Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in relation to the Paid Parental Leave Amendment Bill 2014. In so doing, it is important to think about the purpose of paid parental leave. It has been pleasing to me to see the shift in consensus in this country in the last decade. I remember very well the then Labor opposition in the early 2000s bringing forth to the Australian people a policy of paid parental leave and that being widely opposed by Liberals and Nationals across this country. It took a Labor government to introduce paid parental leave, as you know, Madam Speaker, and that followed on from a Productivity Commission report that Labor commissioned in government that considered a paid parental leave scheme.

It is important to consider what the Productivity Commission report had to say about paid parental leave. The Productivity Commission made some remarks that are very pertinent to the present debate in respect of paid parental leave broadly and the mechanism for administering paid parental leave, which is the subject of the bill before us today. The Productivity Commission, in considering paid parental leave, looked at a few objectives for a paid parental leave scheme. The starting point was: why have a paid parental leave scheme?

The Productivity Commission looked at a few objectives, as I said. The first objective was child and maternal health. Obviously there is a child and maternal health objective in the sense that paid parental leave is aimed at assisting parents to stay at home and bond with newborn children if possible while removing some of the stress that comes from going for a long period of time without an income, which of course most people—myself included—would not be able to manage in terms of the household finances for very long. Another issue that was taken into account, and an objective of paid parental leave, was the equity issues. In simple terms, women tend to take longer breaks from the workforce than men and, as a consequence, end up with less superannuation and less income over the course of a lifetime.

The third key objective that was considered by the Productivity Commission was the labour force benefits of a paid parental leave scheme. There is the obvious workforce participation of a paid parental leave scheme, in that it provides an incentive to stay in employment both to qualify for the paid parental leave scheme and then, once the person has had a child, to continue in employment to remain qualified for the paid parental leave scheme. There are also other workforce benefits—first and foremost of which is the one that is the subject of this bill and the debate of this bill, which is workforce attachment.

I have been listening to the debate today and I note that some the Liberal-National members who have addressed the bill have claimed that it is a small business measure and that there is no workforce attachment benefit to retaining the administration of paid parental leave in the hands of the employer. I turn to those comments. Firstly, the bill is not a small business specific measure; it is a bill which takes from all employers the administration of the Paid Parental Leave Scheme and returns it to the Commonwealth, therefore demonstrating and signifying to the people who use the scheme—employers and employees—that really the Paid Parental Leave Scheme is not an incident of work but an incident of welfare. It is a very unfortunate message to be sending to people because, as I have said, one of the considerations and objectives for paid parental leave was attachment for the person taking the leave to their workforce.

Attachment is so important for a number of reasons. Firstly, skills can be eroded by long absence from the workforce. We know that in paid parental leave legislation there are keep in touch days that are important for keeping the person in touch with the workplace on an ongoing basis. Secondly, there is the out of sight, out of mind issue which arises when people take long periods of leave from the workplace. There I am talking about things like promotion—if a promotion opportunity arises and somehow the person on parental leave is not informed or a promotion opportunity arises and it is advertised only in the internal newsletter and the newsletter is not sent to the person on parental leave, or the management of the firm considers an efficiency restructure and surprise, surprise, it is the person on parental leave whose job magically appears to have become redundant in that process. All of those things are concerns for people who go on parental leave. People on parental leave are concerned about making sure they will have a good job to go back to when they return. There is legislation in place but it is not just legislation. It is not just rule based compliance that is important in normalising absence from the workforce to look after children and in making sure that people who take those absences are not disadvantaged. As well as rules based compliance with the right to return to the same job or a job of equal status, as well as the right to take absences in the first place, as well as the right to have those absences recognised as a normal incident of working life for parenting aged people, culture is needed. Rules alone are not enough to develop that approach by employees and employers. You need to have a culture where it is a normal part of life for people to be absent. Part of building that culture is keeping people in touch with the workplace and attached to the workforce during long periods of absence. That is why workforce attachment is an important issue.

I heard someone say before that they did not really understand workforce attachment, that they thought it was something the Labor Party had made up to justify opposition to this bill. In fact, if you look at the history the Paid Parental Leave Scheme in this country and if you look back at the Productivity Commission report you will see that attachment was one of the key issues considered by the Productivity Commission in considering the payment mechanism, by which I mean in considering whether it should be the employer who administers the paid parental leave as part of payroll or whether it should be administered by a government department as part of the welfare system. The Productivity Commission had this to say about why it would be best for employers to administer the scheme, in other words, to keep workers on the payroll as part of the ordinary business, not some special category over here whose pay is being administered by the government and, as I say, it becomes out of sight out of mind. In its report, the Productivity Commission said:

The more that parental leave arrangements mimic those that exist as part of routine employment contracts, the more they will be seen by employers and employees as standard employment arrangements—

The Productivity Commission suggested that this would benefit employers:

… promoting employment continuity and workplace retention … signalling that a genuine capacity to take a reasonable period of leave from employment to look after children is just a normal part of working life.

That is the rationale that the Productivity Commission had in deciding to recommend that the payments should be administered by the employer rather than by the federal government. The Productivity Commission addressed some concerns about the administrative burden for employers saying:

… it is arguable whether there would be any material addition to administrative costs, not only for large employers with access to sophisticated payroll and human resource management systems, but also for smaller firms because (as acknowledged by some participants) the probability of an employee actually being on parental leave at any point in time would be quite low.

What is being said there is that in a small firm, in a small business, there is a low number of employees, that it is not the norm for an employee to be on parental leave; quite the contrary, it is an exception across the course of the employee's lifetime. So the incidence of employees being on parental leave was relatively low, according to the Productivity Commission. I am grateful to the Parliamentary Library for including in the Bills Digest some responses to a survey conducted of employers in respect of how they found the Paid Parental Leave Scheme to be administered. Tellingly, 74 per cent agreed that paid parental leave had been easy to implement. Of course, while some employer associations had raised concerns about employers having to administer the payments, it is certainly the case that in the course of the inquiries before the Paid Parental Leave Scheme was introduced there was some acknowledgment of the benefits of that workforce attachment consideration.

The Australian Industry Group, as the Bills Digest acknowledges, ultimately said that it understands the logic behind the government funded parental leave payments being channelled through employers for employees who are not short term and who remain attached to the enterprise, that such an approach should reinforce the employee's link with the workplace and achieve better return to work outcomes. So again we see the workforce attachment concerns. Obviously coming from a business background, I was in a law firm which was a private business. Like most private businesses, we had a concern about ensuring that our human resources were managed. It was very clear to me, as one of the leaders of that business, that retention is a vitally important issue for business. You hear different figures being bandied around but one of the figures suggests it can cost $70,000 when you lose an employee—to recruit, to replace, to retrain to reskill the replacement.

It is easy to see how important it is to seek to retain employees whenever that is possible. Work force attachment benefits should therefore not be discounted as a benefit to business for what, according to the research, appears to have been a burden that they have found easy to implement.

Of course this bill is not, as I said earlier, a bill about small business. It is a bill that applies to all businesses. It has been a bit mischievous of government MPs to suggest that Labor does not have any basis to reject this bill because all it does is help small business. We know that small businesses need to be able to devote time and energy to grow. That is why, during the election campaign, we campaigned to enable businesses with fewer than 20 employees to have Centrelink administer their paid parental leave payments. This bill does not just apply to small businesses, as has been mischievously implied by people opposite. It applies to all businesses other than those who opt to pay their paid parental leave payments themselves.

We say that there is a sensible balance needed to maintain the relationship, the work force attachment, with the employees while they are on paid parental leave, versus the resources that are needed to comply and to administer the payment. The bill that is presently before the House simply does not strike the right balance. We will move to amend the legislation in the Senate to ensure that only businesses with 20 employees can have their paid parental leave administered by Centrelink. It is consistent with our pre-election policy. To apply the rules so that there would be a move to administration by Centrelink only for small businesses is consistent with, I believe, the private member's bill of the small business minister when he was in opposition.

The fact is that this bill goes much further and does not strike the right balance. That is why we will seek to move an amendment to it in the Senate. When you think about what can only be described as a surprising move by the government to introduce a bill that does not strike the right balance, that goes further than the previous private member's bill, that contradicts the Productivity Commission's own recommendations around work force attachment, you would have to say that this is another example of the Abbott government's failure to get its priorities right.

It is disappointing, in the broader context of paid parental leave, that we are seeing yet another example of that priorities problem this government seems to have. I have spoken in this House before about the issue of priorities when it comes to paid parental leave. You see this gold-plated Rolls Royce paid parental leave scheme that the Prime Minister has come up with, and his only concession to the arguments of fairness and equity that have been raised has been to reduce the threshold from $150,000 per annum earners down to $100,000 per annum earners. That means, still, that people who are earning $100,000 or more per annum—even if they earn $1 million or more; it is not capped—will be paid $50,000 if they have a baby versus someone on a lower income who will be paid a lower amount. We know that this income replacement process for paid parental leave was squarely dealt with by the Productivity Commission in its 2009 report. We know that the Productivity Commission expressly recommended against a full income replacement scheme in that 2009 report into paid parental leave. Yet, unfortunately, the Abbott government is pushing ahead with this inequitable scheme, where people who earn more get more government assistance and people who earn less get less government assistance.

This is in the context of a budget where we are going to see indexation to pensioners changed so that pensioners end up suffering. We are going to see cuts to health funding in the sense of people receiving a lesser rebate when they go to the GP, the GP tax on people who formerly would have been bulk billed, and the ability for the states to levy the emergency department tax. All of these changes, not to mention, of course—and I have spoken about it recently—deregulation of university fees and higher debt burdens on university students, show that this government's priorities are twisted.

Eric Hutchinson (Lyons, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to rise and speak on the Paid Parental Leave Amendment Bill 2014. I have been an advocate for change in this area ever since the policy was explained to me. The hysteria that has been whipped up by the opposition and those on the other side really beggars belief because ultimately this is a measure of equity. This is about providing low- and middle-income women with the best opportunity to go and have a family, because that is really important. It is also about providing them with the best opportunity, if they so choose, to get back to work.

There have been many misunderstandings. The principal misunderstanding relates to how this measure will be funded. In large part this will be funded by a levy on the biggest tax-paying big business in our country. I find it quite interesting that those on the other side see that as a bad thing. It will particularly help low- and middle-income women in the work force. It particularly will help those women that are involved and employed within small business. Why should not those people who choose to work in small business have the same opportunities that are offered to women that work in big business, to women that work in the Public Service? Why is it that cleaners, teachers and shop assistants should be disadvantaged under the current arrangements? Why is it that those on the other side would oppose these measures?

It is a policy that will support new babies. The evidence shows that the first six months of a baby and a mother bonding are the most vital and the most important. It is also important to understand that superannuation will be paid on this fair dinkum scheme. You do not have to look very far. Most people do understand that women, when they retire at the end of their working lives, have less superannuation than their male counterparts. It is simply untenable. It gives women every reason to have a family. That is so important for Australia. It is so important for them. It gives those women the very best opportunity to re-enter the work force if they so choose.

This is in fact a workplace entitlement. This is not welfare. It is a productivity measure. It is good economic policy. It is not welfare. As Australia's population ages, goodness knows, the evidence is clear for anyone who would want to look, anyone who would listen, that we are going to need many people back in the workforce paying taxes and working. This, in a productivity sense, will support women getting back into the workforce, and indeed we are going to need them. Importantly, we will remove the responsibility that currently lies with small business to be the pay clerk for government within this scheme. It means that low- and middle-income mums are indeed the winners. They are the winners when they are spending time with their families, with their new babies, and they are winners at the end of their working lives, when they also will have access to superannuation at a similar level to what their male counterparts enjoy.

But there is more. For the first time, this will allow small-business employers to be able to compete for quality female employees alongside big business and the Public Service. This is an enormous opportunity for small business to expand. We know what an important part of the Australian economy it is. We know about the damage that was done to small business under the previous government and the number of businesses that failed due to the carbon tax. These are measures to support what we understand and we know to be an important part of the Australian economy—that is, the small-business sector. Indeed, this is a policy of equity.

If you do not believe me, others are saying similar things. I believe that perhaps Eva Cox has the definitive argument for immediately passing and implementing this Paid Parental Leave Amendment Bill. For those including me who are too young to remember, I take it on very good authority that Eva Cox was one of the Australian women's warriors who emerged from the feminist revolution that swept this country in the 1970s, along with people like Germaine Greer, Elizabeth Evatt and Ann Summers. In the early 1980s, she was also an adviser to the respected Tasmanian Labor senator Don Grimes when he was the federal opposition spokesman on social services.

Eva Cox has never been at any time a darling of this side—the Liberal Party. Despite her obvious political colours, she strongly supports the coalition's Paid Parental Leave scheme. Why? Because she understands how much it is needed by Australian women who must work as well as care for their children. Cox, indeed a hardline feminist, says yes to the scheme because of the deeper, more significant reasons which Tasmanian and Australian women who were working and trying to raise a family all at the same time in the 1970s will know and agree with, whatever their political persuasion. That generation of women had been arguing and advocating for such a scheme since the early 1970s for themselves and their daughters, who are our new generation of women in the workplace.

Incorporating paid parental leave with other workplace leave entitlements normalises parenting in the realm of employment. Taking paid leave to have a baby reinforces the notion that it is quite legitimate to be an employee and to be a parent. It is a vital ideological step in shifting attitudes about what makes an ideal employee. The Australian workplace culture needs to acknowledge the fact that in the 21st century all of us are human beings with different responsibilities, and better aligning our paid work with outside obligations is a good measure of a healthy society and will, importantly, boost productivity.

This scheme, I repeat, is a workplace entitlement. It is a productivity measure. It is not about welfare. The legislative amendment for this scheme that we are debating today is closer to an industrial work entitlement that normalises paid parental leave than the current scheme. It is longer, 26 weeks instead of 18, and that is because all the data, all the information, shows that the first six months a mother has with her newborn baby are the most important—and children are indeed important. We need mums to have babies, and we also need mums, if they so choose, to be taxpayers as well again.

I also found it interesting that Cox described the media debate that has surrounded this initiative as 'a sad illustration of both the tenor of current political debates and continuing bizarre attitudes to women in paid work'. Should not those opposing this policy remember and acknowledge what Cox and her feminist colleagues have been campaigning for for nearly four decades? She says:

Too much of the discussion has been emotive, often sexist and deeply irrational.

The most offensive idea to those against the scheme seems to be that a handful of 'high-earning women' would continue to receive their salaries while whilst having a baby. When was the last time that this level of anger applied to high-income men taking annual leave or long service leave? Why is it different? Why is it different because they are women having babies? It simply does not make sense. Or is there still—

Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's about who's paying for it.

Eric Hutchinson (Lyons, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Indeed. Big business is paying for it. Is there still in Australia discomfort with the idea of high-earning women? Perhaps those on the other side simply do not like the idea that there are high-earning and capable women in our midst.

Ms MacTiernan interjecting—

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for Perth!

Eric Hutchinson (Lyons, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker. I would urge those on the other side to listen to academic and feminist Eva Cox and acknowledge that what she is saying is indeed true. We need to normalise women as employees in the workforce and as mothers, and this Paid Parental Leave scheme will go a long way towards doing that.

I acknowledge that this has been the Prime Minister's passion. I also acknowledge that, in the light of a tough budget and a difficult circumstance that we have inherited, he has looked at the scheme and been prepared to make some concessions. I acknowledge him for that. Sadly, we are all being asked to help fix the debt and deficit disaster that was left us by those opposite in the Labor Party.

I remind the House again that this Paid Parental Leave scheme will benefit, most of all, low- and middle-income mums. It will help small business employers. It is a productivity measure, not a welfare measure. It is indeed a workplace entitlement. Just in the same way that I receive my superannuation and, when I go on annual leave, I received the same entitlement as my wage, the same measures should apply if somebody chooses to go and have a family.

