Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

be helpful to the budget. The measure in this bill was about a half billion dollar cash gouge out of stay-at-home families in relation to second and subsequent children.

The policy motive, as it is articulated by the government, is that second and subsequent kids do not cost as much. That has not been my experience. As I talk to people who have had children in the recent era, it is an interesting thesis to bring forward. I am reminded that frugal and economically conservative investments in furniture for newborns tends to involve purchasing a bed that can have the base elevated to be a cot during the nano human phase of the child's development. As they move from nano human to micro human, you can lower the base of the bed and then the sides can go up and down. As they go from nano to micro to mini human, then you take the sides off the very same article: then that is a bed.

That has been my experience from nano to micro to mini human. It spreads right across the birth of a second child in my household when we had to do it all again. We could not break the news to Madeline that she was going to lose her bed because of some policy idea that she had to forfeit it now that Isabella had come into this world. We had to buy the same arrangements for Isabella. When she was at that nano age, we had the base elevated and it was a nice, snug little spot. As she moved from nano to micro, we lowered the side—but we had the bits that could pull up so she did not clunk her head and fall out during the night. As she became a mini human, the sides came off and she was a big girl. But it took some years before she got a big girl's bed.

That journey is also replicated in capsules and seating for cars. I do not know whether anyone in this place other than those of us who have recently been parents have looked at how biblically expensive safe seating is for motor vehicles these days, and how you are encouraged to maintain that structured and supported seating arrangement into the child's seventh year. Unless you are planning to spread the children seven years apart—and that certainly would not fly in my household—the idea that we could reuse those pieces of child rearing infrastructure, if I could use that term, is a little bit of a fiction. It is just not borne out in reality. Therefore, those stay-at-home parents are left wondering and bewildered as to why there is this reduction in the baby bonus for second and subsequent children.

This comes at a time when cost-of-living pressures for families are very significant. Many of the families I represent in the Dunkley electorate do not have much wiggle room at the end of the month; it is a close budgeting exercise for them. My colleague and friend the member for Riverina touched on some of those cost imposts, including the carbon tax. Stay-at-home families are running their households during what is the most expensive period in which to be consuming energy—if you look at time-of-use energy consumption. Those that are not stay-at-home families—their children are in care or at school, and the household is largely vacated—are spared the peak power costs of maintaining a healthy living environment for those in the home. These families are copping the most punishing impacts of the carbon tax. Despite the concept that these families with second and subsequent children somehow have less financial pressure, I would contend that the evidence is to the contrary and there is in fact a greater degree of financial pressure. The notion that you can simply roll over child-rearing infrastructure and that that somehow represents a saving as the logic for this reduction in the baby bonus for second and subsequent children is utter nonsense. This is simply about trying to make an ugly budget position that the Labor government has steered itself and the nation into slightly less bad than it otherwise would be.

If you look at the measures themselves, a couple of other things come to mind. One is that, just as proper support is needed for stay-at-home families, proper support is also needed for those who choose a different pathway. We have heard time and time again how the deficiencies in the government's paid parental leave system failed to recognise that, for households that are raising children and looking to some paid parental leave support, under the government's regime, that defaults back to a minimum wage level. The reality in households is that, when a child arrives, the bills do not default back to the minimum wage level, the mortgage does not all of a sudden default back to a minimum wage level, the financial commitments that you have made do not miraculously default back to a minimum wage level—yet that is the assumption that is embedded in the government's program. In addition to that, for primary carers, mainly women, who are seeking paid parental leave assistance during the early period of raising a new arrival in their family, the loss of superannuation and other benefits represents an ongoing financial impediment in terms of their security and retirement income possibilities—another deficiency in the government's paid parental leave scheme.

