Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Social Services) | Hansard source

I want to thank our whip, the member for Lalor, for her fantastic question. In her electorate, more than 2,600 parents benefited from paid parental leave just last year. On this side, we've always been for women being paid more when they're working and caring for their families and paid more in superannuation when they retire too. Of course, those opposite share a very different position. On this side, we back higher wages—we've got the lowest gender pay gap in Australian history—and we back women's retirement incomes.

On retirement, we back the low-income super tax offset, we back payday super for earlier, more frequent employer contributions and, in the last year, we have been paying superannuation on paid parental leave. That has made an absolutely huge difference to women's retirement incomes.

In the first year of paying super on paid parental leave, around 200,000 people have benefited. There's an estimated $285½ million extra in their superannuation because of that. A woman with a median superannuation balance will be around $5,400 better off in retirement because of this. A lot of people have more than one child. Let's take an example; let's call her Charlee-Sue. She has two children, when she's 30 and 33. Because of our changes to paid parental leave, when she retires, she will have an estimated $10,400 more in her superannuation. That's because of that change that we have made. On this side, we want people, mums in particular, to have more in their super. On that side, they're determined that people will get less superannuation.

Those opposite say that workers are lazy, that they should be paid less, that they should be easier to sack—

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