David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Minister, with this payment, I understand the argument about the workplace relationship in large businesses, but it doesn't stack up in small businesses. The government's own data show that the average small business—and potentially even microbusinesses, where you have a mum running a small business with a few employees—will have to spend 15 hours administering a payment that Services Australia already administers in up to 40 per cent of cases. If you haven't been at a business for 12 months, Services Australia does it directly. I get that with a large business with an HR department, it should just go through there. But we're talking about small businesses here who have good relationships with their employees. They have to because they're working with them day in and day out. Surely at that level it makes sense to have an opt-in, opt-out system.

If the issue is with how hard it is to navigate Services Australia, let's fix that. Let's fix Services Australia. Let's not put that onto small businesses who have to be some sort of go-between, when Services Australia is paying new parents directly 40 per cent of the time.

What can the government say when it comes to small businesses now facing potentially 15 hours a week on top of all their other commitments to administer a government payment? There's multipartisan support for PPL. I would love to see the government go further. But when it comes to the administration of it, this is a government payment. We should celebrate the fact that this is from the Australian people. This isn't the business coughing up: it's all of us. It's great to live in a country where we decide to do that and make that payment. So I'm a bit concerned about what it says about us that we want to try to disguise it as a business entitlement, when actually it's the Australian people saying we're going to pay for you to have real quality time with your new family. It's asking what's the government's view when it comes to small businesses and what support will there be?