Andrew Gee (Calare, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Paid Parental Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022. The journey to parenthood isn't always easy, and the transition to life with a new addition in the family can bring with it all types of challenges. The ability for parents to take paid parental leave has been settled since 2011, albeit too rigidly. It has meant that the primary caregiver can take up to 18 weeks paid parental leave, and the secondary caregiver can receive two weeks partner pay. One of the best ways to boost productivity and participation in the workforce is to provide more choice and more support for families. Investment in paid parental leave advances gender equality and opportunities for individuals, regardless of their choice to start a family, which people in my electorate of Calare and across the country are calling out for. That is why I'm supportive of the changes proposed in this bill.

This bill will give more families access to the government paid parental leave payment, thereby providing parents greater flexibility in how they take leave, and it will encourage them to share care to support more gender equality. The bill intends to extend parental leave pay from 18 weeks to 20 weeks, with parents who are single at the time of their claim being able to access the full 20 weeks. This extension is a result of combining the current maximum of 18 weeks of parental leave pay with the current two weeks of pay that is available for partners and other carers. Dad and partner pay, as it has been known, will basically be abolished. The bill removes the notion of primary, secondary and tertiary claimants and the requirement that the primary claimant of parental leave must be the birth parent, allowing families to decide who will claim first and how they will share the entitlement.

This bill also makes paid parental leave consist only of flexible PPL days, allowing claimants to take the payment in multiple blocks, as small as a day at a time, within two years of the birth or adoption, and it removes the requirement to not return to work in order to be eligible. The bill also introduces a $350,000 family income limit, under which families can be assessed if they do not meet the individual income test. The bill also expands eligibility to allow an eligible father or partner to receive parental leave pay regardless of whether the birth parent meets the income test or residency requirements or is serving a newly arrived residents waiting period. I note the government has also promised to introduce further legislation to progressively increase the Paid Parental Leave scheme from July 2024 until it reaches 26 weeks in 2026, a full six months, something I'm also supportive of.

Despite the make-up of families rapidly evolving, women are still much more likely than men to be primary caregivers. In 2021, women took 88 per cent of primary parental leave, and nine per cent of Australian businesses still offered parental leave to women only. In Australia, 60 per cent of employers offer paid parental leave in some form, but half the organisations in male dominated industries don't offer any form of paid primary carer leave. According to KPMG, the division of labour within a household is responsible for 39 per cent of the full-time pay gap between Australian men and women; it's why an effective paid parental leave scheme is critical to improving economic and social equality. Encouraging more equitable care of a child between parents or additional assistance for a single parent is progress that needs to be made.

According to Danielle Wood and Owain Emslie of the Grattan Institute, this initiative should increase GDP by $900 million a year due to increased workforce participation by mothers, and this is good news. At a time when employers are screaming out for new employees, providing primary caregivers the option to return to work sooner and in a more flexible manner is a win for employers and employees alike, and I therefore commend this bill to the House.

Sam Rae (Hawke, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Paid parental leave reform is good for families. It looks after new mums, dads and bubs. The Albanese government knows that it's critical for the health and wellbeing of newborns and their parents, and we know that expanding and investing in paid parental leave is good for our economy.

The reforms set out in the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022 are all about this government's commitment to improve the lives of working people, especially new mothers. It will encourage parents to share more of the caring responsibilities and make sure that the necessary support is there during one of the most challenging and exciting times of anyone's life. I know for myself all too well the joy, the terror and the utter exhaustion that you feel while juggling work and caring for little ones. I've been fortunate enough to have been in workplaces with generous provisions for parental leave, but I know that not everyone is in the same position. For each of my three children, the ability for me to take leave to be there for their first months has made a monumental difference. It's a privilege that should be enjoyed by all new parents.

This is about choice and flexibility. More people should be able to make the decision that I and so many others can, to enjoy their time raising a new family, and we should make sure that they're fully supported to do so. The decision to have a family is a big one, and we don't want families to have to worry about caring for a newborn while managing the day to day of keeping the lights on and putting food on the table. For too long, parenting has been undervalued and deprioritised in policymaking, but this government knows that it is one of the most fulfilling things that you can do, and these changes recognise that.

This bill to expand and modernise the Paid Parental Leave scheme is a significant reform, driven in large part by unions, who have recognised the need to maximise women's workforce participation; but also for employers, who want to make sure that their workplace is as supportive and accommodating as possible. This sort of investment in our paid parental leave system is good for business, good for productivity and good for the Australian economy. We heard loud and clear at the Jobs and Skills Summit that something needed to be done to ensure greater gender equality, and that that equality was at the heart of future economic reforms.

Importantly, we're delivering on cost-of-living relief for new families with this expanded scheme, something that has been front and centre for this government. In the October budget we revealed this as part of a broader $7.5 billion five-point plan to deliver targeted cost-of-living relief for households while not adding to inflation. This plan builds on our commitment to Australians that we will take action on cost-of-living pressures that are impacting their households and their families.

The plan includes delivering $4.7 billion over four years to deliver cheaper child care for more than 1.2 million families, including almost 7,000 families in my electorate of Hawke alone. We'll also progressively expand paid parental leave to six months by 2026. This is a massive game changer for all working families. By expanding paid parental leave, alongside our investment in cheaper medicines, through reducing the PBS maximum general co-payment to 30 bucks a script, we're lending a hand to those who need it most. And we're delivering more affordable housing, including having a new national housing accord to build affordable and well-located homes for Australians who are trying to have a go. Finally, we'll be getting wages moving again, including supporting the increase to the minimum wage, supporting a wage rise for aged-care workers, fixing the bargaining system and investing in the capabilities of our people and the capacity of our economy, because it's the right thing to do.

After a wasted decade, we're finally building a stronger and more resilient economy and delivering cost-of-living relief for Australian families. These sustainable and targeted reforms will help our economy to bounce back by driving productivity, while making sure parents can make the most of the exciting time that building a family brings. It's important that our businesses and places of employment are supportive places for parents to return to. They need to feel and they need to know that they're being backed in during the pregnancy or adoption and also while they're on leave.

Around 181,000 Australian families will benefit from the changes outlined in this bill, including around 4,300 parents who will be eligible for paid parental leave for the first time under the scheme. This includes the many families that make up my electorate of Hawke, which is filled with new mums and dads and host to a booming population. We know all too well the balancing act that working families face every single day. Hawke is home to a vibrant, multicultural community with so much to be proud of. The city of Melton is one of the fastest growing areas in Australia, with more than 50 babies born every week, exemplifying why it's so important that we work together to ensure that every child's health and wellbeing is central to what we do. The ABS's population-change data shows that the Rockbank and Mount Cottrell area in my electorate of Hawke has Victoria's second-highest growth rate, exploding in population by 540 per cent. By 2051 the city of Melton is projected to be larger than the current population of Canberra. Our fast-growing suburbs will only continue to boom. It's clear that so many families in my electorate are trying to juggle it all while still giving their kids the best start in life. That's why these changes to the scheme are so timely and urgently needed for communities like ours.

When this scheme was first introduced by the Rudd government in 2011 it lifted a huge burden off the backs of hardworking families and created new ways for families to make sure they were able to provide for their kids, while centralising the care and wellbeing of new parents and babies in policymaking. Prior to the Rudd government's scheme being introduced just 50 per cent of working women had access to employer-funded paid parental leave. This grew to around 95 per cent of working women having access to some form of paid leave in the years immediately after the scheme was introduced. And it laid the foundation for more families to make choices that they wouldn't have had before, particularly new mums.

We've still got a way to go. As we know, currently the primary caregiver, usually the mother, is entitled to 18 weeks of pay at the national minimum wage, with dad and partner pay separately provided with two weeks leave. The scheme does not currently do enough to encourage dads to take it up. We know that too often this places the burden of care on women alone. In 2021, almost 170,000 people received parental leave pay and almost 90,000 people received dad and partner pay. In too many cases, the primary care role is left to new mums during what can be an extremely isolating and challenging time. This government will change the scheme to make it easier for new dads to take up paid parental leave. We'll combine the two payments and change eligibility requirements so that new dads aren't excluded from the scheme if their partner makes over the $151,350 income test. By doing this, we're making it easier to raise a family, while boosting women's economic participation and improving gender equality. The reforms that this bill will bring in send a strong message that parenting is an equal partnership. We recognise the role of men as carers too, and we want to see that reinforced in workplaces and across our communities This is particularly consequential in our electorate of Hawke, where the workforce participation rate for women aged 25 to 54 years is around three per cent lower than the rate recorded nationally.

The ACTU welcomes this as a long overdue step forward, pointing to the fact that the unfair burden of care placed on new mothers contributes to women's earnings falling by 55 per cent, on average, in the first five years of parenthood. We will change the income test to a combined $350,000 between both partners, meaning families are no longer excluded if the mother exceeds the individual income test but the father doesn't, as is currently the case under the scheme. Changes will mean fathers and partners can receive payments under the scheme at the same time as they receive employer-funded leave, incentivising more dads to take on a caring role in those early days. The government has been very clear that our Paid Parental Leave scheme is designed to complement employer-paid workplace leave schemes, not to replace them.

Importantly, this bill introduces amendments that would mean that parents can take their paid parental leave in multiple blocks, in their own time, as suits their families—helping them to ease back into work, as little as a day at a time, within two years of the birth or adoption of their child. This flexibility will support parents to return to work in the way that they see fit, and they won't have to worry about losing their paid parental leave entitlements if they take it in their own time, on their own terms, according to the needs of their families. But there is still cultural change that needs to take place in workplaces before we can truly see all the benefits. Employer-provided paid parental leave is more common in industries dominated by women. Around 50 per cent of businesses in industries dominated by men offer parental leave, compared to 75 per cent of those in female dominated industries. Employer-funded leave needs to be an important part of the offering available to new parents, and it's important that the scheme is complemented by employers to make sure that parents can reap the full benefits and stay connected to work and that our economy can enjoy the dividend.

Part of this cultural change will be enacted through this bill introducing an easier claiming process, which will allow either parent to take leave first, removing the assumptions about mothers and fathers being primary and secondary carers. We know that when fathers are more involved, and take on more responsibility in that caring role, the care continues throughout a child's development, with significant physical, mental and social benefits for the mum, the dad and the kids. Importantly, these reforms will extend the full 20 weeks paid leave to single parents as well. These outcomes are going to be essential going forward as we continue to build on the paid parental leave offering. The current scheme will be changed in six key ways from 1 July 2023, including by combining the two separate payments into a combined 20-week scheme to be shared by both parents; maintaining time for each parent to facilitate both parents to take paid parental leave after a birth or adoption; redefining and removing the notion of primary and secondary carers as being the role of a mother and father respectively, which does not take into account the unique and changing circumstances of modern Australian families; expanding access for thousands of new families with a $350,000 family income test, meaning people can receive paid parental leave if they do not meet the current individual income test; increasing flexibility by giving new parents more choice in how they decide to take paid parental leave; and ensuring eligible fathers and partners are able to access the scheme regardless of whether the mother or birth parent meets the income test or residency requirements.

But we won't stop here. In the October budget we committed to a half-a-billion-dollar investment to expand the scheme to provide six months of paid parental leave at the national minimum wage by 2026. As part of that we will be progressively increasing the scheme by six weeks until it reaches the full 26, bringing us up to six months of paid parental leave.

