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

I rise to speak to the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Adding Superannuation for a More Secure Retirement) Bill 2024. Today has been a long time coming. The Greens are so glad to finally see Labor get on board with our longstanding policy to pay superannuation on paid parental leave. Unions and stakeholders have long called for super on PPL, and the Greens have lobbied Labor consistently on this subject for over a decade. We heard consistent significant evidence at multiple previous Senate inquiries. Paying super on PPL was a key recommendation of the government's own Women's Economic Equality Taskforce in 2023. Paying super on PPL was a recommendation of the 2016 Senate inquiry into economic security for women, which I participated in. Earlier this year, when its last PPL bill was before the Senate, I moved an amendment for the government to pay super on PPL. At that stage Labor voted against it, despite having, at the time, already announced its intention to pay super on PPL. So, after all of those many false starts, we are so pleased finally—after almost a decade—that this bill will pay superannuation on paid parental leave.

However, once again, it is delay upon delay. This bill won't start paying super on PPL until 1 July 2025. Why, as with other meagre but positive improvements for women in previous PPL bills, are you making women wait? After waiting this long for super on PPL, women should not have to wait until after the federal election for it to kick in. I don't see nuclear subs waiting for their money. I don't see coalmining companies having to wait for their fossil fuel subsidies or property investors having to wait for their public purse perks. But, unfortunately, women once again are being asked to wait by this government.

Currently, paid parental leave is the only leave entitlement that is paid without superannuation. It's also the leave that's predominantly taken by women. Make that make sense, other than it being discrimination against women. So I'm pleased we're removing this last vestige.

The gender pay gap leads to a gap in retirement income, with women retiring into poverty, often after a lifetime of care and underpaid work. This means that women retire with significantly less super savings than men, with the gender retirement gap currently sitting at about 23 per cent, according to the Association of Superannuation Funds. One in three women retire with no super at all, according to the Super Members Council. This has significant consequences for women's financial security in retirement. I hope we all know that, sadly, women over 55 are the fastest-growing cohort of those at risk of homelessness. Paying super on PPL is one important measure that will improve retirement income for women. On that, the opposition's suggestion to allow women to raid their super are certainly not going to help and would instead contribute to more poverty in retirement.

But there are plenty more levers that the government could pull to close the gender retirement gap. One of them is to approve the affordability and accessibility of early childhood education and care so that women can stay in the workforce if they choose to after they have kids. This means making early childhood education and care free so that more parents can access it. It also includes properly valuing our early childhood educators, who deserve the 25 per cent pay rise that they asked for, not just the 15 per cent that the government has committed to.

Another measure the government could take that would have immediate benefits for women's retirement security is to improve the low income super tax offset, or LISTO. This was originally designed to make the super tax system fairer for low-income earners, and it currently refunds the 15 per cent tax on superannuation contributions up to a maximum of $500 for workers earning up to $37,000 per year. But those settings and that eligibility no longer reflect the cohort that they were designed to represent. Tax scales have changed. Inflation has increased. LISTO is no longer doing the job that it is supposed to do. The government could realign the LISTO eligibility and increase the offset through minor adjustments which would make the super tax setting significantly fairer for low-income earners, the majority of whom are women, the majority of whom work in lower paid jobs or on a part-time basis.

Nonetheless, we're really pleased that the government is getting on with legislating paying superannuation on paid parental leave. But you can and must do more to make the Paid Parental Leave scheme itself fairer. We'd like to see that happen immediately. Australia has fallen behind other countries in the rate of paid parental leave. In fact, our paid parental leave rate is one of the lowest in the OECD. Continuing to pay parental leave at minimum wages forces difficult decisions about who can afford to take leave and for how long. For some people, the full-time minimum wage is an increase on their previous earnings, but for many parents the minimum wage is well below their normal wage. As many stakeholders have pointed out over many PPL inquiries, continuing to pay parental leave at the minimum wage is not an effective incentive to induce more fathers to take parental leave.

The Greens support full wage replacement, including incentivising employers to top up the government scheme to replacement wage. Last year, the government's own Women's Economic Equality Taskforce recommended expanding paid parental leave to 52 weeks, paying superannuation on PPL and eventually paying PPL at replacement wage. The Greens will continue to push Labor to actually implement the WEET's advice.

We were glad to support the package of legislation earlier this year to increase PPL to 26 weeks by 2026. However, parents should not have been asked to wait two more years to get to the 26 weeks that's accepted as an international minimum standard—again, making women wait for the small good thing that they deserve to have now. There's no reason to delay the implementation of good policy. This bill presents a critical opportunity to move towards best practice. It could have included an immediate increase to 26 weeks of paid leave. It could have included and should have included a pathway to 52 weeks of paid leave by 2030 in line with international best practice.

Women deserve fairer paid parental leave. It improves their economic security, reduces the gender pay gap and increases the likelihood of mothers returning to work. Paying super on PPL is a good but small step in the right direction. We're pleased that, after a decade of advocating it, this small but important change will finally be made.