Henry Pike (Bowman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was on a roll before I was rudely interrupted by the business of the House, so I'll try to get back into the rhythm of things. I was talking about the coalition's record of supporting government funded paid parental leave and how far that commitment goes back. In the 2010 and 2013 elections, the coalition's paid parental leave policy sought to deliver mothers six months paid parental leave based on their actual wage. If those opposite, who today have been celebrating this legislation and their party's commitment to paid parental leave, had supported this landmark coalition policy back in 2010, Australian families would have had access to one of the most generous government funded paid parental leave schemes in the world. That scheme would have now been in place for over a decade. Imagine how many families would have been able to access that scheme over the last 10 years and how many Australian women could have benefited from that policy.

The coalition recognises both the social and economic benefits of paid parental leave. It's the coalition that will always be fully committed to supporting women's participation in the workforce, which, we should never forget, rose to record highs under the previous coalition government. It should come as no surprise given our record that the coalition, even in opposition, will not waver from a long-standing ambition to provide genuine support for Australian families, so we will be supporting this bill. As previously mentioned, the amendments in Labor's Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022 builds on the changes to the PPL scheme originally announced by the coalition in the March 2022 budget less than a year ago. We welcome the government's plan to extend parental leave pay from 18 weeks to 20 weeks from 1 July.

In government, the coalition set out to create a single 20-week payment under the PPL scheme by combining dad and partner pay with the PLP. Making a 20-week payment fully flexible to eligible working parents will also see parents share the entitlement between them by as much or as little as would work with their specific circumstances within two years of their child's birth or adoption. As the increased flexibility offered by this bill may pose some administrative challenges for small and family businesses, the coalition has sought assurances from the Albanese government that amendments will not negatively impact small businesses and has requested that Services Australia will provide meaningful support and guidance to businesses to manage the scheme to minimise any possible financial impact and, further, that businesses will be made aware of the changes to the scheme well in advance of the 1 July this year.

Beyond expanding access by introducing the $350,000 income test previously proposed by the coalition and further increasing flexibility by allowing claimants to use their paid leave entitlement that best suits them, this will also significantly expand eligibility under the scheme. The bill also provides for an eligible father or partner to receive parental leave pay irrespective of the birth mother's income test status, residency requirements or newly arrived resident waiting period. The impact of these measures are significant both in their scope and in the sweeping nature of their impact, and, while resolute in our support, the coalition is mindful of Labor's poor record when it comes to the implementation of the many schemes they've brought about. That's something that we'll certainly be keeping an eye on as the government seeks to, beyond the passage of this bill, implement this scheme.

One final point, in the lead-up to the 2022-23 October budget, the Albanese government announced the scheme would be progressively increased to 26 weeks. As this bill fails to mention this change, if Labor has now shelved its proposed increase to 26 weeks, the Prime Minister needs to come clean with the Australian public. We deserve a straight answer from the government on that front about what has happened to their commitment regarding 26 weeks. I know this isn't a government famed for providing details on its policies. Those on our side have certainly been asking for a lot more detail on a lot of the government's policies in recent weeks and months. But my constituents do want to know. It's a question that's been asked by many of my constituents when I've gone door to door discussing changes to PPL. They want to know whether the proposal to extend this leave to 26 weeks is anywhere in the government's thinking for this program in the future. With that in mind, I commend the bill to the House.

Sally Sitou (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When my mum gave birth to me more than 40 years ago she had to return to work full time two months later. That was because my parents needed two full-time incomes to pay the mortgage, pay the bills and put food on the table. She could not afford to take any more time off work. She also couldn't be sure she would have a job to go back to if she took additional leave. My mum juggled the sleepless nights and tiredness that comes with having a newborn while having to front up to work five days a week. She struggled with wanting to spend time with her newborn while needing to earn enough money to support her young family. It was a dilemma that many working mothers of her time had to endure, because few had access to employer parental leave schemes and no-one had access to government supported paid parental leave.

Contrast that to the experience I had when I became a mum 35 years later. With a combination of the government's paid parental leave scheme and generous paid parental leave offered by my employer, I was able to take 14 months off to care for my baby full time. It was both the most enjoyable and the most difficult 14 months of my life. But I got to make those choices—choices about when to go back to work, choices about going back to work full time or part time. I was fortunate to be in a position where I could make choices based on what was in the best interest of my family and my son. I was able to make those choices because of the financial security provided by the paid parental leave schemes I was able to access.

My mum didn't get to make those choices. Her decisions were governed by our family's financial situation. I'm grateful to her and my dad for working so hard to give my brother and me the opportunities they never got. My mum is an amazing mum and I think an even better grandmother. She spends time patiently teaching my son how to write Chinese characters. Instead of reading books to him she makes up short stories to teach him about Chinese culture and history. She spends hours making his favourite meals. And I'm grateful she's been able to have that time with my son, just as I was able to spend quality time with him in his early and formative years.

Australia's paid parental leave scheme was introduced in 2011, a legacy of the Rudd Labor government. At the time of its introduction we, along with the United States, were the only ones in the OECD that didn't have a statutory paid parental leave scheme. So, it was a long-overdue reform. It's now become such an entrenched and important social policy that you sometimes forget there was a time when we did not have this scheme in place. It's a scheme designed to support working parents—mums and dads—and that's an important point to make here. The government's paid parental leave aims to encourage both parents to spend time with their child to encourage bonding.

The paid parental leave scheme aimed to meet a few key objectives, which the Productivity Commission laid out in a 2008 report: to generate child and parental health and welfare benefits by increasing the time parents spend with their children; to normalise the social value of having a child and taking time out for family reasons; to counter some of the workforce participation disincentives for new parents posed by the tax and welfare system; and to increase retention rates for businesses with reduced training and recruitment costs. Put simply, it's good for parents, good for kids, good for employers and good for the economy.

There are two parts to the government's paid parental leave. One is provided to the primary carer, with minimum wage paid for 18 weeks, divided into a 12-week block that is taken continuously and a six-week flexible block. The other part is for dad and partner pay, for up to two weeks of minimum pay. In total, a family is eligible for up to 20 weeks of pay.

But we know that this scheme isn't perfect and has its problems. Countless papers and studies, not to mention numerous submissions to the Jobs and Skills Summit, have outlined its shortcomings. Business, unions, economists and experts all know that it's not doing enough to boost productivity and participation. In order to be eligible for the current scheme, the primary carer needs to earn under $156,000. We know this rule can be unfair to families where Mum is the high-income earner and the primary carer. We know it doesn't do enough to provide access for fathers and partners and partners and we know it limits flexibility for families to choose how parents transition back to work.

And we know it's not the driver for gender equality that we know it could be. Research from the OECD shows that in Australia, like in so many other countries around the world, the responsibility for caring for children often falls disproportionately on women. Typically, fathers tend to remain in full-time work while mothers work part-time or drop out of work entirely. Data from the Department of Social Services indicates that because the two-week dad and partner pay cannot be taken in conjunction with other paid leave, this can make it harder for fathers and partners to take significant time off from work to care for their newborn. The cumulative impact of this dynamic is for women to remain out of the workforce for longer, for the gender wage gap to continue to widen and for the stereotype of the female carer and the male breadwinner to continue. Treasury analysis tells us that women experience a motherhood penalty, with their earnings falling by an average of 55 per cent in the first five years following the birth of a child—that is, more than half of their income is lost—whereas men's earnings are unaffected by the birth of their child.

This bill sets out to fix some of those fundamental problems with the Paid Parental Leave scheme. It does it in a few key ways. It combines the parental leave pay and dad and partner pay schemes into a single parental leave scheme available for 20 weeks. It expands eligibility to allow an eligible father or partner to receive parental leave pay regardless of whether the birth parent meets the residency requirements or income tests. It introduces a $350,000 combined family income limit and allows claimants to take the payment flexibly within two years of birth or adoption.

At its core, not only will this bill allow parents and their child to bond but it will improve gender equality. The new scheme will remove the default position of parental leave attributing to the birth mother; instead, parents will be able to decide who should lodge their first claim. This change will be combined with two weeks of leave reserved for each parent on a 'use it or lose it' basis in order to incentivise parents to take at least two weeks each and to signal that caring for a new child is the responsibility of both parents. Eligible parents will have the ability to share their paid parental leave entitlements to suit the specific care arrangements within two years of the child's birth or adoption. Making the scheme more flexible and easier to share will help families to balance work and care responsibilities. It will encourage more men to take parental leave away from their jobs and, in doing so, will contribute to changing stubborn gender norms and improve gender equality.

We are ambitious for our Paid Parental Leave scheme. Later this year we will introduce legislation to progressively increase the Paid Parental Leave scheme to reach 26 weeks in 2026. This is the largest expansion since the scheme was introduced in 2011. The Grattan Institute has made it clear that the benefits of paid parental leave aren't just helpful for women; they are also helpful in allowing dads and partners to bond with their child, and it's helpful for children as well. The research shows that more gender-equal leave can improve family relationships by reducing parenting stress and allowing couples to build a better understanding of each other's worlds. I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to have benefited from the Paid Parental Leave scheme, a great Labor legacy, and to now be part of an Albanese Labor government working to strengthen and improve it.

I want do end my contribution by thanking two women who have fought tirelessly to get the Paid Parental Leave scheme implemented: Professor Marian Baird from the University of Sydney Business School, who spent decades researching and advocating for paid parental leave in Australia; and Jenny Macklin, the minister responsible for bringing this policy idea to fruition. I thank them both.

Angie Bell (Moncrieff, Liberal National Party, Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is, of course: does the coalition support this bill, the Paid Parental Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022? And the answer is yes. We've heard from many in the coalition about their support for this very important measure. There are a few reasons for that. Primarily, the coalition supports measures that support families, especially young families and those with young children. The coalition believes in the family as the building block of society and believes passionately that, when families do well and small and family business does well, communities do well and regions and cities do well, and then so too does our great country. This is a core value of the Liberals and the Nationals.

That's why we also supported the Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Cheaper Child Care) Bill 2022, which passed through this place late last year. We of course took the opportunity to outline the deep flaws in that bill, which is one of the privileges of being in opposition. Those flaws included the lack of new access—places for children—for the $4.7 billion price tag to the Australian taxpayer, and the utterly disgraceful lack of detail and lack of work done by the Labor government to support a tired and undervalued workforce that has real concerns now about the government's lack of preparedness for 1 July this year.

That's why we are so bitterly disappointed with the Prime Minister and the Labor Party for misleading Australians by promising, before the election, to support families. 'Life will be cheaper under me,' he said. 'There will be a $275 reduction in power bills,' he said. But—newsflash—it's not, is it? Who can put their hand on their heart and say, 'My life is cheaper now than it was in May last year, under the coalition? Nobody. Inflation is at a 33-year high, and that's not bad luck. That's Labor, as they always do when in government, making the situation worse for families and the cost of living. Higher interest rates are predicted to hit approximately 800,000 mortgage holders who will come off fixed-rate mortgages to virtually double their payments under a variable rate—and that will go up further. It's an economic hot mess. Make no bones about it: every decision this Labor government is making will impact cost-of-living expenses and so inflation. Life is not and will not be easier under Albanese.