The prioritisation of this issue in our first year of government speaks to our commitment to working families, especially in the context of our changes to make child care more affordable and accessible for everyday families. Our plan for cheaper child care means 96 per cent of families will be better off—that's 1.26 million families across the country—and not a single one will be worse off under our plan.

The cost of early learning is a major cost-of-living issue for working families. Under the previous government, almost 73,000 families were locked out of the childcare system because it was simply unaffordable. We're getting on with fixing the cost of child care, and we're fixing paid parental leave. This is about fundamental economic reform, building back after 10 years of inaction and delivering a considerable economic boost while supporting working families in our community.

We're delivering a wholesale reform of the way we deal with paid parental leave in this country so that it's a fairer, more robust system that aligns more closely with the views and expectations of modern Australia. I am very proud to be part of a government that has spent every day working on behalf of Australian families, delivering significant reforms to improve the lives of families and communities right across our country. (Time expired)

Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) 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. Many working parents in Ryan have shared with me the challenges around just that: being parents who need to work. Appropriate, fit-for-purpose paid parental leave is absolutely central to functioning and thriving families, to communities and to our economy.

This morning I attended the International Women's Day breakfast here in Parliament House. Both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, amongst others, spoke about uplifting women's lives and equality. They were certainly talking the talk. A great way to walk the walk would be to radically improve paid parental leave, thereby radically improving women's lives. We know that making paid parental leave available for both parents can foster a more equal division of caring responsibilities and set up good habits for life. We also know that the workforce participation of mothers is considerably higher in countries with both a strong paid parental leave scheme and available, affordable child care.

Despite these clear benefits, shamefully, Australia's Paid Parental Leave scheme is currently ranked second-worst in the developed world. With 18 weeks of leave, it falls well behind international best practice of 52 weeks, with structured use-it-or-lose-it provisions and higher rates of pay in those other schemes. As one of the wealthiest nations on the planet, we should be able to give working carers and their children the quality time together that they need. The work and care inquiry initiated by my great Senate colleague Barbara Pocock has heard a wealth of evidence about the need for a strong parental leave scheme, and we Greens will continue to push to make that a reality.

The Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022 is a welcome recognition of the need for reform in the way we design parental leave, to address maternal and child health, to encourage shared care and to address the contribution of our current parental leave policies to the persistent and problematic gender pay gap. But much more needs to be done, much faster than the government's current timetable. The government could immediately move to 26 weeks rather than making families wait another three years for that, and they should commit to finding a pathway to 52 weeks of paid parental leave by 2030, as recommended by many stakeholders, including the ACTU.

In Australia, despite measures allowing fathers to take parental leave, only one in 20 fathers take parental leave beyond the two weeks of dad and partner pay leave. We know that use-it-or-lose-it provisions can be part of the solution. There are great precedents in other countries like Finland and Norway, along with Japan, Canada and other countries that have had these policies in place for some time. What they have reported is a marked increase in shared care arrangements and reduced stigma around shared care and flexible work arrangements. Isn't this what we also need in Australia? In fact, when Canada introduced additional paid parental leave on a 'use it or lose it' basis, the percentage of partners taking leave in the first year doubled. We know it works. It's better for all parents and children.

I welcome the government's recognition of 'use it or lose it' in encouraging shared care. I also acknowledge the great work being done by the Women's Economic Equality Taskforce to review effective 'use it or lose it' periods and urge the government to implement their recommendations when they are released.

This change must be supported by campaigns to educate families about the great benefits of shared care and to encourage employers to facilitate both parents taking leave and returning to the workplace while juggling caring responsibilities. This will be absolutely transformative. We urgently need to make that cultural shift that removes the stigma and normalises both parents being equally involved in caring for young children.

Under the bill, paid parental leave will continue to be a government funded scheme, paid at the minimum wage, as the previous speaker just mentioned, but that's a wage that we know is woefully inadequate. The Greens have consistently said that it must be lifted for everyone. I also note that the ACTU and the Australian Human Rights Commission, and others who submitted to the bill inquiry, strongly supported increasing the rate of paid parental leave to replacement level, instead of just the minimum wage. This is consistent with the calls of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women.

Why is this so important? Parents taking leave to care for children marks a really significant break in their career and their earning capacity, particularly for women who take leave and often return to work at reduced hours and defer promotions. This is an issue that has often been raised with me, and it resonates very strongly for me and, I'm sure, most other people who've been working parents. I believe that replacement wages would ensure that parents are not financially punished for taking time to care for their children. Importantly, providing replacement wages also helps to encourage shared care, by reducing the income lost by parents taking leave.

We Greens are going to continue to call for reforms that incentivise parents to take their parental leave entitlements, including increasing the payment rates and encouraging employers to top up any government paid leave. The Greens have long called for superannuation to be paid during parental leave. We know that the gap in super balances between men and women at retirement age is really huge. Research suggests it's as much as 30 per cent. This makes things much tougher for older women, who are also known to be one of the most at-risk groups for homelessness. Unions, business groups, the Greens and even the former government's Retirement Income Review all agree that adding super to paid parental leave is a no-brainer, and yet it's not a part of this bill.

The Greens will also continue to push the government to ensure that workers can access reasonable flexibility to work from home, change their hours, share roles or make other arrangements to allow them to balance care and work. Other countries have achieved this. So should we.

Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I know there are people who think that paid parental leave only affects mums of a certain age, but, of course, the impacts of not being able to access leave really have a myriad of consequences across families—for mums and dads, for immediate family, for extended family and, importantly, for employers.

I was in a particular group, in the early 1990s, where I wasn't entitled to a day of what we then called maternity leave. I had been working out of the country for several years, self-employed as a freelance journalist for much of it, or with a UK employer, and none of my entitlements came home with me. On arriving home, pregnant, I realised that I was going to have to work through not just the pregnancy but those first few months. My husband and I did not have an economic choice about that. I'm not a believer in 'I managed it so everyone else should,' although, sadly, I have heard women say, 'We did without it, and I don't know why it's such a big deal now,' but it is. You only have to remember the struggles that you had as a young mum, juggling work deadlines while breastfeeding a baby, having a sick child and knowing that if you're not working there's not going to be anyone to pay the mortgage. Those sorts of pressures on young families are extraordinary, and it is really significant that, in the last few years, since the Gillard days, there has been a recognition that it is an essential part of a healthy society that we have a good paid parental leave program. I'm very proud that this government sees it as a priority, as we do so many of those financial supports that mean women can not only close the gender gap in their earnings but really thrive in an environment where they have freedom to make some choices about how they work and when they work. Our legislation around child care and reducing the costs of early childhood education is another example of that.

I'm delighted to be able to speak to the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022, and I'm very much looking forward to it becoming a reality, as, I must say, are my children, who are in their late 20s and early 30s. Their generation is looking to us to help them find a way to make their next steps in the world. One of the things that I noticed at the Jobs and Skills Summit was how high a priority improvements to paid parental leave were. These messages were not necessarily coming from people representing the mums and the dads; they were coming from businesses and the business sector because, in fact, such improvements turn out to be a microeconomic reform. We listened to the variety of proposals that were raised, and we would love to do everything, but we've started with the priorities. This is the most significant step to improving the scheme since it was established by Labor in 2011.

The bill that we're debating today reflects our commitment to improve the lives of working families and advance women's economic equality. That's why I'm very proud that I'm speaking today as we mark International Women's Day in parliament, which we usually do a few weeks before International Women's Day takes place on 8 March. It is a reminder of how poorly we do in Australia. In fact, this morning, we were reminded that, in the area of gender equality, Australia doesn't sit in the top 5 or the top 10 on the global list of countries that are doing a really good job. We don't even sit in the top 20, nor the top 30. We are No. 43 on that list. In the top 10, you've got a whole lot of countries you'd expect—a bunch of Scandinavian countries and New Zealand—but you've also got Rwanda and Nicaragua. We really should be up there at the top because we're an economy and a country that can make these improvements. This bill will help. Around 181,000 families will benefit directly from the changes in the bill, including around 4,300 people who would have been ineligible under the current scheme without the changes but will now gain access.

What we're really doing is modernising paid parental leave so that it reflects the community and families that we have today. The needs of our families and the community have changed since paid parental leave was first established over a decade ago. These changes will come in from 1 July, which is why we're here now, with some urgency, debating this—so that it can be put in place. It lays the foundations for reform that we want to see by expanding the paid parental leave program to 26 weeks by 2026. The current scheme doesn't do enough to provide access for fathers and partners. It limits the flexibility around how families choose to take their leave and how they choose to transition back to work. One of the current features of the scheme is that the eligibility rules are unfair to families where the mother is the higher income earner. It is worth noting that between 2010 and 2017 the number of women with taxable incomes of more than $150,000 has more than doubled. This bill fixes the issues that limit their access in the current scheme. It fixes all those issues, in fact, and it gives families more access to the government payment. It gives parents greater flexibility, and it encourages parents to share care and to improve gender equality. So, while in a very narrow context this is about making it easier for families, the difference it can make in terms of promoting gender equality is really key, which is why that is named in the bill as its feature—for families and for gender equality.

Let me run through the key points. There are six key changes. From 1 July 2023 the two existing payments will be combined into a single 20-week scheme. We're reserving a portion of the scheme for each parent to support them both to take time off work after a birth or an adoption. We're making it easier for both parents to access the payment by removing the notion of 'primary' and 'secondary' carer. We're expanding access by introducing a $350,000 family income test, which families can be assessed under if they exceed the individual income test. We're increasing flexibility for parents to choose how they take leave days. And we're allowing eligible fathers and partners to access the payment irrespective of whether the birth parent meets the income test or residency requirements. These are changes that will allow many families to breathe a sigh of relief and to know that there's support for them when they really need it most in those early weeks and months.

I want to speak a bit about the use of the leave by fathers and partners in the form of dad and partner pay. This really is a very significant change. One thing it does is preserve the existing feature by reserving two weeks of the payment for each parent. So, there is a preservation of those portions. incorporating this reserved portion under a single scheme rather than a standalone payment means we're making the sharing of parental leave between parents a central part of it—a real partnership. And I think we've seen from so many new mums and dads in this chamber exactly how modern families work. In some ways, this bill is catching up with what is already happening, where it is financially possible to do it.

The bill supports both parents to take leave beyond the two-week reserved period. Really 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 allows fathers and partners to receive the government payment at the same time as their employer-paid leave. That's currently available to mothers, but it hasn't been available to partners and fathers. Fixing this inequality actually removes the financial disincentive for fathers and partners to access the scheme to take time off work to care for a child. What it really does, by allowing both parents to claim the government payment alongside their employer-paid leave, is to make it easier for them to maintain their income while caring for their child, and we hope this will result in more partners and dads taking leave. We are really mindful of the financial pressures people are under, and support for that is built into this legislation.

We know that when both parents are not supported to take time off work to care for their babies a couple of things happen. Usually the mum works less or leaves the workforce altogether to take on caring responsibility, while often the dad or other partner remains in full-time work. That pattern isn't for just the first few months. That pattern persists for years and years after the child's birth, and it is a key driver of gender gaps in workforce participation and therefore in earnings. So, this bill works to address those really fundamental issues.