This is good for Australia. It is a matter of equity in the 21st century. It is good for working women. It is good for babies. We know that. The data shows that. It is good for small business employers. It is good for families. Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, I acknowledge also that you understand very well how important families are to a cohesive society. But most of all this is good for Australia. It is about our ability as a nation to have people in paid employ to be able to pay, and to pay sustainably, for the services that we all expect to receive from government in the future. I urge those on both sides of this place to support this bill before the House today.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Paid Parental Leave Amendment Bill 2014. If you listened to the previous speaker, you might think that this was the bill that actually introduces the rolled-gold Paid Parental Leave scheme of the Abbott government, but actually it is not. In fact, it is likely to be some time before we see that bill, because, even though it has been a central, core promise—

Mr Chester interjecting—

A signature policy, says the minister sitting opposite—it actually has not managed to make it to the budget. Even though the coalition have been in government for eight months and they have known about this scheme—and presumably they have had all the time in the world to work it out—it is still actually not in the budget. It is in the contingency reserve, so we are told. It is clearly not developed enough at this point to be solid enough even to be in the budget, let alone to be in a bill before this House. This bill actually deals with how the current Paid Parental Leave scheme is paid. It was interesting to hear the member for Lyons talk about this not being a welfare payment, because the purpose of this bill is to transfer the payment from business to Centrelink. This bill makes the Paid Parental Leave scheme a Centrelink payment. It is quite interesting that they do not see it as a welfare payment, although it will be going through Centrelink.

The current Paid Parental Leave scheme was introduced in 2011 by the Labor government. It was Australia's first Paid Parental Leave scheme, and I consider it to be one of the Labor government's quite extraordinary achievements. Since then, it has benefited more than 340,000 families. An additional 40,000 dads and their partners have benefited from dad and partner pay since it came into effect in January last year. The scheme was designed to benefit all Australian families, but particularly it assisted those on low and middle incomes, many of whom were in casual and part-time work. It pays 18 weeks at the minimum wage. Around 55 per cent of working mothers had no access to paid parental leave at all before Labor's scheme was introduced. Today, access to paid parental leave stands at around 95 per cent of all working mothers. It is interesting to note that the median income of these women is around $45,000—so the median income of 95 per cent of working mothers is actually less than the amount of the Prime Minister's scheme, which is $50,000.

The new scheme will come with a cost of $5.5 billion a year. That is $21 billion over the forward estimates. One of the reasons why those of us on this side of the House have a difficulty with the size of this scheme being $5.5 billion a year is the cuts that the government is making in order to afford this extraordinary $21 billion hit over the forward estimates. We are seeing a slashing of family payments, cuts to pensions, cuts to health, cuts to education, and a $7 co-payment on GP visits. On the one hand, the people who are least able to afford it are being well and truly harmed by this budget of broken promises, but, on the other hand, the government has found $21 billion over the forward estimates for this rolled-gold Paid Parental Leave scheme.

I want to speak mainly about this particular bill because it is a really interesting bill. There will be some people out there that are not particularly interested in the figures that sit behind this bill, but I think it is worth having a look at how the government came to their conclusions and what they covered in the regulatory impact statement that supports this move of the Paid Parental Leave scheme from business to Centrelink. They really are quite interesting. I have to say it is some of the most amusing maths I have ever seen. If it were not for the fact that a government have relied on it, I think I would have spent more than the 10 minutes that I spent laughing when I first read this regulatory impact statement. The figures that they use to support their claims about savings in red tape as the rationale for moving the Paid Parental Leave scheme from business to Centrelink are not just rubbery; they are complete rubbish. By the time I have finished going through this, I do not think anyone out there who understands maths at all will disagree with me. I suspect there are not many on the other side that actually understand maths or they would be a little embarrassed by this.

Minister Billson claims that moving the payroll function of Paid Parental Leave from business to Centrelink will save $48 million per year. For that to be true, the public sector—Centrelink—must be able to deliver payroll services to employees of a business more cheaply than the business itself can, even though the business already has set up the payroll, already knows when the person is going on leave, already has their tax file number and has already been producing group certificates. It is already set up; just the amount changes for 18 weeks.

According to the regulatory impact statement, it is cheaper for Centrelink to set up all of those things and pay a person whom they have not paid before than it is for a business. In fact, it is 31 times cheaper for Centrelink to set up the payroll and pay a person than it is for a business, which already has it all set up and has already been paying the person. Thirty-one times cheaper! If that were in fact true, then I would suggest that many businesses should outsource their payroll to Centrelink, because 31 times cheaper is an extraordinary result.

According to the regulatory impact statement, for Centrelink to pay a person for 18 weeks it would cost $28, yet for a business to pay that same person it would cost $880, even though the business has already been paying that person a wage, so the payroll is already set up. Centrelink sets it all up and manages to do it for $28.

I have calculated those figures, because there were no totals in the RIS, based on the 50,000 people who had received paid parental leave each year in the two years leading up to the regulatory impact statement. The numbers seem to be slightly higher than that, which means that Centrelink would be able to do it for presumably less than $28. But, again, that is an extraordinary achievement. It flies in the face of all the arguments that the private sector is far more efficient than the public sector. In order to get these results, you have to realise that the government has seriously fudged its figures.

According to the regulatory impact statement, the median cost of administering the Paid Parental Leave scheme for business is $1,783. That is actually written in the regulatory impact statement. But the median is the mid-point of a series of numbers. That means half the businesses must be paying less than that and half the businesses must be paying more than that. But, if you look at the series of numbers, you will see that over 80 per cent of respondents put the cost at less than $1,000. So if 80 per cent of the respondents put the cost at less than $1,000 and half put it at less than $250, the median cannot be $1,783. It cannot be nearly twice as high as the 80th percentile. It simply cannot. It must be closer to $250.

The regulatory impact statement also says that the median number of hours for a business to implement the Paid Parental Leave scheme is 22 hours. But the median cannot be 22 hours, as well over half the results show fewer than 15 hours. These are not fudged figures; this is profoundly flawed maths. In fact, it is not maths. A high school student would be able to drive a truck through this. It cannot be the case that the median is 22 hours if over half the respondents say that it takes fewer than 15 hours.

Forty-six per cent of respondents said it took fewer than five hours, and the government comes up with a median of 22 hours. This cannot be true. I think the STEM education level in our parliament is seriously lacking. I would suggest that the government start doing something about it, because this is not just shonky maths; this is fantasy land. It is a basic misunderstanding of words such as 'median'—

Mr Chester interjecting—

The interjector says, 'Swanny was good with numbers.' I never saw the ex-Treasurer do something as extraordinarily bad as this. This is extraordinary.

Mr Chester interjecting—

I will leave the interjection, because clearly the interjector does not understand the maths, either, or he would be a bit embarrassed at the moment, rather than trying to make excuses for the government.

The government claim to be removing red tape. But, in this case, they are simply moving it. Moving the burden of red tape does not save the bottom line, although the government claim that they are saving $48 million. It simply moves those costs to another department. That $48 million figure is calculated on some of the most extraordinarily fraudulent maths that a high school student would get a giant F for. In fact, a grade 8 student would get a giant F for this maths.

Fifty-four per cent of employers disagreed with the statement that organising payments for the Paid Parental Leave scheme has been time consuming. Only 29 per cent stated that additional costs were involved in implementing the scheme. Of those reporting additional costs, 94 per cent of employers stated that those arose from extra workload that they took on themselves, rather than from purchasing new payroll systems or hiring extra administrative staff. Seventy-four per cent of employers said the Paid Parental Leave scheme was easy to implement. If it was so onerous, as the government claims, why did 11.7 per cent of businesses that did not have to pay parental leave do so when the requirement, according to the government, was so onerous?

Labor introduced a Paid Parental Leave scheme, back in 2011, which, as I said, we were very proud of. We set it at 18 weeks at the minimum wage. We deliberately began this program in a modest way because it had to be sustainable. We started it in a modest way. We also wanted to have further discussions with the community, women, families and childcare centres about where we went from there. We were already hearing from women that issues such as superannuation and child care in the longer term were as important and, for some of them, more important than paid parental leave. So we knew we had a rather complex world to negotiate. We knew there needed to be a lot more discussion with parents and with childcare centres about where we went with this program in the future. Unfortunately, the current government has not had those discussions. We are already hearing loud and clear from women that the childcare issue is a far greater impediment to returning to work than paid parental leave. Of course, childcare costs last for an incredibly long time. They can last for 12 years or more. Again, there is nothing in this budget that gives women hope that child care will be a focus of this government; neither have we seen this government focus on superannuation. In fact, we have seen a delaying of the increase in the super guarantee levy by a number of years. So, again, the issues that women are talking about have been ignored by this government. It is a thought bubble of the previous opposition leader, Mr Abbott, turned into a core policy and a signature policy, and a refusal to waver from that policy, in spite of extraordinary feedback from the community that there are other issues that are far more important than this.

I have also heard from some of the childcare centres in my electorate which are also concerned about this rolled-gold Paid Parental Leave scheme. If you think about it, it is really obvious that if a woman, who already has one or two children, is given six months on full pay under the Paid Parental Leave scheme, she will take both of those children out of child care. Again, I am not arguing whether that is good or bad for the family. What I am saying, though, is that there is considerable concern within the childcare sector that this rolled-gold Paid Parental Leave scheme will affect their viability and their ability to continue to offer childcare services.

There are a number of elements that I think the government have not considered—let's face it, they have not yet introduced it, because they still do not have the numbers; they are still working on it eight months later—when they put this program together.

Again, I just want to point out that this particular bill and its regulatory impact statement, and for that matter its explanatory memorandum, include some of the shonkiest maths I have seen in a long time. When the government tries to claim $48 million in savings from this move, we need perhaps to get 13- or 14-year-old maths student to redo the calculations. I am sure they can do a better job. The median is the midpoint in the series of numbers. If 80 per cent of the numbers are under 500, the median cannot be 1,700. It just cannot be. It is shonky maths and a shonky program.

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What an extraordinary presentation, from a woman of all people, and I will go to some of those absurdities espoused, notions like: 'Wouldn't it be terrible if a woman who was getting full paid parental leave took her other child, perhaps a toddler, out of the creche or childcare centre? That would be terrible for the business of the childcare centre.' How extraordinary. Wouldn't it be better for that woman to be able to have both her children home in a period of paid parental leave? So I think we need a lot of heavy thinking about how we have such an extraordinary representation from the Labor Party to try and defend what was a very mean paid parental leave introduced with no superannuation consideration. Don't they understand that women are most likely to be in poverty in their older age because they have had gaps in their employment while they went away to bear their children? Continuous superannuation is critical for women to be able to remain independent in their older age. Here we have a Labor government at the time saying, 'No, women don't need super. Men do but not women.' Therefore their very mean, cheapskate paid parental leave scheme paid only the minimum wage to all women, even those who were already receiving much higher returns in paid parental leave because they were in the Public Service or in the defence forces or in the insurance or banking sector. Apparently it was going to be somehow enough for all women to be only paid the equivalent of the minimum wage, with no superannuation and for a miserable 18 weeks.

It was one of the most shameful pieces of Labor Party policy. I remember the poor unionists hiding their heads in shame, particularly those giants of women amongst the Labor union movement who had fought for years for a paid parental scheme. They were in corners in Parliament House saying, 'How are we going to defend this? What can we do? Perhaps it is best if we say nothing and hope they will fix it as fast as possible.' The good news is that the coalition has fixed the problem of cheapskate, inadequate paid parental leave that Labor gave us. I have to say that this amendment is in itself purely administrative and not much to do with the overall policy, so I will not deal with it straightaway. I think it is very important to remind ourselves that, if a woman expects to have her full salary paid when she leaves the workforce to have a child, she may then be accused of somehow being grasping, asking for too much, expecting something gold-plated, when that is exactly what a man expects and gets if he takes recreation leave, sick leave or long service leave. Why should a woman who is bringing forward the new generation of Australians be expected to accept much less as an industrial standard than what has been enjoyed by the general population of the workforce most of this century, and certainly since the 1970s?

This is an extraordinary situation where we see the Labor Party, who like to beat their chest and say it is all for workers and all for women, and when you look at the reality of their policies it is actually the reverse. They do everything they can to make sure that the oppressed and underpaid continue in that circumstance. So we had this extraordinary reaction when the now Prime Minister announced there would be full income replacement paid to women for six months for paid parental leave, not the miserable minimum wage for just three months, and the scream from the Labor sisterhood went up. I found it extraordinary, and this presentation we have just had from the other side of the chamber reinforces how low some of them can go in abandoning women who are members of their party and expected a lot more, a lot better.

This particular amendment just deals with the administrative burden on business where the paid parental leave legislation required them as bigger businesses to administer the parental leave themselves. From 1 July 2014 employees will be paid directly by the Department of Human Services unless an employer opts in to provide parental leave paid to its employees and an employee agrees for their employer to pay them. The previous speaker became quite excited about the fact that she thought the numbers were wrong. I think that is quite irrelevant. The point is that, if you can have the minimum of additional red tape and administrative burden on our small and larger businesses, isn't that a good thing? It has to be a good thing. Centrelink is set up with its computer-aided systems to be able to deal with this payment in an efficient and effective way, and I say: what a good idea.

Unfortunately, under Labor there was so much red tape and additional burden of administration that numbers of our small businesses literally went under. They could not cope with the form filling, the duplicated rubbish that was requested of them day after day, particularly in the aged-care sector, where women who had entered that workforce wanting to use their skills of empathy and care in their relations every day with their elderly residents instead found themselves filling in forms, more and more and more paperwork. Often they were not of English-speaking backgrounds, so we had great carers leaving the aged-care workforce because Labor killed them with the burden of red tape. We are not going to perpetuate that nonsense and you will be aware, Deputy Speaker, that one of our main aims in this government is to slash the administrative burden, the rubbish red tape that was added to the legislation under Labor's watch.

Let us get back to paid parental leave itself. I find it extraordinary—and I think most of us have received these emails, or perhaps it is mostly women members who do. We get these emails, sadly from older women, saying, 'I didn't get paid parental leave. I coped. Why can't they? This is really silly.' I say to those women, 'Good on you, but you didn't have electricity in the 1950s either and maybe you didn't have a telephone in those early days, and we do not simply say, you didn't have it so in the 21st century the rest of the human population can't.' I think that is a nonsense argument but you get it fairly regularly in emails.

When I ring these older women and talk to them for only a couple of minutes, I find they soon start to tell me about their granddaughters and the difficulties they have in trying to work full time because they need two incomes to keep up with their mortgage payments, to pay for their car and to perhaps pay for their kids school fees. They feel sorry for the burdens that working women now have to bear and how they are trying to do it all—have the babies, raise the children, look after the disabled, look after elderly parents and parents-in-law, and still have a career that is fulfilling and where they can reach their full potential. Those conversations with older women usually end up with us both in furious agreement that, yes, paid parental leave is not only important but necessary for women in the 21st century.

I was amazed when the previous Labor speaker said that she has been out consulting, or someone in the Labor Party has been out consulting, and women have said no, they would rather focus on child care and superannuation. I can understand the superannuation issue. Labor refused to give superannuation to women taking parental leave. I imagine those consultations were a furphy and perhaps nothing happened at all. But to suggest that women out there are saying, 'We want child care sorted not paid parental leave,' is absolute rubbish. What women are saying to me, including my two daughters who between them have six children, is this: 'We need both. We have to have efficient, cost-effective, adequate and flexible child care, but we also have to have adequate time off when we have our babies, at least six months, on our replacement salaries so that we can bond with our babies, breastfeed our babies and have our youngest out of child care for that six months so we can form a proper family when those newborns come into the household.' Of course, you can also have a father participate in this Paid Parental Leave Scheme if they wish. I just find that what Labor is suggesting is absurd—that either you support child care or you give mothers adequate paid parental leave. What a rubbish argument. Would you ever suggest that men in the workforce can either have full pay for sick leave or trade off their long service leave? It just would not happen. Why is it that women are supposed to cop all of this?