But, importantly, this bill extends the Paid Parental Leave scheme, or PPL measures, that the coalition put in place in March last year—another one of our good policy ideas that Labor has taken and added to. It gives both parents more paid time with their newborns to build their family unit. The scheme consists of parental leave pay, PLP, a 12-week PPL period and six weeks of flexible PPL, and dad and partner pay, DAPP, a two-week period. Financial support provided by PPL is intended to complement and supplement existing entitlements to paid or unpaid leave and is paid at a rate based on the national minimum wage, which is currently $812.45 a week. In 2021 and 2022 the PPL schemes together cost the nation around $2.58 billion.

I'll just go through some of the rules, for those who might be listening at home on the ABC. There are some rules surrounding eligibility. Currently there is a work test, and the claimant must have worked for 10 of the 13 months before the birth or adoption of their child, with a minimum of 330 hours in that 10-month period, and have a gap of no more than 12 weeks between working days. There is also an income test. The claimant must have an individual adjusted taxable income, ATI, of $150,000 or less in the 2019-20 financial year, or $151,350 or less in the 2020-21 financial year, or $156,647 or less in the 2021-22 financial year. There is also a residency test. When their child is born or adopted, they must be living in Australia and have one of the following: Australian citizenship, a permanent visa, a special category visa or another temporary approved visa.

This bill makes amendments to the Paid Parental Leave Act which the government says will make the payment more accessible, flexible and gender neutral. The bill provides amendments to extend PLP from 18 weeks to 20 weeks from 1 July. It will combine the PLP and DAPP, forming a single payment of 20 weeks that can be shared between parents, making that easier. This measure seeks to make the sharing of parental leave between parents a central part of the scheme. Two weeks of PLP will be reserved on a 'use it or lose it' basis for each claimant. A claimant who does not have a partner at the time of the claim will be able to receive a maximum of 20 weeks PLP.

It also removes the notion of primary, secondary and tertiary claimants. Under the amendments, either parent will be able to claim the PLP first, and the bill seeks to improve gender equality by removing the default of PLP assuming that birth parents are the primary carers. Currently the Paid Parental Leave Act distinguishes between primary, secondary and tertiary claims and claimants. This bill removes this distinction by allowing fathers and partners to claim parental leave pay without requiring birth mothers to make claims.

Under the current arrangements, a mother must make a successful claim for PPL and then transfer the payment to her partner if she wishes to share it. This process is administratively burdensome and complex, with less than one per cent of mothers transferring some of their payment to fathers or partners in 2021. An eligible non-birth parent or partner can receive the PLP if a birth parent doesn't meet the income test or residency test or is serving a newly arrived resident's waiting period.

The bill expands access by introducing a $350,000 income test. To put that into context, between the 2010 and 2017 financial years the number of women with a taxable income of more than $150,000 has in fact doubled. I might point to the woman's workforce participation rate at the time, which was at an historic high of 62.3 per cent under the coalition government, and I remind those in the House that when Labor last left office it was at 58.7 per cent. We'll see how that women's workforce participation rate goes over the coming months and years. Currently families can be treated differently depending on which parent has the higher income. There could be two families, each with an identical household income, one of which is eligible because the father is the primary income earner while the other is ineligible because the mother is the primary income earner. The bill addresses this issue by introducing a $350,000 family income limit against which families can be assessed if they do not meet the individual income test, which is $156,647.

A family will no longer be denied access to payments just because of the income of the mother, with the introduction of a family income limit. It's expected that nearly 3,000 additional parents will become eligible each year due to this measure. This family income limit is to be indexed annually from 1 July 2024, and the individual income limit will continue to be indexed annually on 1 July. This is to complement the existing $156,647 individual income test, with single parents able to access their family income test.

It increases flexibility and expands eligibility to allow claimants to best use their parental leave payments in the manner that best suits them and their family. Paid parental leave will consist only of flexible PPL days. This measure allows parents to take paid parental leave in blocks as small as a day at a time, with periods of work in between if they need them, during the period starting on the day the child is born and ending on the day before the child's second birthday or anniversary of care. This flexibility seeks to support mothers to return to work whenever they wish and will benefit parents who work part time or are self-employed and wish to continue working after a birth or an adoption.

The bill also allows eligible claimants to take a maximum of two weeks parental leave pay concurrently, assisting parents to share caring responsibilities and also providing an opportunity for dads and partners to provide care for birth parents, supporting their health. Concurrency is limited to ensure that parents are encouraged to return to work. This bill also expands eligibility to allow an eligible father or partner to receive parental leave pay regardless of whether the birth mother meets the income tax or residency requirements or is serving a newly arrived resident's waiting period, as I outlined.

This bill extends the paid parental leave from 18 weeks to 20 weeks. It supports parents and children, therefore the coalition supports the extension to our measures contained in this bill, and I congratulate Labor for finally coming to the party on this very important measure for Australian families.

Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to rise to speak on the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022. The Nationals and I support this bill because it improves fairness and flexibility. I've been through this personally, with my wife and I having our first child in 2008. Back then and previously the discussion was about maternity leave, and then we became a bit more enlightened and talked about paternity leave. I think it's great that we're now talking about parental leave.

It may come as a shock to some of those in the House that my wife, who's a professional in agricultural science, is actually more intelligent than me! In fact, she gave a great speech about launching a new Melbourne university initiative shortly after I was preselected as the National candidate, and the comment was made by some present, 'We've got the wrong Birrell!' I think it shows that families these days—and it is great—are often made up of two professional people or two people who are equal in the workforce with fantastic careers. Often at that stage of life you are on your journey in work because you have children when you're a bit younger, so you haven't got as much money, and the pressure is on to keep working. I would make the point that back in 2008 our mortgage interest rates were very high, and it was very difficult for us—but everything that's old is new again.

Many of the improvements in this bill are measures announced by the former coalition government in March last year as part of the well-received enhanced paid parental leave package of reforms. I commend the bill, but I also commend the coalition for making this commitment in the March budget. In terms of fairness, the introduction of a family income test will remove an inherent bias that was in the system. Families will no longer be denied access to payments just because of the income of the mother, with the introduction of a family income limit. It is expected that nearly 3,000 additional parents will become eligible each year due to this measure. Previously these families were excluded if the mother's wage was above the threshold—that probably would have been the case in our situation—the impact being that you could have two families with an identical household income but one family could be ineligible because the mother is the primary income earner, not the father. I think that reflects, as has been set opposite, a paternalistic attitude that existed previously, that, necessarily, the man is the breadwinner. In many families, including ours, much bread has been won by the mother.

Eligible non-birth parents and partners can receive parental leave pay if the birth parent doesn't meet the income test, residency test or is serving a waiting period for newly arrived residents. The bill addresses this issue by introducing a $350,000 family income limit, under which families can be assessed if they do not meet the individual income test, which is $156,000. Under the amendments, either parent will be able to claim the leave first. It allows fathers and partners to claim parental leave pay without requiring birth mothers to make a claim. That really adds fairness to what was a system that wasn't as fair and didn't look at both the mother and father as equals.

The bill also talks about flexibility and adds flexibility to this situation. If modern living and the past few years have taught us anything, it's that we need, and families are crying out for more flexibility in the arrangement of their life and their work life. In terms of flexibility, parental leave payments will be able to be used in the manner that best suits the family. Parents can take paid parental leave in blocks as small as a day at a time, with periods of work in between, during the period starting the day the child is born and ending the day before the child's second birthday or anniversary of care. This is a great initiative for not only families but workplaces, who can respond more dynamically and come to more equitable arrangements that suit both the workplace and the parents. It's particularly important in regional areas, because often people's employment coincides with seasonal arrangements around different agricultural practices.

The flexibility supports mothers to return to work whenever they wish to and will help the parents who work part-time or are self-employed to continue working after a birth or adoption. A maximum of two weeks of parental leave pay can be taken by both parents at the same time, allowing them to support each other, and it's a great experience for both parents to spend time with a newborn at the same time.

There are a lot of challenges around becoming a new parent, and I've experienced that twice. Certainly we had the benefit of an employer-provided maternity leave system. But this paid parental leave system is much better than that, and it allows fathers to have an involvement in the lives of their newborn children. I tried to do that as much as I could. My favourite thing was to sing to my daughter. If the House would indulge me, my favourite song to sing to my daughter was 'Golden Slumbers' from the Beatles album Abbey Road:

Golden slumbers fill your eyes

Smiles awake you when you rise

Sleep, pretty darling

Do not cry

I'm going to sing it next time! I'll do the best I can. But I didn't know singing was permitted in the House! But the words are important, and of course the key is important, as was pointed out. But what's most important is that both parents, where possible, are able to spend that precious time with the newborn and create that bond. That bond exists for us today, and this program will make that better in terms of both parents being able to be around and being able to be together and taking financial pressure off.

There is a cost attached to these reforms—there always is—and the financial impact of the forward estimates is $531 million. The coalition understands both the social and economic benefits of paid parental leave. The parents benefit, the children benefit and the families benefit. It gives the families choice, and it encourages women in particular to manage their work and family commitments and encourages a return to work. We have enough trouble, particularly in regional areas like in my electorate, getting the professional people we need without putting up further barriers to women, particularly professional talented women like my wife and like so many other people entering the workforce. And we don't need barriers such as the fact that they might find it difficult if they want to have a family. So, I think there's a win-win in terms of families there as well.

The coalition has a strong record of supporting government funded paid parental leave. While in government, the coalition made important amendments to strengthen paid parental leave legislation. These amendments included: increased flexibility, including the last six weeks to be shared and taken any time; introducing special circumstances that allow a person to meet the work test if they have been impacted by family and domestic violence, a natural disaster or a severe medical condition; and indexation of the income threshold for the first time since the scheme was introduced. In March 2022, as part of the Women's Budget Statement, the coalition once again underlined its commitment to paid parental leave by announcing enhanced paid parental leave.

In summary, this is a good amendment; it's a good bill. It's going to help families in my electorate. It would have been excellent for me when we had our first child and our second child, and I hope that the families from now on can benefit. And I hope that young people move forward positively towards the career of their dreams, knowing that if they do want to start a family there is support for them to do that and that then if they wish to re-enter the workforce they can—because we so badly need those wonderful skills, particularly in electorates like mine, where we're having trouble attracting people from metropolitan areas to come up to the wonderful Goulburn Valley to work in our thriving economy. I commend the bill to the House.

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

I'm proud to be a part of a government that is delivering on its election commitments around gender equality, closing the gender pay gap and reforming Paid Parental Leave. The reforms in the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022 are an investment in women's economic equality. They will also have significant benefits for families and the Australian economy. Parents will have more time to spend with newborns: six months in total. More paid leave will ease the cost-of-living pressures for young families and, importantly, create greater capacity for parents to share parenting, build a career and earn a pay packet.

Challenges facing young families across my electorate of Corangamite, and across the nation, clearly illustrate the importance of this bill. I'm referring to young working parents battling to establish a home, taking on a mortgage, beginning a family and striving for a good start in life for their children. With its rapid population growth, among the fastest in the nation, Corangamite has many such families. In the latest census the largest change in population in Greater Geelong was in the 30 to 39 years age grouping, with an almost 30 per cent population increase.

The urban growth area of Armstrong Creek, where my electorate office is located, is now the youngest locality in Greater Geelong, with a median age of 30 years. There are similar growth areas with young families in Bannockburn, Ocean Grove and Torquay. These young families in my community, and other communities across the nation, will benefit directly from this bill's reforms. By giving more families access to government parental leave payments and providing greater flexibility in how they take leave, we're encouraging parents to share the important role of caring for their children.