The government supports dads and non-birth parents sharing the load of caring responsibilities because we know that, when they do, it benefits everyone. When fathers take a greater caring role from the start, it establishes patterns of care that continue throughout a child's life. I was very fortunate to have had a husband who worked shifts when we had young kids, so there was a lot of sharing. But not every family is in that situation. My husband would never miss the joys of making school lunches for his children frequently, regularly, often, because some of those small things are when the real quality time happens, not to mention the skills that you learn in getting kids off to school and negotiating. I think it works both ways. But a whole lot of families just don't have that opportunity. Providing this access and allowing dads and non-birth partners to be involved right from the start will start to change the patterns that emerge in years to come.

The other way we do that is by removing the notion of primary and secondary carers and allowing all eligible parents to claim the payment. If you haven't made this claim, this is probably news. 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. That's a complex and administratively burdensome process. It makes it difficult for fathers to take leave, even when it's in the best interests of their families. That's why, in 2021-22, less than one per cent of mothers transferred some of their payment to fathers or partners. The new simpler claims process will allow eligible fathers to qualify if the mother or birth parent doesn't meet the income test or residency requirements, but they will still get it. So there are a whole lot of things that are going to shift this to a more equitable process.

I also want to note that there is a change in the way it's done. The shift to a gender-neutral claiming process is important because it's more inclusive and recognises the diversity of Australian families. I have spoken briefly about the fact that this lifts the threshold for families. It introduces an income limit for a family of $350,000. But it changes the current limit for individuals, because we found women being excluded from it. A combined limit of 350,000 will bring in a whole lot more families. Parents, including single parents, will be eligible for it if they meet either the individual income or the family income test. Again, it's a much fairer system.

I want to congratulate the ministers who've worked on this. There are always many hands. It reflects the make-up of our caucus, where we have many young members, men and women, who have young children and shows that we are in touch with what is happening in our communities. This is something that, on the face of it, a family might say, 'This is great for us,' but we know that this is great for the broader society and terrific for our economy.

Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in support of the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022. I welcome this legislation because it will make a difference both economically and culturally to this country. It will benefit women, it will benefit families and it will benefit parents.

Australia has a wonderful egalitarian culture, but parenthood is one area where we are not as egalitarian as we think we should be. There is a default view in our community that the primary carer of a child is a woman. Our current parental leave standards and what is being sought to change in this legislation will drive that through.

I remember when my sister had her first child. Probably unusually for many women, she was the primary breadwinner. She had her own business and really needed to get back to work pretty quickly. But to enable her partner to take on primary care responsibilities and be supported by the government, she effectively had to say that she was no longer the primary carer. As a woman, I remember her saying, it made her feel like she was an inadequate mother because she wasn't doing what was expected of her because parental leave was about maternity leave, not proper parental leave. I welcome, from this point of view, this idea that parental leave is a shared responsibility of parents. This is the huge change that, culturally, we need to make.

Secondly, I think of this in terms of the economic lens for women. Today we heard from the United Nations group for women about how Australia lags the economic development and economic empowerment of women. We're No. 43 in the world. In the Prime Minister's words, economywide we are a top-20 country but in empowerment of women we are No. 43 in the world. I think a lot of that comes back to the way we still have a very gendered view of women's place in the workforce, and that is really driven by women's place in the home.

Our default view in this country is that women are the primary carers. The opportunity for the paid parental leave bill is to change this. It's this default view that is holding us back. It's holding back children and it holds back this country. Recently, Treasury released some research showing women's earnings have been reduced by an average of 55 per cent in the first five years of parenthood, which they call the motherhood penalty. This penalty is a result of lower participation in paid work, reduced working hours and a reduced working hourly wage. It doesn't just happen where the father is the breadwinner; even for women who are the primary earner, the motherhood penalty is large. When you look at female economic empowerment, and you look at the statistics, you see that women are more educated than ever and are more educated than young men. But, from the early 20s onwards, female economic empowerment and female economic participation drops off, and it is crucially to do with our role in child care and looking after our children. This is the reason I support this legislation.

I will quickly go to what the bill does. The bill combines paid parental leave with dad and partner pay into one 20-week scheme. You can see from dad and partner pay exactly how gendered that paid parental leave has been to date—this reinforcement that it is the dad who's the secondary parent and it's the mum who is meant to look after things. Two weeks will be reserved on a 'use it or lose it' basis. This is what the current system is. This ensures both parents have a role.

The bill also ensures the leave can be taken flexibly within two years and raises the income threshold so that more people will participate in this. It removes those claimant categories—primary, secondary, tertiary and birth parent requirements—and will be effective from 1 July this year. I believe from the statistics it's going to help 180,000 families each year, which is absolutely crucial, and it's going to be scaled up to up to a full six months by 2026.

I am supporting this bill on the basis of enabling female workforce participation. Women want to contribute economically but we need to make change and we need to make change in our homes as well as our workplaces. This bill has the right opportunity to change our cultural norms that the work of the family is the responsibility of the women. At the same time this isn't just good for female economic participation; this is good for dads and kids as well. There is strong evidence to show that if second parents, which are typically dads, are more involved in raising their children from early ages, this engagement persists. This is good for parental mental health and also good for childhood development. It's absolutely crucial this is seen not just from an economic point of view but also from a social point of view. It will also, I hope, encourage more people to have children, which is also really important when we look at our long-term economic performance.

I very much rise in support of these changes, but I would like the government to pick up the pace. It's absolutely crucial we cement in culture this change that says parenting is a joint responsibility of the parents, not just of the mother. So I would like to see the 'use it or lose it' part expanded to six weeks so that there are six weeks that are a 'use it or lose it' component for each parent, and the remaining weeks are then on a shared basis. The reason I say this is that we already have two weeks of second-parent—typically dad—parental pay, but there isn't as much take-up of this leave as you would hope, and if people aren't taking up the leave it's not going to make a difference.

Sure, two weeks is helpful, but it doesn't actually cement the core responsibility, which is that raising children is the responsibility of both parents. I think that six weeks of paid parental leave is an amount that really creates enough time for a parent to have sole responsibility of their child, to really bond with their child and to really take responsibility for the child. It will build those habits so that it's not just two weeks—almost like holiday looking after the kids—but it's actually six weeks of taking that care, because I think that is going to be most important in driving cultural change.

This would make a greater difference, I think, in terms of the long-term impact of this change not only on female economic empowerment but also on the mental health of second parents and on childhood development. Ultimately, I and many in the community would like to see Australia move to 12 months of paid parental leave, but at six weeks, with that parental leave to be shared equally between parents, if we can equally share parental leave between parents and set those cultural norms from the start that raising children is joint work, we will truly make a difference to the economic empowerment of women.

I'm standing in support of this bill because women in Wentworth, where I'm from, want to be economically empowered. They want great jobs and they want to have wonderful families. They want to do both, and they believe that they should be able to do both, so we need to change the economics and we need to change the culture, because this is not just about the difference for women; it's about the difference for second parents—typically men—and also for children so we can improve mental health, we can improve childhood development and we can improve the economic empowerment of women.

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

Paid parental leave is a proud Labor achievement. It speaks to our values and our determination to build a better future for Australians and Australian families. It speaks to our values of fairness and it speaks to our values of opportunity not just for those who work but also for new children, when they come into the world, to spend time with both their parents in those incredibly challenging but important first weeks and months of their lives.

It was 50 years ago this year that we saw the very first steps towards implementing into Australia's laws what was then called maternity leave. That was legislation from the Whitlam government in 1973 to enact 12 weeks of paid maternity leave for women who worked in the Australian Public Service. It was a welcome reform, but it was amazing that we didn't make much progress for many, many decades after that. I also note that that legislation, quite unheard of for the time, did also include one week of legislated leave for male employees.

The next big investment from the Commonwealth, when it came to ensuring support for parents in those early years, was the massive investment from Paul Keating and the Keating government in early childhood care centres across this country. It was the first time that the Commonwealth had really stepped into that space. It's a legacy which we continue today, with our other reforms ensuring we will have cheaper child care from 1 July this year. This is something that, again, is well overdue.

Then, on 10 May 2009, Mother's Day, we had the announcement from the Rudd government that the Commonwealth would support a massive economic reform of paid parental leave—a universal scheme. We had seen so many schemes that had existed for people who had bargained for them in their enterprise agreements or in particular sectors, such as the public sector, but what Australia lacked and what our economy needed was a universal scheme, and I note that the origins of that scheme came from a reference given by a Labor government to the Productivity Commission. The Productivity Commission said we needed a universal scheme because it was in our national economic interest. That is what this legislation is about, our national economic interest. It will deliver a seismic shift for families who want to spend time with their children and have the economic security that they deserve in the early months of a child's life.

I reflect on the purpose of the legislation we're amending in the comments made by then-minister Jenny Macklin in introducing that bill, which so succinctly speak to all of the benefits delivered when we invest in paid parental leave. Then-minister Macklin said:

Paid parental leave will give babies the best start in life. It means one parent has the financial security to take time off work to care for their baby at home during the vital early months of their baby's life. It will give mothers time to recover from birth and bond with their baby.

After that incredibly successful piece of legislation that has helped thousands of families in my electorate, and probably almost a million families across Australia, we're taking the next step, the step towards increasing that to 26 weeks, six whole months, and providing more opportunities for families to share the leave to make sure that both parents, or both carers, have the opportunity to manage both their work responsibilities and their return to work and their exciting new responsibilities as the parent of a new bub.

There were 2,102 zero- to one-year-olds in the Perth electorate on census night—that is, 2,102 families juggling with the challenge of how you bring in and give a child the best start in life while making sure that you are economically secure. I am so fortunate to have been one of those families, with my wife, Jess, who have benefited from the scheme that Minister Macklin, prime ministers Rudd and Gillard and this parliament brought into being.

Let's talk about what this bill does to give more families access to the sorts of support they need. Firstly, it combines the payments into a single 20-week scheme. That is the first step. That is what we're going to do from 1 July this year. We will reserve two weeks of that for each parent to make sure that each parent has time with their child. We're going to simplify claims and processing by removing the categories of primary and secondary carer so parents have more flexibility in accessing the payments. We will expand access to the scheme by introducing the $350,000 income test. It's important to note that single parents will be able to access the full $350,000 income test, rather than being restricted to a $156,647 limit, because we know the challenges for single parents when they have a new bub in their life. If we can do a bit more to help them, we should, and that is exactly what we're doing. It will also allow eligible fathers and partners to access the payment, irrespective of whether the mother or birth parent meets the income test or residency requirements, so supporting more families to spend time with their children. As is the case with the current scheme, this sits on top of the current employer schemes to ensure that the industrial entitlements people have bargained for over many years are preserved.

The first time I took paid parental leave was in 2017. I was not a member of this place at this time. I was the state secretary of the Western Australian branch of the Labor Party, a political party that might not be close to your heart, Deputy Speaker Goodenough, but is still a very important part of the democratic institutions of Western Australia. I give thanks for that experience. When we knew a bub was on the way, I had a chat with the then party president, Carolyn Smith, and the Premier at the time, Mark McGowan, who had recently been elected, to say, 'I'm going to take 2½ months off at the end of the year because we've got a little bub on the way.' It was an incredible time, being able to spend that time with Jess and our new baby boy, Leo, in the heart of the Perth electorate I probably saw more of what would then become my electorate in those three months than I have at any other time because I was able to just spend it enjoying the wonders of being out and about with a new baby. One of the first events that we took Leo to while I was on paid parental leave was the celebration of Australians voting for marriage equality. It was pretty special taking Leo to that. I also had the joy of taking him—standing right up the back with his little headphones on—to a Paul McCartney concert during that time.

