Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Being a parent is arguably the most amazing experience in life. Good parents want the best for their children. The work-life balance is often difficult, and parents want the best for their family and especially their children. There are many mothers who do not want to return to work, but financial constraints mean they must. My government wants to ensure the best support possible for young families.

The Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Flexibility Measures) Bill 2020 introduces changes to the Paid Parental Leave scheme which will provide choice and flexibility to working mothers and families to access their entitlements. The Paid Parental Leave scheme introduced in 2011 is a world-leading initiative which provides an important safety net for new mothers, adoptive parents and other eligible guardians, supporting them to take time off work to spend time with their newborn or newly adopt children.

There are over 300,000 babies born in Australia every year. In 2019, close to 180,000 people claimed parental leave payments. That means the scheme supported over half of all new primary caregivers last year. The Paid Parental Leave scheme provides eligible working parents with 18 weeks of payments at a rate based on the national minimum wage, which is currently $740.60 per week. That's a total of just over $13,000 over 18 weeks. Through the measures introduced by this bill, we will continue to support the objectives of the Paid Parental Leave scheme while offering families flexibility around when they can access their payment in order to support them balance the needs of their young family and their work.

As it currently stands, paid parental leave must be taken in a continuous block. If a parent returns to work before they have received their full entitlement of 18 weeks of paid parental leave, they lose eligibility for the remainder of the payment. Under the amendments made by this bill, parents will instead be able to claim two types of parental leave pay. An initial 12-week period is available, which parents can use at any time within the first 12 months after the birth or adoption of a child. This initial period will be subject to the same conditions as currently apply to the existing 18-week period. Parents will then be able to use the remaining six weeks of their entitlement at any time within two years of the birth or adoption of their child—in blocks as small as one day at a time. These changes are about giving parents choice when it comes to balancing their work and family commitments, and reflect the range of working demands and personal preferences parents have in relation to their work and career aspirations. Many parents will be able to use their flexible entitlement to support a gradual return to work. For example, after their initial 12-week period, a parent could negotiate with their employer to work a four-day week and receive one day of parental leave pay for the fifth day of the week for up to 30 weeks. These changes will also support parents who are small business owners or otherwise self-employed. For these individuals, 18 weeks is a significant amount of time to be away from their work. After taking their initial 12 weeks of parental leave pay, a parent will then be able to tailor their leave entitlements to suit their personal and business needs.

These amendments will support many thousands of parents across the country and many in my electorate of Mallee. Data from 2018 indicates that over 1,800 babies were born in my electorate and there were over 800 parental leave pay recipients. Since the inception of the program in 2011, well over 5,000 people in my electorate have accessed these payments. Once these amendments come into effect, parents in my electorate will begin to benefit in many ways. My experience in the field of social work has given me valuable insights into the challenges faced by young mothers. Over the years, I have worked with many vulnerable and disadvantaged young women who carry with them the burden of being single parents. Due to their circumstances, many of these young mothers have limited capacity to juggle employment and parenthood. Gaining work, and returning to work, is important for these mothers as doing so helps them put food on the table and pay their bills.

The amended Paid Parental Leave bill will give single young mothers greater capacity to work. I've heard many stories about how these changes will benefit mothers. Recently I had the chance to speak with Bec Arnold, from Mildura, the mother of two young children, who was able to access paid parental leave after the birth of her children. She spoke of the uncertainties experienced by new mothers and how there is often a lingering fear of the unknown when it comes to raising a child. She was confident these changes will give mothers like her security and peace of mind. Mothers who have flexible parental leave pay to fall back on will be more able to deal with unexpected events such as a child's illness.

Another mother from my electorate spoke to me about her experience of giving birth to a baby prematurely. She is part of a support group of mothers who have given birth to premmies who have welcomed these changes as vitally important for parents like them. Many parents of babies born prematurely have their leave entitlements exhausted while the child is in hospital, often in intensive care, potentially forcing them back to work or causing them to give up their employment altogether to care for their child. This new amendment will allow parents faced with difficult circumstances to have greater flexibility to care for their child after leaving hospital.

Babies born prematurely often have complicated health outcomes requiring ongoing treatment. Another mother in a premmie support group shared her personal story of her child who developed cerebral palsy. Due to the child's condition, regular treatment was required from a therapist. Fortunately these parents were able to make arrangements through the NDIS and to provide the necessary care for their child. However, when the mother had to return to full-time work the therapist had to make visits to the child's day care centre, which meant additional transport costs to the parents. The proposed flexible leave amendment would have given the parents the option of having the day off work to transport their child themselves to weekly therapy appointments rather than eating into their NDIS funding.

This bill will support the government's work regarding the Women's Economic Security Package, as announced in the 2018-19 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook. This package aims to improve women's workforce participation, economic independence and earning potential. This package identified an increase in the flexibility of parental leave pay as a key means by which women's participation in the workforce could be improved. While the workforce participation rate of women with children is increasing, the participation rate for mothers is still below that of fathers and is strongly related to the age of their youngest child. This is why it is so important to get the settings right for paid parental leave if we are to close the gap between men and women's workforce participation.

