Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to speak in support of the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (More Support for Working Families) Bill 2023 today. About 180,000 Australian families access paid parental leave every year, and it's important that both parents can spend time with their children in those crucial first years of life.

Australia's paid parental leave allowances are now amongst the least generous in the First World. For instance, the average length of paid parental leave in the OECD is 55 weeks. In Australia, it's currently only 20 weeks. Australian men or supporting partners currently receive only two weeks of paid parental leave. The PPL scheme currently provides support payments for up to 18 weeks. It is primarily aimed towards mothers, with dad and partner pay providing only up to two weeks of payment to fathers and partners. A recent Grattan Institute report highlighted the fact that we have one of the least generous paid parental leave schemes in the First World. Paid parental leave is something that we clearly need to get right. Australian research has shown that increasing shared paid parental leave allowances increases mothers' earnings across their lifetime and also increases national productivity.

I'd like to acknowledge the important steps of the recent work in that direction by both this government and the Women's Economic Equality Taskforce. At the last federal election, many Australians expressed, at the time that they voted, their deep and real frustration with the treatment of women in this country. I applaud and thank them for doing so. I ask them to continue to do so and I assure them that, with this and similar legislation, this parliament will continue to work towards greater gender equity in both the workplace and the home.

This amendment improves several aspects of the current provisions of legislated paid parental leave. Firstly, over the next three years, it expands the total leave entitlement for partnered parents to 26 weeks—up from the current 20. It also increases the amount of reserve weeks—that is, the leave that can be taken only by the second parent—from two to four, and it does the same for concurrent leave. These improvements are all worthwhile, but they are not as generous as they could be. A 2022 KPMG report found that the gendered impact of years not working due to career interruptions, part-time employment and unpaid care together account for 33 per cent of the gender pay gap. The impact of this pay gap accumulates over a lifetime. It means that women retire with less savings than men and that they're more likely to live in poverty in their old age.

Recently, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency reported on the many indirect forms of discrimination that limit women's earning capacity. These include conscious and unconscious discrimination and bias in both hiring and pay decisions and in career progression and promotions. Women in female dominated industries tend to have jobs attracting lower wages. They often have a lack of workplace flexibility to accommodate caring and other responsibilities. But the other challenges include the high rates of part-time work for women, women's greater time out of the workforce with caring responsibilities which impact their career progression and opportunities, and women's disproportionate share of unpaid care and domestic work.

So, what are the issues with this current legislation? Firstly, it continues to offer minimal support for fathers to enter the PPL scheme. The effect of limiting men's access to the PPL scheme is an inevitable perpetuation of the notion of women as primary carers and the men as breadwinners. We think things have improved in this country, but the primary rate of care undertaken by the male partner is less than two per cent. This is in stark contrast to countries like Sweden and Iceland, where the male partner is the primary carer of children in 40 per cent of cases. This disparity costs women and it costs children but it costs men too. It costs us all. The government needs to now own some of that cost as well.

When fathers are more involved and more engaged in the care of their children, they have greater life satisfaction. My husband has told me this as I have left the kids with him yet again this week. I am pleased to see that this bill replaces the previous parental and dad and partner leave pay with a single 20-week scheme, with two weeks reserved for each parent on a 'use it or lose it' basis. It is also appropriate that many limitations of the current regime have been lifted or modified. The current eligibility criteria restrict access for non-birth parents. They restrict parents' choices in how they structure leave days in the transition back to work, and these eligibility criteria disadvantages the families where the mother is the primary income earner.

This bill shifts to a gender-neutral framework, removing the concept of primary birth parent and secondary claimants. It enables leave to be taken in a variety of smaller periods, even a single day, as well as blocks of time that can be interspersed with periods of work. Both parents can take the same period of leave for up to 10 days, and the bill includes a new $350,000 family income limit under which claimants, including single parents, can qualify if they do not meet the individual income tests.

