Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (COVID-19 Work Test) Bill 2021. Paid parental leave in Australia operates by paying parents, mothers in particular, for 18 weeks—90 payable days. It comes in two tranches: 12 weeks for immediate leave and then another 30 flexible days, which of course is equal to six weeks. It pays $772.55 a week. There's also a two-week benefit to the dad or partner which they can access as paid parental leave on a flexible basis. To qualify, parents need to meet a work test. I'm indebted to the previous speaker for this: you must be in employment for 10 out of the previous 13 months before the birth or adoption of your child, at a minimum of 330 hours over that period. That's around one day a week, so it's pretty generous in its terms in that way but people still need to meet those qualifications.

During the JobSeeker period we recognised that the state-generated lockdown periods were interfering with that process of people being able to maintain active employment, as it were, so we changed the rules to accommodate JobSeeker, but it was specific to JobSeeker and not to other government programs. Today, this legislation simply seeks to emulate the conditions that we produced for JobSeeker to ensure that we don't need to do this again, because it's a little more open in its wording and not specific to any particular program. So that's all good and I presume it will receive support from the other side, even though I notice that they've moved an amendment—which they seem to do with just about all the legislation they're going to agree with.

It's a modern world, where matters of equity between the sexes have become increasingly important. What was once a clear delineation between men's and women's duties has come much closer together, and that's a good and proper thing—even though it would be fair to say that in the majority of relationships the woman is still the primary caregiver, and we need to recognise that. It's a very important role.

There are a lot of reasons for why women want to be in the workforce. The first one, and most important of all, is that they want to be there. They want to for a lot of reasons. It can give them an outside input into their existence—to broaden their horizons, if you like—and provide some kind of worth and diversity outside that very worthwhile project of being a child-rearer. And it's an opportunity to do something more with their lives after that period of intensive caregiving has passed. It can also provide a certain amount of financial success and security for the family. And there's another good reason to have women in the workforce that's not necessarily about their benefit: it's for the national benefit. At the moment—and you would know, Deputy Speaker Goodenough—we have skills shortages right across Australia. We have this wonderful resource in women who are, in many cases, highly trained but taken out of the workforce for a period of time.

We want women to have the opportunity to have children—it's very important for Australia's future as a society that they do. We certainly don't want them to be in the position of feeling as though they cannot have children because of their time absent from the workforce. So that's what the Paid Parental Leave scheme is about. It would be fair to say that the support provided by government is working, because participation by women in the workforce is at a record high. The Prime Minister today, during question time, actually enunciated that for average weekly full-time earnings the gap between men and women is down to a record low of 14.2 per cent. I'm pretty sure he said the figure was—

An opposition member: It's gone up!

I don't believe that is correct. I believe it was 17.4 when we came to government.

An opposition member: It's just gone up in the last year.

Well, you may be able to actually put a figure on that, and there are reasons for that. Obviously we've had quite a change in Australia in the past 12 months—you may have noticed!—and there are all kinds of conflictions going on in the workforce at the moment. We are on the general trend that we are actually improving it on a regular basis, and that is off the back of government supports which have enabled women to come into the workforce. It's also off the back of our comprehensive support for the childcare system, which now sees parents earning less than $70,000 heading for an 85 per cent subsidy on their childcare payments. That doesn't come in until July next year, but these months are getting closer and closer by the day. So we can continually improve the lot of women generally, their access to the workforce, and this broadening or strengthening of the criteria around their ability to access the paid parenting scheme is to be applauded. I support the legislation, and I think it will go through this House with flying colours.

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