Barbara Pocock (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In respect of the Education and Employment References Committee report Potential impacts of the Commonwealth Paid Parental Leave scheme on small businesses and their employees, which was presented out of sitting, I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

Australia has one of the weakest paid parental leave schemes in the OECD in terms of pay rates and the length of paid leave. Even with the recent changes to paid parental leave, Australia still offers only half the OECD average of 52 weeks of leave for new parents. The main recommendation made in this report—to outsource the payments of parental leave income to Services Australia for small businesses rather than have it being directly administered by those businesses—risks undermining the integrity of our Paid Parental Leave scheme. As someone who has worked and advocated with thousands of other women and mothers for a good paid parental leave scheme over recent decades, I am deeply disturbed by this report and the way it would, if acted on, take our Paid Parental Leave scheme backwards for decades.

In this country, businesses of all sizes are required to provide minimum standards and minimum entitlements to workers: a minimum wage, health and safety standards, annual leave, sick leave, superannuation and many other important protections at work. All of these entitlements cost time and money to administer, but they are also just part of the cost associated with hiring human beings to work. Whether they're working in an office, labouring on a farm, providing care for the elderly, building houses or teaching kids in a classroom, and whether they're in a big workplace or a small one, workers in all of these situations are entitled to a safe workplace, a living wage, sick leave and a holiday, all administered by their employer. Why would we separate out responsibility for the administration of the workplace entitlement of paid parental leave from any other requirement on small businesses? Why would we do this for a workplace entitlement that particularly assists new mothers and women?

The cost of administering paid parental leave is not just part of doing business—it also has significant implications for the workplace, the workforce and, especially, for women. Small business is a really important employer in our country—27 per cent of employees' jobs are in businesses that employ fewer than 20 people. That's an equivalent to around five million workers. Workers in small business are not a tiny pocket of the workforce. They are not a small cohort. They make up more than one in four of those with jobs. So the decision to let small business off the hook on administering paid parental leave is no small decision. It has many effects and risks. We know that women do a disproportionate amount of child-rearing work in Australia, as they do all over the planet. Women make up almost half of all employees in small business, and they make up 88 per cent of people using primary carers leave—like paid parental leave. Carving out administration of paid parental leave for small business would overwhelmingly affect female workers.

Failing to pay paid parental leave as a workplace entitlement paid by the employer threatens to sever the tie between the employer and the worker. Just in case this needs to be emphasised, this is a payment of government money that is simply administered by the employer. We know the connection between the employer and the worker is vitally important to women as they take leave to have a baby, and later as they rejoin the workforce after taking parental leave. The main recommendation in this report breaks this vital link. It stands to further exacerbate gender inequality and it treats paid parental leave as a welfare measure paid for out of a welfare system—not a vital workplace entitlement for employees.

This recommendation ignores the decades of argument that shaped the administrative structure of our paid parental leave system from its inception in 2011. The shape, size and administration of our Paid Parental Leave Scheme has very significant implications for gender equality and labour opportunities for women. Separating out the responsibility of administering paid parental leave income from other leave entitlements for the small businesses in our community would speak volumes about how we as a country value women. We must not roll back the way we manage an important employment condition. Women are workers. Indeed, they make up one in two of the workforce across our labour market and one in two of workers in small businesses specifically—that workforce of five million workers. Their workplace entitlement should reflect and enable their working lives and their caring responsibilities, pregnancies and care of infants.

Taking time out of the paid workforce to care for children is a normal part of parents' life and work for parents. All businesses benefit from the work of those involved in having and caring for kids, and without them we wouldn't have workers to fill jobs or produce the things that businesses—including small businesses—sell. This is why PPL should not be treated like a welfare payment. It's the responsibility of business to administrate, just like any other leave entitlement. Our small businesses face many challenges. They run on thin margins and they face many unpredictable elements around them, but ditching the administration of workers' entitlements that disproportionately affect women is not the solution. This is especially the case when we look to the administration of paid parental leave. We ask small businesses to administer health and safety law, to provide superannuation and to manage minimum wages and sick leave, and they should be managing the payment of paid parental leave in the same way.

Supporting new parents and advancing economic equality for women has to be at the centre of decision-making around paid parental leave in Australia. Allowing small businesses to opt out of administering this basic entitlement for their workers will see Australian women and workers slip even further behind the rest of the advanced world. It would amount to a backward step of significant proportions, and it must be rejected. It was rejected by so many witnesses before this inquiry. Those who represented workers, many women, parents and their organisations all—to a person—expressed serious concern about the consequences of reducing the employer role in small businesses. Many employers themselves are very dismissive of the concerns that were put forward around small business. These views are not represented in the recommendations in the majority report. Real robust research, rather than a few anecdotes, will reveal the benefits for small business and all business out of administering paid parental leave as a workplace entitlement which is the responsibility of employers.

Finally, I want to address another recommendation, and there were just three in this report. The committee recommended that the Productivity Commission conduct an inquiry—and I will quote the terms of that inquiry—'into the impact of the Commonwealth Paid Parental Leave scheme on Australian businesses, including a particular focus on small business'. That inquiry is not about the administration of paid parental leave. Very wide terms are recommended. It's into the impact of paid parental leave on productivity.

We have buckets of research about the benefits of paid parental leave. Very robust, solid longitudinal studies tell us about the benefits of paid parental leave. There are huge benefits for babies. There are very significant benefits for the life chances of children. It's enormously beneficial to mothers. It assists breastfeeding. There are studies from all over the planet on this question that are totally convincing. There is also clear evidence of benefits to the economy and labour supply. We do not need a focus on the productivity benefits for small business—a narrowly conceived inquiry that ignores the huge body of evidence that we have before us. A narrow inquiry particularly focused on productivity is the wrong way to go.

Benefits of an employee entitlement administered as such is established by many reports—report after report, huge academic literature. What we need is an economy and a system of managing paid parental leave that recognises that one in two workers are women. Guess what? They have babies. Guess what? They need a good lie down when they do it and they need the support of their employer and the administration of their payment as they take that leave.

We have to go forward in much more positive ways rather than go backwards. Let's not go backwards. Let's instead look to putting superannuation on paid parental leave and playing catch-up with the rest of the world in moving towards 52 weeks paid leave for Australia's working women at the time that they have a baby that is administered by their employer, regardless of the size of their business. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.