At the 2014 G20 meeting in Brisbane, the government committed to closing this gap by 25 per cent by 2025. By 2018, when the Women's Economic Security Statement was released, this gap was already at 9.5 percentage points, meaning we're well on the way to achieving a 25 per cent reduction in the gap. I have no doubt that the flexibility measures introduced by this bill will help close the gap between men's and women's workforce participation even further and help us meet our 2025 target.

As a mother, grandmother, social worker and a member of this House representing the people of Mallee, I am proud to support this bill. All birth and adoption experiences are unique, and, as such, we need to cater for all circumstances, especially when things don't go according to plan. These amendments will help us to do precisely that.

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing and Seniors) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It comes as no surprise that Labor supports any amendments to paid parental leave that encourage both parents to spend more time with their child in its early childhood, but the member for Barton has moved a sensible second reading amendment to this bill, Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Flexibility Measures) Bill 2020, to also talk about the other things that impact families when they are having new babies. It is a wonderful time of life that should be celebrated, but we do understand that many Australian families are still juggling young children and work and that interaction. We still know that there are many things that the government could and should be doing to encourage both parents to spend more time with their young one and to support them when their family makes a choice. We also know that this government has made repeated cuts to family assistance and programs designed to support families and children, particularly vulnerable families and children in some of the social services program.

We also know that women continue to do a disproportionate share of the home chores and the raising of children and that this creates a significant gender pay gap. That pay gap in Australia today is still around 14 per cent. We know that the gender pay gap in Australia has been consistent for around two decades. There have been some movements attributed to primarily the mining boom, but, essentially, from the ABS statistics recently, women on average in full-time work continue to earn $242.90 less per week than men in similar work. That is in Australia today. After decades and decades of work by the parliament and governments, we are still in this situation. There needs to be more done by the government. The Treasurer and the Prime Minister need to get really serious about this. If they were serious, I wonder why they support the cuts to penalty rates. These impact a lot of women working part time trying to support their families, particularly young families. Penalty rates and the cuts are disproportionately impacting on women who are working in the retail sector. It is harder for families with childcare costs to raise children. We've seen data showing that the government's recent childcare changes and payments have led to a position where out-of-pocket childcare costs continue to rise. We know that for families who are doing the budgets, who are looking at whether it's worth mum doing an extra day at work on that third or fourth day of the week, often it is not worth it, because of the tax and transfer system, because of those childcare bills and because of the way the childcare payment interacts with that.

We have very serious gender inequality when it comes to raising young families in this country. Still far too many women choose to work part time because they feel like they don't have any other option. We see men starting to make some of the choices to take paid parental leave. When I was minister for women, I had a conversation with the CEO of a bank. I remember him proudly telling me how great it was that his company now offered paid parental leave, and that he was going to take six weeks. I said: 'Oh, that's well and good, but tell me what your company's policy is. What is the amount of paid parental leave?' He said, 'It's 12 weeks, but you can't do that in my job.' I said: 'You've just ruled out a whole heap of people who can do that job. I'd be impressed if you took the same paid parental leave as all of your employees are entitled to, because what you're effectively saying is that there are some jobs that can't be done when people take paid parental leave.' I think that is the wrong message to give Australian families today who are struggling to pay their bills and are trying to make choices that are best for their families. We need to have a better system.

We support the changes in this bill. I will run through what this bill does. It allows carers and parents to take time off work to care for their child after the child's birth or adoption, and it provides them much more flexibility in how they do this. So, of course, we support that. We on this side of the House introduced paid parental leave. It was a long time coming. We were the second-last OECD country to have a paid parental leave scheme that covered all parents one way or another. It is income tested for the primary carer. It is a good scheme but there is always room for improvement. We supported the government's last changes to paid parental leave in 2019, which took effect from 1 January 2020, but again these changes were pretty slow in coming. We think that after seven years of being in government those opposite could probably do a little bit more and focus a little bit harder on what else needs to be done to close the gender pay gap, deal with the budgets of families who are bringing up children in this country today and encourage both partners to do more paid parental leave. I don't think that in this country we're going to get an equal outcome for both genders until we get more men spending time at home with their children and doing more housework.

We need to encourage families to make choices, but it's those families that should make those choices; I'm not suggesting government should impose them on people. We need to do everything we can to encourage both parents, regardless of gender, to have that ability and for families to make those decisions that best suit their family when it comes to accessing paid parental leave in Australia. To be in the year 2020 and to still have the gender pay gap that we have, to still have discrepancies in superannuation and retirement incomes, to still have more women, older women particularly, becoming homeless because of some of the systems and to still have families having tough decisions to make because of the childcare payment system is not good enough. We need to do better. The government can and should do better.

Julian Simmonds (Ryan, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia is the best country in the world to raise a family. I've lived my whole life in the Ryan electorate and I'm now raising my own young family there, along with the 39,161 other families in Ryan. So I made a commitment when I put up my hand to seek their support at the last election, as part of the Liberal-National government, to support the families of my electorate in every way I could. It's with that promise that I rise to proudly support this bill, because it goes to the heart of how we in the Liberal-National Party support our families. We want to support our families through flexibility and support through measures that allow them to suit their own needs and things that draw and require the attention of their families. Labor, on the other hand, seeks to tell families how to live, what car to drive and how they can spend their money so much better than the mums and dads who are trying to raise their kids.

