Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm proud to have been a member of the Labor government which introduced Australia's paid parental leave scheme. At the time this scheme was introduced, Australia was one of only two OECD countries without a national scheme, the other being the United States. Publicly funded paid parental leave is an important measure to give parents the flexibility they need to engage in the workforce, and it is especially important for women. As the International Labour Organization states on its website:

Expectant and nursing mothers require special protection to prevent harm to their or their infants' health, and they need adequate time to give birth, to recover, and to nurse their children.

…   …   …

Such protection not only ensures a woman's equal access to employment, it also ensures the continuation of often vital income which is necessary for the well-being of her entire family. Safeguarding the health of expectant and nursing mothers and protecting them from job discrimination is a precondition for achieving genuine equality of opportunity and treatment for men and women at work and enabling workers to raise families in conditions of security.

To sum up, parents need to bond with their babies, and mothers need to recover from childbirth, and they should be able to do so without their employment being disadvantaged.

Australia's paid parental leave scheme, introduced by Labor, provides 18 weeks of publicly funded parental leave pay at the minimum wage to the primary carer of a newborn or a newly adopted child. The scheme also provides two weeks of dad and partner pay to the father of the child or a secondary carer. Of the 300,000 children born in Australia each year, the paid parental leave scheme supports the parents of just under 150,000. The Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Flexibility Measures) Bill will change the scheme's rules in a number of ways.

The current scheme requires that 18 weeks of paid parental leave for a primary carer be taken in one continuous block within 12 months of the birth or adoption of their child and before the primary carer returns to work. The bill splits the 18 weeks of public paid parental leave into a 12-week paid parental leave period and a six-week flexible paid parental leave period. The 12-week paid parental leave period must be taken as a continuous block within 12 months of the birth or adoption of the child. The six-week flexible paid parental leave period will be available at any time within the first two years and does not have to be taken continuously. The government expects the bill to encourage greater take-up of paid parental leave by secondary carers by allowing mothers to transfer their entitlements to secondary carers. The changes to the scheme are likely to be used by parents returning to work part time and spreading their flexible paid parental leave period over several months. Unfortunately, under the current scheme, there are thousands of parents who return to work before they've used all of their parental leave entitlement.

Labor supports this bill, and I for one welcome the increased flexibility that it provides to workers, women in particular. There is no doubt that these measure will have a positive impact on women's participation in the workforce, but what the bill does not do is change the overall entitlement to paid parental leave. This is unfortunate because, sadly, Australia continues to lag behind international standards when it comes to the provision of paid parental leave. Australia is one of the lowest ranked countries in the OECD both in terms of the duration of leave and the level of pay provided by our scheme. Our investment in paid parental leave is around a third of the OECD average. In fact, the quantum of the payment which equates to the full-time equivalent of eight weeks of paid leave places us, embarrassingly, 40th out of 41 comparable EU and OECD countries. The measures in the bill, while welcome, are just tinkering around the edges when it comes to improving paid parental leave in Australia. The Department of Social Services only expects around 4,000 parents to take advantage of the flexibility measures in this bill.

Organisations which made submissions to the Senate inquiry into this bill raised a number of concerns and suggested improvements to Australia's paid parental leave scheme. The Australian Council of Trade Unions noted that the proposed reforms will be less effective because of the lack of a right of appeal for workers against the unreasonable refusal of a request for flexible working hours or a request for an extension to unpaid parental leave. A number of submitters called for the period of paid parental leave to be extended to 26 weeks. There were also submitters who noted policy developments in other countries and the private sector which supported a gender-neutral approach to paid parental leave. Such an approach would boost equality for women by supporting a more equal distribution of parenting by encouraging fathers to take more parental leave. The Diversity Council Australia in their submission noted that only one in 20 parents taking primary parental leave are fathers and that 85 per cent of fathers take fewer than four weeks of leave. They also observed that career interruptions accounted for 21 per cent of the 2014 gender pay gap. The ACTU's submission noted that two inquiries—the Productivity Commission's 2009 inquiry and a 2014 review of the current scheme—found numerous benefits—