In the process, we're advancing gender equality. The changes set out in this bill have been widely welcomed by family and gender advocates, and employer and union groups, because they know that one of the best ways to boost productivity and workforce participation is to provide more choice and support for families and more opportunities for women. In my own electorate these reforms have also been enthusiastically welcomed by people who have been advocating for modernisation of paid parental leave for years, and I'd like to thank them for their advocacy. The Albanese government has listened and it is delivering.

This bill is about families, gender equity and strengthening our economy. It is the largest expansion of the Paid Parental Leave scheme since Labor established the scheme in 2011. In a nutshell, the bill proposes delivering six important changes from July this year: combining the two existing parental leave payments into a single 20-week scheme; reserving a portion of the scheme for each parent to take time off after a birth or adoption; making it easier for both parents to access the payment by removing the notion of primary and secondary carers; expanding access by introducing a $350,000 family income test under which people can qualify if they do not meet the individual income test; increasing flexibility for parents to choose how they take paid parental leave days and transition back to work; and allowing eligible fathers and partners to access the payment, irrespective of whether the mother or birth mother meets the income test or residency requirements.

This bill is just the first tranche of the government's Paid Parental Leave reforms announced in the budget. The government will bring forward further legislation to start in July 2024, progressively increasing the scheme until it reaches 26 weeks of leave in 2026, a full six months of leave. Around 180 families are receiving the payment each year, and they will benefit from this fairer, more flexible and more generous scheme.

The current scheme does not do enough to provide access for fathers and partners. Currently, dads take government-paid leave at roughly half the rate of mums. The scheme as it stands today is built on the gendered assumptions of primary and secondary carers, which limit parents' ability to share care. Our bill fixes that anomaly.

Nor does the current scheme treat families equally. The eligibility rules are unfair for families where the mother is the higher income earner. You could have two families with a household income of $200,000. One family is eligible because the father is the primary income earner; the other is ineligible because the mother is the primary income earner. That's just unfair. This bill fixes that anomaly. Under the current scheme, a father or partner who is a citizen or permanent resident can be ineligible purely because the birth mother doesn't meet the income test or residency requirements. Our bill fixes that anomaly too.

Currently, there are two payments from the government. Parental leave pay provides up to 18 weeks of payment and is primarily targeted at mothers, while dad and partner pay provides up to two weeks of payment to fathers and partners. Under this bill, parental leave pay and dad and partner pay will be combined to form a single 20-week payment that can be shared between both parents. This will give parents more choice and more flexibility in how they use and share care, better reflecting how Australian families want to parent. This flexible choice is especially popular among people I have spoken to within my electorate. An important feature of the current scheme is a period of leave for the exclusive use for fathers and partners in the form of dad and partner pay. The government's changes preserve this important feature by reserving two weeks of payment for each parent. By incorporating this reserved portion under a single scheme, rather than as a standalone payment, we are making sharing of parental leave between parents a central part of this reform.

This bill supports both parents to take leave beyond the two-week reserved period. Importantly, single parents will be eligible for the full 20 weeks. Another significant benefit of the move to a single 20-week scheme is that it will allow fathers and partners to receive the government payment at the same time as their employer-paid leave. While this is currently available to mothers under the Paid Parental Leave scheme, the legislation requires that those receiving dad and partner payments must be on unpaid leave in order to receive their dad or partner pay. Fixing this inequality removes a financial disincentive for fathers and partners to access the scheme and take time off work to care for a child. Allowing both parents to claim the government payment alongside employer-paid leave makes it easier for them to maintain their income while caring for their child. Hopefully, this will lead to more partners and dads taking leave.

We know that when both parents are not supported to take time off from paid leave to care for their babies mums usually work less or leave the workforce altogether to take on caring responsibility, while dads often remain in full-time work. This pattern lasts for years after the child's birth and is a key driver of the gender pay gap in workforce participation and earnings. When fathers take a greater caring role right from the start, this establishes patterns of care that continue throughout a child's life. In addition to benefits for women and their economic equality there are physical, mental and social benefits for men and women.

This bill improves gender equality and inclusion under the scheme by removing the notion of primary and secondary carers and allowing all eligible parents to claim the payment. Currently, mothers must make a successful claim for their parental leave pay and then transfer the payment to their partner if they want to share some of it. The process is complex and makes it difficult for fathers to take leave, even when it's in the best interests of their family. In 2021-22 less than one per cent of mothers transferred some of their payment to fathers or partners. The new, simpler claiming process will also allow eligible fathers and partners to qualify if the mother or birth parent does not meet the income test or the residency requirement. More than 2,000 additional fathers and partners will have access to the scheme each year because of this change. The shift to a gender-neutral claiming process is also important because it's more inclusive and recognises that Australian families are diverse.

To guard against any negative consequences for mothers resulting from the new process, the birth parent will have to approve the amount of the leave claimed by the other parent. The bill will also introduce a family income limit of $350,000, which will operate alongside the existing individual income limit, which is currently around $157,000 per annum. Parents, including single parents, will be eligible for the payment if they meet either the individual income or the family income test. With the introduction of the family income limit, families will no longer be denied access solely because of the income of the mother. This change is expected to particularly benefit families where the mother is the primary income earner—with nearly 3,000 additional parents becoming eligible each year. This change is long overdue. Between the 2010 and the 2017 financial years the number of women with taxable incomes of more than $150,000 has more than doubled. The introduction of a more generous family income test will help ensure the scheme keeps up with changing times.

The government is improving flexibility for families to balance work and family life in the way that best suits their needs. Currently, parental leave pay is split into a 12-week period that must be taken in a continuous block within 12 months of the birth or adoption followed by six weeks that can be taken flexibly within two years of the date of birth or adoption. And if a parent returns to work before the end of their continuous 12-week paid parental leave period they forfeit the remaining days of that period. This limits the choice for parents, particularly mothers, in how they transition back to work.

Under the bill's amendments, parents can take all of the payment in multiple blocks, as small as a day at a time, within two years of the birth or adoption of their child. This new flexibility will support mothers to return to work whenever they wish without the risk of losing their entitlements. This will particularly benefit the increasing number of parents who work part-time or who are self-employed to continue working after the birth or adoption. Some birth parents may wish to take most or all of the payment in continuous blocks. The legislation supports parents to do this if they wish. We know this is an important option to support physical and mental health, and it is important for mothers who do not have access to any employer-paid leave. Supporting maternal and child health and development is an important objective of the Albanese government and of the Paid Parental Leave scheme. In addition, both parents will have the option of taking the government-paid leave on the same day for up to 10 days of the payment. This will help parents share caring responsibilities right from the start and help dads and partners care for mothers to support their health and wellbeing. This scheme is flexible, it is fair and it will drive positive health, social and economic outcomes for both parents and their children.

In closing, I would like to recognise the former Labor minister for families, Jenny Macklin, who was an absolute champion and who was instrumental in developing Australia's first Paid Parental Leave scheme. This bill continues this great initiative and continues Labor's commitment to paid parental leave. It is good for parents, it is good for kids, it is good for employers and, importantly, it's good for our economy. It's the first step in the Albanese government's delivery of our central election commitment to parents and the Australian people. I commend the bill to the House.

Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity today to speak to the Paid Parental Leave Amendment Bill 2022 and to state my support, as the federal member for Petrie, for the amendments to the current Paid Parental Leave scheme.

The proposed changes to the Paid Parental Leave scheme will benefit the families of Petrie in many ways. Parental leave policies are designed to support and protect working parents at the time of the birth of a new child or adoption of a child, and when children are very young and in the fundamental stages of connection to their parents. The availability of paid parental leave for each parent fosters a more-equal division of unpaid care and paid work, and improves on the goal of families to achieve a satisfactory work-life balance.

One of the core values of the coalition is the family as the indispensable forum where children are raised and nurtured, and the foundation of resilient communities and a cohesive society. Our children are our future, and I believe in giving children the best possible start in life.

Since 2011, under the current Paid Parental Leave scheme, Australian families have had access to government supported paid parental leave, which has significantly changed the landscape of our homes, our workplaces and our economy. The current scheme consists of up to 18 weeks of paid parental leave, which consists of 12 weeks of continuous leave and six weeks of flexible leave, and aims to help balance work and family commitments as caregivers return to the workforce. To claim paid parental leave currently you must qualify as the birth mother of a newborn child, as the initial primary carer of an adopted child placed in your care by an authorised party for the purpose of adoption or as another person caring for a child under exceptional circumstances. Claims for paid parental leave must also meet an income test, a work test and a residency rules test. Fathers of a newborn baby or adopted child are also eligible to claim a two-week period of dad and partner pay to assist during the very early stages of new life, when sleep evades the new parents. Having three sons myself, I understand that. Well-intended schedules turn into chaos and nappy changes seem to never end. Claims for paid parental leave can be made three months before the expected date of birth or date of adoption of the child and up to 40 weeks after the birth or adoption without affecting the full 18-week leave entitlement. In 2021-22, the Paid Parental Leave scheme cost around $2.58 billion and had a total of 276,641 claims of both paid parental leave and dad and partner pay.

The extension of paid parental leave is basically ensuring that this scheme will go from 18 weeks up to 20 weeks. If a woman is pregnant now and has been given a due date after 1 July, then these proposed changes will apply to her and her partner. This bill will combine paid parent leave and dad and partner pay, forming a single payment of 20 weeks that can be shared between parents. This measure seeks to make sharing of parental leave between parents a central part of the scheme. Two weeks of paid parental leave will be reserved on a 'use it or lose it' basis for each claimant. If, at the time of birth, a claimant does not have a partner they will be able to receive a maximum of 20 weeks paid parental leave.

Currently, the Paid Parental Leave Act distinguishes between primary, secondary and tertiary claims. This bill removes this distinction by allowing fathers and partners to claim the majority of parental leave pay without requiring birth mothers to be the main claimant. An example of this would be my friend Jason, who has two children. His partner was a lawyer. When she gave birth and the children were being raised, she went back to work relatively quickly because Jason decided to stay home because his partner, as a lawyer, earned more than him. That has worked well for that family. He has been the main carer while his partner has gone back to work. Flexibility for families is extremely important.

Families will no longer be denied access to paid parental leave if the mother's taxable income exceeds the $156,647 income test, with the introduction of a family income limit of $350,000. It is expected that nearly 3,000 additional parents and families will become eligible each year, due to this measure opening up access to parents who may be able to work part-time or are self-employed. This bill also gives increased flexibility. The measure will allow parents to take paid parental leave in blocks as small as a day at a time, with periods of work in between, during the period starting the day the child is born right up until the child is two years of age or two years after taking on the care of the child.

In the lead-up to the 2022-23 October budget, the government announced the scheme would be progressively increased from 18 weeks to 26 weeks by 2026. The legislation does not detail the change. If the government has walked away from that increase, it needs to come clean about why it was not included in the legislated amendments. As someone who was elected to this House in the 44th Parliament, there's the irony of the position that Labor is taking now in relation to a family income test of up to $350,000 and extending the scheme to 26 weeks. Guess what? That was the policy of the coalition government at the 2013 election in the 44th Parliament that I came into. At the time, the Labor opposition complained, moaned, groaned, said it was no good and voted against it. As a result, that never actually came into law. But that policy from Tony Abbott ensured that women, capped at $150,000, were able to get up to six months parental leave. The Labor government talk about the gender pay gap. But when the rubber hit the road 10 years ago, the coalition wanted to introduce this scheme to allow up to six months parental leave pay, capped at $150,000, and Prime Minister Albanese voted against it. That's the reality.