When our second child was due to arrive, I was very fortunate to be a member of this place, and I think we've seen time and time again that we are very fortunate that members are afforded leave with their families when children come along, and I think it's a credit to leaders of all parties in this place that that is accommodated. I will talk about my experience. Firstly, the then Leader of the Opposition, Anthony Albanese, was very supportive. Our bub Ruby was born during COVID in 2020 and that came with some particular challenges around travel and other things, and I really do appreciate the support of the leader of my party in accommodating all of those needs. I remember, towards the end of my three months of leave that I had taken from being here in the parliament, speaking to the Leader of the Opposition and saying, 'Look, I feel like I could come back.' It was February and I had that big sense of FOMO. I'm so grateful for the leadership he provided in saying: 'No, no, no. You don't need to rush back here. Parliament will still be here in March. Stick to your schedule.' That's exactly what I did, and it was a wonderful piece of advice.

I think about the challenges that we all have in this place when our staff, very fortunately, add new children to their lives. Last year, the Perth electorate office welcomed baby Eloise and if I can say on the record in this place congratulations to Dylan and Amy on the birth of that wonderful child. Equally, we welcomed baby Jude, who recently had his first birthday, and congratulations to Marissa and Matt on one wonderful year of parenting. Then, foreshadowing things to come, we've also got two wonderful children, Cillian and Sean, children of Aoife and Aaron, who now have the school and childcare juggles that so many families have, which is why it's important that we don't support parents just in these first six months—as we're dealing with in this piece of legislation—but that we support parents and working families throughout those critical early years. We know it puts pressure on family budgets, and we know that there are families that are doing it tough right now, so this is one thing we can do to support families, but it comes in partnership with a whole range of other important policies to support working families to make sure they can give their kids the best start in life. It works in partnership with our plans for the middle of this year to deliver cheaper child care, so that, when you no longer are able to spend every waking moment with your beloved new child and you hand them over for the first time to a highly qualified early childhood educator, you are able to do that without it breaking the bank.

The supports we will put in place, which will come into effect in the middle of this year, will make child care more affordable for 1.2 million families. And, because of the National Quality Framework, which was introduced more than a decade ago, again, by this side of the House, we know that the quality of child care and the quality of early childhood education and care is so much more than it was just a few decades ago—again, giving children the best start in life. If you think about the other things that educate children and help them understand how the world works, I'm proud that we're part of a government that introduced ABC Kids—one of the great investments in our public broadcaster.

I'm pleased that this year, for families whose children might need medication either on an ongoing basis or on an ad hoc basis—again, because this government was elected—medicines are $12.50 cheaper. That does make a difference when you're pushing the pram, as I do, to the Beaufort Street chemist and you see that things are getting cheaper when it comes to those absolute essentials—and products on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme are essential. Doing what we can to make them cheaper is something that we should, and have, done. At the same time, when parents go back to work after having had that great six months of paid parental leave—coming into effect from 2026— we want to make sure that they are going back to secure, well-paid jobs. That's why you've seen us pass legislation to enhance job security. It's why you've seen us take action by writing to Fair Work to back a pay increase for those on the lowest of wages—the minimum wage. Again, that's something that we should all welcome.

If we think about the challenges we have when it comes to making sure that parents, when they are on the government paid parental leave scheme and are returning to work, have good, secure, well-paid jobs, we have to be honest that we still have some big challenges ahead of us when it comes to delivering on gender equality. We know from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency's 2020-21 employer census that women continue to dominate part-time and casual roles. They are more likely to be in insecure forms of casual work. We know that currently only two out of every five full-time employees are women. And the gender pay gap, while it continues to reduce, means that women, on average, earn $25,800 less per year than men. There is no cause for this other than that we haven't, to this point, got the policy design right to deliver true gender equality, and this legislation we are debating today is one step towards that.

We also know there's a severe underrepresentation of women when it comes to CEOs and roles of business leadership. Only two out of every five managers are women. And we know there is so much more to be done in terms of ensuring that we lift up our entire society by achieving gender equality. Gender equality is business for all of us. Gender equality is about making sure that those children who will be benefitting from spending more time with their families, more time with their parents, their carers or their mums and dads will, when they grow up and enter the workforce, be entering a workforce where we have ensured pay equity, proper equality of opportunity, and the equal, fair society that every Australian expects us in this place to be working towards.

Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I applaud the government for introducing the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022, and I would like to acknowledge former Senator Stirling Griff for raising this issue during his time in the Senate. In his speech on 11 June back in 2020, the then senator said:

There is inequity between two families on the same combined income: they would be eligible if the man were the higher income earner but not eligible if the woman were the higher income earner, which is just unfair. The current rules just don't reflect the realities of modern parenting, with more dads staying at home to care for children. The number of stay-at-home fathers has grown to 80,000 in 2016, based on the latest census data. It is time to move away from models that assume children will be cared for by a primary carer who is the mother. Modern parents don't define themselves in this way, and it's time the legislation doesn't either.

That was back in 2020.

In July last year I received an email from a constituent, and I'd like to read it out here. It said: 'Dear Ms Sharkie, I'm an emergency department doctor. My income hovers just over the threshold for the paid parental leave. My partner is a gin distiller. His projected income this year is around $45,000. I'm currently seven months pregnant with our first child and as such have been looking into paid parental leave. The current entitlement would not be enough to support our family. So our hope was for my partner to use the parental leave and I would go back to work. I have to admit, I have been shocked by how sexist the system remains, even in 2022. If our genders were swapped we would be entitled almost without question. However, because the income threshold is based on the income of the mother/female, our application has been rejected, despite the fact that my partner was going to be the one using the vast majority of the leave. I am shocked to see such a system still exists in 2022—a system that is still based on the fact that "a woman stays home and the man or father goes to work".'

It's quite rare for a policy to deliver significant social as well as economic gains, but this one delivers both. Australia has higher rates of female workforce participation than in many OECD countries, yet women are far more likely to work part-time than women in other advanced economies, and the main reason they work part-time is to care for children.

This bill, which encourages a more equitable sharing of unpaid care between parents, gives mothers more opportunity to engage in paid work, with clear, positive outcomes for women, families and the economy. For some families, the traditional model, of the male breadwinner and the female carer and second income earner, works well, but for many others it doesn't. Many women reported a desire to participate in more paid work, while many fathers would like to spend more time at home with their children but feel unable to, due to barriers that prevent shifts in traditional work patterns. These traditional family roles and work patterns undermine women's economic security, through reduced pay and lower lifetime earnings. Every woman who is the family's main breadwinner prior to babies arriving is statistically far more likely to drop their work hours than their male partner. Unfortunately, this leads to a pattern that persists well after the children are no longer in care.

But this bill can deliver so much more than economic gains. Overseas studies show that policies allowing fathers to be more engaged in their children's early years have lasting impacts on fathers and their children, and that when men are given greater opportunity to spend time with their children in those early years they tend to have stronger relationships and greater life satisfaction—in essence, they are happier. Children, in turn, benefit from increased time spent with their father as well as from the diversity of their interactions in their early years.

That same constituent contacted my office recently and wrote:

With our current 5 month old my partner wanted to spend as much time at home with him as possible and was hoping to take parental leave when I returned to work. I love my job as an Emergency Doctor but would have much preferred my child to have the opportunity to spend time with his Dad when I am at work rather than at daycare.

Because I earn about the threshold my partner has been denied the chance to spend this precious time with our child. I feel angry that it's 2023 and a father is only able to access the leave on their own merit if the mother is considered incapacitated. This is grossly unfair to all of the fathers currently playing an active role in their childrens upbringings and almost exclusively affects families where women are the main income earners.

With the change in legislation we are hoping if we are lucky enough to have another child then he will be able to take the full parental leave time to spend being a hands on father to our children.

This bill will encourage more dads to take up paid parental leave, leading to more equitable family roles becoming normalised, thus releasing both men and women from heavily gendered norms that have previously been so prevalent in Australian society. I commend this bill to the House.

Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The other day I caught my husband flicking through the photos from our children's early years; images from play dates, local parks, kinder gym and music classes. He fell silent and then said, 'I wish I had the opportunity to do this with them.' It struck me that, when my children were born, it was I who scaled back on work, and in those early months spent time at home looking after them. Paid parental leave was not an option for me back then. But then my husband's words brought home the sense of loss he felt for a time that will never return. I take for granted the time I had with my babies, but it was no bed of roses. I would have loved to have had my husband share some of that carer load. But, alas, he was locked out, an indication of how far we need to go in challenging gendered roles: the mother as the homemaker and the father as the breadwinner.

The cost of not challenging social norms means that we further entrench gender inequality as women fall further behind and fathers are denied the opportunity to spend time with their children. Having guided many patients through end-of-life care, I can assure you that on our deathbeds there is no nostalgia for working long hours or having spent time in pointless meetings, but we do assess the quality of our nearest and dearest relationships.

There is much to do in challenging these cultural norms that discourage men from spending time with their newborns. A survey of 842 men conducted by an Australian recruitment agency, Hays, in 2019 indicated that 54 per cent of Australian men believe that new fathers don't take the full parental leave they are entitled to, because of the hit to their finances, while 34 per cent fear being perceived as less committed to their job. However, 80 per cent of men believe that shared parental leave and shared child-rearing responsibility would help breakdown unconscious bias and improve gender diversity—a resounding endorsement for modernising our Paid Parental Leave scheme. We know that many more men want to take time off from work following the birth of their child, based on data from the private sector. Deloitte introduced similar leave entitlements for mothers and fathers in 2015 and saw an increase in the uptake of paid parental leave among fathers from 20 to 40 per cent.

It is telling that 'the fatherhood penalty' is not in our lexicon. In fact, I never want to hear the words 'penalty' and 'parent' associated in the same sentence. According to Treasury, women reduce their hours of paid work by 35 per cent over the first five years following the birth of a child. In contrast, fathers experience only a transient decline in paid work during the first month of parenthood, before resuming previous levels. It's a fatherhood blip rather than a penalty. The downstream effects on women are insidious. Decisions made in the earliest time of a child's life lock in patterns of parenting for years, if not decades, to come. An Australian woman does more caring and twice as much household work even a decade after the birth of her first child. In other words, having children worsens the gendered division of work at home, which persists for years to come, serving neither the mother nor the father's wellbeing.

Australia has one of the least generous parental leave schemes in the OECD, both in terms of rate of pay and the amount of time allocated. Fathers, in particular, receive very little dedicated leave, and their take-up of the scheme is very poor. Currently, the primary carer, who is usually the mother, is eligible for 18 weeks of paid parental leave at minimum wage in addition to any employer scheme. The secondary carer leave, called 'dad and partner pay' provides two weeks at minimum wage, and cannot be taken alongside paid leave from an employer. So, many fathers currently face a substantial pay cut should they take up the scheme in its current form. In addition, 12 weeks of the 18 must be taken as a block, discouraging the shared taking of leave between parents.

