Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Murray for her question which began with the financial impact of the government’s proposed paid parental leave. She asked why people would only get $9,788. I say to the member for Murray: that is $9,788 more than your government ever provided to anybody. That is because those opposite, in their 12 years in office, refused to lift a finger and do a thing for paid parental leave—not a thing.

This debate about paid parental leave is particularly interesting because it goes to the credibility of those opposite on two fronts. Let us simply go to front number one, which is about this minor promise which those opposite, led by the Leader of the Opposition, gave on taxes. Six weeks ago, the Leader of the Opposition said he would not raise taxes to fund policy proposals. He said:

We won’t increase taxes. There will be no new taxes. There will be no increased taxes.

Now there is to be a 1.7 per cent levy on businesses in Australia. How can the Leader of the Opposition stand there with any credibility on the question of his commitments about no new taxes when, six weeks later—he did not even make the 100 days mark—he is in there fundamentally violating one of his first commitments to the Australian people? He says, ‘No new taxes’ one day and then, suddenly, whacks a huge tax on business the next day.

There is a more fundamental question of credibility because—those opposite and the member for Murray know exactly where I am going with this—the Leader of the Opposition has said in the past that there should be no such thing as paid maternity leave. Several years ago, he said:

I am dead against paid maternity leave as a compulsory thing.

That was the position of belief. That was ‘straight-talking Tony’. That was the Leader of the Opposition who says he never changes his position, but suddenly, it seems, the circumstances change. Having been challenged on it since he became Leader of the Opposition, he went out and said, ‘Well, of course, we would not be funding that from business.’ Then the member for Murray says, ‘Of course, he would not be funding it from business.’ Now we find that they do propose to fund it from business.

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