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

As I was saying before this debate on the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Flexibility Measures) Bill 2020 was interrupted, the ACTU's submission noted that, between them, two inquiries—the Productivity Commission's 2009 inquiry and a 2014 review of the current scheme—found numerous benefits from paid parental leave. These included improved child and maternal health and wellbeing, but there were also benefits for employers. The Queensland Nurses and Midwives Union noted in its submission that offering flexible return-to-work arrangements is in the employer's interests as it helps to attract and retain skilled workers. As several submitters have noted, the government's changes to paid parental leave simply do not go far enough, and much more needs to be done to improve the participation of women in work.

I doubt, however, that we can rely on those opposite to expand the scheme, given their previous attempts to undermine it. In 2016, the Liberal government attempted to cut the publicly funded Paid Parental Leave Scheme for workers who were accessing employer provided paid parental leave entitlements. The cuts would have impacted around 80,000 families. In the previous year, the government insulted those families by referring to parents who access both government and employer funded schemes as rorters and double dippers. The attitude of those opposite in 2015 and 2016 was a strong statement that they think our publicly funded paid parental leave is too generous, despite it being so low by the standards of other advanced economies.

Although the expansion of paid parental leave is an important measure to achieve equality between men and women, when it comes to engagement in work, it is only one of several public policy measures that are needed. I'd like to be able to say that those opposite are making progress on equality for women in the workforce in other areas. Sadly, the opposite is true. It might be news to the Treasurer that, contrary to his claims that the gender pay gap in Australia has closed, it actually remains stubbornly high at 14 per cent. In absolute terms, this means women earn an average of $240 a week less than men. One area in which more needs to be done to address this gap is improving pay in industries dominated by women workers. In 2012, social and community services workers won a landmark equal pay case in the Fair Work Commission. The commission's ruling ensured that workers in the sector, which has had a high representation of women, would receive pay commensurate with comparable male dominated industries, and I am particularly proud to note that the union I used to work for, the Australian Services Union, led the case. I'm also proud that it was a Labor government that legislated to allow equal pay cases to be brought before the commission.

I'm also proud to say that it was the same Labor government which agreed to fund the pay increases through supplementation to Australian government grants. The equal remuneration order, or ERO, supplementation is due to expire in 2021-22, and it's an absolute disgrace that this Liberal government has taken no action to extend the supplementation payments or to incorporate them into base grants. Supplementation is due to end for about 220 organisations, and I have had a number of community service organisations which rely on Australian government grants contact me and explain what the cut to the ERO supplementation means to their particular services. We're going to see savage cuts to services that are helping feed the homeless, support the elderly and people with disability, and shelter women fleeing domestic and family violence.

These cuts are outrageous not only because of the reduction in vital community services but also because they undermine the important progress that was made on gender pay equity through the 2012 equal pay decision. This is a sector in which 80 per cent of workers are women. If the Morrison government refuses to continue providing the funding necessary to give effect to the Fair Work Commission's equal pay decision, that is sending a very strong message to the sector and to the broader community that they do not believe in equal pay—that women's work is somehow of less value than the work done by men.

Another area that needs action to address pay equity is having more women in management and leadership positions. A report by consultant Conrad Liveris in 2017 found that women in chair and CEO roles in Australia's 200 largest companies were outnumbered by men called John. There are also more Peters running Australia's largest companies than women, and more Davids, too. There is something very wrong happening with women's equality if the leaders of Australia's largest companies are more likely to be called John, David or Peter than they are to be women.

When Labor in government established the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, we introduced a straightforward requirement for organisations with more than 100 employees to report against several gender quality indicators. It's fortunate that the Liberal government, after pressure from women's and business groups, did not accept their Commission of Audit's recommendation to scrap the agency. There was unfortunately an attempt by the government to water down the reporting requirements, but thankfully this failed. In and of themselves, the WGEA's reporting requirements do not have any direct impact on workplace gender equality, but they are an important tool for tracking progress towards gender equality and keeping businesses accountable for their progress.