It's a cruel irony that the scheme is called 'paid parental leave' when almost all the primary parental leave recipients are, in fact, mothers. In 2017-18, less than 0.5 per cent of parents using the scheme were men—the second-lowest in the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries. A Grattan Institute report from 2021 indicates that three in four men are passing up the right to PPL because it's probably not worth the hassle. International experience shows that when targeted dad-leave schemes are introduced take-up is actually very good. Uptake was 80 per cent among fathers in 2018 in Quebec, compared to 28 per cent when the scheme was introduced. More-evolved Australian businesses have realised that equal paid parental leave schemes are good for the bottom line because they help to retain the talent. PwC reported a reduction in the proportion of their staff who've resigned while on paid parental leave from 6.4 per cent in 2017, before a more flexible option was introduced, to 3.3 per cent in 2021.

Improving paid parental leave dovetails with our desire to make gender inequality extinct. Paid parental leave was a key reform raised at the Jobs and Skills Summit by business, parents and their advocates. The Albanese government has listened. This amendment is the most significant reform to the PPL scheme since its establishment by Labor in 2011 under Prime Minister Julia Gillard. The changes to commence on 1 July this year are the first stage of reforms that will lead to the scheme's expansion to 26 weeks by 2026. Approximately 180,000 parents in Australia, and 960 in Higgins, will benefit from this scheme this year. Our bill will expand access to the scheme and provide more flexibility to families.

The key changes include combining the two existing payments into a single 20-week scheme, eliminating mother and dad components—no more gendered titles like 'primary carer'; we're getting rid of those. This will make it easier for families to access the payments and decide who will claim paid leave first. We will expand access by introducing a $350,000 family income test which families can be assessed under if they exceed the individual income test, which currently sits at $156,000. This change to income thresholds will open the scheme up for more families. We are also allowing parents to choose how they take their leave days. Until now, a 12-week block had to be taken, but these changes now mean that paid leave may be as small as one day at a time, with periods of work in between, so parents will have flexibility. The reformed PPL scheme will reserve a dedicated use-it-or-lose-it portion for each parent in order to incentivise uptake. This will be two weeks for each parent, but it will be reviewed as the scheme increases from its current 20 weeks to 26 weeks in 2026.

Fathers and partners will be able to access PPL at the same time as any employer funded parental leave scheme, which is currently not the case. Currently, many fathers would have to take a pay cut and drop to the minimum wage in order to access paid leave. We are allowing them, like mothers, to now access employer and government schemes were employer schemes exist, which currently affects about 50 per cent of all businesses. We want that to increase. We hope that we see an increase in businesses bringing in their own in-house PPL schemes. It's a great way to attract and retain talent.

Early involvement of dads sets up a virtuous cycle of care and a more equal division of housework, and it helps build confidence in fathers' parenting skills from soothing baby to changing nappies, bathtime and bed. All are skills, and all can be learned with practice, free from the pressures of work. A healthy bond from birth also sets fathers up for greater engagement in developmental activities like reading and playtime later on in life. I want to break those social norms that box in men as breadwinners and women as homemakers—in fact, I want to smash them. The modern family in Higgins, with both parents working, demands flexibility and an opportunity to do things a little better than their parents' generation. I commend this bill to the House.

Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would just like to comment on the member for Higgins's fine contribution just now. Member for Higgins, I join you in wishing to smash those gender norms not just for the sake of women but for the sake of men; we all benefit, and mostly our children benefit. Thank you for those comments.

The Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022 is an important step towards supporting Australian families, and one I welcome. As a former midwife and academic researching maternal and child health, I deeply understand how giving children the best start in life is one of the most powerful drivers of lifelong health. It's preventative health 101. Creating an environment that promotes parent-child attachment is key to that. A law that supports both parents to care for their young children at home with paid leave when they choose to is good public policy.

Good public policy should always be supported by evidence, and there is plenty of evidence to support this bill. We began to understand the importance of nurturing parent-infant attachment in the 1950s with the groundbreaking work of Bowlby and Ainsworth. Their work was followed on by Emerson, and a raft of subsequent studies has demonstrated that attachment is crucial for children's physical, psychological, behavioural and developmental wellbeing. Longitudinal studies have confirmed lifelong benefit from strong, healthy attachment.

We have been slow to embrace paid parental leave in Australia. I spent many years studying and working in women's and children's health research in Sweden, a place, alongside other Nordic countries, we have looked to for guidance on best practice policy for families. In those days, Swedish colleagues regularly asked me, 'Why do you not have parent leave in Australia?' Very straightforward, the Swedes! For them it was as fundamental as Medicare is to us. Since the introduction of the Swedish parental leave reform in 1974, fathers have had the same rights as mothers to use parental leave. Parental benefit is 240 days per parent, a total of 480 days, and it's distributed between parents as they choose. Sweden introduced the 'use it or lose it' system in 1995, recognising—all the things that we've heard about—why fathers don't take up this leave. They reserved a month specifically for fathers that they would lose if they didn't take it. They watched it, and they decided they needed to raise it to two months in 2002, and then, in a bid to achieve further gender equity, this was increased to three months in 2015. There's a lesson there. We need to monitor how well our system works and be prepared to amend it again if we need to.

There is strong evidence in Sweden of paternal and maternal leave being taken up. In 2013 almost 90 per cent of fathers took some amount of parental leave. The number of days taken varies between men and women still. Overall, 44 per cent of parental leave benefit recipients were men, and 56 per cent were women. It's getting closer. Even so, the proportion of total days used by men has slowly increased from seven per cent of all leave in 1989 to 25 per cent in 2013. Furthermore, the percentage of couples that share parental leave equitably is slowly increasing, indicating a more equitable distribution of child rearing that has benefits for mothers, fathers, other key carers and infants. The evidence is there, and I support the bill's intention to further incentivise dads and non-birth parents to share the load of care responsibility. We know that, when caring responsibilities are shared, the child, the birthing partner, the family, all benefit—physically, mentally and socially. It's great public policy.

Based on what we have learned, though, from the long history of parent leave in Sweden, I encourage the government to fund an effective and targeted campaign to ensure that non-birth parents are actively encouraged to access these new benefits. I support increasing paid parental leave from 18 weeks to 20 weeks. This is a great start, and I really look forward to seeing paid parental leave increase to 26 weeks in line with international best practice.

Removing the categories of primary, secondary and tertiary claimants and removing the requirement that the primary claimant must be the birth parent are positive steps towards recognising the diversity of Australian families. I hope that the families of Indi, who I represent and who are configured in many shapes and sizes, find accessing parental leave easier and more inclusive.

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, most importantly, more opportunity for women. Reforming the Paid Parental Leave scheme is one part, and an important part, a groundbreaking part actually, of improving women's economic equality and encouraging greater economic independence for women. That, again, confers lifelong benefits on women and children.

As the minister said in introducing the bill, we need a system that reflects modern families. We need a system that improves the flexibility for families to balance work and family life in a way that suits their diverse needs. But—and I have to spend some time talking about this because it is so interrelated—parents can't go back to work if there's no-one to look after their child. This bill will hopefully take some pressure off finding child care by supporting families to provide care at home, particularly in the child's first year. But access to affordable, high-quality and flexible child care has to work hand in glove as part of this policy, and further reforms are necessary. Child care has been a key focus for the government, and I encourage them to continue on this path, for, if we're truly going to support parents entering and staying in the workforce, we need to do this.

I draw the government's attention particularly to rural and communities such as mine, where finding child care has always been a challenge—and it has never been a greater challenge than it is right now. High-quality, accessible early childhood education and care is an essential service in a community where we want maximum workforce participation. For parents, it allows them to work, to train, to study, to open doors—and to provide for their families, of course. For children, it keeps them safe and healthy, assists in their development and builds their skills for school and well into the future.

A thriving childcare service is crucial everywhere but particularly in rural and regional areas where child care is a linchpin service in maintaining the sustainability of small towns and communities. Having childcare services locally, even in thin markets, even where there are not many kids, means that young families can live and work and stay local. If childcare centres close, then the community loses a key hub. In Indi, we've experienced the threat of closure in several small towns where the market is thin and childcare workers are so scarce.

Very early on in my tenure as the member for Indi, I was very pleased to successfully advocate and work with the people of Bellbridge to secure their local childcare centre. That little community has continued to go from strength to strength, and I would argue, based on the strength of their child care. Once a local childcare centre closes down, this is what happens. Parents have to take their children somewhere else, which often leads to a flow-on effect of that child entering a school in another town. Subsequently, this leads to school closures, the loss of opportunities, the loss of childcare workers or primary school teachers who lived there—the list goes on—and, ultimately, contributes to the desertification of country towns.

Family policy is crucial to rural and regional development, and child care remains an urgent issue in Indi. I need to tell you about this. Each month—and this has really grown for me in Indi—parents, both mums and dads, write to me about how hard it is to find a childcare placement for their child. They tell me that this means they're delaying going back to work. Many of them are critical healthcare workers, such as psychologists, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, not to mention logistics supply people and all the other people we have in our regions. The lack of available places is actually severely compounding the problem of essential worker shortages in Indi.

In Wangaratta, some children have been on the waitlist for 18 months, with over 100 families now on their waitlist. In Bright, there's a 70-child waitlist. In Wodonga, families have their children on waitlists at 10 or more centres and still can't get a spot. Working parents are forced to quit their jobs—I'm not exaggerating—or reduce their hours because there are not enough childcare places. So paid parental leave reform is brilliant. It's good. I'm happy about it. We must, though, work in lockstep with childcare places as well.

One of the reasons there are no childcare places available is that there are not enough educators. One educator in Wangaratta, who's worked in the sector since 1994, tells me she has never seen the level of educators so low. In Corryong, a tiny town in the Upper Murray, minimal childcare staff mean women are considering leaving town because they can't return to work. They estimate that at least 10 more childcare workers are required to meet the demand. I recently met a highly trained nurse in Cudgewa who told me how badly needed she was at the local hospital, but she simply couldn't go to work because she could not get childcare. Parents who send their children to The Lake View Children's Centre in Mount Beauty talk about how they feel the centre is in survival mode when it comes to staffing. They're simply not getting paid enough. One mum told me: 'We need our childcare centres to retain quality staff to provide our children with the expert care and education they need. Access facilities and better pay for our educators should be priorities.' And I couldn't agree more.

I welcome the government's commitment towards lifting the maximum childcare subsidy rate to 90 per cent for families for the first child in care and keeping higher subsidy rates for the second and additional children in care. Great work! Making child care cheaper, though, is one part of making child care more accessible. I have to emphasise that—and many of my colleagues from the regions are saying the same thing—regional communities can't take up this cheaper child care because they're limited by having the child care to take up. This government also needs to prioritise attracting, developing and retaining quality childcare staff to develop the workforce that will meet the demand that comes with cheaper child care, a demand that's well and truly being felt in Indi.

We must increase the minimum award pay for childcare workers. Improving pay conditions in the childcare sector is one of the reasons why I ultimately supported the government's secure jobs, better pay bill last year. Secondly, the government must continue to invest in training a childcare workforce. The government has agreed on a $1 billion national skills agreement, which will provide additional funding for a fee-free TAFE in 2023 to provide more training for industries just like child care, and I welcome that. A longer-term agreement aimed at driving sector reform and supporting women's workforce participation is still being negotiated. I sincerely hope that growing the childcare workforce is directly addressed in this agreement. I also call on the government to fully implement the National Children's Education and Care Workforce Strategy, which seeks to address recruitment, retainment and sustainability of the childcare workforce. I also welcome the upcoming comprehensive review by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission on child care. I look forward to reading their findings and recommendations, and working with government to see them fulfilled.