Going back to my own personal experience, my wife, Louise, and I had three sons before I came into this place. It was a special time. My eldest son is now 20 and in the Australian Defence Force. He's grown up. I remember when he was born. I remember being there at the birth and learning that midwives know what they're doing. You don't always need a doctor there. I remember giving my son William his first bath. It was an emotional time. I remember shedding a tear when that happened. My wife decided at the time, before I came into this place, that she wanted to spend time with our first child and subsequent children and breastfeed them for up to 12 months. So she wasn't able to go back to work at all for the first couple of years but then went into part-time work. We were in a fortunate position where, at the time, I was able to put additional super contributions in for her because she'd missed out on that, which was a good thing. Now my wife and I have equal amounts of super.

I have a staff member in my office at the moment who is expecting a child in July. As an opposition, I'm really thankful that we can support hard-working mothers like her, and not just her. One of our staff members in the Opposition Whip's office is also expecting her first child. Another staff member in the member for Longman's office is also expecting her first child. We very much appreciate these three women who work for the coalition in the jobs that they do. We want to wish them well for the birth of their child and want them to be able to come back to work when they are ready and when they make those choices. So the opposition is happy to support this bill to support these women and other women and their families and men right around the country.

Recently, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and shadow minister for women, Sussan Ley, was in my electorate for a roundtable for women. Women from the electorate of Petrie spoke about flexibility and more support and choice in their workplaces from their employers when juggling family and work commitments. Women are also seeking a government that supports stronger families, according to Dr Kahari, a local obstetrician at Redcliffe Hospital in my electorate, who was a participant in this roundtable. Her daughter was also there. She mentioned how supporting men to play an active role in the family is pivotal for stronger families. This was a point that Dr Kahari made to the roundtable and to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition about how important it is to support men. But you cannot deny there will always be an element of maternal physiological connection and dependency between a mother and child in those early stages that continues for years following birth. It will be interesting, then, to see whether the implementation of these amendments to the paid parental leave scheme in fact achieve the desired outcomes of increasing women's participation in the workforce and stimulating the economy, because a lot of women choose to stay at home. They choose to raise their children for the first few years after birth. We must remember, at the end of the day, it is a woman's choice how she wishes to raise her family, and we mustn't disparage a woman who chooses the hardest career choice of all, in my opinion, in raising children and homemaking. I'm very thankful for my own wife, who did that—that she chose to do that. We've got three great sons that have grown up brilliantly.

I also note what the coalition did in the last parliament. One of the things we did was catch up super payments for women that had been out of the workforce for some time. We enabled women to make additional contributions to their super so they could catch it up if they'd been out of the workforce for three or four years. Once again, this wasn't a policy that Labor really supported. It's still in place—thankfully, they haven't scrapped it yet and hopefully they don't—but they weren't very supportive at the time. Sometimes it saddens me to see a little bit of hypocrisy from the current government, from when they were in opposition to where they are now and so forth.

Many of the amendments we've heard about in this bill are in fact measures announced by the former coalition government in March last year as part of the well-received enhanced paid parental leave package reforms. The coalition has a strong record supporting government funded paid parental leave. I go back to the policy that Tony Abbott wanted to implement in this place, which Labor voted against. At both the 2010 and 2013 elections, the coalition's paid parental leave policy sought to deliver mothers six months of paid parental leave of the same amount members of the government are crowing about now which will be brought in later, in a couple of years' time. If those on the other side had supported this landmark policy, Australians could have had access to one of the most generous government funded paid parental leave schemes for the last 10 years, and the wage gap between women and men would have reduced significantly. But Prime Minister Albanese, his whole cabinet and everyone else voted against it—actually, I shouldn't say 'his whole cabinet' because some of those people weren't here in that 44th Parliament.

While in government the coalition made important amendments to strengthen paid parental leave legislation. These amendments included: increased flexibility lasting six to eight weeks that could be shared and taken at any time; introducing special circumstances which allowed a person to meet the work test if they had been impacted by family and domestic violence, a natural disaster or a severe medical condition; allowing JobKeeper and COVID payments to count towards the work test for paid parental leave to prove a genuine connection to the workplace; and indexation of the income threshold for the first time since the scheme was introduced in 2011.

In conclusion, the coalition government did a lot. We support this bill. We believe in freedom, we believe in choice and this bill will help with freedom of families to raise their children. Summing up, we support the bill.

Anika Wells (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I can't begin to describe how empowering it is for families in my electorate of Lilley to finally have a government who recognises paid parental leave as the critical social and economic policy it is. Paid parental leave is a proud Labor legacy, introduced by the Gillard government in 2011. In 2011 this policy made history for mothers and fathers, their employers and their children. More than 10 years on, the Albanese government knows that paid parental leave is still vital for the health and wellbeing of parents and children. Simply put, it allows women to stay connected to their jobs. It allows fathers and partners to spend more time with their children and create a lasting bond. We know that investing in paid parental leave benefits our economy, and that gender equality and economic reform go hand in hand.

Modernising paid parental leave was one of the most frequent proposals raised at the Albanese government's Jobs and Skills Summit in September. Businesses, unions, experts and economists all agree that one of the best ways to boost productivity and participation is to provide more choice, more flexibility, more support for families and more opportunity for women. A decade since paid parental leave was introduced in this place, it is well past time to re-evaluate how fit for purpose the scheme is. The current scheme does not do enough to provide access to fathers and partners, and it limits flexibility for families to choose how they take leave and transition back to work. Flexibility is crucial for modern families functioning well in today's economy. The eligibility rules also make it unfair to families where mothers are the higher income earner. The Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022 introduces a range of important structural changes that many expectant mothers and fathers in my electorate of Lilley have been asking for for a very long time.

From 1 July this year, the Albanese government is delivering six key changes to modernise paid parental leave. This bill combines the two existing payments into one single 20-week scheme; reserves a portion of the scheme for each parent to support them both to take time off after a birth or adoption; makes it easier for both parents to access the payment by removing the notion of primary and secondary carers; expands access by introducing a $350,000 family income test, under which people can qualify if they do not meet the $156,647 individual income test, which increases flexibility for parents to choose how they take paid parental leave days and transition back to work; and allows eligible fathers and partners to access the payment irrespective of whether the mother or the birth parents meet the income test or residency requirements.

Nationally, 181,000 families will benefit from the changes in this bill, including around 4,300 parents who will gain access who would have been ineligible under the current scheme. With 2,206 families in Lilley receiving paid parental leave in the last year, I know that these changes will be very welcome to the north side of Brisbane.

For too long, our society has not valued care enough. We have not placed enough value on the role of care in our community and the work of those that provide care, both paid and unpaid. Our failure to place a high enough value on care can be seen in our homes and in our workplaces. Aged care is an industry where more than 85 per cent of workers are women who perform demanding and skilled work in a high-pressure environment, yet have been historically underpaid. The pay rise our government fought for will mean, for the very first time, that aged-care workers on an award wage will be able to earn more than $30 per hour—a pay rise that will help close the gender gap.

The Albanese government values both men and women as carers, and we want to see that reinforced in workplaces and communities throughout the nation. The Productivity Commission found that incorporating paid leave for fathers and partners in paid parental leave schemes can help reduce the pressures on parents of caring and working. The changes in this bill send a clear message that treating care responsibilities and parenting as an equal partnership supports gender equality. Last year, Emma from Geebung wrote to me:

I currently earn approximately $160,000 a year, and my husband earns approximately $70,000. When we have a baby and go on leave, we will not qualify for paid parental leave. But if our salaries were swapped, and I earned the lower salary, then I would qualify.

This policy is outdated and unfairly impacts families where the mother is the primary breadwinner for the family.

I am appreciative of having paid parental leave in our country, but I think we could improve on what we have in the name of equality.

Well, Emma, we hear you and, more importantly, we are taking action.

These paid parental leave reforms will help women across Australia, like Emma, who are thinking about having a family but are worried about the financial roadblocks ahead. They will help women, like Emma, who need economic security in a changing environment. It will help to close the gender pay gap by levelling the playing field for unpaid care. It modernises the paid parental leave scheme to reflect how Australian families and their needs have changed since it was established over a decade ago. It's good for parents, it's good for kids, it's good for employers and it's good for the economy. The Albanese government is delivering on our mandate to renew Australia's economy and the social infrastructure that supports it. We are improving our health and aged-care system, making child care more affordable and tackling the rising of cost-of-living so that families aren't scraping by and living from pay cheque to pay cheque.

Today, we are modernising the paid parental leave scheme to reflect how Australian families and their needs have changed since it was established over a decade ago. Labor has never stopped fighting for Australian families, and today we have the power to make the change that we have been fighting for.

I congratulate the Minister for Social Services for her tireless advocacy and work on this bill, and I proudly commend this bill to the House.

Zoe McKenzie (Flinders, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022, which will amend the Paid Parental Leave Act 2010. This bill modernises the paid parental leave scheme, which began over a decade ago and which, in its current form, provides 18 weeks leave for parents taking leave and a dedicated period of two weeks leave for dad and partner pay. This scheme benefits between 250,000 and 300,000 parents a year. This bill will combine the 18 weeks and the two weeks of DAPP, forming a single payment of 20 weeks that can be shared between parents, although two weeks will still be reserved for each parent on a 'use it or lose it' basis. But, if there is only one parent, that parent can, if eligible, claim the full 20 weeks.

The bill also removes the somewhat giddying reference to primary, secondary and tertiary claimants, recognising that carers are not constrained to biological parents. As a ferociously proud step-parent—or in the minds of my stepchildren, sometimes just ferocious—this is indeed a most welcome evolution for my kind. The bill also removes the requirement that mothers make a claim for PPL. Fathers or other parents may make the claim, and the awkward arrangement that mothers must apply and then choose whether to share the paid leave with the father is also gone. The bill introduces a family income limit of $350,000, indexed from 1 July 2024, recognising that, in some families, the mother earns more than the father or other partner with caring duties and certainly more than the existing $156,000 limit. It also means a single parent will be assessed against the family threshold of $350,000. It is worth reiterating at the outset, as the member for Deakin did yesterday in his second reading contribution on this bill, that the coalition supports it. It picks up many of the amendments which the coalition proposed back in March 2022. Overall, it creates a much more flexible scheme, as had been conceived in the coalition's proposed amendments in the Enhanced Paid Parental Leave package of reforms.

There are, however, some things that this legislation cannot address, which is attitudes towards parents and particularly men—fathers and carers—who take leave to look after their children. Like many in this place, I had the precious opportunity over the summer break to plough into books and reading, and one of them was the cracking read, TheWife Drought by my friend Annabel Crabb, published back in 2014. TheWife Drought is indeed a wonderful read, contemplating both the individual, social and economic benefits and the broader societal pros and cons of stay-at-home partners and parents. The tougher the job, it seems, the greater the benefit to the worker of having a partner who can spend more time at home looking after children, managing the chores and logistics of the household, ensuring there is food in the fridge, booking the summer holidays, ensuring that homework is done and handed in, that parent teacher nights are signed up for and that books, stationery and new shoes are ordered in time for the new school year. I'm sorry: I have digressed into a personal guilt list.

Crabb's book starts in its early pages with the story of a fictitious 'Jane' and 'Jeff' and uses them to explain the ongoing pay gap between men and women in like roles. As Crabb explains in her book:

If she works for 40 years, Jane is likely—if things go according to the average experience—to earn a lifetime total of $2.49 million. But if you take a second graduate and call him 'Jeff' and give him exactly the same qualifications as Jane and bless him with the same degree of averageness, he ends his forty-year career with a lifetime total of $3.78 million.