This is why Labor remains committed to these requirements, and it is a great shame that those opposite haven't always fully shared this commitment. In addition to the current reporting requirements, Labor has called on the government to require companies with over 1,000 employees to also report publicly on how much they pay women compared with men. This would show which companies are contributing to closing the gender pay gap and which ones need to do more. This government's approach to industrial relations does very little to help close the gender pay gap. The Morrison government has boasted that low wage growth is a deliberate design feature of their policy, and this is of little surprise when you consider their record.

Take, for example, voting to cut penalty rates, opposing increases to the minimum wage and the many ways in which they've undermined enterprise bargaining and efforts to stop unfair labour hire practices. Given that women are over-represented in low-paid industries, the efforts of those opposite to suppress wage growth have a disproportionate impact on women workers. Sadly, low-income workers are highly represented amongst those who have lost their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic. So, as a result of the pandemic, women's equality in the workforce is going to slide even further backwards. Women are also more highly represented in the occupations that are on the front line of the crisis, particularly health care, and the burdens of extra caring responsibilities are more likely to fall on women. The disproportionate impact of the pandemic on women in work is such that there is an even more pressing need during the recovery to commit to boosting women's equality in terms of pay and workforce participation. Australia ranks 44th out of 153 countries on the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Index. In 2013, when those opposite came to power, we were ranked 23rd. So we've slid 21 places under the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government.

The lack of progress on gender equality by this government should be of no surprise when you consider the lack of progress on equality within their own party room. Less than a quarter of the Liberal Party's federal members and senators are women, compared with almost half for the Labor Party. Until the Liberals make significant progress towards increasing the representation in their parliamentary ranks and within the cabinet, they are going to struggle to make progress towards improving equality for all women. They will continue their poor record on helping women to engage in work, to earn the same as their male counterparts and to succeed in attaining leadership positions. This is because men will continue to dominate decision-making on the government's policy approach to gender equality.

The flexibility provisions in this bill are just one tentative step towards equality in a journey of many, many miles. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Stirling Griff (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Flexibility Measures) Bill 2020. This bill amends the Paid Parental Leave Act 2010 to introduce measures to make parental leave more flexible. The bill allows new parents to split the 18 weeks of public paid parental leave into a continuous 12-week paid parental leave period to be taken in one block and a six-week flexible period that can be taken at any time during the first two years. These changes will apply to children born on or after 1 July in any way that fits the needs of individual families.

There is no doubt that the changes in this bill are important reforms for families and will provide much-needed flexibility as they navigate a return to work for the primary carer. The changes as proposed should assist new parents to maximise time with their young children—a very important consideration. Also, these changes will support self-employed women and small-business owners who may not be able to leave their businesses for 18 consecutive weeks. The changes demonstrate a more contemporary understanding of how modern parenting and work interact, and I commend the government's efforts to make Australia's parental leave scheme more flexible and to better support working parents and families. However, it also represents a missed opportunity by this government to review the legislation underpinning the scheme, which is now 10 years old.

We all accept that support for working parents is crucially important to a number of social and economic outcomes, including gender equality, economic security for women and increased workforce participation for women. Improvements in any of these areas ultimately lead to better economic outcomes for the nation as a whole. However, we also know that the Australian Paid Parental Leave scheme is far from best practice when compared with similar jurisdictions, particularly in Scandinavia and Canada.

One area the government has failed to correct is an inconsistency in the scheme which penalises breadwinner mums and stay-at-home dads. This is because the eligibility for the government's 18-week parental leave pay is tied to the birth mother's income, except in the cases of adoption and fostering. So if the birth mother earns more than $150,000 the family cannot qualify for parental leave pay, even if her partner earns under the cap or earns nothing at all. Where the birth mother earns less than $150,000 she can access the parental leave payment regardless of how much her partner earns. A woman can transfer her entitlement to parental leave pay to a partner, but only if they both individually earn under $150,000.

This is not a debate about the cap. This is not another class war. But it embeds discrimination and sexism in the paid parental leave system. At the moment, high-earning women are penalised for being high earning, as if this were something unusual. Surely the same threshold should apply to all parents, male or female? The inequity means that two families on the same combined income would be eligible if the man were the higher earner but not eligible if the woman were the higher earner. This is very much unfair, and that is why I've proposed an amendment that does away with this out-of-date part of the scheme.