Our understanding of the importance of shared care is growing. Patterns of care established in the first year of life for a child persist. The underutilisation of parental leave from fathers entrenches gender differences. The gap between how mothers and fathers work, care and earn after a baby is born is more pronounced in Australia than in comparable nations. The Australian Institute of Family Studies has found that the average number of hours worked by fathers does not change significantly after the birth of a child, while the number of hours worked by mothers generally falls by about two-thirds. Research by the Grattan Institute has shown that, on average, female parents do approximately two hours more unpaid care work per day than male parents, while male parents do two hours more paid work; hence, the so-called motherhood penalty—the 55 per cent reduction in women's earnings once they become mothers. There is no doubt that we need to support all policies that encourage both parents to take leave, and there are important aspects of this bill which recognise the value of and encourage shared care. Every man who takes paid parental leave makes it easier for those who follow.

This improvement on paid parental leave should be just a step on our path. The WEET report recommended PPL entitlement be extended to 52 weeks. The AIST noted our leave entitlements are very limited compared to other OECD countries. Women are left at a significant disadvantage, as families will always inevitably restructure their work and household duties to favour that partner with the higher income, which is typically the man, and current tax and childcare policies decentivise full workforce participation. At present, paid parental leave is the only paid leave which does not attract compulsory superannuation; although many employers voluntarily make superannuation contributions.

I strongly encourage the government, as I have before, and as many of my crossbench colleagues have on many occasions, to further increase the number of weeks of paid parental leave it offers to families, to increase access to better funded child care, and to acknowledge the importance of paid parental leave by heeding another recommendation of the WEET report that legislation be enacted to ensure that superannuation is paid on all forms of paid parental leave.

More than 99 per cent of parents accessing the government's current paid parental leave schemes are women. Inevitably, women are most impacted by the superannuation gap. By taking time out of the workforce to care for their kids, women are penalised with less financial security on retirement. Industry Super has reported that 1.45 million women in Australia have missed out on $1.6 billion in super over the last 10 years because super is not currently included on the Commonwealth Paid Parental Leave scheme. Women retire with about one-third less super than men—on average, $67,000 less. They're overrepresented on the pension, and women aged over 55 are the fastest growing cohort at risk of homelessness.

The Australian Public Service Commission has also recommended that, to help reduce the gender pay gap and to improve women's long-term economic equality, the employer component of superannuation should be paid on all forms of paid or unpaid pregnancy and parental leave regardless of the superannuation scheme type or the contribution method. The AIST made the interesting observation that, consistent with the government's intentions to move towards a wellbeing budget model, it would be apposite of the government to address inequality and financial disadvantage created or facilitated by structural policy issues like this. In that sense, government policies that entrench gender roles and which ignore the contribution of women to the workplace and the economy need urgent attention. Policies that financially disadvantage women by limiting their earning capacity due to caring duties following childbirth further exacerbate the gender super gap. As the WEET said, in 2023, if we eliminate negative gender biases from our system, we could unlock $120 billion that's lost each year to inequality.

We face numerous key economic challenges in the next decade. These include decarbonising our industries, adjusting to the economic impact of climate change, managing an ageing workforce and dealing with increasing intergenerational inequity, geopolitical challenges, the rise of artificial intelligence and other technological advances. This is the ideal time to unlock the value of women's full economic participation. Apart from the economics, it's only just and only fair to give women an equal voice in our society. So I encourage the government to enact legislation requiring superannuation on paid parental leave as soon as possible. And, as the WEET suggests, I would encourage all employers who offer paid parental leave to do the same.

In the words of the taskforce chair, Sam Mostyn:

Women want the same opportunities as Australian men, to better utilise their education and their skills and not be held back by having to take the burden of care, often unpaid or underpaid.

And they want the persistent barriers that hold women back removed very purposefully, until we get on with the job of building a fairer economy for all.

I commend this bill to the House and look forward to further progress in this very important area.

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