Crabb kindly does the maths for us, explaining that that amounts to a $1 million penalty for just being a woman. Crabb then goes on to examine the economic hit of having children, at least for mothers. I quote from page 97, although who knows what page it is when you are reading it on a Kindle:

Children change things for both men and women. In Australia, an average 25 year old man can expect to earn a lifetime total of $2 million over a forty-year working life, if he doesn't have children. If he does have children, however, this figure is bumped up to $2.5 million.

For women, though, parenthood exerts the opposite effect. A childless woman can actually expect to earn just about as much as her childless male counterpart—$1.9 million over the course of her forty years at work. But if she has babies, that total dips to just $1.3 million. She will earn $600,000 less than a childless woman, and a full $1.2 million less than a father.

I suspect some things have not changed terribly much since 2014, when some 60 per cent of families had a father working full time and a mother working part time, and only three per cent of families had a mother working full time and a father working part time—although this may not be true, or at least as true, anymore. There may have been a silver lining to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the much-altered way it made us live our lives, especially those of us in Melbourne, who endured one of the longest lockdowns in the world, with more than 260 days in our fat pants and ugg boots, working from the kitchen table. Over the COVID years, anecdote would tell you, household chores were more evenly shared. Both parents were home more often than not, albeit that, in some cases, working in the laundry meant using the ironing board as a stand-up desk, with the door closed to noisy homeschooling.

It seems not just to be anecdotal. In its submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee on this bill, the Australian Human Rights Commission noted that 13 per cent of all paid primary carers leave was taken by men. While that doesn't sound like much, it's a doubling of the mere six per cent recorded in 2020. Maybe, just maybe, the pandemic taught us to share the load, both in terms of parenting and, I suspect, in terms of maintaining the household. I have already been onto Annabel about writing The Wife Drought, Pandemic Edition.

Other submissions to the Senate inquiry which is currently on foot highlight the potential economic gain to the nation of getting more women into the workforce, or indeed more men into making the school lunches. The Australian Human Rights Commission argues, in its submission:

Rebalancing work and care responsibilities between partners would result in a reduction in the gender pay gap, higher GDP through increased female work participation, and would ultimately lift economic welfare.

That potential GDP dividend is significant. Deloitte argued, in its Breaking the norm report, that an additional $128 billion would be added to the Australian economy by adding 451,000 additional full-time employees. Chief Executive Women, in their submission to the Senate legislation committee, estimated that halving the workforce participation gap between men and women would represent an additional 500,000 full-time skilled workers with post-school qualifications. CEW also estimate that increasing women's working hours by two per cent alone would add $11 billion to Australia's GDP.

My suspicion in this space is that, when we talk about paid parental leave and family responsibilities, we need to talk about men as much and as often as we talk about women. We need to encourage, normalise and celebrate men taking up the tasks of parenting and, in some cases, indeed, the lion's share. In political discourse, we need to stop saying 'women' and 'paid parental leave' in the same sentence all the time. I know it's important—it's very important—but it's important for men too, and, above all else, it's important for their children to know their fathers.

So it's not just paid parental leave we must facilitate but also flexible working hours, in the hope that it makes it easier for both men and women to share parenting and household responsibilities. No, I don't suggest everyone should be at home, beamed into the office from the ironing board, but we do know, from studies elsewhere, that allowing employees some flexibility about where and when they work makes them both more productive and more useful at home.

An expectation of more flexible work might also go to reversing the somewhat bizarre trend identified in Crabb's book, one which, I suspect, rings a bell in the mind of every woman in this building, and certainly in this chamber. Annabel found:

… when a woman earns more than two thirds of the total household income, she starts to increase her unpaid work at home.

Let me say that again in another way. If a woman takes on a part-time job, she tends to decrease her work in the home, albeit marginally. But, if she starts to earn significantly more income than her partner, she will actually do more unpaid work at home. Anyone who has read of Maggie Thatcher's infamous cooked dinners for her cabinet or Simone Veil's insistence that she always made tea for her husband at home knows exactly what I'm talking about.

Again, in her hilarious treatise on Australian family life, Crabb refers us to a study by Janeen Baxter interpreting the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey, known to most of us in this place as the HILDA Survey. The study found:

One explanation is that we have such a strong male breadwinner culture in Australia that in those households women are, if you like, re-asserting their gender identity by picking up some of the housework that's left over.

Let us all, not just here but beyond these walls, in the private sector and elsewhere, think beyond the boundaries of this bill to what we can do to create and sustain a more gender-equal nation, not just in parenting, earning, cleaning up or being accountable. To be fair, for today, this is a good start.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022. This bill implements the first tranche of the Labor government's Paid Parental Leave reforms announced in the 2022-23 October budget and will commence on 1 July this year. The bill reflects the Albanese government's commitment to improve the lives of working families, support better outcomes for children and advance women's economic equality.

It was a former Labor government in 2011 which introduced the current Paid Parental Leave scheme. It was an important and progressive Labor policy which gave every family with a new baby more choice, greater security and better support. While that has served our communities well, families and their needs have changed in the decades since.

The scheme as it stands today is built on gendered assumptions of primary and secondary carers, which limit parents' ability to share care. Our bill fixes this. The eligibility rules in the current scheme are unfair to families where the mother is the higher income earner. Our bill fixes this. Under the current scheme, a father or partner who is a citizen or permanent resident can be ineligible because the child's birth mother doesn't meet the income test or residency requirements. Again, our bill fixes this. Our amendments represent the biggest expansion to the Paid Parental Leave scheme since its inception in 2011.

Improving paid parental leave is critical reform. It's critical for families. It's critical for women. It is critical for our economy. The six key changes that will come into effect from 1 July 2023 are: combining the two existing payments into a single 20-week scheme; reserving a portion of the scheme for each parent, meaning they can both take time off work after a birth or adoption; making it easier for both parents to access the payment by removing the notion of primary and secondary carers; expanding access by introducing a $350,000 family income test which families can be assessed under if they exceed the individual income test; increasing flexibility for parents to choose how they take their leave days; and allowing eligible fathers and partners to access the payment, irrespective of whether the birth parent meets the income test or residency requirements.

These changes are the first stage of the Labor government's reforms and lay the foundation for an expansion to the full 26 weeks of paid parental leave by 2026. That means we will have a full six months of paid parental leave at that time. Across Australia these changes will benefit around 181,000 families each year, including around 4,300 people who would not have been eligible under the current scheme but will gain access after the changes. In my electorate of Newcastle, more than 2,000 families will benefit each year from the paid parental leave amendments in this legislation. I'd like to acknowledge those in my electorate who have contacted me to advocate for the expansion and improvement of the Paid Parental Leave scheme. I want to say to you that the government has listened and, even more importantly, we're acting by implementing these important reforms in the parliament.

The Albanese Labor government is committed to achieving economic equality for women. We know that, if done right, paid parental leave can be a driver for advancing gender equality. A key driver of the gender pay gap is the disproportionate amount of unpaid care and work that is performed by women. We know what happens when both parents are not supported to take time off paid work to care for their babies. Often it is the mum who works less or leaves the workforce altogether or takes on caring responsibilities, while the dad remains in full-time work. After the birth of a child, it's estimated that women reduce their hours of paid work by around 35 per cent for the first five years. By contrast, men's hours of paid work drop in the first month of parenthood but then return to previous levels. This pattern persists for years after the child's birth, and it is a key driver of the gender gaps in our workforce participation and earnings.

This is not an attack on men. We know that many dads want to take additional time off work following the birth or adoption of a child. We see this in the increasing number of fathers taking up parental leave in the private sector. It was very slow to start, but the increasing numbers we are seeing in the private sector are very encouraging. But if we are to close the gender pay gap and support gender equality, we must have systems in place for mothers to return to the workforce and for fathers to take on more unpaid caring responsibilities. A successful paid parental leave scheme is an important mechanism to achieve this. This government wants to establish systems that support dads and non-birth parents to share the load of caring responsibilities because we know that when they do it benefits everyone. The changes in this bill send a clear message that the government values men as carers too.

The current scheme does not treat families equally. The eligibility rules are unfair to families where the mother is the higher income earner. You could have two families with a household income of $200,000. One family is eligible because the father is the primary income earner. The other is ineligible because the mother is the primary income earner. Our bill fixes this most discriminatory part of the current scheme. I know there are many families in my electorate who will be particularly pleased to see this change.

The bill will introduce a family income limit of $350,000, which will operate alongside the existing individual income limit of $156,647 per annum. Parents, including single parents, will be eligible for the payment if they meet either the individual income or the family income test. This change is expected to particularly benefit families where the mother is the primary income earner, with nearly 3,000 additional parents becoming eligible each year as a result of this change. This change is long overdue. Between the 2010 and the 2017 financial years, the number of women with taxable incomes of more than $150,000 has more than doubled. The introduction of a more generous family income test will help ensure the scheme keeps up with the times.

This bill supports families to make decisions around the division of paid and unpaid care within their household so parents can use their weeks in a way that works for them. Currently, if a parent returns to work before the end of their continuous 12-week paid parental leave period, they forfeit the remaining days of that period. This limits the choice for parents, particularly mothers, in how they transition back to work. Under these amendments, parents can take all of the payment in multiple blocks, as small as a day at a time, within two years of the birth or adoption of their child. This flexibility will support mothers to return to work whenever they wish without the risk of losing their entitlements. This bill will also allow both parents to access leave on the same days for up to 10 days of the payment. This will help parents share caring responsibilities from the start, and it will help dads and partners care for mothers as they recover from the birth.

Currently, there are two payments from the government: parental leave pay, which provides up to 18 weeks of payment, is primarily targeted to mothers, while the dad and partner pay provides up to two weeks of payment to fathers and partners. Under this bill, parental leave pay and dad and partner pay will be combined to form a single 20-week payment that can be shared between both parents, with two weeks of payment reserved for each parent. Importantly, single parents will be eligible for the full 20 weeks.

Evidence from across several countries clearly indicates that the most successful parental leave schemes operate when the provisions encourage men to take it. This will give parents more choice and flexibility in how they use and share care, better reflecting how Australian families want to parent. The changes in this bill send a clear message that parenting is an equal partnership. They also allow fathers and partners to take the government paid leave at the same time as employer-funded parental leave. This is not an option for fathers and partners under the current dad and partner pay rules, where the legislation requires that those receiving dad and partner payments have to be on unpaid leave in order to receive their dad and partner pay. These changes will further incentivise dads and partners to take time off from paid work.

Modernising paid parental leave was one of the most frequent proposals raised by participants at the successful Jobs and Skills Summit in September last year. Businesses, unions, experts and economists all understand that one of the best ways to boost productivity and participation is to provide more choice and more support to families and more opportunity to women. I am pleased that our changes have been widely welcomed by family and gender advocates and employer and union groups, including the ACTU, the Business Council of Australia, the Parenthood, Minderoo's Thrive by Five foundation, Chief Executive Women and the Equality Rights Alliance. I also want to take this opportunity to recognise all of those who have contacted my electorate office advocating for the expansion and modernisation of paid parental leave. These reforms are in no small part due to your advocacy, and we remain indebted always for that.