It was a great pleasure to talk to many families across my electorate about how, as part of a re-elected Morrison government, we were going to reduce taxes for some 10 million Australians, including many families, who need that money back in their pocket to spend on their own priorities. Being a young dad myself, with another little one on the way, I know that nothing really prepares you for raising a child. The life of every new parent as our friend Tom from Sky News, who had his baby today—congratulations to Tom and his family—and any new dad knows, can be unpredictable with a newborn. In fact, it is entirely unpredictable. It's something you can't really prepare for as a new parent when your first child comes into the world, and so I think there is nothing we can do that can support families more than providing them with as much flexibility as possible to suit their own needs and working arrangements.

It's no different when it comes to our paid parental leave scheme, which this bill addresses. While as new parents we may all be united in the decision to bring a child into the world, it comes with very different circumstances for all of us. Across my electorate, as across Australia, different families, new families, will be juggling different requirements and work requirements so that they can ensure as many opportunities for their family as possible. For families, no one size fits all so it's important that we have a paid parental leave scheme that can be tailored to best suit the needs of any mum and dad. Flexibility is the greatest way to allow choices for Australian families.

Currently, paid parental leave can only be taken as a continuous block of 18 weeks within the first 12 months after the birth or adoption of a child. With these measures that the Morrison government is putting forward in this bill, families will be able to split their parental leave pay into blocks over a two-year period with periods of work in between if that's what mum and dad need. Mum and dads will be able to use an initial 12-week block of their entitlement at any time within the first 12 months after the birth or adoption of their child without returning to work.

Again, I can tell you from my own recent experience that the first 12 weeks are a rollercoaster. It's a time of course of joy and bonding, and it is so important that the government provides that opportunity for parents to spend that 12 weeks with their children. Under this legislation, after that time, parents will be able to take their remaining entitlement of up to six week if they so choose any time before their child turns two years old. Mum and dads will still get the 18 weeks currently allowed—that's an important point. This isn't a reduction in entitlements by any means; it simply allows them greater flexibility to suit their lifestyle and circumstances.

The Prime Minister has spoken previously about this government's achievements when it comes to supporting women in the workplace. Women's workforce participation is at a record high of just over 61 per cent. It is absolutely vital that we do everything we can do to support women working while raising a family, if that is their choice. Work-life balance is different, person to person and family to family. While some women may be able to take the initial block of 18 weeks in one go, other women, with different working requirements, need greater flexibility to suit their personal situation.

As the son of small business owners, I know that one week—as politicians they say a week is a long time in politics—is a long time out of the shop and 18 weeks away from the helm of a small business, particularly during peak times of the year, can seem like too long. Women who work in small business and need to return to work sooner than the 18 weeks should not be disadvantaged and should not lose the balance of their entitlements. Should these changes come to pass in this bill through the House, they won't be disadvantaged. It will allow mothers the choice to return to work on a part-time basis following an initial period of parental leave. They could choose to negotiate with their employer to work a certain number of days, such as working a four-day week and receiving paid parental leave for the fifth day.

Raising a child is a team effort. These changes will enable mothers to transfer their entitlement to partners who also take on the role of primary carer. Fundamentally, on this side of the House, we believe that individuals should be able to negotiate their own outcomes. Good government is there to support Australians in the way that they want to raise and best serve the needs of their family—not to stand in the way, not to tell parents how it's done or what block they should take in terms of paid parental leave, but to try and set up arrangements that allow maximum flexibility so that they can make their own decisions. Unlike Labor, who like to tell Australians what they should do based on the opinion of the few—who say it on Twitter, for example—this government listens to everyday Australians, responds to suggestions and continually adapts to make sure that our policies around supporting families are both flexible and provide the families of Australia with the maximum amount of support we possibly can.

Paid parental leave is an important safety net for nearly half of all Australian mums. We will always make sure it is certain, fair and flexible. To the mums and dads out there who are working tirelessly to raise their families: thank you for everything that you do and for the sacrifices that you make. It is so important for our nation. We know, mums and dads, that you are working your guts out. We appreciate the work that you are doing, and the Morrison-McCormack government is absolutely here to support you.

Libby Coker (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Flexibility Measures) Bill 2020 and to support the amendment moved by my colleague the member for Barton. The opposition supports the bill, which builds on the national Paid Parental Leave scheme introduced by Labor, which commenced on 1 January 2011.

On this side we are very proud of the scheme. You will recall, Deputy Speaker Goodenough, that, when the legislation was passed, Australia was only one of two OECD countries, along with the United States, that did not have a paid parental leave scheme. The purpose of the Paid Parental Leave scheme was and is to provide financial support to primary carers of newborn and newly adopted children in order to allow those carers to take time off work to care for the child after the child's birth or adoption, enhance the health and development of birth mothers and children, enable women to continue to participate in the workforce, and promote equality between men and women and the balance between work and family life. It provides two payments: paid parental leave of 18 weeks at the minimum wage for the primary carer and leave of two weeks for the dad or partner. Paid parental leave signals to employers and the Australian community that parents taking time out of the paid workforce to care for a child is essential and a part of the normal course of life. It also enables participation of women in the workforce. A high workforce participation rate is important in the context of an ageing population. It is also crucial to our economy and retaining skilled staff. Importantly, it helps to address the gender pay gap, particularly for those women on low and middle incomes who often have less access to employer-funded parental leave.