That is why I am pleased that the coalition has brought forward a policy for a fair dinkum paid parental leave scheme that recognises that support is important for stay-at-home parents and also for those that do not choose that pathway in terms of their family arrangements. It is particularly encouraging that the coalition's policy recognises the circumstances facing small business. Women who choose to contribute to that engine room of the economy—albeit one that is spluttering a little bit under this government's policy setting—should not be disadvantaged in terms of their access to paid parental leave support. Under the coalition's policy the types of schemes that are so attractive and offered by the Public Service or major corporations all of a sudden come within reach of the small business sector of the economy and, therefore, small business is enhanced in its capacity to recruit very capable women who might otherwise not be attracted to working with small enterprises because they cannot access the more generous paid parental leave arrangements of the corporates and the public sector. That is overcome by the coalition's policy position as well.

Also in this bill are the administrative arrangements relating to dad and partner pay. How topical this is. I have tried on a number of occasions to point out to the government how mindless, senseless, unjustified and unnecessary is the government's insistence on imposing the paid parental leave pay clerk responsibilities on smaller employers in particular. We tried to maintain the system that was in place when the government's program was initially introduced, where the Family Assistance Office of Centrelink were the ones that processed those payments. Having determined eligibility against material supplied by the employer and the applicant seeking to confirm their eligibility, the government made those payments directly to those eligible people. In that window, in that nirvana, as it was described by the minister, when there were so many people welcoming the paid parental leave opportunity, the very system that was in place that gave rise to boast after boast from government ministers about the scheme, we just wanted to keep that system in place, that architecture in place.

But no, that was not enough. The government needed to go against its promise that it would not impose additional administrative and cost burdens on employers with the introduction of its scheme. It had to insist, under the threat of substantial fines, that smaller employers, with no business in calculating eligibility or the nature of the scheme, would have the government decide to whom and in what amount the payments would be paid and then descend those payments to those small business, under threat of a fine, to process as if they were part of the payroll system—but then have them removed from the payroll system as they related to payroll tax, superannuation contributions and workers compensation liabilities. We said: 'No, the system is in place, the infrastructure is in place. Why impose this needless burden?' What does this bill do? The bill relies on the very system we wanted to have operate across the whole paid parental leave scheme, where the secretary carries out that responsibility. No, instead the government wanted the secretary to decree that an employer—particularly a small employer—would do that work that the government was doing previously when Jenny Macklin and ministers responsible for this program were boasting about its success.

What a vivid contrast to Friday, 13 July 2007, when Ms Plibersek, Ms Macklin and Ms Gillard issued a joint press release promising, in respect of their paid parental leave scheme, 'Labor will not support a system that imposes additional financial burdens or administrative complexity on small businesses or in any way acts as a discouragement to the employment of women'. What did they do? They went and did the very thing that they promised not to do. When we came to try and have the provisions that are re-emphasised in this bill before the House that are now utilised for the payment of dad and partner pay, when we came to this chamber to see that those very same mechanisms be used that are embodied in this bill today, we were rejected. It was voted down.

The Independents, supposedly concerned about red tape and compliance burdens on small business, lost their way. In fact, Independent member Mr Oakeshott, days after voting against the very measure that would reduce red tape and compliance costs, got up in the National Press Club and said he was concerned about how small business have been:

… really whacked … around the head and this parliament will be a small business friend and help with these compliance challenges—

these are his words, so I apologise for the length of sentence—

as we challenge small business with important reforms, such as paid parental leave and a carbon market.

He went on to say he was concerned about the compliance burden. He voted just days earlier against the very measure that would have relieved the very compliance burden he went on to speak about. Then, to add insult to injury, he did it again when we gave the government and the crossbenchers an opportunity to understand the compliance burden small business is facing.

Here we have another bill relying on the very provisions that we sought to have the government use for the payment of the Paid Parental Leave scheme, particularly for smaller employers. Again, they have turned down the opportunity. They have walked away from the opportunity to reduce the red tape and compliance burden facing small business. You do not have to take my word for it. These provisions, which are now being embraced in the bill before the House, are the very same provisions we wanted used for the scheme in general and we got endorsements from so many small business organisations. I say to the government that it is not too late. You can amend this bill to embrace the red tape reduction measures that would end the compliance and red tape obligations under the threat of a fine forcing Paid Parental Leave paymaster roles on small employers unless and except where the eligible person and the employer agree. In that case, let them do it. But, otherwise, do the right thing and relieve some of the compliance burden embodied in the system.

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