Not only will our changes help families better balance work and care but they will also support participation and productivity over the longer term, providing a dividend for the Australian economy. We also acknowledge that this is not a set-and-forget model. The government is committed to continuously improving the paid parental leave scheme to support gender equality and women's economic security.

Legislation on the second tranche, the expansion to the full 26 weeks, will be introduced following consideration of advice from the Women's Economic Equality Taskforce. This task force, chaired by Sam Mostyn AO, was established by this government to provide independent advice on a range of issues facing women in Australia. This task force will examine options for an optimal PPL model to improve women's economic outcomes and deliver support and flexibility for families. This will include the optimal number of weeks parents can access together as well as how to encourage more equal sharing of leave, including the provision of 'use it or lose it' weeks.

The paid parental leave scheme is critical reform. I'm delighted this is before the Australian parliament. I'm delighted there is multiparty support for these amendments, which is right and proper. It is absolutely proper not only for a government with 52 per cent of its ranks comprised of women who have much lived experience of this scheme but also for all of us who are listening to our electorates. This has long been called for. These amendments will mean we'll have a flexible, fair and positive outcome for Australian families. It will help drive positive health, social and economic outcomes for parents and their children. I am very pleased to rise and support these amendments. They've been a long time coming, and I look forward to being able to vote positively for these reforms today.

Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the government's Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022. I welcome the government's goal of improving families' access to government payments, providing parents with more flexibility in how they take leave and encouraging them to share care. Improving and driving gender equity is vital to both the wellbeing of our society and the success of our economy. As a mother from North Sydney recently said to me: 'Being a full-time carer for a young child is such an undervalued role in society. It's an enormous undertaking to raise a healthy, happy, kind child with both parents working—which you both have to do when you live in Sydney.'

I am hugely supportive of an improved paid parental leave scheme in Australia, and I welcome these reforms. However, I think we can and must aim higher. I believe courage and long-term vision is what we should always strive for. Ultimately, 26 weeks should be set as a minimum length of paid parental leave, increasing to 52 weeks based on the Scandinavian shared-care model. On average, families in the OECD are typically entitled to over 50 weeks of paid leave; that's 2½ times more than what we offer here in Australia. In Finland, new parents each have access to seven months paid leave. Policies such as these have been linked with better development outcomes for children and support a more balanced division of labour between two-parent families.

I recently surveyed my electorate of North Sydney, and 75 per cent of respondents indicated to me that they felt the time they had off for paid parental leave was too short. We also know from international experience that the fastest way to address any gender gap is to introduce shared paid parental leave. As the Grattan Institute has noted in a recent report, greater sharing of child care is one of the best ways to improve women's economic security.

In the existing paid parental leave scheme, 18 of the 20 weeks are allocated to the primary carer whilst the remaining two weeks are allocated to dad and partner pay. Reflecting on that for a moment, the mere fact this pay is being referred to as 'dad' or 'partner' pay immediately relegates the father or the second parent in a parenting situation to the lesser of the two carers. The North Sydney community has told me it's a great idea to let families decide how to use the available support in a way that works best for them. It's about enabling choice—a choice for families to determine what is best for them.

In addition to shared care improving the choices for individual family units, it also has a broader societal impact. As a constituent so eloquently put it: 'I think sharing it is critical. Men need greater incentives to pause their careers, even if only for a few weeks. And women need to be free of the patriarchal assumption that they're better at the at-home piece and less likely to be able to support the family financially. Families who genuinely want to share the parenting load need shared leave.'

One glaring gap remains in these reforms. The Paid Parental Leave scheme does not attract the superannuation guarantee. In combination with the current Australian gender pay gap of 19 per cent on average and the fact that mothers usually return to work part-time after having children, this is one of the major factors contributing to the current situation where Australian women retire with 47 per cent less super than men, on average. Their accumulation of superannuation savings is interrupted while being on paid parental leave, which is commonly then extended by several months of unpaid parental leave. This is exacerbated on return to work with women commonly re-joining the workforce on a part-time basis after their parental leave. The inequality that occurs during parental leave follows the primary carer, usually the woman, throughout her career into her retirement, creating significant inequalities in retirement incomes. One hundred per cent of the North Sydney constituents who I heard from indicated that they would like to see superannuation payments added onto paid parental leave payments. This bill is a missed opportunity in that regard, and I hope to see the government progress this soon.

Along with paid parental leave improvements, we need to ensure that families have access to quality and affordable care and education to allow those who wish or need to return to work to do so. This means the provision of not only affordable but also accessible early childhood education. It's clear that the families in North Sydney face hardship when it comes to child care and returning to work. One constituent shared with me: 'I've been on a waiting list since my son was four months old. I've been waiting for that day care spot. We have decided to use a nanny, use family and have split-days off. My son is nearly one, and it's been financially challenging, especially as we've also been trying to buy a home in Sydney.' The reality is parental leave policy settings have a significant and wide-ranging impact on families, children, women, the economy and, ultimately, society as a whole. In the words of one of my constituents: 'We need to fix this. It's an essential gender equity issue.' I couldn't agree more.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The bill before us, the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022, is quite possibly one of the most important bills that we could be considering in this parliament when it comes to gender equality. It recognises that we need to increase paid parental leave—something that has been called for for quite some time—so that mums have more time with their newborns. That is a good thing.

What this bill does, and what I will focus on in my contribution, is remove gender. It says to families that mum or dad—either parent—can have access to this government entitlement. This is critical if we want to talk about gender equality, if we want to talk about the informal work that occurs in homes. What tends to happen on the journey is that when families find out they're going to have a child—and it's not just because I've been through this recently; any family will tell you this—they make decisions about who will take time off, based on what their entitlements might be and what their position at work is. In the majority of cases, because it is the way our laws are set and because it is the way entitlements are organised, it is the woman who takes off the longer period of time. Whether they be people working in my office—I have one staff member who is literally about to go on maternity leave—or in many other workplaces, it's the woman who tends to take off the longer period of time, because the rules state it must be that way. Even with our own staff, if one of our male staff members right now were to have a child, they would only be entitled to two weeks, but a woman having a child would be entitled not just to paid parental leave in accordance with our enterprise bargaining agreement but also to the government entitlement that we're extending in this bill.

What is good about what we're doing today not just for our staff but for all families, for all men, is that we're saying: 'In your family, have the discussion. Does it work for you? We encourage you to take more time off when your child is born.'

One of the things that I hope happens by saying it's a family's choice which parent takes time off, whether it be the full amount, part amount or shared amount, is that it will encourage the corporate sector and employers to do something similar. The fact is that a lot of men in Australia are only entitled to the two weeks minimum. And what are two weeks? Anyone who's had a child knows that, in those first two weeks, when you get to the end of it, you ask yourself: 'Should I be returning to work? I'm not sleeping at the moment; we have a newborn.' People are already concerned about returning to work. If your partner has had to have a Caesarean, technically they're not supposed to drive for six weeks. Yet, currently in this country we expect them to return to work after two weeks. Some employers have different arrangements.

I want to acknowledge corporate Australia's efforts to encourage men or non-birth partners to take more time off. Good on them for doing so because there was no legal requirement. I want to congratulate and acknowledge the unions and the workers who stood up and bargained for that entitlement so that men or non-birth partners could have that extra time off when they have a newborn or an adopted child enter their lives. It is great to see this reform come forward and address that.

Some of the early divisions of labour in the home of non-paid work occur when a child is born, and the data reflects this. Before children enter a house, the gender of housework can be quite even. But once a child enters the home, women tend to pick up more of that work. Part of that is due to the culture and the challenges we have, but part of it's due to policy design. Once you get three months into your maternity leave, if you're the parent at home, you tend to be the one who puts the washing on while your partner is at work; you tend to be the one who does the cleaning, in and out, while the kids are sleeping; you tend to be the one that picks up all that domestic work. Quite often, people will ask, 'Are you going to enjoy your maternity leave?' If you ask a mum who's on maternity leave, and she'll say, 'What do you mean, I haven't stopped working; I'm working just as hard at home.' But when that mum returns to work, she continues to do that domestic work.

I'm hoping that one of the consequences that come out of this is that, if we're able to share the workload of raising children in the early days, more men can spend time at home with their newborns, which might keep that gender balance happening at home when it comes to unpaid domestic work, because the burden has fallen to women. What I like about this bill and what it does is that it makes it a choice for families. It actually says: what's in the best interest of your family. As the member for Newcastle pointed out, currently, if a male primary breadwinner chooses to go back to work, the woman who becomes the primary carer is entitled to paid parental leave under the government system. But if it is a woman who is the primary income earner who wants to return to work, her partner is unable to access the same entitlement. This bill removes that discrimination. It says, 'What works best is your family's choice—one or the other, or share.' But it is good that it is a 'use it or lose it' arrangement, which will encourage families to use this entitlement in the first period with their newborn.

I agree with some of the comments raised about needing to do more when it comes to accessing the next stage once the paid parental leave has finished. It is hard to find childcare places at the moment. Our government has inherited a horrible mess in the early childhood education sector. One of the biggest stresses for a lot of women at the moment wanting to return to work after their paid parental leave is being able to access childcare and having that childcare place. In my own community of Kyneton, I met with a mum's group. Some of them had deferred going back to work. They had tried to extend their paid parental leave into unpaid parental leave because they couldn't find a childcare place.

We have had a bit of a baby boom in central Victoria. We are bucking the trend of the rest of Victoria when it comes to the pandemic. Believe it or not, people assumed there were more babies born during the pandemic. There weren't. There was actually a slight decline in the birth rate, except in Bendigo and central Victoria. We knew that that was coming based on the nature of who was moving into the town. If you build a bigger hospital, employ more people at the bank and grow mining underground, you are going to attract younger people and families, and that's what's happened. We've had a growth in our birth rate. But that has presented a challenge when it comes to child care. Being able to find a place for a newborn, a toddler or someone who is under 18 months of age has been a challenge.

I want to acknowledge that that is something our government is working at. The cheaper child care bill will make child care more affordable. More importantly, the Fair Work amendments that were moved through at the end of last year will allow our educators to bargain for better wages, and hopefully that will attract more educators back into child care. One of the key reasons why there are such long waiting lists for younger children in early childhood education is that centres can't open rooms. They've got the space but not the educators. So it's an area that we're looking at and hoping to address sooner rather than later. I want to acknowledge the work that the sector, the government and the unions are doing to really try and address that.

Part of the bigger plan and the bigger focus that we have to have when we talk about women, work and paid parental leave is making sure that we are more family friendly and making sure that we do have that support in the early years. We kind of know what the plan is once children start primary school, because we've had a formal education system for quite some time. But we don't quite have the policies right yet for children under five. We are trying to turn around and change culture and change history, and that is one of the things that this bill does. It actually acknowledges for the first time that it isn't just the woman's responsibility to stay at home with young children. It acknowledges that we want to encourage men and women and families to make choices based upon what is in the best interests of that family unit. That choice could change between children—between the first child and the second child. For the first child it might be mum who stays at home. For the second child it might be dad who stays at home, depending upon where they're at at that time.

I really want to acknowledge the dads who have spoken to me—not just since I became an MP but before—about this issue and about how they haven't had the opportunity to really bond in the same way as their partners. I also want to acknowledge the dads who kind of swam against the tide, took time out, took that step to be at home more and gave up work to be there to help raise their little people, because they really have been some of the trailblazers to help set the agenda about what more we need to do.