Almost 150,000 parents a year benefit from the Paid Parental Leave scheme introduced by Labor. Nearly half of all new mothers benefit from the scheme each year. The scheme has had its ups and downs. The scheme was not 22 or 26 weeks of paid leave, as it is in many other countries. The research tells us that the optimum time for bonding between mother and child is around 26 weeks. Our 2011 scheme was more modest than many would have liked, but it was affordable and it worked. And, of course, the scheme was always intended to be supplemented by bargaining in the workplace, which would allow additional weeks at the worker's usual rate of pay. An agreement derived entitlement could be taken either simultaneously with the PPL entitlement or added to the minimum 18 weeks PPL scheme.

In the last seven years, we have fought coalition attempts to absorb bargaining outcomes against the scheme entitlement—in other words, to reduce the maximum 18-week payment, currently $13,330, by the amount received under an enterprise agreement. Scandalously, on the other side this was called, to both bargaining entitlements and legislative entitlements, double-dipping. Thankfully, that legislation was defeated in the Senate. It would have seriously disadvantaged lower- and middle-income workers, like cleaners, carers, teachers and nurses, who have often negotiated additional benefits under enterprise. Thankfully, this bill doesn't go down that path. It is one that we can support and which belatedly fixes problems which weren't necessarily contemplated a decade ago.

This bill will enable working mothers and families in my electorate of Corangamite and across the nation to split their paid parental leave entitlements into blocks of time over a two-year period, with periods of work between. Currently, the scheme only allows paid parental leave to be taken as a continuous 18-week block within the first 12 months after the birth or adoption of the child, and then only when the primary carer has not returned to work since the birth or adoption of the child.

The bill will change the paid parental leave rules by splitting the 18 weeks of paid parental leave into a 12-week paid parental leave period and a six-week flexible paid parental leave period. The 12-week paid parental leave period entitlement will only be available as a continuous block, but would be accessible by the primary carer at any time during the first 12 months, not only immediately after the birth or adoption of a child. The six-weeks flexible paid parental leave period will be available at any time during the first two years, and that does not need to be taken as a block. These changes will apply to children born or adopted from 1 July 2020. In practice, this will mean families can split their entitlements over a two-year period, with periods of work between. As with the current rules, the primary carer can be changed during this time. It is likely the most common use of the increased flexibility will be parents returning to work part time and spreading flexible paid parental leave period over several months. This bill may encourage greater take-up of paid parental leave by secondary carers by allowing mothers to transfer their entitlements to their partner at a time that suits the family. This is welcomed. While the changes are modest, we hope they will allow more families to share parenting responsibilities in a way that works for them. Around 4,000 parents each year are expected to use these proposed flexibility changes. Again, that's a good thing, and the entitled cost of $25 million over the forward estimates is a modest price to pay for these changes.

There is some concern the proposed changes will be complex in administration, with required interactions between Centrelink and families accessing paid parental leave increasing several-fold. Given the history of Centrelink managing complex interactions, there is a worry that there will be unnecessary grievances and disputes. This will need to be monitored. It should also be noted that this bill does not increase paid parental leave entitlements for Australian families. Australia is falling behind internationally in the support it provides new parents. This bill does nothing to change that. According to 2019 OECD data, Australia's paid parental leave scheme ranks amongst the lowest in terms of both duration of leave and the amount of pay replaced.

In contrast, other countries are rapidly expanding the support provided to fathers and partners to encourage them to spend more time at home in the first year of a child's life. In Iceland, fathers are entitled to three months paid parental leave. In Finland, the government has announced plans to provide each parent with more than 6½ months of paid leave, with a further six months to share. Parents are also able to transfer some of their leave to their spouse. Single parents will receive both allowances.

Australia has one of the lowest rates of investment in parental leave—just a third of the OECD average. Our public expenditure on maternity and parental leave per live birth in the 2019 OECD comparisons leaves us seventh-lowest of 34 countries, wedged between Israel and Chile. The 2019 OECD comparison on the percentage of usual wage replaced again sees Australia as the eighth-lowest of all OECD countries, with our minimum wage being only about 40 per cent of the usual wage. All but 12 countries—including the US, which still has zero paid parental leave—provide more than 20 weeks of paid leave. So, it is high time that the Scott Morrison government started thinking about improving the scheme in a fundamental way.

Another issue that affects the ability to take time off and spend time with family is the gender pay gap. The gender pay gap remains a problem in Australia, despite the Treasurer's recent contention, in question time on 9 September 2019, that 'the gender pay gap has closed'. Female workers in Australia still earn 14 per cent less than their male colleagues. It is a fact that the gender pay gap in Australia has remained stubbornly high over the past two decades. If the Treasurer and the Prime Minister were genuinely serious about fixing the gender pay gap, they would oppose cuts to penalty rates. The vast majority of workers who have had their penalty rates cut are women. The cuts to penalty rates are exacerbating the gender pay gap, making it harder for women to pay the rent and cover the bills. Of course, we don't hold out much hope for any consideration of marked improvements to the scheme when more minor issues have taken years to fix.