Thirdly, and finally, I call on the government to look at the many intersecting factors causing worker shortages, including childcare workers, in regional and rural Australia and placing enormous pressure on families. One factor I consistently hear about is the lack of affordable housing. The government's upcoming housing legislative package aims to address affordable housing. I'll be closely watching how this package will prioritise affordable housing and affordable rentals in regional and rural areas. If this doesn't happen, critical sectors like child care will continue to suffer along with all the flow-on effects this has for small communities. I look forward to working with the government on how this package can truly deliver for regional electorates like Indi.

The Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022 is a very important reform in family policy, gender equity, and child and parent health. I commend this bill to the House.

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

It's a pleasure to follow the member for Indi and the member for Higgins, who both brought their medical history and knowledge to this very important topic. I also hear the member for Indi when she talks about how important it is that we support reforms for child care and that child care is accessible to women across this country, including in regional areas. That is a huge part of the gender equity puzzle our government is absolutely trying to address and solve. Thank you for raising those issues as well.

I am passionate about paid parental leave. It will surprise no-one in this place to hear that because I bang on about it a lot here. I feel like I spent most of my first term speaking about it. In fact, in my first speech I called my husband a unicorn because my family is in the unusual position of Australian families where I work full-time and my husband works part-time. We are unusual in that situation because our workplace laws, with the support we've put around, have not supported Australian families to be in that position. We have set up a system which is a good system but has not really allowed for the gender equity we want to see in our community.

As someone who worked in this building for the last Labor government when we first brought in paid parental leave, I know that that scheme in itself was a game changer. Particularly for low-paid women and women in insecure work, that Labor scheme, that first paid parental leave scheme we had in this country, was the first time they had the option of accessing pay after they had a child. That is a truly game changing Labor reform. But it's been a decade since we brought that in, so we are well and truly due an update, and that is absolutely what this bill, the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022, is all about. I am so proud and pleased to be standing here, after a term advocating for action on paid parental leave, saying that our government is getting on with it and that we understand modern families need a flexible scheme that supports mums and dads to take time out with a newborn and to know they will be supported with pay during that time and will have good jobs to go back to. I am very pleased to be here today.

We know we still have in this country a huge problem with gender equality. We are just not where we should be. Overall, Australia ranks 43rd out of 146 countries for gender equality. It is not great if you consider where we should be as a wealthy, progressive country, particularly if you consider that in 2011 we ranked 23rd—so we've unfortunately been going in the wrong direction, mainly under the previous Liberal-National government. It is very much our government's intention to turn that around to improve gender equality in this country.

The gender pay gap remains one of the standout areas where we need to do so much better. Since 2006 we've dropped from 13th to 36th in women's economic participation. Women make up only 38 per cent of all full-time employees in Australia and 68½ per cent of the part-time or casual workforce—what a disparity there! We're also ranked 37th for women's representation in senior, official and management roles, and we see persistent gaps in industries such as manufacturing, IT and STEM, which continue to be male dominated, while others such as education are dominated the other way, by women.

What we know is that a lot of this does come back to the way we support women to juggle work and families and how we support men to juggle work and families. If we have a system that encourages only women to take time out after they've had a baby, what we're saying is that, from that point on in a woman's working life, they will be the person who, after taking maybe that initial year off, will then go back to work part time, probably until their child is in late primary school. At that time they may find that re-entering the workforce full time is quite a difficult task—it has been a long gap. Then, obviously, we see that flowing on into women's economic security as they get older. In fact, we now see that older women are the group most at risk of homelessness in our society. So this is an issue that flows right through women's lives.

At the same time that this is happening for women, we see what is happening for men's careers. I've seen data that shows that when men have babies it's common that they get a pay rise and a promotion. The exact opposite of what happens for women at that time happens for man. I know from talking to people in my community, and we know from work that has been done in this area, that so many men in our community do want to be able to take more time to be able to care for their children and support their children after they've been born. Unfortunately, to date our paid parental scheme has not supported those men to do that, so I am pleased that this scheme is going to make that change.

These changes to paid parental leave will mean more choice for families. There will be more flexibility in how and when partners take time off work and how they share care. There will be more support so that both parents can spend that critical time with their child in those important first two years and create a pattern of care throughout their lives.

Again, I will draw on my own experience here—I do have small children, so this really resonates for me. You see massive difference. From the very beginning my husband has known that there are jobs that he does. It's not me telling him to do jobs. It's not me explaining how to change a nappy, how to do the bath or what the routine is. That's stuff he knows because he does it and because he's had the privilege of having the time to do it. Not all men in our community have had the privilege of doing that, because they have not been in a position where they've been economically supported to do that, so I'm very pleased that this legislation starts to make some change on that.

Of course, it gives more opportunity for women to be supported both in their parenting life and in their working life, and, as I've been talking about, it maximises women's economic equality. These changes will come into effect on 1 July this year, when we can combine the two existing payments—parental leave pay and dad and partner pay—into a single 20-week scheme, removing the notion of a primary and a secondary carer and making it easier for both parents to access the payment.

Both parents will have the same opportunities, the choice and the flexibility in how and when they choose to take paid parental leave, so families can make decisions about what works best for them. They could take the leave in a continuous block. They could take it in short bursts. They could even take single days at a time. It means that dads will no longer have to be on unpaid leave from their work to access government PPL. Just as women have been able to do, they will be able to access the scheme at the same time as being on paid leave from their work. A portion of the scheme will still be reserved for each parent so that parents can share the leave and both can take some time at home with their child. This scheme is also going to be designed to make the transition back to work easier, allowing flexibility around when you take the leave so it doesn't have to be a continuous block. Over time, we move to 26 weeks of leave by 2026, delivering a full six months of leave. That will be a really important change in our country.

All the evidence from overseas, where a lot of OECD countries do have much more generous paid parental leave schemes than does our country, shows that a strengthened PPL system delivers important benefits to health and wellbeing not just for women, not just for men, but, of course, for children as well. For parents, more time at home means that they do get to spend that time caring, being part of early childhood development, being the people who know the routines, set the routines and manage the routines, and who do that without having to juggle work at the same time. For children, it means seeing that they can be cared for by parents of both genders—that Mum and Dad are both there to do that caring role. Again, if we think about gender equity in this country and the long way we have to go still to achieve gender equity, setting up those norms of gender roles from the very start of a child's life is so important. If a young child sees that Mum and Dad can both be carers and that it's not a role that just goes to women, that changes their whole perspective on how these roles play out, again, throughout our community and throughout our society.

At the moment in Australia, dads take up the government paid parental leave scheme at about half the rate of mums. The scheme as it stands has limited the ability of parents to share caring responsibility. The current eligibility rules have also been unfair for families where the mother is the higher income earner. In a situation where two families have the same household income, one might in fact be ineligible for government PPL because the mother earns more, whereas the other family, where the father earns more, may be eligible. Our changes will fix these issues. It is important, as we go through this, that we continue to take a lens of gender equity to the improvements to the scheme. I very much hope that we will see a 'use it or lose it' component to the scheme. Again, evidence from overseas shows us that take-up of these types of schemes by dads is most likely when there is a portion that is reserved just for fathers. That encourages men to see it as a scheme that is there for them to access and that they are in fact responsible for using for their children.

I want to commend Australian businesses for their approach to supporting Australian families that are combining work and early caring responsibilities. We know that a lot of businesses in recent years have really changed the way they run their paid parental leave schemes. They now look at much more of an equity model, where leave can be taken by men and by women, moving away from this idea of primary and secondary carers. It will be good to see this updated scheme—this much improved scheme from our government—working hand in hand with employers across our country, delivering the best outcomes for businesses, parents and kids.

We are also doing a lot of other work in other areas. Paid parental leave is just one way our government is improving workforce participation and equality for women in our country. Last year, our government set up the Women's Economic Equality Taskforce, chaired by Sam Mostyn AO. It has been tasked with advising us on how to improve women's equality right throughout the economic sphere. We know that single reforms or changes, even super important ones like paid parental leave, won't do all the work themselves. We need to work across the spectrum to make sure that women can realise their full potential in the economic sphere as well as in their caring roles. So the taskforce is focusing on how gender responsive policy and budgeting will advance gender equality in Australia and the measures that we need to make this happen. They're looking at issues like the gender pay gap, workforce participation, patterns of paid and unpaid care, safe and respectful workplaces, and planning for skills and industries of the future. The task force has already recognised that reform is needed in heavily feminised industries, such as child care and aged care, and the government has acted to do all it can to raise wages in these industries. Again, those are caring roles that traditionally we've seen as women's roles—industries which are heavily dominated by women and which for too long have been underpaid. We need to make sure women are supported in those industries and are able to work in those industries.

That goes hand in hand, obviously, with our government's efforts to make child care more affordable for Australian families. Once paid parental leave ends, most families get to that point where they need to access paid child care. Again, the evidence has told us that the cost of child care in this country has just shut too many families out. For many women, when they've finished their paid parental leave and are looking to return to work, there has been an economic decision where they've had to say, 'I can only do three days a week because I earn less than my husband or partner; the childcare fees are so expensive that, actually, I'll be working for nothing on that fourth or fifth day.' Our reforms to make child care cheaper for 96 per cent of Australian families will very much change that equation for Australian families.

We are making it easier for Australian families, for men and women, to share the caring load from birth, with an improved Paid Parental Leave scheme, to that point where children are entering child care. It will allow for that ongoing flexibility and ongoing sharing of roles that we know is good for Australian families, good for our children and good for our whole community as we see women being able to increase their participation in the workforce and men being able to take up roles that many of them want—to care for their children and to be an active part of their family life. We see all of that as our government continues to work to close the gender pay gap and to support women in low-paid industries. This is really exciting to be speaking here today on such a bill that has been 10 years coming but which I know will make a huge difference to the lives of Australian women and Australian families.

James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in favour of the second reading of the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022. I start by commending our shadow minister for his contribution as our lead speaker. He indicated the coalition's support for this bill and made a couple of important historical points that I also want to reiterate, particularly around disappointment about the inability of the coalition, after we won the 2013 election, to implement our paid leave scheme, which of course was blocked in the Senate.

That is really regrettable because, on top of the scheme that's been in place since 2011, we could have dramatically enhanced support for paid leave. We took it to an election, and the people of Australia elected us. They wanted us and our policies, and it is a shame that that policy was not enacted, because there are a lot of people out there who would have benefited significantly from that. It is regrettable that we have a history of class warfare when it comes to supporting parents having children. There's nothing wrong with being successful and earning a high income. That's not something to demonise. Certainly I will take up every opportunity to stand up for all parents getting the most support they can get and flexibility around being able to care for their children. Higher-income earners are doing nothing wrong; we are lucky to have them. It's a shame. The scheme we sought to put in place, just to remind everyone, would have provided payments on actual income up to a cap of 150,000 a year pro rata. I think there is nothing wrong with people that earn $150,000 a year. It's becoming, in real terms, a lower and lower amount, with inflation running as hot as it is.