I am not proud of the fact that Australia was one of the last countries in the OECD, along with the United States of America, to have a statutory paid parental leave system. It was a very long time coming in Australia. If you thought we had women who had to go back to work the day after they had their babies, that in fact was not the case, because the private sector and the Public Service moved to fill the gap because we did not have a statutory paid parental leave scheme. But before Labor introduced its mean and lousy 'no superannuation, only three months' scheme, we had women who were lucky enough to be in the Public Service being offered paid parental leave on full pay. Likewise, women in the defence forces in any higher paid positions were offered full pay replacement during their parental leave. It was just bad luck, according to Labor, that if you were a part-time worker or in a lower paid industry like accommodation, cafes, restaurants or retail you just missed out, that it was just tough. I will give you the statistics.

In 2005, 76 per cent of women employed in the public sector in their last main job while pregnant used full-pay, paid maternity leave compared with just 27 per cent of women employees in the private sector; 80 per cent of women whose last main job while pregnant was in government administration defence and 68 per cent of those in education used full pay, paid maternity leave. And there were much higher levels in the finance and insurance industry. However, the industries with the lowest proportion of female employees with paid parental leave were accommodation, cafes and restaurants and there only 14 per cent of women got paid parental leave and in retail it was only 21 per cent. Instead of Labor looking at those statistics and saying, 'That's not fair. Those poorly paid women and those part-time women should have had decent paid parental leave as well,' Labor had every woman in the workforce reduced to a minimum wage for only three months as a paid parental leave entitlement and no superannuation. How extraordinary. No wonder union women hung their heads in shame and hoped it would very quickly morph into a better scheme. Sadly, it did not and it is up to the coalition to put a decent scheme on the table.

The coalition's Paid Parental Leave Scheme provides that women receive the entitlement, as men receive in their various work entitlements, of the equivalent of their wage for incomes up to $100,000 for up to 26 weeks. I am very sad to say only about two per cent of the Australian women in the workforce earn more than $100,000, but at least up to that level women will be paid a full replacement salary. They will also receive their superannuation. So they are not going to have this gap, this stop/start business that Labor was more than happy to endorse.

Women will have a better chance of having an independent older age. The reality for women in Australia is that they are more likely to be alone in older age through divorce, being widowed or never having married. Fewer women now are marrying or permanently partnering. We know that at least 30 per cent of women over 30 now will not be marrying. There will be more who will need to independently pay for their old age. We know women are going to have a long older age after retirement. A girl born today will live on average to 100 years.

For Labor to have been happy to deny women superannuation payments while they take leave to nurture their newborn I find disgusting and unconscionable. I do not know how the women in the Labor Party can sit in this chamber and make speeches saying that it is all okay. I do not know how they can get excited about whether the cost-benefit analysis or whatever all adds up. I am sure it does, but I am amazed that that is the focus of their attention and not the fact that under Labor's scheme people would not get their full wage even though their mortgage reflected their full wage, along with a partner's wage, and would only get 18 weeks and would not get access to super. What an extraordinary scheme, for a country like Australia which happens to take some pride in the idea of equity and a fair go.

Of course I strongly support this amendment. I also ask all of those out there who keep sending me emails or suggesting to me: 'How dare a woman want full pay when she takes parental leave! How dare they consider getting superannuation!' to stop and think about the incredible sacrifices women do make when they choose to have a child during their career—to think about the extra work they take on: raising children, managing a career, and looking after their partners and lots of others in the community as well. I salute the women of Australia. I think they do a magnificent job. And I really want to see our coalition paid parental leave scheme start as soon as possible.

Clive Palmer (Fairfax, Palmer United Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When a woman received less historically, it was not from the government. It is not the government's role to use taxpayers' funds and distribute them to citizens according to their wealth. It is not the role of a government department or the government to pay employees in the private sector. Is this the Liberal Party's creeping socialism? The Liberal Party wants to extend the role of government—to make it bigger and give it more functions—to pay paid parental leave. The government expands. Liberals used to believe in smaller government, not larger government. Liberals used to believe in lower taxes, not higher taxes.

We need a childcare revolution, but if you listen to the Treasurer of Australia, Australians cannot afford that—we have got to balance our budget. Then how can we waste $20 billion on what is primarily the responsibility of an employer to an employee? So when is the Treasurer going to introduce a childcare revolution? And what happens to this country when we introduce paid parental leave, abolish the carbon tax, abolish the mining tax and cut everything to nothing? Do you think we will get the economy moving that way? What happens after all those goals are achieved?

The Prime Minister is attempting to win popularity with the women of Australia. But it will not work. The women of Australia know the Prime Minister. And his untruthful government does not care about them. Paid parental leave is no substitute for a desperate single mother who cries herself to sleep each night because the money is not there and she will be unable to support herself or her children in the future. Australians need to care more about the children who are being born here, and give them a decent life rather than put them in hardship.

Paid parental leave was, for a long time, a matter between an employer and an employee. It was a cost of business negotiated between employees and employers. There are, in this country, many children that do not have a home or a bed to sleep in every night. Adults can decide what they want, but all of us have an obligation to care for our children. The payment of money to wealthy women will not give their children a better life. It will not mean that they are more loved, that they grow up better or that they will have a greater contribution to make to our society. There are so many single mothers, and single fathers, who struggle every day to look after their children, who struggle for a better standard of living for their family, and who are being persecuted by the government, which is lessening and lessening their entitlements as families.

But the age of entitlement has arrived. It is the age of entitlement for wealthy Liberal women, as against normal Australians who may live in the regions or may be stay-at-home mums; for them, the age of entitlement has arrived. What happened to the age of entitlement for everybody in this country? Why is it for only a select few? All citizens, regardless of wealth, race, geography or gender should not be discriminated against. All citizens need to be equal under the law. Why should Australian citizens and businesses be taxed, and working women discriminated against, just so that the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff can receive a massive benefit when she gets pregnant? There is an argument that women on lower incomes in less advantaged circumstances should receive greater support for themselves and their children than wealthier women in better circumstances. There can be no reason why wealthier women should receive more money when they are pregnant than women on a lesser income.

If there was any doubt about the Prime Minister's misogyny, that doubt has now been removed by the introduction of this bill. How can it be that there are so many capable and competent female members of the government on the backbench, and such a lack of representation of women in cabinet? That is a matter of serious concern. Role models are important for our society and for our children. We need strong women in cabinet and a lot of them, so that we have role models—

Mal Brough (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I do not do this lightly. I do not wish to offend the member for Fairfax, but he has just made a reflection upon the Prime Minister which is totally inappropriate and I would ask him to withdraw.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Fairfax would assist the chamber if he would withdraw the reflection on the Prime Minister.

Clive Palmer (Fairfax, Palmer United Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, seeing as you ask me, Mr Deputy Speaker, I withdraw it.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Fairfax.

Clive Palmer (Fairfax, Palmer United Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We need strong women in cabinet and a lot of them so that we have role models for our children and so that they can contribute to the debate in the nation. To pay a greater benefit to wealthier women and a lesser rate to poorer women only lessens these poorer women and the respect that they have for themselves.

Citizens are discriminated against by this legislation. Palmer United senators have resolved not to support this legislation in the Senate. A stay-at-home mum working hard every day for her family and Australia would get paid nothing under this legislation. It discriminates against people from the country, people in the regions, who may be engaged in a family farm—they would not be recognised as being entitled to the same benefits as a woman lawyer, a Liberal Party voter, living in the city. Regardless of the income of their mothers, a mother's love is what sustains our children. The content of a person's character is far more important than the size of their bank accounts or how much money they are earning each week.

The cost of the Paid Parental Leave Scheme has been estimated at $20 billion for the first few years. Yet they say we have a budget problem. This measure would pay 50 per cent of a free university education for all our students in the country. The cost of one year's unemployment is equivalent to the cost of 12 years' education. A strong education policy is not only good social policy; it is great economic policy.

How can we divide our people into rich and poor? How can the government declare a class war? The former Labor Treasurer declared a class war against me during the last parliament. We need to unite all Australians and unite them for a common purpose. All Australian babies are created equal, with the same rights as all Australians: the right to a fair go; the right to life in an independent country.

How can the government pay more money for babies of wealthy Australians and less money for babies of poorer Australians? What sort of message does that send to Australia? What sort of a message does that send to our neighbours in the region? We need a more compassionate and caring approach that deals with the rights of all our citizens. We want all women to be loved and respected, put in cabinet, allowed to participate in all the important decisions of the government. How can the Liberal Party reduce tax on the one hand and introduce new taxes not just in the form of paid parental leave which will be taxing our businesses but a debt tax as well, which is an imagined, illusionary tax when there are no real debt problems in Australia.

The Liberal Party is the party of Bob Menzies, Malcolm Fraser, Harold Holt, John Gorton and John Howard; the party of low taxation; the party which now increases tax. Shame on the Liberal Party! Shame! Shame on deserting the hopes and aspirations of all its members! The government should be ashamed of what it has done to all its members. Let's not divide our community. Let's not put a different monetary value on our children. We need to unite our country rich or poor, black or white, men or women.

Tomorrow is another day. Let's make it a new day for all our children, for all our businesses and for all our women. The Greens need to stand up for the rights of working women. To neglect our children is a great folly. In neglecting our children regardless of the commercial circumstances of their parents, we are neglecting Australia. We cannot be wealthy while our country is spiritually poor. As it was said:

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Paid Parental Leave Amendment Bill 2014, which is an administrative bill unrelated to the proposed policy referred to in the previous member's speech. This legislation removes the mandatory requirement of employers to administer the government funded paid parental leave. From 1 July, the Department of Human Services will pay eligible employees directly, unless an employer indicates they wish to opt in and the employee wishes for them to pay the paid parental leave.

This is a policy we took in the lead-up to the 2013 election to make a number of changes to the existing paid parental leave scheme in order to lift the cost burden on employers, particularly small businesses. These savings in compliance costs to Australian businesses are estimated to be up to $48 million annually.

This government made a commitment to the Australian people that we would cut red tape and continue to implement measures that alleviate the various burdens placed on our small business sector. If we are to grow and strengthen our economy, we have to reduce compliance costs—it is self-evident. Complex red tape costs businesses hours and money off their bottom line. If we want to let small businesses grow, the best thing we can do is reduce their costs.

There has been a significant impact on a number of small businesses in the electorate of Lyne that have been forced to close. In a regional area the vast majority of our employers are small to medium enterprises. We have a few government enterprises that employ hundreds of people, a couple of large health contractors that employ many people and a couple of businesses in the manufacturing industry that have upwards of 150 employees. The vast majority are all small businessmen and women with small numbers of employees. The costs of compliance and red tape really affect their bottom line, and that is precisely what happened under the previous government. The current scheme that pays $662 a week for 40 days is foisted upon the employer to administer, and that is what this legislation is addressing, not the issues that the member for Fairfax was referring to.

If we achieve what the previous coalition government achieved—the encouragement of small business—we should get our economic activity in the small business space up and bring the unemployment rate down, which currently in my electorate is close to six per cent and in the youth unemployment space is double that. If you are a small business and your compliance costs are over $1,000, that could be employing new young employees. The suite of measures that make up our paid parental leave will help reduce compliance costs, particularly for these businesses. It will allow them a lot more flexibility. We spoke about taking over the role of paymaster in the 2013 and 2010 election, and this amendment is just keeping faith with that.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry support these measures. Their CEO, John Osborne, has highlighted the increased cost burden that was placed on small business. He said:

Small business people should not be forced to be the unpaid 'pay-clerks' for government schemes. This responsibility should be funded and administered by government.

He went on to say:

The Abbott Government is trying to do the right by small business in cutting red-tape and the Opposition should support this.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry surveyed their members and, of the 1,700 businesses that participated, 84½ per cent either agreed or strongly agreed that the government should not require employers to be the paymaster for the Paid Parental Leave Scheme. Similar support has come from other peak bodies, including the Australian Industry Group, the Pharmacy Guild of Australia and the Australian Mines and Metals Association, who came out quite strongly during the 2010 Productivity Commission inquiry into paid parental leave.

To put things in perspective in these surveys, the Australian chamber did a different survey of small, medium and large businesses, and 501 businesses responded to the survey. Seventy-one per cent of respondents recorded additional costs as a result of this scheme: 25 per cent said at least one to two hours per month; 24 per cent said from three to five hours per month; 22 per cent, 15 hours or more. And the costs as a result of that are up to: $250 for some employers; from $250 to $1,000 for 21 per cent of the employers; and for up to 20 per cent of employers with large schemes to administer and with many people of varying situations, over $1,000.

The introduction of the Paid Parental Leave Amendment Bill 2014 honours our commitment to the Australian people to simplify things and let the government administer a government scheme. It is smart, it is sensible and it is important legislation that will reduce compliance costs. If there are employers that still want to administer it, by agreement, they can. But most people do not want the hassle of yet another scheme or another compliance burden on their business. It is part of our commitment to reducing red tape and I commend this bill to the House.

Kate Ellis (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Doesn't this perfectly summarise how confused this government is when it comes to its priorities, how mixed up the messages are that they are sending to the Australian public? Just today, in this parliament, we heard from the government and from the Prime Minister about why it is that the indexation of pensions needs to be cut, why it is that schools and hospitals need to be in the firing line of multibillion-dollar cuts and why it is that low- and middle-income Australian families have to pay the price for this government, which is saying quite the opposite thing now to what it said before the election?

We know that before the election there was no emergency. Before the election there were going to be no cuts to health, no cuts to education, no changes to pensions, no cuts to the ABC, and all of those promises have flown out the window. Yet we stand here in this chamber today debating this piece of legislation to spend over $20 billion of taxpayers' money in order to put in place a scheme which would see millionaires getting paid $50,000-cheques from the government for having a baby. This is what this government is trying to sell to the Australian public.

I stand here and say that this is a ridiculous proposition which people in the community that I represent are quite rightly angry about. They are quite rightly angry about the fact they are paying again and again through the government's new taxes, which they promised they would not introduce. They will be paying every time they go to the petrol station and they will be paying every time they go to the GP yet their neighbours, who do not need the assistance, will be getting up to $50,000 for having a baby—how ridiculous.

I want to make very clear that I am a very big believer in paid parental leave schemes, absolutely. But those schemes have got to be sensible public policy. They have got to be well targeted and they have got a be an appropriate use of taxpayer funds. We were incredibly proud that it was Labor who introduced this country's first paid parental leave program. I would also say that I was deeply ashamed as an Australian that we were so far behind the rest of the world when it came to having such a scheme in the first place. When Labor came to government, we addressed that. We got the Productivity Commission to look at the benefits of paid parental leave programs and we introduced a sensible policy which was appropriately targeted and which saw over 95 per cent of all women in this country eligible to access paid parental leave. We also know that the median income of people accessing Labor's Paid Parental Leave Scheme sits at $45,000. It is a scheme that is making sure that those who require assistance the most are those who get it. This government wants to tell us that the age of entitlement is over but it seems that is only true when it comes to pensioners; it is only true when it comes to the sick; it is not true of wealthy families who want a $50,000 government check just for having a baby.

I want to outline why it is that I believe these priorities are incredibly wrong. We know, for example, that if we want to look at boosting women's workforce participation, there are a number of very important debates that we should be having in this parliament. If we want to look at the evidence of what really makes a difference when it comes to increasing women's workforce participation, it is not giving $50,000 cheques to very wealthy families who do not need it when they have a baby; it is making sure we continue to progress an affordable, quality childcare system in this country. But at the same time that we are seeing this proposition of over $20 billion in taxpayer funds for the Paid Parental Leave Scheme, we are seeing cuts and more cuts when it comes to the childcare system.