In 2019 the government changed the eligibility rules for the paid parental leave scheme and extended access to women who work in dangerous occupations usually occupied by men or who have irregular employment. Labor supported the changes to the legislation, which took effect on 1 January this year, but, welcomed as they were, those changes were very slow in coming, and too many Australian women and their families have missed out on the benefits of paid parental leave as a result. For example, in 2013 the Australian Jockeys Association publicly identified the access problem and called on the Abbott government to fix the legislation. The community had to campaign for many years before the unfair access issue was fixed. We hope the change will encourage more women to consider careers in roles historically dominated by men. While Labor supports this bill, it is time for this government to do more to build on Labor's paid parental leave scheme and do more to support our nation's young families.

Fiona Martin (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I rise in support of the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Flexibility Measures) Bill 2020. Our government understands the important role that paid parental leave serves in encouraging workforce participation and supporting the wellbeing of families. This bill introduces greater flexibility to support working parents, particularly women, including self-employed women, casual and seasonal workers, and small-business owners who cannot afford to leave their businesses or workplaces for 18 consecutive weeks. Currently, parental leave pay can only be taken as a continuous 18-week block within the first 12 months after the birth or adoption of a child. From 1 July 2020, families will be able to split their parental leave pay into blocks over a two-year period, with periods of work in-between. These amendments give families, and particularly mothers, much more flexibility so that the scheme can best fit their family's needs and the transition back to the workforce. Parents will be able to use an initial 12-week block of their entitlement at any time within the first 12 months after the birth or adoption of their child without needing to return to work during this initial block. This gives parents a period of recuperation and bonding in the months immediately following the birth or adoption. Parents will be able to take their remaining entitlement of up to six weeks any time before their child turns two years old, and they can return to work at any time during this period. This totals the 18 weeks currently allowed, but with much greater flexibility. These amendments will have a positive impact on families across Australia, including in my electorate of Reid.

This greater flexibility is especially important in supporting women who wish to return to work. This amendment will be beneficial particularly to casual and seasonal workers, or workers who have large breaks in employment, such as teachers, nurses and academics. For many small business owners and self-employed women, 18 weeks is a significant amount of time to be away from work. Under these changes, mothers will be able to take an initial 12 weeks of paid parental leave before returning to run their businesses. They will then be able to take the remaining six weeks of their entitlement when they choose, at a time that suits their personal and business needs. For example, over the Christmas and new year period, if their business is quiet, they may be able to take that time then. Some mothers may choose to use their paid parental leave to support a part-time return to work—for example, after returning to work following an initial period of parental leave—and parents could negotiate with their employers to work a four-day week and receive a day of paid parental leave for the fifth day for up to 30 weeks.

The increased flexibility will make it much easier for mothers who are eligible for paid parental leave to transfer their entitlement to an eligible partner who takes on the role of primary carer where it suits the family circumstances. It is expected around 4,000 parents will choose to take their paid parental leave flexibly each year, which means 4,000 families on an annual basis will get a better experience as parents.

While the structure of the modern Australian family cannot be categorised in any single framework, the value of the family unit remains central to the wellbeing of society. Supporting Australian families by empowering them through choice and flexibility strengthens the fabric of Australia as a whole. By making the Paid Parental Leave scheme more flexible, families have more choices. Parents can tailor their payments to their family's needs and circumstances and make the choice that will have the best financial and social outcome for them. Men who are the secondary carer can take parental leave and share a more balanced caring role in their family. The amendments through this bill reflect and support the needs of the modern family in Australia. This is a step in the right direction for modernising paid parental leave payments for Australian families, and I commend the bill to the House.

Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Paid parental leave is about equality for women, equality and care for children and equality for everyone. Economic empowerment is what paid parental leave seeks to provide—to say that, just because you choose to have children, it doesn't in any way diminish your rights to live a good life and to be paid a wage. The reality is that only some people have that privilege, but it is something that is important to all of us.

In this place today, we stood in silence, in one of the more moving moments I have had in this parliament, remembering Hannah Clarke. It reminds us that people are at their most vulnerable when they have just had a baby. The data tells us that is one of the times in a woman's life when there is the highest risk of being a victim of domestic violence. For women aged 25 to 44, the greatest health risk they face is not cancer. It's not road accidents. The greatest risk they face is domestic violence. When we think about these things in the broader context, paid parental leave seeks to achieve equality, and it is an important building block in making sure we have a fairer and more equal Australia.

I want to thank the former Minister for Women, Kelly O'Dwyer, for her work on the government's Women's Economic Security Statement of November 2018. This bill is part of that work, a legacy that continues some nine months after she left this parliament—and, indeed, continues to move us in the right direction.

Flexible paid parental leave, when you think about it, is absolutely sensible. Different parents, different families, have different needs, and different children have different needs, and so allowing the 12-week parental period to be available as one continuous block and then a six-week flexible period to be taken within the first two years makes sense for so many families across Australia. Indeed, if you look at the 2017-2018 financial year, some 159,372 families accessed the Australian Paid Parental Leave Scheme. It is amazing to think that just 10 years ago we didn't have this scheme at all, and now there are more than 150,000 families on an annual basis accessing this scheme.

For those who've fought for these changes, for the rights for parents to have paid time off with their children, it is something that pre-dates many of us in this place. It has been a long fight, and I want to also thank everyone who has been part of the campaign for paid parental leave and who continues to campaign to make this system fairer and even more equitable.

