Jenny Ware (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this motion that relates to Australian women's economic inequality, paid parental leave and closing the gender pay gap. In the short time I have been in this place, I have used every available opportunity to speak about supporting measures that will improve the lives of Australian women, Australian mums and Australian families overall. Closing the gender pay gap is a crucial step in ensuring that we have gender equality going forward. It is important that we shine the floodlight on the barriers that limit women building their financial security and focus on practical measures to help change that because, when Australian women do well, their families do well, our economy does well and Australia does well.

One of the largest barriers to women's financial security, workforce participation and earning capacity is that the predominant responsibility of family and caring duties still falls to women. Women should not be discouraged in their employment through their intrinsic role in childbearing. Australia's Paid Parental Leave is an integral component of our workplace relations system. It assists Australian parents to manage their work and parental responsibilities so that the needs of children and families may be met in the context of a modern Australian society. It also supports dads and partners. Paid parental leave is a classic representation of liberalism, where the role of government is to facilitate an environment that enables Australians to make choices that work best for their individual circumstances. This is why the coalition has supported legislation that will expand government funded paid parental leave to 26 weeks, commencing from July 2026.

However, the government has again missed an important opportunity to address a very crucial part of women's financial security, and that is the superannuation gap. It's a massive gap that exists between Australian men and women. This motion does refer to the national gender pay and superannuation gap, and I commend the member for bringing this important matter to this place. However, the member is part of a government that could have used its 18 months to legislate to include superannuation guaranteed payments on parental leave pay. This is a government where the Minister for Finance is also the Minister for Women. I will shortly be writing to the honourable Senator Gallagher about this issue in the lead-up to the next budget. Parental leave is still the only commonly taken form of leave on which superannuation is not paid. This gap directly contributes to women retiring with an average of one-third less superannuation than men. This is effectively a financial penalty women pay for having children. It is time that that changed.

In that context, another thing that really needs to be addressed—and this is a matter close to my heart—is that it's time that things changed for mums and families with multiple births. As we speak about paid parental leave and women's equality, those women who give work birth to multiples—twins, triplets or more—remain significantly disadvantaged. As a mother of twins, I fully support the policy changes recommended by the Australian Multiple Birth Association to assist these families, which amount to over 4,000 each year. Multiple-birth families face a range of unique challenges in comparison to families with singletons, including pregnancy complications, in particular premature births. I know from personal experience all about premature births. Mothers of multiples face a number of potential health impacts, including things like lower breastfeeding rates, higher rates of postnatal depression and other issues.

The Australian Multiple Birth Association is advocating for increased financial payments to families with multiple births and also to increase parental leave. That is to recognise that twins and triplets are far more likely to come early and to spend significantly more time in hospital. In my personal experience, my son spent 11 weeks in hospital, and that 11 weeks was not a period that was then added onto the parental leave that I had available. It would have made a massive difference to me. It would make a massive difference to other families experiencing this, and so I call upon the government to make the changes that are being advocated by the Multiple Birth Association as we are now coming into the prebudget submissions.

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