted as an international minimum standard. There's no reason to delay the implementation of good policy. This bill presents a critical opportunity to move towards best practice, and should start with an immediate increase of 26 weeks paid leave and include a pathway to 52 weeks of paid leave by 2030. Australia has one of the weakest parental leave schemes globally. The experience in other countries puts beyond doubt that more equitable parental leave, coupled with free child care, improves women's workforce participation and helps shape the long-term sharing of care work. The reintroduction of 'use it or lose it' provisions in this bill to encourage shared parenting is a welcome change. We have seen time and again in Scandinavian countries how this provision causes a huge jump in the number of dads taking leave. And that fairer sharing of care has then been sustained for more than a decade.

But Labor can, and must, do more than make the PPL scheme fairer. and immediately. We've fallen behind other countries in the rate of pay and how leave is allocated between parents. Continuing to pay parental leave at the minimum wage forces difficult decisions about who can afford to take leave and for how long. For some people, full-time minimum wage is an increase on their previous earnings. But for many parents the minimum wage is well below their normal wage. The Greens support full wage replacement, including incentivising employers to top up the government's scheme. Last year the government's own Women's Economic Equality Taskforce recommended expanding paid parental leave to 52 weeks; to pay superannuation on PPL; and, eventually, to pay PPL at replacement wage. That was the government's own taskforce. The Greens will continue to push Labor to implement the taskforce's advice and, particularly, to pay super on PPL. That's a way of helping to prevent women retiring into poverty. It is time out of the workforce and taking on more unpaid labour that contributes to the gender pay gap and the super gap. By failing to pay super on parental leave, the government is increasing the risk that more women will retire into poverty.

Women deserve fairer paid parental leave; it improves their economic security, reduces the gender pay gap and increases the likelihood of mothers returning to work. Fairer paid parental leave is a no-brainer that benefits everyone: parents, children and the economy.

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