Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the issue of the red tape and compliance burden being imposed on employers by the Gillard Labor government with regard to paid parental leave—PPL—payments. The red tape affects many businesses in my electorate, particularly small businesses.

Mr Don Pember, the CEO of the Mandurah Retirement Village, tells me that the Labor government's way of handling these payments is significantly affecting his business. Mr Pember has expressed his concerns with regard to the additional administrative work his organisation must undertake to make these payments. This is because the Labor government has chosen to dump the responsibility for making the paid parental leave payments on the employer. The extra administrative work is gained through the double handling of payments by both Centrelink and the employer.

When the Labor government decided that, from July this year, employers were to be responsible for processing the PPL payments and also having to deal with Centrelink to gain the initial funds to do so, they effectively forced employers to become PPL pay clerks. The coalition believes that the government expenditure incurred to establish the Centrelink-administered PPL system should have continued to deliver benefits to the Australian people beyond the six-month shelf-life the Gillard government determined.

Mandurah Retirement Village employs more than 100 female employees and at least five per cent of the workforce could be on maternity leave at any one time. This means more of the village's resources are being dedicated to administering these payments. This includes familiarising the PPL pay clerks with their obligations and responsibilities; changes to payroll and accounting systems and software; the processing of payments; and compliance, verification and reporting requirements.

On top of this, there are significant fines that can be issued to employers who fail to comply with the various obligations under the scheme. I would add that the coalition, through the shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs, Bruce Billson, actually attempted to remove the unnecessary administrative compliance burden via the Paid Parental Leave (Reduction of Compliance Burden for Employers) Amendment Bill 2010. Unfortunately, those on the Labor side voted it down, and the burden continues for the Mandurah Retirement Village and other small businesses like it.

This is a disgrace. It just demonstrates that the Labor Party has no sympathy for small businesses on this compliance double handling. In fact they are not interested in small business at all; they are interested in red tape rather than in seeing a properly administered scheme that saves small businesses the extra time in compliance that this initiative has put on them.