A mere 10 or 12 years since paid leave was first introduced, it's pleasant to see how much society has moved on. We obviously are all coming together from a bipartisan point of view to remove some of the old stereotypes that were in place, even a mere 10 or 12 years ago, around the role of men and women as parents and carers, and the concept of differentiation. As the shadow minister pointed out, a lot of the measures being adopted in this bill are measures that we ourselves announced in the budget last year. We support that.

In particular, we support the concept of equity between parents. It shouldn't be the case, for example, if a mother is earning a higher income than the father, that the couple are at a financial disadvantage under the individual income test. That's obviously ridiculous. Parents will be quite reasonably making their own decisions about how they will structure care arrangements for their newborn children in a way that works for them as a family, taking into account all sorts of issues, including income. They will not have a situation where they might make a different decision to the one they want to make because there is a penalty in place based on the income of a mother versus a father. This change removes that scenario, with the $350,000 cap for couples. We want to see equity and decision-making in the hands of parents, not being guided or interfered with because a government policy gives a different outcome depending on the decision they make. This is getting rid of the two different categories of leave, and giving flexibility around the way in which to take that leave.

The great thing about 2023 is that we are continuing to break down a lot of the stereotypes around the roles that people were expected to play within the family unit in decades gone by. Being just shy of my 40th birthday, I'm in that cohort of people with families and children. I have a lot of—what's the popular term?—lived experience in managing child care and the like in my own family, with my own partner. All of our friends are doing it in the ways that suit them best. Giving people that flexibility and giving parents the ability to make decisions in their interests, unique to their circumstances, is really important.

I'd like to commend the businesses out there that have put in place their own schemes in addition to the base-level scheme, the paid leave scheme that we're amending here, which every Australian has access to. These companies are making sure that, in their employment agreements, they are putting in place parental leave well beyond this. I mentioned at the start of my remarks that there is a growing cohort of people who don't have access to this government scheme, but it is certainly the case that a lot of employers are making the decision and recognising the need, from a talent attraction and retention point of view, to make sure that they are as family friendly and flexible as possible.

Gone are the days of merely accommodating maternity leave and keeping a role available for someone while they leave the workforce to raise children. Now I think there is a growing and important expectation that employers are providing all the support necessary for parents through their decision to have children and providing the leave they need to care for their children; and ensuring that they have financial support through those schemes and that the impact on their career around the time they leave the workforce is as limited as possible. There is also the expectation that workplace support and pathways will still be open to them into the future whilst maintaining flexibility for them to make decisions on raising children that are in their and their family's best interests.

We in the coalition are very passionate about family. We are very passionate about the family unit being the core of our society and making sure that family is the priority in our society, our community and our economy, and never the other way around. People should never have to make decisions that disadvantage their families because they have to to avoid an economic penalty. We will always be striving and looking for opportunities to better support the family unit.

It is not—this is a really difficult point to make—in the best interest of people's individual decision-making. As a nation, we have to make sure that we're supporting people to have as many children as they want to have and not in any way putting in coercive policies. We understand how vitally important it is that the demographic structure of our nation ensures that a proportion of our population continues to be significant enough to support the entirety of that population. We know that countries like Japan and Italy have very significant ageing populations and emerging significant challenges in providing the care that everyone in their society deserves, with a diminishing proportion of people providing the economic activity and the tax base to do that.

In this country, migration plays a very significant part in supporting our population pyramid. We also have a higher fertility rate than some of those countries. But we used to say, across the western world, that's not the case at all. We've just seen a milestone in China, where, for the first time probably in history, certainly with available records—putting aside the awful consequences of Communist Party policy under Mao Zedong and the years of famine et cetera—they now have a natural reduction occurring in their population. That is purely around the excellent outcome of modern medicine, meaning we are living longer, which we all are very much a grateful for, but with a dramatically reduced fertility rate. Obviously China had some social engineering policies partly associated with that, like the one-child policy. But they are in line with a lot of countries that, frankly, also have this issue of low fertility driven by the choice of couples to perhaps have fewer children than was the case in generations gone by.

We need to make sure that, on an absolute choice basis, nothing is standing in the way of people having as many children as they want to. That's why initiatives such as the ones in this bill are so vitally important. It's everyone's decision as to whether to have children in the first place, as well as how many they want to have. But we don't want to be in a situation where people are wanting to have that second or third child, or whatever their choice might be, but feel that they'll be financially disadvantaged in doing so and don't proceed to do so. Firstly, we love families to be as big as they can be, based on personal choice. I certainly think children are a blessing and the more the better, within reason. But, equally, it's also vitally important that, for our societal cohesion and our ability to provide for everyone, particularly our ageing generations, the services and support of government that they deserve and need, we make sure that we are managing the population profile of our nation so that we always have the economic capacity to provide that. That's vitally important. In this and in other policy areas, we always want to be supporting people to make their own decisions but also ensure that there's nothing stopping them from making a decision in a certain direction because there's an economic disadvantage to that.

With those comments, I commend this bill. One issue not addressed in this bill is expanding it to 26 weeks, which the government has indicated is going to be occurring in a subsequent bill. I don't know why that couldn't happen in this bill, but we hope that the government intends to honour that commitment and that we see that bill before the House in the near future. But certainly the principles of equality and flexibility are natural attributes of the coalition. These are policy positions that we in many cases had in our last budget, and on that we support the bill, and I commend it to the House.

Dan Repacholi (Hunter, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to contribute to this debate on the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022. One of the first things we did as a government was to hold a Jobs and Skills Summit, bringing together all sectors of our country to address the issues facing our nation and together consider real solutions that will have a real and effective impact. Paid parental leave reform was one of the most frequent proposals raised at this successful Jobs and Skills Summit in September. We made the summit one of our first priorities, and we did this because we are a sensible, proactive government. This is another example of a sensible and practical bill addressing issues that real-world people are facing today. This government has listened to the issues raised by everyday people, and we are responding to these issues and making sure that we make changes to create a better future. This is a government for all Australians. This is a government that cares about and looks out for working families.

This bill is aimed at improving the lives of working families, just like the many hardworking families in my electorate of Hunter, and these families deserve a fair go. Having a child is one of the most amazing times of someone's life, but it can also come with added pressures. Families in Hunter and around Australia deserve to have the financial support in place that they need so they can focus on what's important: providing the best possible start to the life of the newest member of their family. This bill is supporting better outcomes for children. It's important that the decision to have a child should not come at a financial sacrifice for women. Women should not have to choose between having a family and maintaining economic equality. That's why this bill is helping to advance women's economic equality. The time women are out of the workforce to bring a child into this world should not leave them worse off when it comes time for them to retire.

Of course, as with all nation-shaping legislation that has been passed through this place, it was the Labor Party who were responsible, so it's no surprise that it was when the Labor Party were last in government, in 2011, that the Paid Parental Leave scheme was first established. I'm proud to be a part of this government, which is taking the most significant steps to improve the scheme since its establishment. The government is modernising the Paid Parental Leave scheme to reflect how Australian families and their needs have changed since it was established over a decade ago.

We said we would be a government that holds nobody back and leaves nobody behind. This amendment is giving those who were held back previously an opportunity to access paid parental leave and all of the benefits that come with it. Around 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 underneath the current scheme. That's 181,000 families with more support and 181,000 children with a better start in life.

The current scheme was a significant introduction in 2011, but today it is not fit for purpose and does not entirely support the changing needs of a modern family in 2023. The current 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 into the workforce. Eligibility rules are unfair to families where the mother is the higher-income earner. Our bill fixes these issues.

We are giving more families access to the government payment, making sure that parents have more flexibility in how they take leave. We encourage parents to share the care because we know and understand that in 2023 parenting is a shared responsibility more than ever before. We are a government that gets straight onto the job. There's no fluffing around on this side of the parliament. That's why from 1 July 2023 this bill will deliver six important changes. The current scheme offers two separate payments. This bill will combine these two existing payments into a single 20-week scheme. I know firsthand what it's like to become a new parent, and I also know what it's like becoming a dad for the second time. It can be challenging, and it's important that the load is shared between both parents. That is why one of the changes we'll be making is reserving a portion of the scheme for each parent to support them both to take time off work after a birth or an adoption.

The time you spend with your child as a newborn is invaluable, and it is an experience that you don't get many times throughout your life. I know that when my girls were born I would have loved to have had the chance to be at home with them as much as I could, but unfortunately I had to go back to work, leaving my amazing wife, Alex, at home to look after them. This is a common occurrence for many Australian families. It's not fair on mothers, and it certainly isn't fair on the fathers. This is exactly what ensuring both parties can take time off work will address. This is a bill that is good for both the parents and children of Australia and the Hunter because when fathers take a greater caring role from the start it benefits mums, dads and their kids.

This bill is about modernising the scheme and bringing it into line with modern parenting. Gone are the days when raising children and looking after the newborn was solely the responsibility of the mother. It was this type of mindset that too often limited the Paid Parental Leave scheme, making it difficult for one parent to access the payment. The changes being introduced will remove the notion of primary and secondary carers and make it easier for both parents to access this payment.

Our government wants to make sure that all families who need the support of the Paid Parental Leave scheme have the chance to access it. We know that an individual income does not tell the whole story of a family's income, and so we are expanding access to the scheme by introducing a $350,000 family income test which families can be assessed under if they exceed the individual income test.

When you're a government in touch with the people who you represent, you understand the needs of people in the community. We understand that not every family is the same, and that's why there is a need for increased flexibility for parents to choose how they take leave days. That is what this bill and these changes to the Paid Parental Leave scheme will deliver. These changes will allow eligible fathers and partners to access the payment, irrespective of whether the birth parent meets the income test or residency requirements, because, again, we're a government that leaves no-one behind.

This is a bill that, as a father and a man, I am proud to speak on and support. This is a bill that sends a clear message that treating parenting as an equal partnership supports gender equality. This bill shows that, as a government, we value both men and women as carers. I truly hope that this is reflected and reinforced in workplaces and throughout all of our communities. This bill brings all-round benefits. The government's paid parental leave reform is good for parents, good for kids, good for employers and good for the economy. This government is delivering a win for all, a win that will have real benefits for real people who need it the most. I commend this bill to the House.

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

I rise to speak in favour of the Paid Parental Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022, which expands the financial support currently provided by Australia's Paid Parental Leave scheme. I am particularly glad to be speaking on this bill as we approach United Nations International Women's Day. We still have a long way to go with women's equality in Australia. We currently rank 43rd out of 146 in the world. This is not good enough for Australia. We can do better. Improving paid parental leave is one way to improve women's economic security and improve gender equity.

Paid parental leave changes lives. Indeed, had it been in place when I had my boys, James and Nicholas, back in 2006, it would have made my time as a new mum considerably easier and far less stressful. It would have provided my husband, Michael, with an opportunity to be fully involved with the boys as babies, and it would have provided us as a family with choices that were not available to us. Numerous studies have shown that paid parental leave schemes provide invaluable assistance to Australians—Australian parents, Australian workers, Australian employers and the Australian economy overall. Without doubt, paid parental leave is one of the most important economic measures that governments can adopt to support women—Australian women. And, when Australian women do well, their families do well and our country does well.