For any woman in this place, including me, who's had children, our partners are the ones who have really helped us to be able to keep doing what we do. I've got two little people. I'm hoping that they're in bed now, at ten to seven. I don't know; I'm here. But they're at home with their dad in Bendigo this week, and the dinner, bath and bed routine falls to dad. That's just the life if you're a mum working full time, or if you're a dad working full time. If you're trying to balance that routine at home, the ability to have more employers who recognise that we want flexibility in workplaces is important.

The reason this bill has come before the parliament now is for us to deliver on a big commitment that we made at the election: that we wanted to be a modern Labor government that recognised that modern families need changes. Increasing the PPL was one of the most frequent proposals raised by participants at the Jobs and Skills Summit last September, and it is why the Albanese government really listened and continued to consult and brought forward these changes. It's why it was a big part of the October budget.

Families having access to more leave and enjoying greater flexibility will ensure that there is less of a gap in terms of paid income for households. Right now that is so important as interest rates and cost of living goes up. There are always extra expenses with children that you don't quite expect. This bill will be welcomed by so many, particularly those who are planning on having children or might find themselves expecting a little one soon—although I do have to note, because it's in my notes, that one of my staff members is a little bit disappointed that it didn't come in a bit sooner. Her second child is due in a few months.

Importantly, this change is part of Labor's commitment at the federal election to deliver on gender equality. It does help to demonstrate how we are wanting to make these changes. The reforms that are being introduced will improve flexibility from 1 July this year, and from 1 July next year we'll start expanding the scheme for an additional two weeks each year until it reaches 26 by 1 July 2026. I hope we don't stop there. We need to look at super on paid parental leave. It's one of the other gaps that we have in terms of people who take paid parental leave earning income. Perhaps when we see more men taking paid parental leave we'll start to see a boost in super.

We want to see the corporate sector, the community sector and employers step up, and see them more develop more generous paid parental leave schemes for males and parents; for dads. We want to encourage more families in those early years to not just share the workload of raising young people but also be able to perform those early critical bonds so that they too can be home with a 21-month-old toddler doing the dinner, bottle and bed routine. I'm hoping that my speech is not being part of face time to them. I think all of us who've had that joy of becoming parents know that those early days are fun. Those early years are fun. But the extra support to take the financial stress away makes life that little bit easier.

Stephen Bates (Brisbane, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm glad to support the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022, which makes paid parental leave available to both parents in the relationship. It's a welcome step that fosters a more equal division of care between parents and supports LGBTQI+ and non-traditional family units as well.

We're facing one of the most significant cost-of-living and housing crises we've ever faced. Brisbane residents and their families are struggling to manage their care responsibilities and work commitments to make ends meet. Widening the scope of paid parental leave is a step in the right direction, but there's so much more that we can do. Despite these improvements, Australia's current Paid Parental Leave scheme is ranked as the second worst in the developed world. Australians only receive 18 weeks of paid leave, which doesn't come close to the international best practice of 52 weeks and doesn't reach the same level of pay or structured 'use it or lose it' provisions.

This bill is a welcome recognition of the need to reform the way we design parental leave. We must address maternal and child health; and encourage shared care and the contribution of paid parental leave policies to shift attitudes of traditional gender roles and narrow the persistent gender pay gap. We must keep pushing for the kind of support and care that our community deserves. At a minimum, the government should immediately fund 26 weeks of paid parental leave. Families can't afford to wait another three years.

In a country as wealthy as Australia, this is something that we can do. If the government can find $40 billion of fossil fuel subsidies, they can find the money to take care of working families. If the government can afford these subsidies, they can afford to give carers and their children the quality of life that they deserve. If we can afford the stage 3 tax cuts, which will cost $245 billion over the next decade, we can afford to make a world-class paid parental leave scheme. The work and care inquiry initiated by my colleague Senator Barbara Pocock in the Senate has heard a wealth of evidence about the need for a strong parental leave scheme, and the Greens will continue to push to make that a reality.

Like I said, families can't afford to wait another three years. We must accept the recommendations of stakeholders like the Australian Council of Trade Unions and establish a full 52 weeks of paid parental leave by 2030 as per international standards. Families across the world and particularly across Scandinavia already enjoy such high standards of paid parental leave, and Australian families deserve the same.

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm proud to speak to the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022 in this place today, and I'm proud to do so as a member of this government, which is ensuring this critical reform is provided to families right across Australia. Labor governments build the country. Our positive reforms are felt for decades. They are reforms which benefit the people of Australia and ensure a fair go for all. Gough Whitlam reformed higher education to ensure it was accessible and achievable for all Australians. Bob Hawke reformed Australia's health system, with Medicare, ensuring more people could access health care. And it is this government, led by Anthony Albanese, that will reform paid parental leave, which will ensure greater gender equality and fairness for all Australian families.

When we came to office in May last year, paid parental leave became one of our central focuses as a new government. The 2021-22 federal budget had, at its core, investment in paid parental leave for the benefit of the people of Australia and the Australian economy. It's not just a social measure; it's also an economic measure. This government understands that investment in paid parental leave, when it is done right, will advance gender equality, provide a boost for the economy and help everyday Aussie families with the cost-of-living pressures that are being felt across Australia right now. It was a message that was sent loud and clear by workers, employers, unions, economists and industry experts at September's Jobs and Skills Summit: gender equality and economic reform are issues that go hand in hand. It's not often, as we know, that you get all those disparate groups coming together with a common voice. This is a reform that opens our economy and provides full and fair participation for women in Australia, both as parents and within the workforce.

It was the Prime Minister who said that this reform agenda would be 'a parental leave system that empowers the full and equal participation of women, which will be good for business, good for families and good for our economy'. The message from this government cannot be clearer than that. The importance of this bill cannot be more obvious. This reform, at its core, is good for Australia.

This bill will see the implementation of the first tranche of the government's paid parental leave changes, which were announced by the government in October, in Labor's first budget in 10 years. The bill provides essential structural change, which will modernise paid parental leave and ensure that it meets the needs of modern Australia and modern families. This means the scheme will meet the needs of Australian families fairly and equally, which is something that it doesn't currently do. Current eligibility rules under the Paid Parental Leave scheme are unfair, at best, in a way that disproportionately and negatively affects families in which the mother is the higher income earner—and I don't think anybody can enunciate it better than my colleague the member for Bendigo in her terrific speech just now.

Backwards views on who is and isn't the breadwinner in a family are just not relevant in today's Australia, and so it is important that these views are not inadvertently entrenched in legislation and the support schemes that emanate from it. Under the current scheme, mothers who are the higher income earner are negatively impacted by statute. Currently, two families with a household income of $200,000 dollars are treated vastly differently based on who is the primary income earner. If the father in this situation is the primary income earner, then the scheme is accessible to that family and they meet the eligibility criteria. But if the mother is the higher income earner, then the family is automatically ineligible for support under the scheme. It's not good enough, and this government and this bill will change it.

Frankly, we're 23 years into the 21st century, and we've still got a situation where women face this sort of discrimination. I'm old enough to remember when women had to leave the workforce when they got married. I'm not quite old enough to remember when women had to get their husband's permission to open bank accounts. We thought those days were long behind us. The entrails of those days remain in legislation, and this government is determined to wipe them out and end discrimination once and for all.

This bill will deliver six key and core changes that will come into effect from 1 July 2023. First, it will combine the two existing payments under the scheme into a single 20-week scheme. This will make it less convoluted and more easily accessible for parents. Currently, there are two payments that are made under the scheme from government. Parental leave pay, which provides up to 18 weeks of payment, is primarily targeted to mothers. On the other hand, dad and partner pay provides up to two weeks of payment to fathers and partners. Under this bill, those two payment streams will combine in a single 20-week payment which will give parents more choice and flexibility in how they choose to use paid parental leave and how they choose to share care of their newborn or adopted child. This better reflects modern Australia and how Australian families choose to parent in modern Australia. It accepts that not all families are the same and that different families will make different choices. This gives vital flexibility to parents so that they have the opportunity to provide for their family in a way that suits their family. This very much puts the family first.

The second key change is that a portion of the scheme will be reserved for each parent to support them both to take time off work after birth or adoption. I can't put into words how important that is. The ability for both parents to take time to be just that—parents—and to spend time to bond with their newborn and to enjoy being a family is something that all parents deserve, and under this Paid Parental Leave scheme it is something that all parents will be able to participate in. As the member for Bendigo so brilliantly enunciated, those early years are so vital in setting future roles in the family. Actually, I've noticed this myself in my family. I'm perhaps embarrassed to admit that, while my wife and I used to share duties at home fairly equally, we have a very traditional set-up, I would say, when it comes to child rearing, and my wife by all means takes on the heavy domestic chores in the household. So that's a very traditional way. I'm sure I get a lot of grief for it still, as I should. But those marks are set early, and this seeks to change that. So it is a very welcome change. When I see the young fathers in this place and the way that they are so ready to take paid parental leave and to be much more involved in the nurturing of their kids in a way that I admit I never did with my young children, it's just fantastic to see how quickly young fathers are adapting.

Third, the notion of primary and secondary carers will be removed. This will make it easier for both parents to access support. The removal of this terminology is long overdue. I don't think anybody would realistically consider one parent to be more important than the other, so why should the paid parental leave scheme support that inference by listing primary and secondary carers? It's wrong, and it's gone with this bill under this government.

The fourth key change is that we are expanding access to the scheme by introducing a $350,000 family income test. Under this test, applicants can qualify even if they do not meet the $156,647 individual income test. That's about opening access to this scheme to more Australians, and it means stronger families and a stronger economy. It's a great initiative, and I'm pleased it's being included in the bill.

Fifth, the bill will increase flexibility for parents to choose how they take paid parental leave days and how they transition back to work. Every person in Australia is different. Every parent is different, with different circumstances and different ways that they will adjust to their newfound parenthood. It's critical that this flexibility is afforded to people so they can make transitions in a way that is right for their family and in the best interests of their family. Governments should never dictate how someone leads their personal life or their family life. Improved flexibility in the scheme will be a game changer for Australian families.

Finally, the sixth key change to the scheme in this bill is to allow eligible fathers and partners to access the payment irrespective of whether the mother or birth parent meets the income test or residency requirements. Families living in Australia should not be left behind, and families will not be left behind under the Albanese government. This key change is another way that the Australian government is ensuring more access to the scheme, which is both fair and to the benefit of Australian families and, by default, the broader Australian community via the economy.

In my electorate, many families are struggling with the cost of living and are uncertain about the future for their new and growing families. This bill sends a message loud and clear that the government stands with Australian families and is making it easier for them. From Deloraine in the north through to Bridgewater in the south and everywhere in between in my electorate, families are going to benefit from these changes to the Paid Parental Leave scheme, and so in turn will local economies.

I'll conclude in the same way I started: by reiterating that this bill is good for families and good for the economy. It's a bill that provides much-needed reform to Australia's Paid Parental Leave scheme. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the minister, Amanda Rishworth, for the work that she has put into this reform for the benefit of Australian families. This is a very significant reform. It's a reform that should be a unifying moment for this parliament. At its core, it's a bill that will ensure the ongoing security and prosperity of Australian families in a flexible way that works for them, and I am sure that, just as we talk about the reforms that Gough Whitlam made to education and that Bob Hawke made to health, this will go down as a defining moment and future Labor governments will turn to this and say, 'This, too, was a defining moment that we should be proud of.'

Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to be speaking on the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022. I'm so proud that once again it's a Labor government who is leading the way on this critical reform. We know that improving paid parental leave is vital for the health and wellbeing of families and has immense benefits for our economy. We also heard loud and clear during the Jobs and Skills Summit in September last year that paid parental leave reform would be instrumental in advancing gender equality. Businesses, unions, experts and economists all understand that one of the best ways to boost productivity and participation is to provide more choice and more support for families and more opportunity for women to re-enter the workforce. The introduction of this bill is just another example of the Albanese government listening and acting.

This bill is designed to address shortfalls under the current scheme. At present the scheme does not do enough to provide access to fathers and partners, it limits flexibility for families to choose how they take leave and transition back to work, and the eligibility rules are unfair to families where the mother is the higher income earner. Our bill fixes these issues. It gives more families access to the government payment, it gives parents more flexibility in how they take leave and it encourages parents to share care to improve gender equality.

From 1 July 2023, the bill delivers six key reforms. The two existing payments will be combined into a single 20-week scheme. A portion of the scheme will be reserved for each parent, to support them both taking time off work after a birth or adoption. It will be easier for both parents to access the payment, as the notion of primary and secondary carers will be removed. Access will expand through the introduction of a $350,000 family income test, under which families can be assessed if they exceed the individual income test. Flexibility for parents to choose how they take leave days will increase, and eligible fathers and partners will be allowed to access the payment irrespective of whether the birth parent meets the income test or residency requirements.

Australia's first paid parental leave came into force on 1 January 2011. This was a Labor government initiative. Now, a decade later, the Albanese Labor government is ensuring that our Paid Parental Leave scheme meets contemporary expectations and is fit for purpose for the next decade and beyond.

The changes in this bill send a clear message that treating parenting as an equal partnership supports gender equality. Our wonderful Minister for Social Services said boosting women's workforce participation and encouraging more dads to take paid parental leave was a priority for the government. The minister has made the point that treating parenting as an equal partnership helps to improve gender equality, and she is right when she says of our changes:

This will benefit mums, it will benefit dads, it's good for children, and it will be a huge boost to the economy.

Our government values men as carers too. We want to see that reinforced in workplaces and in our communities.

On a personal note, I know how important paid parental leave is. When my beautiful daughter, Tia, was born, having time together as a new family was so important and so special. It meant so much to have that time at home. In fact, it was probably the best four weeks of my life. I know that for many fathers or non-birthing parents two weeks is not enough time to support the mother, or birthing parent, to settle into the new routine and care for their baby—not enough time in these formative months.

Australians need a paid parental leave scheme that reflects the needs of modern families. The current scheme does not do enough to provide access for parents together. For example, currently dads take government paid leave at roughly half the rate that mums do. The scheme as it stands today is built on gendered assumptions of primary and secondary carers, which limit parents' ability to share care.

It's time to ensure that our legislation better reflects what we know about the benefits for children that can flow from a more flexible scheme, and there are benefits for parents as well. Why would we perpetuate an outdated understanding of caring roles, where too much of the burden falls on one parent and, as a consequence, that parent is more likely to suffer poor mental and physical health? Having both parents engaged in care also means that they are more likely to be happy at home, where they can be engaged in the lives of their children. They will be more productive when they return to work. Their children will grow up and fare better at home and at school. If both parents have the opportunity to be part of caring for their children it also means greater empowerment for the parent who might otherwise have to take on a significant portion of the responsibilities. This means, among other things, that they may have the option of returning to work sooner, which would support productivity in the economy. This is why our changes to paid parental leave are not just about individuals; they deliver benefits to the entire family and to the community more broadly.

As I mentioned before, placing a burden of care on one parent alone in the weeks and months after a child is born is not acceptable. It's plain unfair. Our paid parental leave scheme should not entrench an outdated model of care. We know that this approach leads to adverse mental health outcomes for the parent who has to undertake this task, and we know that, more often than not, it is the mother. Our paid parental leave scheme should operate to ensure there is no structural reason for this outcome to take place. The importance of this is outlined by a mother who described her experience of a paid parental leave scheme that is past its use-by date. The example I've taken is from an organisation called TheParentHood. The mother described her experience as follows:

Rather, it was a blur of tears, anxiety and a needling sense of dread that felt louder and more urgent as the days passed by. This challenge was in no small way due to the inadequate parental leave afforded to my husband, a predicament that is unfortunately commonplace in Australia.

She outlined the anxiety that surrounded her as she grappled with the responsibilities of being a new mother after being discharged from hospital, saying she:

… spent the remainder of a fortnight juggling nappies, breast pumps, and an unspoken sense of panic at the prospect of me carrying on solo once my husband returned to work.

Most significantly, she spoke frankly and bravely about the depth of mental health struggle that ensued over subsequent weeks and months:

Over the next few months my mental health suffered, and despite the enormous support of friends and family, it became clear to those around me that my struggle with parenthood was very much affected by what was later identified as postnatal anxiety and depression.

The Paid Parental Leave scheme changes made by this legislation will not eliminate postnatal anxiety and depression, but, by increasing the flexibility of the scheme and making it possible for parents to more reasonably share caring responsibilities and support each other, we will remove a structural problem that exists under the current scheme. All the evidence tells us that this will help create an environment that is likely to reduce the circumstances that create a mental health burden on one parent, which is usually the mother. This is undeniably a very positive outcome.

Throughout my speech, I've spoken about how these changes will apply to parents and families. In my own case, as I outlined, I share the responsibilities of parenting with my wonderful wife. But I understand that not every family looks like mine, and this scheme does not apply just to mums and dads. The legislation is inclusive of different models of family, all of which must be nurtured, supported and celebrated in our community. I know many families of different kinds in my electorate and beyond—rainbow families, single-parent families—and our Paid Parental Leave scheme ensures that these families are also able to access support when they need it to help give the next generation the best possible start in life.

Labor is the party that has delivered paid parental leave to Australian families. We need to ensure our national Paid Parental Leave scheme keeps pace with the expectations of Australian families. Increased flexibility in the application of paid parental leave will benefit parents and their children. All Australians should welcome this. I hope it will be reflected in the way that parents share the responsibility of raising their children, from birth right through their early years and beyond. Without these changes, we risk leaving in place a paid parental leave scheme trapped in the past. I call on all members to get behind this legislation. This benefit will be felt across our communities and across our economy. I commend the bill to the House.

Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Greater flexibility has become a persistent theme over the last few years. Many have benefited from more time at home, online meetings, more flexible leave arrangements and working from home. For a lot of Australians, greater flexibility has made juggling everyday responsibilities easier, and it's given many people the time for the things that really matter to them, the important things—more time with family, more time with friends, more time to focus on physical and mental wellbeing, more time to explore new passions. For new parents, that sounds like a bit of a fantasy list, given the pressures that are placed on new parents—and parents generally speaking, frankly, until the kids are out the door after university or whenever it might be. But, for new parents, the biggest barriers to flexibility come at one of the most important times in their lives.

We know that Australia has a generous paid parental leave scheme. Globally, it's one of the better ones. But there are still significant improvements needed when it comes to flexibility and equity. That's what this bill, the Paid Parental Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022, seeks to do—to make paid parental leave more flexible and more equitable for Australian families. It's going to combine the current 18 weeks leave for the primary carer and two weeks leave for the other parent into a single 20-week scheme, allowing parents to make decisions about how they utilise paid parental leave—flexibility. It's going to remove the notion of primary and secondary claimants and the requirement that the primary claimant must be the birth parent. This change will reflect the fact that the families of modern Australia come in all shapes and sizes, with different responsibilities and commitments. It gives parents the choice in how they structure their leave days and their transition back to work. It gives parents the option to split leave as they see fit, rather than one parent being entitled to 18 weeks, while the other is limited to two. While many parents may still decide that one takes most of the time, it allows them, the parents, to make that decision. That's important, because we know that the current arrangements particularly restrict women in returning to work.

We know that women are more often the primary carer, on average, as far as the data goes. Unless they take their first 12 weeks of leave at once, they forfeit the remaining six weeks which can be used flexibly. So they are effectively penalised if they choose to return to work in their first 12 weeks of leave, even if it is just for a day or two a week. A lot of mums—I know this is a bit anecdotal—who have had their second or third child are like: 'I want to go back to work now, early.' Some mums choose to stay the whole year with their newborn. It especially happens with the firstborn, but, I think, once they get to the second or third, they're like: 'See you later. I'm going back to work.' Fair enough. We want to give women that flexibility to make their own arrangements under the scheme. So this is really important—to give them a real choice. The decision is not going to be made for them. They get to make the decision. This bill will allow women greater freedom over when they return to work, by allowing the leave to be used flexibly from day one. It's a change that supports advancing women's economic equality. This is a key goal of the Albanese Labor government. It provides greater access to fathers and partners, who often are limited to only two weeks of leave despite wanting to share the load. It will include all sorts of parents: LGBTQIA+ parents and parents who have adopted or who have been forced to split leave in ways that might not suit their family's needs or wishes. These changes give parents choice about when they return to work. Payment days may be taken in multiple blocks as small as a day at a time with periods of work in between, within two years of the birth or adoption of a child. This is real flexibility. It gives people choice, and that's why these are such important elements of this bill. They give parents that choice.

The bill reflects the Albanese government's commitment to improve the lives of working families, to give them that choice. It improves their quality of life, supports better outcomes for children and advances women's economic equality, as I've noted. These reforms will reserve a portion of the scheme for each parent, to support them both to take time off work after the birth or adoption of a child. The elements of this bill follow advice and consultation with many experts and stakeholders, who were clear about the need for reserved portions to promote shared care and gender equality. They have come from the data and the evidence base that have informed the drafting of this bill and this policy.

Engagement with stakeholders has been a key feature of this bill. Reform of paid parental leave was one of the most frequent proposals raised at the successful Jobs and Skills Summit held in September last year. When we brought stakeholders and leaders from across Australia together to develop solutions on the big challenges facing our nation—guess what!—we were serious. And this is what came up. We were serious in our commitment to listen to Australians and to deliver what we think are commonsense changes that will make their lives better. That's part of being a good government. The changes in this bill fit that motivation and that course of action. They were widely welcomed in the October 2022-23 budget.

These changes are the most significant step to improving the Paid Parental Leave scheme since its establishment by the Labor government in 2011. It wasn't perfect then. We're suggesting some improvements. That's the sign of a good government, one that is always looking to improve, always evolving, always listening and making sure that it is meeting the needs of Australians, in this case parents, and giving them that much needed flexibility.

This reform will benefit 181,000 families. That means around 4,300 people who are currently ineligible will get access to paid parental leave, because we're lifting the family income limit to $350,000. That's great. And we will continue with reforms that improve the lives of Australians, including legislation later this year that will expand paid parental leave to 26 weeks by 2026. There's a nice symmetry there—26 by 26. I don't know who thought of that—some clever person—but it will be 26 weeks by 2026. It is a further improvement that will go straight to giving flexibility and support for parents in the Paid Parental Leave scheme.

Our changes are good for parents, they're good for kids, they're good for employers and they're good for our economy. They are changes that make a good scheme more suitable for a more modern Australia. We've evolved since 2011, and these changes are important in that context. Families will be able to make their own choices to suit their own family's needs and enjoy what is such an important time in their lives with their new baby. They can decide how long they spend. If it's a second or third, mum might want to go back to earlier than the year that she spent with the first born, but that's their choice, and that's the beauty of these changes. It really is making sure that we give families the chance to decide for themselves what is best for their family's circumstances. That is something that this Albanese Labor government has committed to delivering for Australian families.