Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Disability Reform) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Chifley very much for that question. He knows how important it is that this government keep working and keep delivering for Australian families, first and foremost doing everything to get families into jobs and, of course, delivering the support that families need with their most important job—that is, looking after their children.

One of the things that this government is very, very proud of is the implementation of the nation's first Paid Parental Leave Scheme. We have delivered that scheme. We now have 140,000 families who have registered for the scheme. Eighty thousand of those families have already taken their paid parental leave. What that has meant for those families is that they have not had to make the difficult choice that they had to make in the past when those opposite were in government, the very difficult choice of whether they would stay at home with their baby or go out to work. As a result of this government's efforts, families are now able to stay at home with their newborn babies, and we all know how important that is for the baby and of course for the parents. Many Australian families have written to the Prime Minister indicating how important this has been for them and their children, and we do understand how important it was for the government to do it—without whacking a great big new tax on business to pay for it.

We know from this Leader of the Opposition that he wants a Rolls-Royce scheme, but we have also had confirmed by the member for Goldstein just yesterday that they are going to whack a great big new tax on business to pay for the Leader of the Opposition's Rolls-Royce scheme. There are many people in the opposition who are now calling on the Leader of the Opposition—

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