Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Minister, I want to take you up on a few of those points. Firstly, the claim that there would be non-genuine claims sounds to me a lot like you were just saying women are going to lie. We do hear that from your side of the chamber quite a bit. It's still not okay and it's also not right. I ask you to reconsider whether you really want to assert that women are going to make up the fact that either they are pregnant or they were otherwise going to leave the job or stay on the job, because that's just playing a trope that's very unhelpful and is actually quite dangerous, as I would hope you know.

You then talked about speculation on work intention. These people have a contract, so there's no need for speculation on their intention. They are employed. Were it not for COVID, they would be entitled to receive paid parental leave because they are employed. I genuinely don't understand how you think there's some speculation required as to their employment situation or their intention.

Lastly, on the point that this would somehow require additional paperwork: these are the same people who otherwise would have been eligible for PPL. They might now have to put in a different form. It's not like there are going to be additional people. The only thing that has changed is the pandemic. The number of people has not changed. Just their eligibility to get any support from this government is what has changed.

You noted that you have made JobKeeper count for the purposes of PPL eligibility. I'm aware of that, and we welcome that. But there is actually no real reason for you not to also extend PPL eligibility to people who would have been eligible were it not for the pandemic. It gets a bit confusing, but I think people understand the point. It's not their fault that their business has either gone bust or chosen not to offer JobKeeper, or they are not eligible because your government won't extend JobKeeper to the number of people that it should; namely, casuals, people on temporary visas, students—the works.

In a sense you are hoisted on your own petard. You are trying to use that as an excuse to say they don't deserve help. They do deserve help. I don't accept your premise that women are going to lie about their employment situation or their reproductive health status. I'd like a further response on why you're not simply going to do the right thing here and give people the money they would have otherwise been entitled to.