The research shows that across Australia what parents, and particularly mothers, are often battling with is out-of-school-hours care. Unless you can find a job that lines up with the hours of school, you will find that is very difficult. Many women are falling out of the workforce because they cannot access a childcare spot. We know that the majority of jobs across Australia do not finish when the school bell rings at three o'clock. Families need real solutions. But what does this government do? This government cuts $450 million from out-of-school-hours care. There was $450 million to provide additional places to make sure that all parents, particularly more mothers, had solutions when the school bell rang, to make sure that children had more options and more support in out-of-school hours care so they could have a more enjoyable experience.

Just recently, I had the chance to catch up with my nearest and dearest friend, an old mate from high school who has three children. She had been out of the workforce with her children for a number of years. Now they are all at school, she was just offered her first job in many years. She turned to me and said, 'I do not know what I am going to do because I have been offered a job working two weekdays and a Sunday. I cannot find an out-of-hours place. The school is full and has no more places.' She has called upon the grandparents, who have kindly agreed to look after the children on one of those days. But there just was not a solution for the other day. She was going to have to turn down that opportunity for employment.

So I say to those opposite: if you are serious about coming in here and saying that you believe in increasing women's workforce participation, then when you make your contribution on this legislation to spend over $20 billion of taxpayer funds, perhaps you can outline why you support cutting $450 million from out-of-school care; perhaps you can outline whether you think that is a way we are going to increase women's workforce participation.

This is an ever-increasing problem. In the last 10 years the number of children in out-of-school care has grown by 100,000, with 30,000 more children attending in just the last 12 months. We now have 335,000 children attending out-of-school care around Australia, and this government wants to turn their back on them and make it harder; make waiting lists longer, and make more parents have to turn down employment opportunities because they simply do not have a choice.

As if that was not bad enough, all of the research also shows that, if you want to look at where support for children makes the biggest impact on decisions about returning to work, it is with low- and middle-income families. They are the ones in a really touch-and-go situation about whether they can get childcare assistance and whether it is worthwhile returning to the workforce, or whether they are simply just working to pay childcare fees. We know that these are the families that need assistance with the cost of care, and we know that without financial help many of these families will have one of their parents prevented from working.

Yet just a couple of weeks ago, in this place, in this federal budget, we saw that $230 million is being cut from the childcare benefit, a means-tested payment—unlike the Paid Parental Leave Scheme which we are currently debating—and from the childcare rebate. This Prime Minister wrote to every childcare centre across the country in the lead-up to the election telling them that a pause in indexation was a cut that would have a devastating impact on that cost of child care. We know that a $230 million cut pales in comparison to the $5 billion being spent on the Paid Parental Leave Scheme put forward here, every each and every year.

The Department of Education has confirmed that the changes to the childcare benefit and the childcare rebate will negatively impact around 500,000 families, who could be out of pocket by up to $6,000 per annum. So tell me how it makes any sense whatsoever for this government to be saying that they have to cut, and cut hard, from the programs and assistance that those on low- or middle-incomes rely upon, that they have to cut, and cut hard, and impact our pensioners, our sick and our most vulnerable, while at the same time we can have a debate in this chamber about spending this level of taxpayer funds on a scheme that is not targeted, is not means tested and will see taxpayer funds going to families that simply do not need it. How does that make any sense whatsoever?

Unfortunately that is not the worst of it. There are 500,000 families around Australia that will struggle to find that up to $6,000 per year that this government has cut in the budget in the next financial year, and there will be many more families the year after that and the year after that.

We know that modelling by Early Childhood Australia shows that the changes will leave a family on $135,000 a year up to $6,000 worse-off per child a year by 2017. We also know that a family currently on a combined income of $75,000 will go backwards by $4,143 per child. So, at the same time that a family on a combined income of $75,000 will go backwards by $4,143, as a direct result of a decision of this government, a family on upwards of $1 million can be $50,000 a year better off. This is ridiculous policy. It is policy that is not well thought out. And it is policy that shows that this government is out of touch with the priorities of Australian families, is out of touch with the measures which would increase women's workforce participation, and is out of touch when it comes to their confused and mixed up messages.

It is not just about spending an enormous amount on paid parental leave whilst cutting out-of-school care and cutting the childcare benefit and the childcare rebate; we also see that one of the biggest hits in this space will come to family day care. Family day care is a form of care that has been very popular in Australia for a number of decades. It is a form of care that can be more flexible than centre-based care because we know that in family day care it can be delivered in the home of the carer or in the home of the child in the family. We also know that it can be lined up to match with the hours that people actually work. You can have a family day carer that comes and works overnight if you do shiftwork. You can have a family day care that changes their hours as your roster changes so that your workforce participation is not impacted on. Yet we know that this government has massively slugged family day care with cuts.

Family Day Care Australia estimates that the $157 million of cuts which were announced in the budget by this government will increase fees by $35 a week. I would very interested to hear from members opposite—particularly those National Party members in this place who have a number of regional families relying on family day care when there are no other options available—why they think that slashing $157 million and ensuring that fees rise by around $35 each and every week is the priority so that they can deliver over $5 billion a year in their non-targeted, non-means-tested Paid Parental Leave Scheme. This is absurd.

We also know that Family Day Care Australia has confirmed that much of the care provided is in remote, rural and regional areas and is often in areas where other forms of child care are not available or are just not sustainable. This is really important. And that is not the only change to the community support program that will threaten the viability of the sector. It is the sudden backflip by the government that has really thrown the sector. Only two months earlier, the hapless Assistant Minister for Education announced changes to funding which she assured the sector would only impact new services that apply. But this was simply not true. How will this government explain to the teachers, explain to the nurses and explain to the police officers why their paid parental leave for millionaires is a bigger priority than new family day care services to cater for the need for affordable and flexible child care for so many families?

Unfortunately, these are not the only hard cuts to measures that are put in place to increase workforce participation. One of the most despicable cuts that this budget has put in this space is to a program that is probably little known to many families across Australia. It is the Jobs, Education and Training Child Care Fee Assistance program—affectionately known as the JET program. This program helps those who are currently on welfare payments to access child care so that they can go to work or go to training so that they get a job. If there is a government that cares about boosting workforce participation, these are the individuals that you should be wanting to help—getting people off welfare and into work. But what has this government done? It has cut this program—a program that is specifically targeted to those people who need it the most.

I simply will not listen to those opposite say that the priority should be $20 billion on a paid parental leave scheme that will benefit millionaires at the same time as they are cutting the very assistance that everyday Australian families in the electorate that I represent absolutely reply upon. This is the best example of how mixed up this government's priorities are. (Time expired)

David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do appreciate the opportunity to speak on this bill, the Paid Parental Leave Amendment Bill 2014. I did listen to the member for Adelaide's contribution. Whilst I understand, Mr Deputy Speaker, that you do apply a wide discretion in taking on the contributions of different members, the bill we are speaking about today is the bill that relates to the abolition of the pay clerk process which is currently required of business—and I did not actually hear the member mention that once during the 15 minutes of her contribution. So let us get to the topic at hand today, which is that very important red tape reduction measure. This has, of course, been championed by the Minister for Small Business for some time—going back a couple of years, in fact, when he moved a private member's bill.

The importance of this measure is, frankly, self-evident. One of the key priorities of this government is to get the administrative burden of red tape off the backs of Australian business. People who are in business have a huge number of matters to attend to. They need to win customers; they need to develop products; they need to plan for their future; and, indeed, they need to hire the best staff. None of that is easy and it all takes time. The thing you want in business is to be burdened by non-value-adding processes that just simply tie you up in knots and do not help you to build the future of your business. Sensibly, the government has taken the decision to remove that administrative burden off the backs of Australian business and, indeed, non-profits and to have the government manage that process for them.

That to me would seem to be very sensible and a very unobjectionable sort of measure. It is very difficult to understand why anyone would be opposed to that. To the extent that we care about business and to the extent we care about the economy, you would like to think that there would be a shared goal of making that as straightforward as possible for small, medium and larger businesses. We all know that some degree of compliance is a necessary part of the system, but we want to minimise it and we certainly do not want to put unnecessary burdens on small business.

When this matter was discussed in the Senate back in March, Labor and the Greens sought to amend the discussion so that it would only apply to businesses with 20 or fewer people. They question is: why would you do that? I cannot think of any sensible reason that you would do that. I listened earlier today to the member for Hotham—who generally makes some quite sensible contributions. But today she said that she was concerned that this would sever the link between the employer and the employee in relation to the payment of this particular amount. It is very unclear about why there needs to be a link and why it is a problem to sever that.

What are the sorts of links we want between employers and employees? We want them to have the time for an employee to come forward with a great idea for the business and to say, 'What if we do it this way?' or 'What if we create this new product?' or 'What if we try to win this customer who we perhaps have not focused on as much as we should have?' That is what we want the relationship between employers and employees to be about. We do not want the relationship to be one of filling out forms, ticking boxes and spending that time at seven or eight o'clock at night when there are much better things to be doing than filling out forms on behalf of the government. I am genuinely mystified as to why the opposition would not support this measure. It is interesting that so many of those opposite speaking in this debate have not actually mentioned this specific legislation. In fact, the member or Adelaide did not mention it at all and others touched on it very tangentially in their remarks.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry surveyed business and asked that simple question: do you think you should be required to be a paymaster for this sort of payment? Unsurprisingly, 84 per cent of businesses said, 'No; we should not. Frankly, we have better things to worry about and we shouldn't be required to spend all of this time on this compliance measure.' In fact, those organisations identified a cost of $1,783 on average—quite a precise average—to implement the PPL. Those opposite will maybe say that $1,783 is no big deal. Well, it is a big; it is a very big deal. As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker Kelly, many small businesses in particular are simply struggling to make ends meet and to keep the doors open. The place where small businesses often sacrifice is the salary that they pay to themselves, as the operator of the small business, when things are not going so well. That $1,783 could well be the difference in direct income to the owner of the small business, many of whom are on very modest incomes.

There is a $48 million saving nationally, including importantly $4 million for the non-profit-sector. Just as business does not want to be tied up doing non-valuable things, neither does the non-profit sector. It is a $4 million saving for them. Should employers and employees collectively decide that they would like to continue with this payment arrangement—and I am not quite clear why they would—and elect to do so, they can. But the general position with the passage of this bill will be that businesses do not have to worry about this anymore—and that can only be a good thing.

There have been some interesting contributions in this debate. The member for Shortland earlier today comprehensively rejected the idea that only people who earned over $100,000 per year should be encouraged to have children. I support her in that. I am not sure what relevance it had to any legislation that is before the House, but I am looking forward to seeing the Hansard on that one.

This is a very straightforward measure on red tape reduction and is consistent with a much broader red tape reduction agenda on behalf of the government. Of course, Mr Deputy Speaker, you, like other members of the House, were here earlier in the year when the member for Kooyong brought forward a wide range of red tape reduction measures. Again, reducing red tape is one of those sentiments that we all seemingly agree on at a high level; but it is interesting that, when it gets down to the practical reality of reducing red tape, we see very different attitudes on the different sides of the House. A great initiative on that repeal day relates to job service providers, who provide a very important function in the community. Previously, they had to keep paper documents of all of their various contacts with potential job seekers and so on. In this day and age, the hard drive is really all you need. So it is a very sensible change to allow those records to be submitted electronically. Similarly, universities, which are such an important part of our society, are no longer required to submit those duplicative reports about how they are using their facilities, offices and so on. This is a very important red tape reduction measure. There are a wide range of red tape reduction measures, and this bill is an important contributor to that.

As others in this debate have raised the broader issues around a paid parental leave, I thought I would do so as well, because there are important contrasts here. The coalition in a very sensible and cautious manner has provided in the budget for a sustainable economic future—a sustainable future where we live within our means and where we are conscious of managing things carefully so as to secure that future. When you do manage the budget carefully, you are able to make investments in priority areas, and paid parental leave is one of those areas. The levy on large businesses, which substantially covers the cost of the scheme, is how it is funded. There is really a very clear distinction here. The Labor Party says that, if you earn more than a minimum wage, when you get pregnant and need to take leave, you should take a pay cut. That is the essence of their position. Let us say you are earning $45,000 or $50,000. What those opposite say should happen is that you should take a substantial pay cut for the purpose of going on maternity leave. They do not make that argument in relation to holiday pay. They do not make that argument in relation to sick leave. But they do make that argument—and in fact that is their legislation—in relation to maternity leave.

Think of the example of a woman who perhaps obtains a job on $45,000 a year. She works hard. She owes commitment to that organisation. She is promoted a couple of times and gets a couple of pay rises. She is perhaps working full time and is paid $55,000 or $60,000 a year. She is then required to take leave for maternity purposes. Under those opposite's policy, she then takes a very substantial pay cut for the purpose of being on maternity leave. It is important to understand that this relates to women who are earning average incomes—$45,000 according to the ABS—across both full-time and part-time employees. This is about the average. It is a significantly higher amount for full-time employees. What those opposite say—and we need to emphasise this, because it is a very important point—is: 'Take a pay cut. Take a big pay cut, while you go on maternity leave.' For people who are earning $45,000, $46,000, $47,000 or $48,000, this is what the ALP thinks should happen.

We know that the position of those opposite is not taken on economic grounds. The notion that those opposite would put forward anything on the grounds of economic conservatism is absurd. They are, after all, the people who have not passed a surplus budget since 1989, when, as we discussed the other evening, Kylie and Jason were still singing duets. So it is a very long time ago.

So it is not economic grounds; it is ideological grounds. Those opposite think that everyone should be paid the minimum wage when they are on maternity leave even if they are earning a little bit more than the minimum wage. Why would those opposite, who claim to champion the interests of ordinary working Australians, say to those ordinary working Australians on average incomes: 'Take a pay cut. Take a big pay cut'? I do not understand that. Indeed, in the OECD, which those opposite are often keen to quote, only two nations do not have a replacement wage system for maternity leave. That is certainly worth noting.

The legislation before the House is a very good piece of law. It will save Australian businesses $44 million in compliance costs. It will save the non-profit sector some $4 million in compliance costs. It is absolutely consistent with our broad goal of getting the monkey of red tape off the back of Australian business.

Government needs to know its place, and that place is not to impose unnecessary burdens on those who create productivity. Governments do not create economic activity. Governments do not create wealth. Businesses create wealth. Individuals create wealth. Government must judiciously use some of that wealth for taxation purposes, but what it must never do is impose unnecessary burdens on small, medium-size and larger businesses. That is what the current legislation does, and it needs to be changed.

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I remind all members that this bill is the Paid Parental Leave Amendment Bill 2014 and there is a requirement to be relevant to this legislation. I give the call to the member for Scullin.

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you. I will do my best to speak in accordance with that injunction. In starting off I make it very clear that I am rising to speak in opposition to the Paid Parental Leave Amendment Bill 2014. I note in doing so that this is not the first time this House has had to deal with this aspect of paid parental leave legislation as the government previously introduced the measures that are the substantive component of this bill as part of the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2013. I note that the Senate made some very sensible and welcome amendments to that original bill to remove the requirement for employers with fewer than 20 employees to have to pay their employees' paid parental leave instalments. This is consistent with the promise Labor took to the last election to get the balance right in this important area of public policy. I understand that amendments to similar effect will be again moved in the Senate to give effect to that promised balance.