In 1979, the Commonwealth legislated to give 52 weeks of leave for Commonwealth employees. Back then, just 0.4 per cent of the population—that's women Commonwealth employees—were given 52 weeks maternity leave in the maternity leave act. That was 52 weeks unpaid. While by today's standards that is an incredibly inadequate provision from the Commonwealth—indeed, the Commonwealth could have afforded to do a little more—it was 41 years ago, and it started something much bigger.

In 1990, Australia ratified the ILO's 1981 convention on the rights of workers with family responsibilities. That continued us on the path towards more support for families with children. Also in 1990, the Department of Industrial Relations initiated the work and family unit of the department to start to look more at how we can make sure we've got the right economic settings to support parents and support families. The United Nations' International Year of the Family was in 1994, the same year that the Keating government negotiated Accord Mark VII with the ACTU. That accord noted, 'In this International Year of the Family, we should also incorporate consideration of direct assistance to workers with family responsibilities.' That was an important statement for the ACTU and the government to make.

In May 1995, the government did announce a new maternity allowance as part of its agenda for families. This was the first time there was a direct, specific payment in the form of what then morphed into a paid parental leave scheme. It was a means-tested lump sum payment equivalent to six weeks of the parenting allowance, payable to women back then regardless of their status in the workforce. I note that it was continued under the Howard-Costello government with the baby bonus.

In 2009, we saw two further steps towards the legislation that we're amending today. The Rudd government referred the issue of paid parental leave to the Productivity Commission to see what would be the best way of building such a scheme not only to ensure that it supported the families that we needed to support most but also to make sure it was economically sound. And we saw an amendment to the Fair Work Act to ensure that parents would have the right to 24 months of unpaid leave with their children.

Then we saw the historic Paid Parental Leave Scheme, a huge achievement of the Rudd and Gillard governments and a huge achievement of Jenny Macklin, the former member for Jagajaga. It was something that ensured a government funded scheme providing the primary carer with 18 weeks postnatal leave paid at the adult federal minimum wage. Back then, it was $543.78 a week. Now, wages haven't grown as much as they should have since then, but it was a significant change. In 2012, we had dad and partner pay included in the scheme by the Gillard government.

All of these things came into my world on 21 October 2017, when my son, Leo, was born. My wife, Jess, was very fortunate to have access to the Paid Parental Leave Scheme. I was fortunate that my employer provided a significant amount of paid leave and then was happy to let me take unpaid leave so I could be off for three months. That was one of the best decisions of my life. I wish I'd taken longer. As I said, one year I was one of those 150,000 people who access this scheme and their family every year. But we know that the scheme isn't doing all that it intended to.

I'll talk about the history of this. It is now a 10-year-old scheme. The economy has moved on, international expectations have moved on and there's a lot more that should be done. I received an email from a constituent in Eden Hill about what an extended paid parental leave scheme would mean for her. I'll quote from that email, with your indulgence, Mr Deputy Speaker. She says: 'Childbirth can be a very traumatic event for both mother and baby. Mothers can need time before birth off work due to dangerous pregnancies and time after the birth just to recover physically, mentally and emotionally. There are numerous other countries around the world that offer a year of paid maternity leave to mothers and fathers. I think this would benefit Australia a lot. I almost died giving birth to my child, and, while I was extremely lucky to have time off from work and I am so thankful for that, a full year of paid parental leave would have been wondrous and probably would have enabled me to take work off before the birth instead of working so close to her due date.' She says that there are many women in her workplace taking 12 months off to be with their babies but most of that time is unpaid, and she thinks that's unfair. She finally writes: 'I feel we don't only deserve an income but also superannuation during this time.' I think that's a debate that we're going to continue to have over the next decade as we continue to look at how we make sure our paid parental leave scheme does fit the expectations of our community and does fit the economic needs of our people. Indeed, it is now more than a decade since the Productivity Commission looked at our paid parental leave scheme. Maybe it is time the Productivity Commission once again looks at what Australia needs in a future-fit paid parental leave scheme.

Compared internationally, Australia has one of the least-generous paid parental leave policies in the OECD. Current rates of Australia's paid parental leave entitlement only cover an average of 42 per cent of the previous earnings of the participants in the scheme, amounting for most women to just 7.6 weeks of their full-time pay. I went through the history earlier where that first payment scheme in the 1990s provided for six weeks of payment. Now, recognising and not comparing minimum wages and minimum payments to people's full-time pay—but just 7.6 weeks of people's full-time pay? Hopefully, over time, we can talk about how we can do more in that space. Of 36 OECD countries, about half offered six months or more paid leave for mothers. Six months is the minimum recommended amount by UNICEF, and if we think about who would have a good idea of what the minimum should be, I would listen to UNICEF before I listen to many others.

In Norway, parents can access 35 weeks of paid parental leave at the full amount. Estonia offers mothers 85 weeks of paid leave. Hungary offers 72 weeks. Bulgaria offers 65 weeks. Finland recently announced that their paid paternity leave will be extended to nearly seven months, in line with maternity leave. This isn't some utopia; these are actual countries who are listening to the experts, listening to UNICEF and others, saying: how do we make sure that we give kids the best start in life, give parents the best chance to bond with their children and make sure that we actually value the work that people do that they have to give up in order to take some time to care for their children?

