Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, a young woman employed as a childcare worker on a salary of $40,000 will receive $9,788 for the 18 weeks spent on parental leave under Labor’s scheme, a reduction in her usual wages of almost $4,000 for that period. Under the coalition’s plan, the same young woman will receive 26 weeks leave at her full salary, plus superannuation, giving her real time with her new baby and no cut to her income during this period. Why won’t the Prime Minister join the coalition and Unions New South Wales, which has announced it supports the coalition’s scheme as the right benchmark for Australia?

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

It is pretty interesting that during this question time we have not had a single question on health. We announced the biggest reform to the health and hospital system across the nation and the Leader of the Opposition woke up yesterday and said, ‘How can I possibly not engage in this debate? I know; I’ll take a thought bubble out there on paid parental leave and, whack, we’ll stick it out there.’ Let us just call a spade a spade: that is exactly what is happening here.

The Deputy Leader of the Opposition asked a question about why a person in a given income category would put trust in a system which we say will provide $10,000. I would say again to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition that the $10,000 that we provide is $10,000 more than she ever provided, $10,000 more than the Leader of the Opposition ever provided and $10,000 more than the Liberal Party ever thought of in the past—because, historically, the Liberal Party has been opposed to the very notion of paid parental leave and paid maternity leave.

Look at the ideological position of the Leader of the Opposition where he has said time and time again over the years that he does not believe in this one bit. How do we go about trusting a bloke who said four weeks ago, ‘No new taxes,’ and four weeks later here is a big new tax? How do we trust a bloke who a few weeks ago said, ‘We’re only going to have paid parental leave but no impost on business,’ and then a few weeks later turns that on its head? How do you trust a bloke who says throughout his life that he has never believed in this and then suddenly, as we move into an election year, he has discovered conviction and commitment and has believed in it all along?

People are beginning to ask themselves some questions about this Leader of the Opposition but one of the biggest questions over here at the moment is: why has the good old member for North Sydney been so silent during all this debate? Joe has been left to one side in all the deliberations on this recent thought bubble. Barnaby has said that he was not consulted—but maybe there is a virtue in that—and Joe was not consulted. It was only Tony out there with the thought bubble of the day in order to take attention away from health and hospitals. I would suggest that the Leader of the Opposition frame a question on health and hospitals, given that as health minister he conspicuously failed to do anything at all about health and hospitals.