Labor's approach to this issue strikes the sensible balance between an employee's need to maintain a relationship with their employer whilst they are on maternity leave on the one hand and giving small businesses the option—the choice, the freedom, we might say—of having their PPL administered by Centrelink on the other. However, the legislation that is before us takes this some several steps further. It abolishes the role of the employer in its entirety. Members opposite seem almost wilfully blind to this when speaking of small-business concerns. It is interesting that, before the election, the then Leader of the Opposition repeatedly said in this place and in others that he wanted paid parental leave to be treated 'as a workplace entitlement, not just a welfare one.' Not for the first time, the effect of this statement seemingly expired at 6pm on election night.

Moving administration of all paid parental leave to Centrelink regardless of a business's size clearly encourages the view, to say the very least, that paid parental leave is a welfare entitlement, and this is the inconsistency that lies at the very heart of the coalition's scheme. It goes against its very rationale. Indeed, so do almost all the public utterances of seemingly its only sponsor, the now Prime Minister. I guess this was made very clear in the contribution of the member for Banks, whose contribution about different treatment of sick leave and annual leave from Labor's position on paid parental leave in the current debate shows how fundamentally members opposite are missing the point.

In his second reading speech, the minister alluded to the administration of paid parental leave as unnecessary red tape which hinders innovation, investment and job creation. I encourage the minister to demonstrate any specific examples or provide evidence of where administration of the scheme has actually done any of these things. I think he will struggle. The ideology of red tape reduction warms the heart of members opposite and of all of us in this place. For the benefit of the member for Banks, we oppose unnecessary regulation, but it is a very rare thing to see evidence to match the government's rhetoric.

Again on the contribution of the member for Banks: he talked about the very different attitudes to red tape reduction. We do have a different attitude to members opposite: we support evidence based regulation. Last year the Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Queensland conducted a survey of 501 employers for the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. Members opposite may be interested in these findings. The research found that 54 per cent disagreed with the statement that organising payments for PPL has been time consuming. Only 29 per cent of employers stated additional costs were involved in implementing the scheme; and, of those reporting additional costs, 94 per cent stated this arose from extra workload they took on themselves rather than from purchasing a new payroll system or hiring extra administrative staff. In terms of staff hours required to process paid parental leave, 25 per cent of employers reported one to two hours were needed, 24 per cent said it required three to five hours and 22 per cent reported it took 15 hours or more. Costs to organisations implementing paid parental leave were minimal, with estimates ranging between $1 and $250 for 45 per cent of employers, between $250 and $1,000 for 21 per cent of employers and over $1,000 only for 20 per cent of employers. Seventy-four per cent of employers agreed that PPL under Labor had been easy to implement. This research entirely undermines the government's already very weak case supporting this legislation. So much for that. So much for all the contributions of members opposite.

Indeed, so much for the assertions of letting small business decide. The member for Deakin in his contribution called the suggestion by Labor members bizarre that these arrangements that are the subject of this bill might somehow impact in a negative way on a mother's connection to her workplace. He said he did not know where the evidence was. I would simply say that he did not look very hard. Similarly, the member for Banks misunderstands the importance of this fundamental connection. The member for Hotham, criticised by the member for Banks, understands this much better. Regarding employers making paid parental leave payments, I remind the House that Labor acted on the recommendations of the Productivity Commission, which in 2009 found:

… the more that parental leave arrangements mimic those that exist as part of routine employment contracts, the more they will be seen by employers and employees as standard employment arrangements.

The Productivity Commission, a body that members opposite are generally pretty keen on when it comes to matters of workplace relations reform, suggested this would benefit employers in two ways. Firstly, it would promote employment continuity and workforce retention. Secondly, it would signal that a genuine capacity to take a reasonable period of leave from employment to look after children is just a normal part of working life.

In a later submission to the Senate inquiry into the exposure draft of the bill that introduced the PPL scheme, the AI Group was also supportive of the employer paymaster role—as it has been named and criticised since—arguing that it:

… understands the logic behind the Government-funded parental leave payments being channelled through employers, for employees who are not short term and who remain attached to the enterprise. Such an approach should reinforce the employee's link with the workplace, and achieve better return to work outcomes.

We are already seeing that sort of outcome through the experience of over 340,000 women who have been participants in this scheme.

It is opportune to remind members that in January 2011, Labor introduced Australia's first ever paid parental leave scheme and, as I said a moment ago, since then not only have 340,000 families benefited from the Paid Parental Leave scheme, but an additional 40,000 dads and partners have done so since it began in January last year— unfortunately, a little too late the birth of my second child. Labor's scheme was designed to benefit all Australian families but in particular those on low and middle incomes, many of whom are in casual or part-time work. We cannot forget nor gloss over the fact that around 55 per cent of working mothers had no access to any paid parental leave before Labor's scheme was introduced. In occupations like hairdressing, people had very limited choice but to return to work at a time that did not give them a full range of choices around the birth of their children. Labor's scheme fundamentally changed that, and I think it is changing how Australian society, as well the Australian economy, is functioning, since today access to paid parental leave stands at around 95 per cent of all working mothers It is interesting again to reflect that the median income of those women is around $45,000. As the member for Jagajaga said in her second reading speech in 2010, Labor's scheme was:

… fully costed and funded by the government. It is fair to business and fair to families.

That statement was true then and remained so, but the same cannot be said of the coalitions scheme.

When members of this government talk of tough choices, fairness does not feature. It never features. In the policy incoherence at the heart of this bill—the welfare versus the workplace entitlement confusion—there is a golden thread that we can trace through the government's decision making; and this is the perverse insistence that those least able to should contribute the most. This is the 'shared sacrifice' members opposite talk about. While some women will, of course, benefit from this scheme, how does it sit against other budget impacts on Australia's women such as the sustainability questions we so often hear about in this place? Fundamentally, how tough was the choice? I think about a non-means tested payment of up to $50,000 versus very large imposts on women who are much less well-off. When it comes to affording fairness to women in Australia, it is clear that this government has failed. I think also of the disproportionate impact on women of the repeal of the low-income superannuation contribution, the impact of the cuts to the rental affordability scheme on housing security for women and the increased cost of family day care and the disproportionate impact of cuts to income support and freezing indexation payments on women. Was it a tough choice to go ahead with this scheme in that context? Sadly, it does not seem it was very difficult at all.

One matter that has not been much touched upon in this debate is the consideration of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights, which sought advice from the minister on the impact of the coalition's scheme on employees with salary sacrifice arrangements currently in place. The question is whether the removal of the requirement for employers to provide government funded parental paid leave may limit the right to social security and the right to just and favourable conditions of work; and, if so, whether such limitations are permissible. The Human Rights Committee noted the minister's statement of compatibility for the bill:

… does not address the question of whether the bill's potential to result in reduced after-tax income for employees with salary sacrifice arrangements may indirectly discriminate against women, given that the majority of paid parental leave recipients may be women.

I look forward to the minister's response to this question.

There is an enduring sense that this legislation is not just incoherent, but is ill-conceived and not fit for purpose. The fact that last time it was buried in the middle of an omnibus bill where it rated a few short paragraphs by the Minister for Social Services is indicative of this slipshod approach to a fundamentally important area of public policy making. This time, of course, the minister has devoted slightly more attention to this matter, but ultimately it is a re-hash of the same bad, unfair policy and he still has not got the details right. When I had the opportunity to speak about this policy previously, I thought it might be a good time to raise this fundamental question of fairness in the allocation of the finite resources of the state according to need and broader social purposes. In the aftermath of this cruel budget, when the coalition is cutting so much for so many, it raises many questions about the priorities of this coalition government. So the coalition's Rolls Royce, gold plated paid parental leave scheme, which would replace a perfectly good paid parental scheme that is already doing so much for so many, is a $5.5 billion extravagance and will cost more than $21 billion over the forward estimates. So much for the rhetoric again of sacrifice!

Pensioners, schools and hospitals could all do with these funds, but this government is cutting funding to these and many other areas of need—for example, to child care, most obviously in relation to this debate, which is of course the real key to our employment participation challenge now that we have paid parental leave on the statute books. Why is there a budget emergency for low- and middle- income earners but not for high-income earners, which seems to me to be the fundamental proposition underpinning the government's insistence on returning again and again to this legislation? It seems that the age of entitlement, whatever is said by members opposite, remains alive and well, while that age of opportunity that was briefly a figure of coalition sound bites is just that, a sound bite at odds with mean short-sighted policies directed at those doing it tough through no fault of their own.

The coalition seemingly has been happy to break every promise it made before the election, sometimes with much enthusiasm. But the one it seems obsessed with keeping is the one which involves paying the wealthy up to $50,000, with no means test, for having children. It is paying the rich and taking from the poor. There is no excuse for this. It is unjust and unfair. Labor stands opposed to this bill for the practical reasons that I have outlined in this speech, for the fact that the minister has not acquitted all his responsibilities, particularly those arising from the human rights committee, in terms of the evidence base that is presently before us, but fundamentally because it is unjust and unfair.

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

With great pride and enthusiasm I support this bill, the Paid Parental Leave Amendment Bill 2014, which takes a burden off small businesses in my electorate, thousands of small businesses that, no matter how much they wish to support paid parental leave in this country, have been burdened completely unreasonably by the previous government's attempts to make life even more complex for them.

Paid parental leave is something that, like any economic intervention to support our workforce, should be brokered through government and should be paid direct to the employer as other entitlements are. In this case what we see with this bill is an ability for employers to pay only where there has been an election to do so and where the employee wishes that payment to be made directly from the employer. This opens up for small businesses in my electorate the opportunity not to have an additional red-tape burden placed upon them, which has been a recurring message over the six years of the previous government.

In this great chamber we should be able to stand shoulder to shoulder, regardless of the party we are members of, and say we are united for gender equality and united in seeing labour market participation for women. We should be united around ensuring we have female contributions to our economy, both nationally and globally. We should be united in seeing that the informal and unpaid work done by women should be paid at least at a fair wage and that those who are getting paid a minimum wage should have every opportunity to be paid a wage that eliminates the gender gap. Of course, that is not the case if the highest value you place upon a woman who takes time off to have a child is the minimum wage. By holding to that ridiculous proposition one actually increases the wage gap for women. We need to make sure that gap is closed, not opened any further.

I think it is the view of everyone in this chamber that women should be able to rise to senior positions in their professions and occupations with minimal hindrance. Most typically that occurs with interruptions for having children. We know that the transition since the seventies has been from a single-income family and household to, in most cases now, at least a 1.2- if not dual-income household. The real world now is that second adults are joining the workforce simply to be able to afford what one income could do three generations ago.

It is an economic argument that all of the OECD has woken up to. All of the OECD admit that their calculations for parental leave should not be based on the minimum wage. In fact, there may be only one other economy in the world that does that. Every other economy has understood the importance of women earning a replacement wage that equates to what they were earning while at work when they take time off to be a parent. The last thing we want is small business to be burdened with the additional impost of having to run an administrative program that is effectively nationwide and that, effectively, should be brokered by the government that is funding it.

We know that, even as recently as last week, the APEC Women and the Economy Forum strongly reaffirmed this importance at a meeting in Beijing from 21 to 23 May of eight of our 10 largest trading partners. The APEC ministers, heads of delegations and senior officials identified that limits on female workforce participation represents at least an $89 billion challenge every year amongst APEC members. Australia is not an insignificant part of that. We know that in countries like Japan at least nine per cent of GDP is held back because of low female workforce participation. In the US it is around five per cent and in Australia estimates as recently as early this year indicate that just getting our female workforce participation up to OECD average levels could represent a boost in excess of $10 billion. These are huge figures compared to the cost of providing paid parental leave. Yes, funding paid parental leave fairly and equitably actually pays for itself, pays that dividend back to the GDP through participation.

There are of course three elements to this debate. The first one is the economic, which I will go through in great detail. The second one is the entitlement side of the debate. The third and probably most colourful has been that the paragon, the party that argued for decades that they were shining light for workplace entitlements, suddenly found it utterly impossible to pay a woman what she is worth and found that the minimum wage was good enough for no other reason than that the other side of politics came up with the idea. That is right, the Labor Party has appallingly placed the burden on small business to broker this dreadful arrangement and at the same time will deny the huge majority of working women earning more than the minimum wage a fair replacement wage when they are raising a child.

The greatest challenge we have for closing the gender pay divide is ensuring the continuity of employment for women in Australia. The propensity to return to work after having a child is directly linked to retaining a payment that stops if you do not go back to work. It is one thing to leave work and have no payment or to leave work and have some part payment, but under a system that pays you your replacement wage that continues from before you had a child it is the realisation after six months that the payment is about to stop unless you go back to work that has the extraordinary pull effect to bring highly trained, qualified, talented women back to the workforce. And a minimum wage system simply cannot achieve that. Paying a woman a minimum wage is a cheap way out that does not bring women back to the workforce. I am sure that everyone on the other side of the chamber feels that, deep in their hearts, but simply because it is not their idea they are unable to support it.

There was one of those rare moments in Australian politics where the Greens, when debating the way Greens do for means testing, argued that maybe the cut-off should be a little lower. But the Labor Party did not argue that. They descended into even more disappointing depths until they reached the nadir of their argument by, during the election campaign, referring to millionaires getting the Prime Minister's paid parental payments and the administrative burden of small business having to do it.

I thought it would be interesting to ask my community if there were any millionaires out there, in their late 20s, having children. Were there any millionaires out there deciding to have a baby? We went looking for them but could not find any. Where are those elusive, ephemeral millionaires who are having children? Somehow they did not turn up anywhere that I was looking. I was only looking in an outer-metropolitan marginal seat; perhaps they are living somewhere else. Perhaps all those millionaires having children are in Labor seats. It is an outrageous, egregious abuse of public payments to see $50,000 being paid to a woman—a woman who would earn $50,000 anyway in that time—to come back to work and keep earning $50,000 after having a child! What a gross injustice that was, according to Labor.

The fact is that nearly every other OECD economy does it just that way. But do not let any facts from the rest of the OECD spoil a great argument or a great smokescreen. Put it on the record: every one of the members of parliament sitting on these rows on this side of the chamber believes that women in the workforce, just as they get their annual leave and their sick leave, should get paid parental leave at wage replacement. Everyone on this side believes that.

Let Hansard record the Labor Party's appalling position on what women are worth in the workforce. Believe me, if we take the burden off small business having to administer the payment—as this bill does today—and if we pay women precisely what they are worth, or what they earn prior to having a child, for the six-month period while the WHO recommends they should be bonding with their children, and then pay them to return to work, the continuity of career will mean that, for the first time, this nation can hope to reduce the gap in superannuation earnings between men and women at the ends of their careers.

That is not a small issue. We have had the Labor Party go on and on about superannuation savings for women. They recognise that they have $87,000 less superannuation to their name by the end of their working lives. The main reason for that is the interruptions to their working lives while they have children. So why would we not support women in every possible way to return to the labour force? We want the brightest and most productive minds coming back to help with the skills shortage. We are, effectively, a high capital-low labour ratio economy. We need every person we can get to reduce the need to import labour.

Here is a federal opposition nickel-and-diming Australian women and saying that no matter what they earn women are not worth a cent more than the minimum wage. I do not mind a completely open, clear, transparent debate about whether a program can be means tested. I am no great fan of means testing, but I welcome the opportunity to have that debate. But, no, that is not what was pushed by those on the other side of the chamber; it was just the preposterous argument that this money was being cleaned out by millionaires. We had not met any; we had not seen any. None has ever put her hand up and identified herself—no, no, no. Most of those high-income-earning women work in the large corporations, where they are already getting paid parental leave. There is no real change; instead of getting it from the company direct, the company pays the extra 1.5 per cent to the government, who pays it to the woman anyway. There are no millionaires, there, scooping up money they do not get already. So, they are working for large corporations or they are working in the offices of judges, parliamentarians and other high-paid public officials—they are senior public servants. I do not know too many millionaires there, either, to be honest, but they have public parental leave arrangements at—wait for it!—wage replacement.

