Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

It is extremely disappointing to see what has happened despite all the evidence and despite every witness that appeared before the Senate inquiry into this piece of legislation bar the government’s own department. The witnesses all said that this bill should be extended to six months and that that should be the amount of leave that we are talking about. Despite the opposition’s position—and, of course, I am not sure whether Tony Abbott had it written down, so perhaps it was not gospel—there was an opportunity here for us to get a scheme that delivered that support that families needed.

The minister says that actually most women will get access to six months because of the top-up arrangements if they include their employer funded schemes. Well, one of the key reasons why the government has argued that it needs this scheme and that it needs to be administered the way it is is that it provides support to those women—the majority of women—who do not have access to an employer funded scheme. Those are, of course, those in the casual workforce, those in the more low-paid workforce and seasonal workers. They are, of course, the very same women who now will not have access to the top-up and therefore the six-month leave schemes because it simply does not exist for them now. Under this scheme, they will continue to be worse off in relation to their counterparts, simply because the government is relying on the goodwill of business to continue their employer funded schemes in order to create what the government has acknowledged would be a better scheme if it were six months—although it is interesting to note that the government still refused to commit to extending the scheme or to agree in principle to a six-month scheme. I just think that is important for everybody to remember. In two years time, when this bill is reviewed—and we will get to the amendments around the review further on—it will be very interesting to see whether the government will move to extend this scheme, because we have not heard the commitment from the minister or any of the ministers to date.

Question put:

That the request (Senator Hanson-Young’s) be agreed to.