The coalition's record of paid parental leave is a bit all over the place. I commend them for bringing this legislation forward, which heads in the right direction, but it's like they've had to try every possible direction before finally landing on this point. In his quest to become Leader of the Liberal Party, Tony Abbott proposed what could only be described as an ambitious scheme.

Kate Thwaites (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Rolled gold.

Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Rolled gold—also a very high-taxing scheme, I think was the other point. I often get lectures from those opposite on Labor's tax policies. I think the idea that you would say, 'We're going to have an ambitious paid parental leave scheme, but we're only going to do it if you accept a huge tax on corporations,' was a terrible way to treat a very important area of social policy. In 2012 the then opposition leader Tony Abbott—he had so many roles it is hard to keep track—described it as a welfare scheme. This isn't a welfare scheme; it is about supporting parents and protecting people's workplace entitlements. We then had the legislation to prevent paid parental leave double dipping. Again, it was treated as some sort of a welfare payment and they said people didn't deserve it. It was all brought down to whether you were a worthy recipient or not.

Talk about going in every single possible direction! All that mess led us to nothing. Which scheme are we amending today? We are not amending the 'rolled gold' Tony Abbott scheme; we are amending the Rudd-Gillard scheme. And that's because it has taken six years for this government to take the policy area of paid parental leave seriously at all. While I commend the changes that are being made with this legislation, it is not the huge change that we saw when this legislation was first put through the parliament.

Think about the challenges faced by families on a daily basis when they deal with Centrelink. For some families, their first engagement with Centrelink is when they go to claim paid parental leave. We know that parents have huge trouble accessing childcare subsidies. We've heard stories in the last few days of Centrelink offices being closed down. This makes it even harder for families to access paid parental leave entitlements. I know a family who, when their childcare subsidy took seven months, were told it was because of a technical issue. They asked Centrelink what that technical issue was, but they still don't know.

I worry that, as we continue to change these schemes, it creates more and more pressure on an understaffed Public Service. It creates more and more pressure on those who work in Centrelink. It creates more and more pressure on IT systems, which we know are well and truly behind the modern IT systems that are needed to run the complex social security architecture that Australia relies on in 2020. Indeed, when I recently visited Centrelink, they referred to it as 'the mainframe'. That's a term I haven't heard in a very long time. I think that gives a really good sense of the ageing infrastructure that sits below our social security system. I have much more to say on how to improve all the other parts of our family welfare system, but I will end it there. Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Kate Thwaites (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak in support of the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Flexibility Measures) Bill 2020 and the amendment. As we heard from the member for Perth it was Labor that introduced Australia's national Paid Parental Leave scheme, which started on 1 January 2011. I have spoken in this place before about how, at that time, when Labor introduced this scheme, I worked for the minister responsible, Jenny Macklin, the former member for

But it's almost a decade on and Australia is falling behind again. We now invest just a third of the OECD average in parental leave and, in particular, we are falling behind when it comes to encouraging and supporting fathers and partners to take time off to care for their baby. We are doing a disservice to families, to children and to our community in doing this. So this bill is meant to make paid parental leave more flexible my changing the rules so that the 18 weeks of paid parental leave can be split into a 12-week paid parental leave and a six-week flexible paid parental leave period. This should mean that families can split their entitlements over a two-year period with work in between—and, as with the current rules, the primary carer can be changed during this time. It is likely and hopeful that this will increase flexibility, and help parents to return to work part-time and spread their flexible paid parental leave period out over several months. The government says the bill may encourage greater take-up of paid parental leave by secondary carers, by allowing mothers to transfer their entitlements to a partner at a time that suits the family. Well, I certainly hope that that is something that happens, because, while Labor supports these changes and hopes they'll be beneficial, it's clear there's much more work to be done; particularly on how we share parenting between genders and how that's supported by schemes such as this one.

I'm going to look for some inspiration from Scandinavia, of course. Starting with Finland, where their female leadership team has just introduced almost seven months leave each for mothers and fathers—or for each parent, in the case of same-sex relationships—with a further six months to share. Iceland offers fathers three months paid parental leave. Norway has been leading the way in this space for quite some time, first introducing a 'use it or lose it' daddy quota, where parents were entitled to extra leave but only if the father took it, way back in 1993. The research on that shows that countries that have a non-transferable form of leave for the father have a much higher uptake of men taking leave than those countries that don't. This benefits men and women and, importantly, it benefits children. Nordic research has shown men who take longer parental leave will also take on more responsibility at home, they do more unpaid housework, they're more involved in the care of their children, and they have better relationships with them. That is such an important point: by having that early time where they actually get to be the primary carer, these fathers build lifelong bonds with their children. Men who spend time caring for their child or children alone establish a more fundamental sense of shared responsibility between the parents and, as I said, they have a stronger bond with their children.