Then we heard the preposterous reason for trying to burden small business with this unnecessary imposition. The realisation was that people in the public sector were able to double dip under Labor's scheme. Good, hard-working people in the private sector were lucky enough to get some low-level, minimum wage arrangement by Labor. But what did Labor do when they were in government? They said that if you were in an enterprise bargained paid parental scheme—such as the staff in this building are in—you could take that payment and then, over and above that, go ahead and take a second lot of paid parental leave at the minimum wage. So, even right now we have staff in our own offices taking paid parental leave not once but twice for the same child, under the Labor scheme. How does that stand up for equity? It is double-dipping—two lots of paid parental leave. It is great if you can get it but it is not fair if you cannot access it.

So for the great party of fairness we see double standards again. I do not mind having a debate about paid parental leave and how much working women deserve. I have no doubt that someone on the minimum wage will earn the minimum wage while they are on parental leave. So let there be that incentive. Let people seek out the best possible jobs, knowing that they will get wage replacement if they are to have a child. And let the scheme be administered not by the small business but by government.

The point of today's bill is that employing a woman should never be a risk. Employing a woman should never be something to be avoided. The whole point of this is that small business can say there is already a significant interruption in employing someone who takes parental leave, but they are prepared to brook that because they know that there will be wage replacement funded predominantly by large corporations and delivered by government. And the administrative burden does not fall on them.

Concocting a minimum wage scheme that is run by small business would have to be done by a party that has never run a small business. It would have to be done by a party where no-one has ever worked in a small business. And it would have to be done by a party that thinks a working woman is only worth the minimum wage. Frankly, I find it embarrassing in the 21st century to share the chamber with such an old-fashioned view. Women are worth more than that.

I think anyone who deals in the community with women returning to work after having a child would appreciate two things. One is wage replacement for the obvious reason that you can maintain those household commitments that are not easy to change. You cannot just downsize your house for six months while you are having a child: 'Because I'm being paid the minimum wage, I'll just take a bedroom off the house and reduce the mortgage!' How preposterous!

Secondly, the Labor dream of emancipation of working women was to not pay them superannuation under paid parental leave! Where did that come from? No superannuation while you are taking your paid parental leave. What does that mean—that while you are having children you don't need any superannuation? What a preposterous argument. Small business to wear the burden; no superannuation; and then, finally, as if there was any evidence of expert advice on that side of the chamber, out came the minimum wage but just for 18 weeks. That is all you get. After 18 weeks it all runs out. How on earth have they worked this out on the Labor Party's side of politics? Now working women are worth only 18 weeks, despite WHO recommendations to the contrary, at the minimum wage; no superannuation; let small business where the burden; and, if you have an enterprise bargaining agreement in government, you can double dip.

I thought there were smart people in politics and I certainly hope there are smart minds putting together policy. You could not have concocted a more distorted and a more vengeful approach than paying a working woman less than she deserves and less than she earns. I am ashamed that that policy exists. I feel very, very strongly that small business should not wear that burden. I support this bill strongly.

Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to highlight a couple of things before turning to the substance of the policy at hand here. First, we have had a couple of speakers say that speakers on this side of the chamber were not addressing the substance of the bill, so I am very happy to first turn to the substance of this bill. One of the speakers opposite actually said that he doubted speakers on the side had read the bill. I have read the bill and I have read the EM. The first thing I can point out is that there is an issue with the financial impact that is in the explanatory memorandum.

On page 3 of the EM the financial impact is said to be '$0.7 million over five years'. But then when you go to page 4 it says:

The additional cost to Government to implement the measure is $7 million over five years.

It repeats that on page 16. What sort of competence do we have from a minister who puts an explanatory memorandum on the table that has a decimal point in the wrong place—an additional zero and a decimal point? Is it $0.7 million over five years or $7 million over five years? Figures matter in this. I just cannot fathom the incompetence. I thought perhaps there was an issue on the website but then I checked the explanatory memorandum here on the table. How can we have this situation? This makes a difference to what the financial impact of this bill is.

But more than that, it makes me actually question the veracity of some of the other figures in this explanatory memorandum, which those opposite have been parroting. In 'Analysis of cost/benefits' on page 17 it states, amongst other things, that the 'Total by cost category' for 'Administrative Costs' is '$48 million (savings)' and repeats that in the 'Total by Sector'. But, as the Bills Digest points out, these figures do not have references. I will quote from page 2 of the Bills Digest:

The Government's reason for making the change is to 'ease administrative burdens on business'.

The footnote says that this is from the explanatory memorandum, page 3.

The Government estimates that the total annual (national) savings to employers from removing the paymaster requirement to be $48 million., though it is unclear how it arrived at this figure.

I think any reasonable person, when they start seeing figures where one is right and one is wrong, would start questioning the veracity of the figures that are used elsewhere.

On that point, I have heard those opposite, as I said, parroting from the Bills Digest. One thing that is clearly missed by I think all of them is, if you look at page 7 of the Bills Digest it states:

While there is clearly some opposition to the paymaster role among employers, there is evidence from a Government evaluation of the early impacts of the scheme … that employer experiences in implementing PPL have generally been positive.

Again you have to question the veracity of the evidence-based policy making that has gone into this bill that is before us today. It cannot get its figures right and it cannot reference figures, yet we are meant to just believe them. This is something we have before us that obviously those opposite are happy to believe without interrogating it. I would like to interrogate it and if I get an opportunity I will.

But just the same it is the fact that it was Labor that introduced this country's first ever national Paid Parental Leave Scheme. I find it incredulous that some of those people opposite, like the last speaker, would follow a Prime Minister who said it would be over his dead body that paid parental leave would ever be introduced. We know that 340,000 women have accessed paid parental leave since it was introduced in January 2011—I will go into some of the details about my own electorate—and around 40,000 dads have accessed dad and partner pay since January 2013. Since its introduction it has been administered by employers, and the employer role was included to help employers maintain the relationship with their staff when they are on leave. That is why we adopted in the 2013 election campaign a position that would enable businesses with fewer than 20 employees to streamline administration and have Centrelink make payments to your employees whilst they are on leave.

That is the situation for the substance of paid parental leave as it stands at the moment in this country. Again, I find it incredible that some of those opposite would come up here and try to lecture Labor on paid parental leave. They cannot even get their own side to agree. I cannot believe the last speaker had the audacity to say that everyone on his side supports this policy. It is absolutely not the case. When they get their house in order then they might try and convince the rest of the electorate about it. To quote a couple of choice ones, the member for Tangney said on 17 September 2013:

I do have significant concerns … I think there are better ways to attack the overall problem: having affordable and easy access to childcare.

That is not me; that is one of their own side. The member Mitchell spoke said this morning we should not be conflating this bill with policy issues over paid parental leave—I do not think his colleagues got the memo on that one. He was very scathing saying that issues were conflated—'to conflate issues' in this debate because this is about small business. He would know because he said in his article in May 2013 in that reputable IPA Review:

Is it a good idea to levy a 1.5 per cent charge on the country's largest businesses in the current global economy? Will the new tax improve Australia as a destination for investment and make our firms more globally competitive? I would argue the opposite. Any new levy of this size will add substantially to the cost of doing business in Australia at a time when our country is already less internationally competitive than it should be.

If you want to talk about small business, even based on the members for Mitchell's eloquent writings, and if you think that large businesses are not going to pass on costs to small businesses you are in fantasyland. I could go on with that but, as the member for Mitchell pointed out, this is about a different issue. The member for Mitchell talked about youth unemployment and how easing small business burdens will help to address youth unemployment. I will tell you what would probably have helped youth unemployment rates in Western Sydney and in other high unemployment areas of Sydney: probably not abolishing partnership brokers, probably not abolishing all those other schemes which were having a very positive impact on young people, making them employable and helping them to get placements—for instance, the Youth Connections workers who have been doing incredible jobs. Labor had previously identified Greenway as an area of high need and it devoted literarily its own task force person to manage these issues. But no, she is out of a job now, despite the fact that she made—as I am sure have many others—an immense contribution.

To go on about this friendless policy, former Liberal minister Peter Reith labelled it 'obviously bad policy'. Former finance minister Nick Minchin indicated that he, too, did not support the scheme and an unnamed National described it in words which are unbecoming to this House, words I will not repeat. Take all that into consideration and take into consideration the Prime Minister's own 'over my dead body' view of paid parental leave and his view that there should be a policy directed towards women of calibre—somehow women are worth less if they are not of calibre—then put that all to one side: we have the cost to the government of $7 million over five years—or 0.7 million, depending on what part of the explanatory memorandum you read—versus the government's Paid Parental Leave Scheme of $5.5 billion every year. So how is this saving money?

Some opposite have quoted business groups in support of this bill. They have indeed used these quotes very selectively. If you look at the substance of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry's views on the government's paid parental leave policy, the ACCI has slammed the coalition's scheme and called for greater means testing that will 'considerably improve both the schemes affordability and fairness'—that was on 5 February 2014. Peter Anderson, then CEO of ACCI said on 19 May 2013:

It is an excessive paid parental leave scheme.

We had similar comments from the then chief executive of the Australian Industry Group, who said:

… on any measure this is bad parental leave policy and its bad tax policy.

There are no friends for the government's policy. To think this will benefit small business in the long term leaves open the whole notion of how this government approaches parental leave. The last speaker and a couple before him gave us a diatribe of what women want. I will tell you what they want. I have some figures from August 2013—which will have increased substantially since, considering Greenway has one of the youngest demographics in Australia. These figures show that 3,500 parents have been recipients of Labor's PPL Scheme in Greenway alone. When this policy went through it was certainly welcomed. I remember very clearly after my baby was born in the first six months going to mothers group and nearly to a tee every one of those women from Blacktown to Quakers Hill would say that the only reason they were able to take the extra time off with their babies was the PPL Scheme. That is what they directly told me.

We know that Labor's PPL Scheme is working. It has had and continues to have a positive impact. The previous speaker liked to bang on about superannuation. What about the low-income superannuation contribution for those earning less than $37,000? Predominantly women fall into that category. There has been not a word about that; no care whatsoever about that. This means a lot in the electorate of Greenway. Two of the top 20 suburbs receiving low-income superannuation contribution recipients—these figures will be much higher now—are in Greenway: Girraween and Blacktown. It can plainly be seen that those opposite like to talk a big game when it comes to improving women's participation in the workforce. They like to talk a big game when it comes to a lot of the other factors that enable women to participate fully in the workforce.

I heard a member opposite speak about how important child care is.

Even today in The Australian I saw an article about childcare standards. The author, Natasha Robinson, says:

I must admit that I was sceptical about the previous Labor government’s national quality reforms to the childcare sector. When the reforms were rolled out, my toddler was in family daycare, and all I saw of the reform agenda was more bureaucracy for my daughter’s carer.

But then she goes on to say there have been substantive improvements to the quality of child care as a result of Labor's reforms. She quotes someone from the Community Child Care Co-operative, who says:

I have been in the sector for 30 years and I can honestly say with my hand on my heart I am seeing better quality now than I have ever seen. We are going to see different outcomes up ahead.

Those opposite, as I said, like to talk big when it comes to paid parental leave. They like to talk big when it comes to the rights of women in the work force. As we all know, it took Labor to introduce a national Paid Parental Leave Scheme. It took Labor to do that. The policy that the government is pursuing in this regard is completely friendless. Even if you just take this bill before us in isolation, the paymaster role has seen such incompetence from this minister that he cannot even get the key figures correct. There are no footnotes and no explanations about how the savings in here were reached. You cannot take with any veracity anything this minister does, because the incompetence is quite startling.

Natasha Griggs (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak on the Paid Parental Leave Amendment Bill 2014 and to be able to detail why I believe this legislative change is important and why, more generally, the coalition's Paid Parental Leave Scheme will be an invaluable addition to the nation's social infrastructure now and into the future. As the Minister for Small Business said back in March, when he was introducing this bill:

This bill will implement the government's commitment, foreshadowed during the 2013 election campaign, to reduce the red tape burden and compliance costs on business by ensuring that they are not required to be the paymaster for the government's paid parental leave scheme.

This measure has drawn a lot of attention and a lot of comments from those opposite on the Labor benches over the past couple of years, both when they were in government and now as they lick their wounds over there on the opposition benches. Labor members might want to talk down this initiative and make mischief about what it means to business, the economy and so on. But time will tell them that they have got it wrong and that the government's Paid Parental Leave Scheme will have a lasting benefit for all Australians.

It seems unusual that there could be any sound reason to object to legislation that removes the requirement for employers to provide government-funded paid parental leave to eligible long-term employees. Under the amendments, employers will be paid directly by the Department of Human Services unless an employer opts in to pay parental leave to its employees and the employee agrees for their employer to pay them. The abolition of the pay cheque clerk burden from the Paid Parental Leave Scheme is estimated to save businesses around $44 million and the not-for-profit sector millions of dollars a year. Aside from making life simpler for businesses, this red-tape buster will help reduce some of the negative sentiment that has been generated by the previous government's decision to put the onus on the people who provide our jobs.

As has already been stated, this measure is strongly supported by the business community. The member for Greenway was just questioning that support. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry showed that an overwhelming 84.3 per cent of businesses were opposed to being paymasters for the government's Paid Parental Leave Scheme. That is, 84.3 per cent of businesses said they were opposed to being the paymasters for Labor's scheme. The member from Greenway was saying there was overwhelming support for the Paid Parental Leave Scheme that the Labor Party had put through. The chamber of commerce suggested differently. This is understandable and a consequence of the failure by Labor to properly think through or implement its paid parental leave model. When we were in opposition we saw disaster after disaster in the way they implemented policy.

As Prime Minister Tony Abbott notes in his book Battlelines, the Rudd government scheme was only for women in the paid work force. But it is not funded by business as, by rights, it should be. At 18 weeks, it is not long enough to allow women to fully breastfeed their babies. As a new grandmother, I am able to see first-hand the importance of my daughter-in-law being able to be home and able to breastfeed our granddaughter. As I said, 18 weeks is not long enough to allow women to breastfeed their babies. And at the level of the minimum award wage it is actually inadequate for most families that depend on the mother's income.

We heard the member for Bowman talking about how in his electorate the mothers who have gone on maternity leave still have the same costs, particularly around the family budget, that they had when they were still working. He cited as an example that they do not just cut off a bedroom in the family home. People need to take this into consideration. I think those on the other side did not do that. In some cases, accessing the $9,700 taxed maternity leave payment will actually leave some women worse-off than they would have been with their existing untaxed baby bonus and family tax benefits.

There are other issues that have been brought up about Labor's Paid Parental Leave scheme, which include that it is primarily located within the social security system rather than as part of a workplace based contributions scheme such as social insurance. It is also funded through general taxation revenue rather than a combination of individual employer and government contributions. Another fault that was identified is that it is paid at the minimum wage rather than at a certain percentage of wage replacement. Most OECD countries set a certain percentage of wage replacement, ranging from 50 to 100 per cent of wages—and that is from 'Parental leave and child health across OECD countries', in The Economic Journal. Also, one of the issues with Labor's Paid Parental Leave scheme is that it is means tested. To be eligible, an applicant's adjusted taxable income must be $150,000 or less rather than the scheme being universally available to all regardless of income. Also, although the Australian scheme is paid for 18 weeks—I mentioned that briefly—which is around the OECD average of 19 weeks, that is shorter than in a number of countries. For example, in Sweden the leave is paid for 68 weeks. That is according to the OECD's 'Key characteristics of parental leave systems'.

The Abbott government will address these shortcomings. I am pleased to be able to rise in support of this bill because I believe that what we are doing is the right thing. I would like to quote again the Minister for Small Business. Back in March, he said:

The government is committed to continuing to reduce red tape burdens for business, including new and established businesses, as a critical step towards improving Australia's productivity—unnecessary red tape hinders innovation, investment and job creation.