By way of background: the Paid Parental Leave scheme commenced on 1 January 2011. This bill provides amendments to extend parental leave pay from 18 weeks to 20 weeks. It will combine parental leave pay with dad and partner pay, forming a single payment of 20 weeks that can be shared between parents. The measure seeks to make sharing of parental leave between parents a central part of the scheme. A parent who does not have a partner at the time will also be able to claim a maximum of 20 weeks parental leave. In this way, the bill seeks to improve gender equality by removing the current default of parental leave pay that assumes that birth parents are primary carers and that birth parents are not the primary income earners in a household.

The bill expands access to paid parental leave by introducing a $350,000 income test on the family income rather than the current individual income test, which is just over $150,000. I am very pleased to say that, in the period between 2010 and 2017, the number of women with a taxable income of more than $150,000 doubled. However, families can currently be treated differently depending on which parent has the higher income. This is grossly unfair to women who are the primary income earners, and does not accord with modern Australia. Indeed, when I had my boys, this was precisely what occurred in our family under the old family tax benefit system. To clarify the way the system currently works: there could be two families, each with an identical household income, and one family could be eligible because the father is the primary income earner, while the other family is ineligible because the mother is the primary income earner. Under this bill, with the introduction of a family income limit, families will no longer be denied access to payments just because of the income of the mother. It is expected nearly 3,000 additional parents will become eligible each year due to this measure.

The bill will also put more flexibility into the paid parental leave system to allow parents to best use their parental leave payments in a manner that best suits them. Paid parental leave will consist only of flexible paid parental leave days. This measure allows parents to take parental leave in blocks as small as a day at a time, with periods of working in between, during the period that starts the day the child is born and ends the day before the child's second birthday or second 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 to continue working after a birth or adoption.

The bill also allows eligible parents to take a maximum of two weeks parental leave pay concurrently, assisting parents to share caring responsibilities, and providing an opportunity for dads and partners to also provide care for birth parents, to support their health. This will greatly assist all parents, but particularly parents of twins and multiple births. As the mother of twins, I particularly support this measure. The bill does limit the concurrency period, to ensure that parents are encouraged to return to work.

The coalition remains committed to supporting Australian women's participation in the workforce. At its highest level, the clear benefit of paid parental leave is to increase female workforce participation. However, the health benefits for mothers cannot be overestimated. It can assist with bonding with the child, breastfeeding and recovery from childbirth. Studies have also shown it can assist with lowering postnatal depression rates and improving new mums' mental health. Paid parental leave can also lower infant mortality. It ensures that women are not disadvantaged in their employment through their intrinsic role in childbearing. It supports economic security for women throughout their lives. It supports the health and welfare of mothers as well as their newborn children. It assists Australian parents to manage their work and parental responsibilities so that the needs of children and families may be met in the context of modern Australian society.

This amended scheme will also go some way to ensuring that working women do not unwillingly delay or avoid having children because of the financial ramifications. This scheme particularly supports first time mums through assisting childbirth recovery and perinatal and postnatal health challenges such as premature birth. Most importantly, it supports my fundamental Liberal principles that the role of government is to facilitate an environment to enable Australians to have choice and to make decisions that are right for their individual circumstances. It helps Australian women decide when they will have children.

I also support fathers being able to access to paid parental leave. Again, this enables Australian parents to make choices that are right for their individual, particular family circumstances. For dads it can increase their parental satisfaction, through time spent bonding with their baby. In my family, my husband, Michael, would have really benefited from and enjoyed having more time with our boys when they were very young. It also can assist to create a more equitable division of household labour—another thing that I would have appreciated 16 years ago.

I note that the coalition has sought assurances from the government that the amendments to increase flexibility in this bill will not negatively impact upon small businesses. At this point I will say that I commend all those Australian businesses who, over many years, have introduced their own paid parental leave and assisted many of their female employees back into the workforce. I've been advised that Services Australia will provide additional support to businesses to manage the new scheme to both minimise any economic impact and ensure that businesses are aware of the changes to the scheme well in advance of its commencement on 1 July this year.

I note that, in the lead-up to the budget in October last year, the government announced that this scheme would be progressively increased to 26 weeks. That measure is not in this bill, and I will welcome that legislation from the government in due course. I ask, though, that the government consider amending this bill to include superannuation guarantee payments on parental leave pay, as the scheme was initially envisaged. This will go some way to bridging the disparity between the superannuation balances of Australian men and women, where women still lag a long way behind men.

To conclude, this is a good bill. Paid parental leave is vital for Australian mums; it is vital for Australian dads. It is integral to women's workforce participation, for mothers' physical and mental health, and for giving fathers the opportunity to be more fully involved in their children's early care. For all of the reasons I have mentioned, I commend this bill to the House.

Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to follow the member for Hughes and find myself agreeing with everything I just heard her say. I didn't hear the start of your contribution, Member for Hughes, but I suspect I would have agreed with that as well.

Most of us in this chamber understand that society has changed, almost unrecognisably in some ways, over the last 30, 40 or 50 years in the way women now expect to be able to live their lives and the things that we expect to be able to achieve. I actually can't believe it, but I'm turning 50 this year. I think of my mother's experience, as someone who was a teacher, when she had me, and the experience of professional women now when they have children. The changes that have happened over that 50-year period are remarkable and so positive. My mother found it very hard to go back to teaching after having had me, because she didn't get the support at the school for the flexibility that she needed to be able to have a young child and work full time. We would find it extraordinary these days for that to be acceptable, particularly in a public school system.

The Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022 takes us another step towards achieving the sort of society that we want to be a part of. That is—for many of us in this place, and for almost everyone I know in my community—a society where men and women are able to equally share the joys and the burdens of child care, particularly in the early years after they've had children.

For too long now, the structure of workplaces, the culture in Australia and the expectations have made it incredibly difficult for men who want to be at home and be part of the early weeks, months and years of their children's lives to do that. As women we often, rightly, talk about how important it is to have paid parental leave provisions for women and to support women to get back into the workforce, and all the benefits individually for women, for businesses, for the economy and, quite frankly, for children, of being able to see women go back into the workplace after having children.

Possibly we should also talk more about how important it is to encourage and facilitate men to take on more of that childcaring role earlier in their children's lives and to help men who want to do it to do it. That's why, in particular, the 'use it or lose it' provision in this legislation for two weeks of paid parental leave is an important step towards being able to do that. We know, and others in this place have said it—there's nothing new or remarkable in what I'm saying—that the research shows that if men spend more time with their children in the time immediately after birth then they are also more likely to be more involved in their children's lives as they grow up. We know the benefit to children of having that relationship with their fathers. And we of course know the benefit to women—yes, it's generally women—of having a male partner who is more involved in their children's lives and also takes on more of the unpaid work associated with having a family. We also know from all the census data that women still do a disproportionate amount of unpaid work around the home, often no matter how progressive that household is and no matter how much the man and the woman in that household both want to be equal and share the burden. Again, culture, workplaces and a lack of opportunity for men to be more involved play into that unequal burden.

So I'm really pleased with this legislation and everything that speakers before me have said it will achieve for families, for productivity and for children. It is an important first step in what the Albanese government wants to achieve and that push towards 26 weeks of paid parental leave—and looking forward to the recommendations of the Women's Economic Taskforce about what some of the provisions should be in that legislation.

After what I've just said, it will surprise no-one to hear that I think we can also do better in terms of the 'use it or lose it' provisions. Of course, there are very difficult decisions to be made about the costs of progressive reforms in the economic sense and the benefits of them. And we can't always bring in, and bring in quickly, the extent of reform that some of us would like to see. But there are other countries in the world that have a standard in paid parental leave that I believe we should be looking to for the future and aspiring to. We could look to Sweden, which, as I understand it, provides 480 days of paid leave to parents, 90 of which are reserved for fathers on that 'use it or lose it' basis. Iceland has 12 months of leave, at 80 per cent of total salary, which can be shared between parents. That's a pretty expensive scheme, it must be said. But there are a number of countries around the world that have and that are looking at looking at extended 'use it or lose it' provisions and can point to a change in the culture in their countries as a result of introducing the provisions. They can point to changes in data saying that men very rarely took paid parental leave or were involved in the early years of their children's lives before the introduction of 'use it or lose it' provisions in paid parental leave, and now it's becoming a societal norm.

My contribution on this legislation is to say that it is absolutely terrific, and I am very proud to be part of a government that is introducing it, but to also say that that norm, where both men and women can be part of the early years of their children's lives and can make a decision between them about how that is balanced, is the norm we should be aspiring to in this country. It will go a long way towards the gender equality that everyone in this chamber wants to see achieved.

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

When it comes to firm, consistent and unwavering support for hardworking Australians and young families, there is no better record of decisive action by government in this place than the record of the coalition. The amendments in the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022 build on comprehensive changes to the Paid Parental Leave scheme that were first announced by the coalition in the March 2022 budget. These changes, first proposed by the coalition, were part of an enhanced Paid Parental Leave package of reforms that were very well received by commentators, key stakeholders and Australian working families less than a year ago. I had many in my electorate react positively to these changes when announced last year by the coalition government, and I'm pleased that the current Labor government have progressed these positive reforms.

Many local families who I've met with on my travels throughout the electorate have talked to me about the Paid Parental Leave scheme and the potential changes. I've met with many families who have benefited from the scheme. I've had two kids while the scheme has been in place, and my family have certainly benefited from it. But I've also had many constituents who've reported to me the flaws in the current scheme: the inflexibility of the income test; the challenges of the scheme in situations where the mother is the higher income earner in the household; the challenges of sharing the leave between parents; and, of course, how quickly those 18 weeks go.

It is important to make the point that the coalition's enhanced Paid Parental Leave package of reforms is now mirrored in almost identical measures in this bill. These measures include the creation of a single 20-week payment under the PPL scheme by combining up to 18 weeks of parental leave pay with a further two weeks of dad and partner pay and the introduction of a combined family income limit of $350,000 in adjusted taxable income in addition to the existing individual income limit of $156,647, which was due to apply from 1 July 2022. This is incredibly important. Households should be treated fairly based on their combined wage, and the federal government should be using combined household income as the basis for assessments for a lot more of the initiatives that the federal government undertakes throughout this country. I could talk more about how we can make vast improvements to the inequity in the tax system by going down this path, a path that would be way better for families, but I'll save that debate for another time.

Other measures in this bill that reflect the coalition's enhanced Paid Parental Leave changes include increasing the flexibility of the parental leave pay so the entire entitlement may be taken in blocks as small as a single day, with periods of paid work in between, if within two years of birth or adoption. Again, this is about more flexibility. That can only be a good thing, and that's certainly something that the young parents in my electorate have been calling for. I think it's fantastic that it's going to form part of this bill. Enhanced Paid Parental Leave would have seen an investment of $346.1 million over five years to expand PPL, giving working families full choice and control over how they use the 20 weeks of taxpayer funded paid parental leave.

But the coalition's record of supporting government funded paid parental leave goes back a long, long way, well before these reforms. In both 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 very self-satisfied in getting this bill this far, had supported that landmark coalition policy way back in 2010, then Australian families would have had access to one of the most generous government funded paid parental leave schemes in the world, a scheme that would now have been in place for well over a decade. Think how many Australian families could have been positively impacted by that coalition policy over the last decade. Think how many Australian women could have benefited from that policy.

The coalition, better than anyone else in this place, recognises both the social and economic benefits of paid parental leave. The coalition has always been—

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

The debate is, unfortunately, interrupted in accordance with standing order 143. The debate may be resumed at a later hour. The member will be granted leave to continue his remarks, should he require.