Another study of four countries, the US, Australia, the UK and Denmark, found that fathers who'd taken paternity leave were more likely to feed, dress, bathe and play with their child in the years after the period of leave had ended. In Britain, dads who took time off at birth were almost a third more likely to read books with their toddlers than those who hadn't. These are significant changes. In Australia today, more and more men want to be more hands-on with their children and to be able to take more parental leave, but they are held back by financial considerations, by a lack of support and, probably quite often, by a workplace culture that still sees it as a little bit strange that they might want to spend more than two weeks at home with the baby. In fact, the national average leave of less than two weeks for men leaves men often returning to work sleep-deprived, unable to give 100 per cent at work, and ill-equipped to also provide adequate support at home. A 2018 Human Rights Commission report here in Australia found that 27 per cent of fathers had experienced discrimination in the workplace during parental leave or upon return to work, ranging from negative attitudes and comments to actual threats of dismissal. There are a couple of things we need to do here. One is to look at policies that actively support fathers to take more leave, and the other is to look at the culture in our workplaces and how we can ensure that they're set up to support both men and women to care for their children, so that working parents—because, let's be honest, most families in Australia have working parents—generally share the load of bringing up their children while having a job.

Like many people in this House who've spoken on this bill, I've had some pretty recent experience of parental leave myself. My daughter has just had her second birthday last weekend. When she was born, I took leave for the first 11 months. My partner and I had planned that at that point he would step in and take three months unpaid leave. This is how we had always planned it, and we were ready for this, but I think the change that happened when he took over the primary responsibility was immense. It probably started with a fairly 'crash-through or crash' approach by both of us. My partner decided to take our daughter, at 11 months old, on a flight from Melbourne to Newcastle to go and visit his parents. I thought to myself, will I check the bag that he's packed? Should I have a look at what's in it before he goes? And I thought, no, he's got this; it's his responsibility now. So off they went. The plane was apparently a bit delayed in taking off. By the time they got on the plane, I believe he may have run of out nappies. They then sat on the tarmac for a little bit, and that meant he used up the last bottle he had with them. They took off and they had to get through some turbulence. They were circling around and around. I can see some of the other parents in the room smiling with recognition. So he was out of nappies and he was out of food. There was possibly some wee on his trousers at this point. He's not going to really thank me for sharing this story, but I think that at that point a helpful family stepped in to support him.

That was not a great experience, obviously, but it demonstrates that being the primary carer is actually really different to being the secondary carer. The relationship between him and his daughter from that point on changed. I don't have to worry about things like that anymore. I don't look around and think, 'Did that happen? Has that been packed? Does he know what she needs next?' He knows what she needs next because he's done it. He's taken that responsibility on. We've all have bad experiences as a parent when we think we could have planned things better, but, if you haven't had that experience, if you haven't done it as a solo parent, if you haven't done it as the main care giver, you need to know it's a really different relationship. I think it is important that we set up a system that allows men and women to experience that, both for our relationships and for our relationships with our children.

Of course, it's also for women's economic security because, until we do a better job at sharing the caring load, women in Australia will continue to be left behind. ABS data that came out just a couple of week ago reveals the gender pay gap remains stubbornly stuck at 13.9 per cent. That means that women earn $242.90 a week less than men, despite the Treasurer telling us last year that the pay gap had closed. Women's superannuation is, on average, half the rate for men at the age of retirement. This leaves too many older women at risk of homelessness and poverty because they've shouldered a lifetime of being a primary carer. They're the ones who not only took the early leave—again, because they'd fallen into the role of being the primary carer, the one who knows how it all happens—but became the carer going forward. They were the ones who took the extra sick days when the child couldn't go to child care. They were the ones who came home early for the school excursion or to organise the other things. As that happened over a lifetime, they fell further and further behind in their career and their earnings.

We can do better than this. We do need to strike a better balance between the genders when it comes to caring, unpaid domestic work and productivity. Women are too often forced to make a decision between having a family and their career. Good parental leave policies are still judged too much on the amount of maternity leave afforded to women. Of course this is important, but we must look at how we also make a system that supports women and men to be there for their children. It's an issue that goes to how we set up those systems, how we set up our jobs and our careers and our life, and how we do the ongoing juggle that all parents are trying to make work.

The scheme introduced by the Labor government has been life-changing. There were so many women who, prior to this scheme being introduced, didn't have access to any paid leave. I remember hearing a lot of their stories. Particularly for women in areas like retail who were working casually, this scheme has been so important in that they know they can take some time off with security. It's been important for their employers as well to know that they can afford to have their workers take some time off. It has made a big difference in the lives of a lot of families, so it's good that the Morrison government is looking at what it can do to improve this scheme and how it can improve some of the flexibility in the scheme. But it's a shame that it's taken so long for them to start thinking about this, because there is so much more to be done. We have fallen behind again and we don't need to. We are a modern, progressive and smart country. We are a country in which families are juggling work, caring, child care and all of those things, and we deserve to have a government that's thought these issues through, looked at what will benefit women, what will benefit men and what will benefit their children in order to give them all a start during a pretty tough time—becoming a parent and working through what that means for your relationship and what that means for your relationship with your child going forward. That needs government support. It needs to be thought about; it needs to be planned.

The fact that this has taken so long to get here is regrettable. It's good that it's here now. We need to see more. I encourage the government to look at some of the overseas examples of what is happening elsewhere and think about what else they can do to support working families in Australia. This is a start. It doesn't get us to where we need to be. It doesn't really give the sort of flexibility that will allow families to set themselves up for a truly equal model, and it doesn't allow women to make up some of those gaps that they still have in their careers and in their earnings—gaps that really, as they get further and further down the track towards retirement, leave them at risk of poverty, homelessness and quite serious consequences that we still see for many women today, and that shouldn't exist in our country.

Debate interrupted.