How true that is.

I could continue to speak for quite a lengthy time, but I think that I will leave you with a couple of little thoughts. Labor's resistance to this measure proves that they just do not get business and they really have no understanding of how unnecessary costs adversely impact on jobs and business viability. I quoted the member for Bowman before. He was talking about how, in his electorate, he was looking for the millionaires in their 20s, because this has been a major criticism that those opposite have had of our scheme. I have to say that in my electorate the average age is 33. There are not too many millionaires in their 20s having babies in my electorate either. But I think that for any woman to have a baby and to be able to have a wage replacement is actually a good thing.

Those on the other side are saying that women are clearly only worth minimum wage, and they are not entitled to superannuation. I have heard from so many women who are now grandparents that they do not have as much superannuation as they would like or as they need because they did not have the entitlements that we have access to now. A lot of these women relish the opportunity that we are providing—the fact that we are offering a paid maternity leave that is a wage replacement option and we are going to provide superannuation. The member for Greenway said that Labor's PPL is working. She is clearly saying that she thinks it is acceptable that women are only worth the minimum wage and not super. I want to reiterate that I support women being paid superannuation while on maternity leave, and I support wage replacement, not minimum wage, for women in this country.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Paid Parental Leave Amendment Bill 2014. I think the presentations we have had, the speeches we have had, from both sides of the chamber on this policy area certainly put into stark relief the difference in values, the difference in qualities and the difference in understanding of policies, because we have had such a befuddled presentation of logic and reasoning coming from the other side of the chamber.

Let us put things in context up front. Step 1: the government has said there is a budget emergency. That is the mantra I have heard for the last nine months: tough decisions need to be made because there is a budget emergency. I could spend half an hour dismantling that argument, but that is the prism through which this legislation was presented to the chamber by the government. Step 2: let us remember that there is a Paid Parental Leave scheme, put in place by Labor, operating right now. It is not a perfect scheme, not the most generous scheme in the world, but a scheme that does give some comfort and takes up some of the slack for the costs associated with having a child. I do not think anyone would be rushing off to have a child in order to receive that pay, but it is of some benefit.

The reality is that we did this in the context of appropriately means-testing payments associated with having a child. Deputy Speaker Vasta, I know you have had a child recently. Obviously the baby bonus was means-tested by Labor. I think when you were first in parliament the baby bonus was not means-tested. Labor appropriately brought in the fact that it is means-tested. This is a very bad example because my wife was pregnant on budget night when Wayne Swan announced it. I would have thought it might have been logical to have a nine-month lead-in, but that was not the case. My son was born on 19 January, and my wife constantly reminds me that she received no baby bonus, because it was appropriately means-tested. It was a good policy for the nation—not so good in my home!

The reality is: we have to have schemes that are affordable and appropriate. This comes in the context of a so-called budget emergency—sure, it is a AAA credit rated economy ticking over and doing quite well, with a couple of long-term challenges and some medium difficulties approaching us, but, still, that is the prism through which the minister has presented this bill. Let us have a look at the context in terms of the difficult journey for women to have a child in Australia. I am proud to say that we were one of the first countries in the world to give women the right to vote. New Zealand might have been the first, although I think South Australia—and I note the member for Mayo at the table—might have been the first in the world to give women the right to vote at the state parliament level. But New Zealand was the first to do it as a nation. Since then, progress has been difficult. In fact, it was not until 1949 that our first female federal cabinet minister was appointed, and, if you look at those photographs of cabinets back in the sixties, seventies and eighties, they are still mainly men sitting around that cabinet table. Obviously things are much better now—oh no! Sorry; the current cabinet has gone back to the 1960s.

But things have changed. When I was born, women working in the federal Public Service were required to resign when they were married. That is not that long ago. But in the last 50 years much has been achieved for women in terms of equality in education and in the workplace. There are still some glass ceilings there in terms of the number of female graduates versus the number of positions on boards and as senior partners and the like, but obviously much has changed over that time, particularly with safe contraception and access to childcare facilities facilitating more career opportunities. In 1984 the federal government banned discrimination on the basis of sex. Today more women than men are educated at secondary schools and universities, and more women graduate from university with bachelor degrees. According to ABS data, of females aged 15 to 64 years, the proportion enrolled in formal study rose from approximately 17 per cent in 2001 to 20 per cent in 2013. There is still more to be done, but nevertheless we are slowly seeing change. However, paid parental leave is not the final frontier. There are still many rows to hoe, including wage equality, where there is still a significant difference between what males and females make.

In 2009 the Productivity Commission's inquiry into paid parental leave identified a number of benefits of providing support for parents with newborn children, including: the improved wellbeing of families, and in particular child and maternal health, associated with an extended period of absence from work around the birth of the baby and secure financial support during this period; in the face of the incentives against work provided by the social welfare and tax system, encouragement of women of reproductive ages to maintain their lifetime attachment to the workforce; and the expression of community norms. This includes the view that having a child and taking time out for family reasons is part of the usual course of work and life for many people in the paid workforce, including fathers. Obviously it is all about society recognising the value of children, particularly when they are very young.

Labor has a proud tradition of bringing in policies that support the hard work of mothers, whether they are at home or in a paid job. Having had two young children during my time in parliament, I know that having a baby on the scene is both a rewarding and—as I can tell by the circles under your eyes, Deputy Speaker Vasta!— challenging time of life. New parents usually have to adapt to life without sleep as well as to the loss of an income. That is why I am proud to be a part of the Labor team that implemented legislation that supports families through the baby bonus, the family tax benefit and Australia's first paid parental leave scheme, a scheme that was responsible and fully costed and did not impose an unfair big new tax on business—a big new tax that will be passed on at the checkout, a big new tax that will be passed on at the petrol bowser, a big new tax that will be passed on by the bigger companies every time we buy their products. That is what happens. Remember all those arguments for the three years of the 43rd Parliament about how the carbon price cost would be passed on? Well, they are exactly the arguments for what will happen when the government implements this scheme and passes on those costs to big business. They will just send it straight back to their clients and customers.

A properly considered paid parental leave scheme should take into account the varying responsiveness of different groups of people to its generosity and duration as well as considering how the welfare system affects that responsiveness. A paid parental leave scheme needs to give particular attention to lower income families. The beneficial employment effects of a leave scheme are most likely to be experienced by less well educated and lower skilled females. Empirical evidence shows that higher effective wages do more to encourage these women to work than more educated, higher paid women. Poorer families have less recourse to savings, because they are just trying to manage from week to week with food and other cost-of-living increases, and they cannot necessarily support themselves on a low single income, hastening their return to work. Lower income families face the greatest barriers to work, given the incentives of the welfare system, although that is being changed rapidly at the moment.

This legislation does not support those who need it most. The reality is: it is going to reward the higher end of people that are having children, people that are not necessarily going to be looking at every dollar to make a decision about whether or not they have children. This should be seen in the context of a community that is receiving cuts to pensions and increases to petrol taxes, which are going to go up and up and up. The Queensland government has just flagged an increase of 13 per cent to electricity bills, coming on top of, I think, 23 per cent and 10 per cent before that. There will be $2.8 billion cut from our public hospitals. There will be a tax every time we go to the doctor. There will be cuts to family payments and an obscene forcing-up of the costs of university, for those smart enough to get there.

The current government wants to impose this Rolls-Royce paid parental leave scheme, while howling at the same time that we are in the middle of a budget emergency. These things jar, and you can see why the Nationals have been so insistent on changing this policy. I am hoping that they will find their voice in the next little while. Sadly, they seem to have lost it a little bit in this coalition government.

This government is hiding the true facts about Australia. As I said, we have low inflation, low interest rates and a AAA credit rating from all three rating agencies. When the Prime Minister—it might have been the Treasurer—tried to suggest otherwise, they were quick to come out and say, 'No, you are incorrect.' We are one of only eight countries in the world with this achievement.

I note that the government is doing its best to try to talk down the economy. It is having a horrible effect on business confidence. But the reality is that we are in a healthy position. The budget needs to be seen for what it is: basically a cheap attempt to justify unnecessary taxes and unfair cuts, part of the Tea Party program rolled out in the United States.

The Prime Minister has shown that he simply does not understand the needs of Australian families, by taking the axe to early education and care that parents rely on every day while funding $50,000 payments to women with a child. At the same time the government is providing a wage replacement bill, the government is also cutting funding from child care. If the purpose of this bill is to have more women return to the workforce, then surely a logical step would be to improve the availability of child care for Australian families.

At a time of record demand, with around 335,000 children now using outside-school-hours care so that parents can go back to work, the Abbott government has also cut $450 million that would have seen extra programs and places in over 500 schools.

The childcare benefit threshold will also be frozen, cutting access to child care for those who can least afford it. Indexation of the childcare rebate will also be stopped.

These are aggressive attacks on family budgets and on women who are doing their best to return to work. On top of this, we have cuts to pensions that will make life harder for pensioners, who, as grandparents, are often involved in caring for kids.

I received an email on 26 May from Lorna, one of my constituents. I will read part of what she said:

I am a pensioner 78 years old … I & many others have contributed income tax for over 40 years & have never received any of the many benefits that are now available to other generations except our aged pension.

I have been quite happy with this & do not expect more than the small increases to cope with inflation & the rebates to help with the utilities which have risen above belief. However, these are now under threat—

in fact, they are more than under threat; they've just been abolished by the decision made in the budget—

but it is OK to give the wealthier thousands of dollars in maternity leave payments. Where is the justice in this for pensioners paying fees to visit the doctor & having their benefits cut.

I never thought I would receive such unfair treatment from a Government who has such little care for its disadvantaged citizens.

Lorna certainly was a Liberal-National Party voter in the past but, from the tone and tenor of this email, she will not be in the future. She understands that it is impossible to argue budget emergency at the same time as you are providing this Rolls-Royce Paid Parental Leave scheme.

If we did a demographic analysis of Australia and saw that our population was going backwards and the budget was super healthy, perhaps we could look at this scheme. I do understand superannuation and its importance to women. I note that, overall, women miss out on superannuation because they take time out from the workforce. Labor gets superannuation; we are the party of superannuation. I could go back through the speeches of the Prime Minister, railing against increases to superannuation. This is a bloke, who, in his 50s, was saying that over his dead body would a paid parental leave scheme come in. Labor understands superannuation and the impact it has on most women, with that time out of the workforce to raise their children. The government has brought in a policy which takes away the superannuation bonus for lower paid workers, 2.1 million of whom are women.

The Paid Parental Leave scheme put forward by the government totally jars with the budget narrative they are trying to put together. Every time we hear the words 'budget emergency,' all I can hear is Paid Parental Leave scheme and Lorna's words, saying: 'Where is the justice in this for pensioners, paying fees to visit the doctor and having their benefits cut?' That is what I will hear every time I hear a speaker opposite talk about how wonderful this Paid Parental Leave scheme is. Labor is fair dinkum about supporting women in the workforce. This policy in front of us today is ill-considered.

Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to support the coalition's Paid Parental Leave Amendment Bill 2014. This bill amends the Paid Parental Leave Act 2010. It specifically and vitally removes the administration requirement for employers to make payments to employees under the national Paid Parental Leave scheme from 1 July this year.

The bill proposes that employees be paid directly by the Department of Human Services, unless the employer chooses to make the payments and the employee consents to this arrangement. This amending legislation is imperative, as it will ease administrative burdens on businesses by reducing red tape. It is also fair. Currently, in most cases the government funds employers to provide paid parental leave instalments to their eligible, long-term employees. Why should businesses be burdened with this administrative task when paid parental leave is a government initiative and a government payment?

At the 2010 and the 2013 federal elections the coalition made the commitment that, under our Paid Parental Leave scheme, employees would be paid directly by the Commonwealth government, not by their employer. This bill implements that commitment. As a business owner for many years before becoming a member of parliament I have had practical and personal experiences with the paid parental leave scheme. I ran a small family-owned business in my electorate with 15 staff. In 2011 two of my staff members, both office workers, Carly and Catherine, had the great news that they were expecting in Carly's case her third child and in Catherine's case her first child. It was great news. There was the paid parental leave scheme that was brought in in 2010 that had bipartisan support, but what I would say is that the issue with it is that this was a new administrative burden for the business because the government was not making this payment directly to the mother. Our finance officer at the time probably spent about 20 hours researching what was involved with the paid parental leave scheme, how that $1,200 a fortnight in the hand should be administered, talking to the people at the Fair Work Commission, and basically setting up the payment took about 20 hours, believe it or not. Once it was set up it was a lot easier to implement, but once again it probably took an hour or so a week to make the payment, to issue the pay slip, to write everything up and so forth. So I estimate that probably would have cost somewhere between $750 and $1,000 for the small business that I was involved with.

One of the arguments that the Labor Party speakers have mentioned as to why this red tape removal bill should not be implemented is that it will break off the relationship between the employer and the employee. I would say in relation to that that is quite common for women that have had a child to bring the baby into the workplace after they have had the child, show the office workers, show the management—everyone is very excited about having a look at the new baby that has been born that the woman has carried for the last nine months. Not only do most women bring the baby into the workplace but in some workplaces, ours in particular, we do a regular newsletter every three months to our existing customers. We put photos of the newborn babies in the newsletter. It was great news, exciting news, that two of our staff has added to their family and brought a new life into the world and we put photos into the newsletter at our workplace to say, 'Look at this, customers, look at the great news. We have had a couple of babies in the family.' We also invited those women to Christmas parties. We always have a staff Christmas party and we had a little tradition in my previous workplace where wherever it was someone's birthday we would always get a birthday cake for morning tea. The rest of the women in the office and the men that worked in our workplace continued to celebrate those birthdays whilst they were on paid parental leave or maternity leave, so we were very engaging with the employees up on maternity leave.

What businesses generally think about that I will touch on in a moment, but what I say to those opposite that are blocking this bill in relation to removing this red tape is that most employers want to keep their employees. I know those opposite have strong links with the unions and that is not a bad thing in itself, but what I would say is that it is not always the case where the employer and the employee are at war. For most workplaces that are productive and are doing well and keep their staff long-term there is a good, healthy relationship between the employee and the employer. So to say that removing this red tape, removing this administration cost to small business, will somehow break off the relationship between employees and employers is completely wrong. Most employers are good people. Most employers want to keep their staff. They have spent years training them, investing in them, and it is important to point that out.

What do businesses think about this? Do they support this measure to remove this red tape? The majority of businesses do. I know that when I was out campaigning I spoke to hundreds of small businesses out doorknocking and talking. We had a platform leading to the 2013 election about removing red tape for small business. The Prime Minister often would say, 'If you have got examples of red tape, let me know what they are so we can remove them.' This is a classic example of red tape removal. All the businesses that I spoke to were in favour and thought it was a good practical thing to do. I also spoke to young women of child-bearing age and some mothers that I met out campaigning and explained about the red tape removal in relation to this measure. They also thought it was a good idea. So I see this amendment to the 2010 paid parental leave scheme as an election commitment. We very much support women and it is fantastic that even the current paid parental leave scheme is in place, let alone our plan that we want to implement later. It is a good thing and this is a matter of red tape removal.

We have heard a lot from the opposition about their support to remove the requirement for employers to make payments under the paid parental leave scheme but only for businesses with less than 20 employees. There is no reason for this amendment to apply only to businesses with less than 20 employees. The burden placed upon businesses by the current practice affects all businesses whether they are small, medium or large. In fact, many of Australia's leading business organisations support the removal of the requirement that employers make payments under the Paid Parental Leave Scheme. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry supports the measure introduced by this bill.

In a media release from March of this year, the Pharmacy Guild of Australia said:

… the Guild—along with many other employer groups—was disappointed that the [original paid parental leave] legislation was passed without any amendments to remove the paymaster role from small business employers.