The department, in offering up an explanation of the inequity, was reported as saying:

Parental Leave Pay is primarily intended to help support mothers to take time out of the workforce to care for their newborn or recently adopted child, to enhance the health and development of the child and to allow time for the mother to recover from the child’s birth.

I would hope that most of us here would agree that the view of mothers as the only primary carer is outdated and this is a rule that penalises breadwinner mums and stay-at-home dads. It is the legacy of a scheme designed 10 years ago, when the notion of stay-at-home fathers was very much an afterthought. The number of stay-at-home fathers grew to 80,000 in 2016, based on the latest census data, which was up from 68,500 in 2011. It makes absolutely no sense to stick with a system that penalises family units that consist of stay-at-home fathers and breadwinner mothers.

Modern parents don't define themselves as primary or secondary and neither should the legislation that supports and regulates their family life. By supporting this amendment the Senate will bring the PPL scheme into the modern era. This change is inevitable, if not now then certainly in the future.

The amendment circulated in my name is framed as a request, because it amends section 54 of the act expanding the parameters of who can make a claim for paid parental leave. It has been fully costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office and the cost is relatively minor, an estimated $27.3 million over the forward years. Those costings have been provided to government, the opposition, the Greens and the crossbench with plenty of time to consider them. I would hope that this chamber can support my amendment to remove this inequity, and if it is not successful then a future government will undertake to enact this reform and remove the unintended discrimination from the paid parental system once and for all.

Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today in support of the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Flexibility Measures) Bill 2020. Before I start on the bill itself, I'd just like to correct something that Senator Bilyk said. She said we lowered penalty rates. We did not lower penalty rates. Retail workers are actually getting a rise in penalty rates from 130 per cent to 150 per cent from Monday to Friday between 6 o'clock and 9 o'clock. On Saturdays they're getting a rise in penalty rates from 140 per cent to 150 per cent. It's very important when Labor tells lies that we call it out. I get a little bit sick and tired of this myth that we have lowered penalty rates. We haven't. Sunday rates came down, because they were at 225 per cent. Small business couldn't compete against Coles and McDonald's, because Bill Shorten threw those guys under the bus. Small business were going great. I don't want to get my coffee from McDonald's on a Sunday morning. I want to go and help an Australian business who wants to stay open, so they can afford to employ someone. More than ever these guys are doing it tough.

In 2018 this government announced the Women's Economic Security Statement to improve the economic standing of women. The goal of the statement is to help reduce the barriers to women's economic participation, the most notable of which is parenting. Women are much more likely than men to take time out of work to raise families, putting them at an economic disadvantage. However, I should take note of Senator Griff's point that there are a lot of stay-at-home dads. I had a stint myself and I thoroughly recommend it, because who wants to drink the Kool Aid all your life? It's good to take time out and spend a bit of time with your kids.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics show there is the greatest gap between men and women in the workforce during women's peak childbearing years of 30 to 34, proving that women are more likely to be the ones taking time out of work to raise young children. Women are also far more likely to work part-time than men with 46 per cent of women in the workforce working part-time compared to only 18 per cent of men. This all contributes to limited workforce participation for women, meaning they are less likely to be promoted to higher paying jobs. This situation invariably leads to a pronounced imbalance where women have less economic security than men, proven by the fact that women retire with 42 per cent less money in their superannuation than men do, which is why we need a good pension.

Having children is an important part of life for most women and it is also important for the economy, so the government should be doing what it can to make it easier for women to have both families and a career. To help achieve this the security statement proposes three main areas for improvement in women's working lives: workforce participation, earning potential and economic independence. This bill focuses on workforce participation by making paid parental leave more flexible to better suit the needs of a more realistic cross-section of women, parents and families, and in the process levels the playing field and ensures greater equality of opportunity for women.

The importance of making leave available for parents after the arrival of a child is well known, contributing to the health and wellbeing of mothers, babies and the stability of families. A 2016 Ernst & Young study of more than 1,500 employees showed that over 80 per cent— (Time expired)