I wonder why the previous government did not recognise this beforehand. We moved amendments to try to remove this red-tape burden. At the end of the day, this is about supporting parents and those parents are still supported by this amendment to the 2010 bill.

Under the coalition's Paid Parental Leave Amendment Bill 2014, employees will be paid directly by the Department of Human Services, unless the employer chooses to make the payments and the employee consents to this arrangement. This may happen. We do not need to legislate everyone in. We know that governments—whether it is council, state or federal—have paid parental leave schemes in place at full replacement wage, but there are some employers and private businesses that also do this. Some businesses would be more than happy to continue the current arrangements—to continue to handle the government payment directly from the government to the business to the employee. But I do not believe that we should be legislating everyone in. I think it should be a choice. I believe in freedom. I believe in choice. I believe that people should be free to do business without the burden of managing the distribution of government payments how ever beneficial those payments may be. That is why I support the coalition's Paid Parental Leave Amendment Bill today.

Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like many on this side, I rise to speak against the implementation of this government's extravagant Paid Parental Leave Scheme in this Paid Parental Leave Amendment Bill 2014, which is being introduced at a time when it is making severe cuts to some of our fundamental services. It was not all that long ago in lead-up to the last election, and you might recall this, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker Vasta, that Tony Abbott said, 'There will be no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no changes to the pension, no changes to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS.' I want to put this into some perspective. Just two weeks ago we saw a very deceitful budget, one that brought down cuts to education, cuts to health, changes to the age pension, cuts to family benefits and introduced a GP tax—all initiatives that will disproportionately hurt the vulnerable.

This government argue that the cuts brought down in the budget are necessary to bring the budget into line, yet they are determined to introduce in this so-called constrained economic environment—or, as they see it, a confected budget emergency—an overly generous Paid Parental Leave Scheme that will pay high-income earners up to $50,000 to have a baby. For that, this government stands accused of having its priorities wrong.

I am a father of three and proudly a grandfather of six, with another one on the way. I genuinely appreciate the role that women play in bringing up a family. I certainly appreciate the importance of a mother's role in a young life. I must say, and my wife would have me say this if I didn't, that a mother's job is indispensable and most challenging. Balancing work and life pressures, particularly during pregnancy, are things that should not be taken for granted. We know a baby needs full-time carers and the role of parents in the early period of a child's life is absolutely critical. Apart from the emotional and physical stress that mothers experience during this time, financial pressures are probably one of the biggest concerns facing many families in my electorate when it comes to having a baby.

Having a baby is definitely a milestone in all our lives, but it does require a lot of planning and adjustment. I know how difficult it is for low-income families to maintain a household budget on a single income. When each of our three kids arrived, my wife Bernadette was not working and we relied solely on my income, which paid the mortgage, the electrical, gas and water bills and all the other household expenses. I suppose many of us did this because in those days there was no paid parental leave. So to that extent, we have moved forward and we have a better understanding of the role of parents and the need to support them. When it comes to having a family, I know the importance of having a paid parental leave scheme. My daughter accessed this when she had her four children.

A paid parental leave scheme is so important for people who come from low-income households. That is why the previous Labor government proudly introduced Australia's first Paid Parental Leave Scheme in January 2011. It provided working mums and dads with financial support during that very important time in their lives with the arrival of their newborn baby. Under Labor's Paid Parental Leave Scheme, we provided 18 weeks pay at a minimum rate. The scheme was designed on the recommendations of the Productivity Commission, who made it clear that a flat rate on the minimum wage payment was the fairest and most effective way of supporting mothers with a newborn. Under Labor's Paid Parental Leave Scheme, 340,000 families benefited, and since January last year 40,000 dads have also benefited from Labor's initiative.

The question, though, is not about the numbers of families benefiting from paid parental leave but, quite frankly, the types of families that require that level of support. Labor's Paid Parental Leave Scheme was designed to benefit all Australians but particularly those on low to middle incomes, many of whom were dependent on casual and part-time employment, whereas Tony Abbott's Paid Parental Leave Scheme provides up to $50,000 for high-income earners to have a baby. Women earning in excess of $100,000 a year—possibly in professional careers, able to command high-salaried employment, and often able to receive privately-negotiated paid parental leave—are not in the same financial situation as mothers in low-income households.

My electorate, although it is one of the most multicultural electorates in the whole of the country—and I enjoy thoroughly the colour, the vibrancy and the diversity that that brings—also has a high proportion of women supporting low-income households, or coming from low-socioeconomic or disadvantaged backgrounds. My electorate and the people there are not rich, and they are absolutely dependent on their jobs to support their families. By way of information, the average family income in my electorate is $55,000 a year. You can see that, as I say, they are not rich people. So, when it comes to having a baby, the cost can be particularly overwhelming for many women and families in my electorate.

Why should the baby of a Macquarie Street solicitor be valued more highly or attract a higher degree of support than the child of a cleaner or a part-time worker living in Liverpool or Cabramatta? That is just not fair and it is not reasonable.

Mr Pasin interjecting—

The member interjects from the other side, but I do know that he is a solicitor—though he may not be from Macquarie Street—so he is probably standing up for the legal profession.

Under the Liberals' scheme, there is a huge gap between the support for high-income-earning women and that for low-income-earning women. It is not uncommon for a cleaner living in my electorate to earn about $30,000 a year. If she has a baby, she will receive $15,000, as opposed to that Macquarie Street solicitor, earning in excess of $100,000, who, if she has a baby, will receive $50,000. In other words, the women at the top end of the scale—the doctors and lawyers and other professionals—get more of a benefit than those in low-paid occupations such as cleaners, textile workers and people who work for piece rates. Again I ask: how is that fair? How is it equitable?

Some might be so kind as to call that 'middle-income welfare', but the paid parental leave that we introduced was targeted primarily at those it would help most. Ours was not a vote-buying exercise as was the one proposed by the Liberal Party in the lead-up to the last election.

Everyone knows why we have this Paid Parental Leave Scheme, and how it was introduced—and we all know about the cries of hostility from those on the other side at the time who claimed that it was not necessary, was overrated and should not occur. It was introduced because of the poll that went out that showed that Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party had lost a lot of support from women, particularly those at the higher end of the professional scale. This was to appeal to the women's vote. So let us not mince words on this. Let us call it for what it is. This was genuine vote-buying by the Liberals.

Cutting pensions, cutting family payments, freezing younger people out of Newstart allowances, penalising the unemployed by withholding their unemployment benefits for six months, imposing a brand-new GP tax, and increasing tax indexation every time you fill up your car—in that environment, an overgenerous paid parental leave scheme for high-income earners just does not make sense. At a time when this government is cutting $50 billion out of health over the next 10 years, cutting $30 billion out of education and increasing the retirement age to 70, again, the government's Paid Parental Leave Scheme just does not make sense.

Talking of education, I would have thought there was common ground. Everyone here knows that education is a vital investment, and one that we must commit to if we are to safeguard our children's futures and, indeed, if we are to safeguard the future of our nation in this competitive world. But cutting another $6.7 billion out of the Gonski reforms, again, makes no sense at all. That is particularly so when, prior to the election—and you would remember the words that were used, Mr Deputy Speaker Kelly—the Liberals actually campaigned on the basis of a 'unity ticket' with Labor when it came to Gonski.

I cannot see how a government can consider making cuts to the most vulnerable, the most at-risk groups in our community, while introducing an excessively-generous paid parental leave scheme, particularly given the history of the Liberal Party when it comes to paid parental leave. Maybe not all those opposite were here at the time, but maybe they should actually do a bit of research, because everybody who was in the parliament at the time knows the record of Tony Abbott when it came to paid parental leave. When he was a senior minister in the Howard government, his words were: 'Paid parental leave—over my dead body.' This is not someone who had some philosophical commitment to paid parental leave; this is someone who wanted to buy votes before an election. No wonder it took them kicking and screaming in 2010 to support Labor's Paid Parental Leave Scheme. This is something that does not come naturally to them. It certainly was not in their DNA at that stage. To enact a scheme which favours wealthy women while slashing family benefits to less fortunate families goes to show how skewed the priorities of this government really are.

Another significant aspect of this amendment to the paid parental leave bill is the government's proposal to remove the employer's compulsory role in administering paid parental leave. I know many on the other side have spoken from a business perspective on this. This could mitigate against the employer's obligation to retain working mums after they go on maternity leave, particularly for a period of six months.

Under Labor's Paid Parental Leave Scheme, we placed a strong emphasis on employers maintaining a direct employer relationship over this period, but it also enabled mums to remain connected to the workplace during their time off. More importantly, it was also a way to ensure that women have a job to return to after their maternity term.

Australians need a paid parental leave scheme that is fair and reasonable. Remember: 95 percent of all working mums have had access to Labor's paid parental leave since it was implemented. This is fair, responsible and, more importantly, what is affordable for our economy.

The coalition scheme is going to cost $22 billion over the next four years. The economy, quite frankly, is not in a position to support such a scheme. We say it is thoroughly inappropriate. It is a proposal that is expensive and should not be introduced at the expense of basic fundamental services and benefits provided to low-income Australian families. It is not a question about being generous; this is a question about being fair. What is being proposed is not fair under the current circumstances.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to speak briefly on the Paid Parental Leave Amendment Bill 2014 to respond to some remarks made in the debate by member for Fisher earlier today.

The member for Fisher in his remarks suggested that the reason that the Paid Parental Leave Scheme as proposed by the Prime Minister was going ahead, which is not the subject necessarily of these amendments, was because of the influence over the Prime Minister by his chief of staff, Ms Peta Credlin. The member for Fisher suggested that the Paid Parental Leave Scheme as proposed by the Prime Minister had come about because of her influence over him and in order for her to benefit from the scheme in the event that she had a child.

This is a very serious allegation made by the member for Fisher, and I am speaking on the debate because, as the Leader of the House, it is appropriate that somebody senior in the government responds to the suggestions made by the member for Fisher. It is a cowardly statement for him to have made. It is a wrong statement for him to have made and it is an ignorant statement for him to have made. Whether he likes the Paid Parental Leave Scheme policy or not, there are some basic requirements in politics, and one of those is that attacking staff who cannot defend themselves in this place is off limits.

The member for Fisher is a new member to this House, and I am sure that if he had been aware of the basic tenets upon which the parliament operates, he would know that singling staff, whether it is opposition staff members, government staff members or even crossbench staff members—

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Fairfax.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I keep saying the member for Fisher; I mean the member for Fairfax. The member for Fisher is not responsible for any of these statements; the member for Fairfax is, however, Mr Deputy Speaker Mitchell. It is clearly a matter of confusing seats on the Sunshine Coast, which is easy to do and, similarly, the Gold Coast where there are three seats which I can sometimes confuse.

The member for Fairfax made these statements, and I assume that he has made them not knowing the import of attacking staff members whether they are in the opposition, the government or crossbenchers who cannot defend themselves. For that reason, it is a cowardly attack and I am very disappointed that the member for Fairfax would stoop to that level.

It is wrong, because in fact the Prime Minister proposed a paid parental leave scheme first in his book Battlelines, written a great deal of time before Ms Credlin worked for him as his chief of staff. Therefore the suggestion that Ms Credlin had been the influence on the Paid Parental Leave Scheme is demonstrably false as the Prime Minister wrote about it in Battlelines sometime before.

It is also an ignorant statement, because the member for Fairfax is suggesting that somehow, if the Paid Parental Leave Scheme as proposed by the Prime Minister passes the parliament, it would benefit Ms Credlin, the chief of staff; in fact, if Ms Credlin were fortunate enough to have a child, she would already benefit from a generous paid parental leave scheme, because she is a member of the Public Service. As a consequence, there is no possibility that she could benefit personally from the Paid Parental Leave Scheme being passed by this parliament.

What we are trying to do in the government by expanding the Paid Parental Leave Scheme is to help the member for Fairfax's constituents who do not currently serve as public servants and who do not have the generous paid parental leave scheme that exists in the Public Service. So the member for Fairfax's comment is an ignorant comment, because in fact, if he were to support the Paid Parental Leave Scheme, it would extend the benefits towards his constituents, who are women who give birth, in a similar way to those who currently in the Public Service receive the support of the taxpayer. For that reason, I have come into the House to clear up the statements made by the member for Fairfax. If the member for Fairfax wished to, it would be an appropriate thing for him to return to the parliament at some point and apologise to the chief of staff for making statements which quite clearly are: cowardly because she cannot defend herself; are wrong because in fact the Prime Minister proposed the Paid Parental Leave Scheme long before she worked for him; and are ignorant because the chief of staff would already benefit from the government's public service Paid Parental Leave Scheme, and the Prime Minister's proposal extends that further to people who are not currently members of the public service. I thank the House.

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is interesting that we are debating a Paid Parental Leave Scheme when you look at the track record of this government and, in particular, of the Prime Minister. I noted the comments of the member for Fowler only a few moments ago. I entirely agree with many of the things he said with respect to the track record of this government. I would like to repeat a couple of the realities of the Abbott government's record on the Paid Parental Leave Scheme and on women more broadly. The Prime Minister himself is on record as having said on 22 July 2002, when referring to the introduction of the Paid Parental Leave scheme:

Over this government's dead body, frankly. It just won't happen.

It is amazing what political reality can do for your beliefs in this place. Not only has the Prime Minister had a change of mind but he was going to go even further than what the previous Labor government had done when it introduced the current Paid Parental Leave Scheme. He now wants to introduce a scheme that will pay mothers who are in the workforce up to $50,000 when they have a baby. It is clear that the Prime Minister realised that it was smart politics if he was to show a little bit more respect and regard for women around the country. But the reality is that leopards do not change their spots.

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Whilst I do not like to interrupt the member, he cannot impugn an emotive upon another member. He cannot seek to have emotive—

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order. The member for Makin will continue.

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I made a statement and I stand by it. In other matters relating to women, and I refer in particular to the Prime Minister's own cabinet, only one in 19 cabinet ministers is a woman; only five out of the 30 ministers in his team and only one out of the 12 parliamentary secretaries are women. That reflects the position, when it comes to women, of the current Prime Minister.

The greatest criticism I have of the treatment of women by this government relates to the government's decision to take away the $500-superannuation benefit for people earning less than $37,000. Two-thirds of the people earning $37,000 or less are women so that is who he will effectively hurt the most. What was also interesting was that not one single member opposite, including the women members, took a stand on behalf of the other women who are to lose those benefits.

Coalition members want to portray themselves as the party of paid parental leave and portray the coalition's scheme, which offers up to $50,000 to a mother having a child, as a fairer and better scheme The reality is the government's Paid Parental Leave Scheme has become an embarrassment to the coalition members and is an ill conceived illogical scheme the Prime Minister can now not walk away from. Indeed, I have not heard anyone outside of members in this place—who I suspect are simply following their party line—support the Abbott government's Paid Parental Leave Scheme. The Productivity Commission did not recommend it. The business sector condemned it widely. The audit commission did not recommended it—this is the government's own audit commission, a very right-wing group that was appointed by the Abbott government—nor did numerous past Liberal members of this place, including Liberal ex-leaders.

The coalition is not the party of Paid Parental Leave. Indeed, it took a Labor government to bring in paid parental leave just as it was a Labor government that brought in the minimum wage; it was a Labor government that brought in the age pension; it was a Labor government that brought in Medicare; it was a Labor government that brought in compulsory superannuation; and, as I said, it was a Labor government that brought in paid parental leave. It was also a Labor government that introduced the National Disability Insurance Scheme. It seems that you have to look for a Labor government to have social changes implemented in this country,

The second myth the coalition members want the public to believe is that this paid parental leave policy is a workplace entitlement. The coalition is all hypocrisy when it comes to this issue. If it is a workplace entitlement, why is the minister bringing in this specific legislation that says that the government should administer the payments? If it was a workplace entitlement, it would be the workplace that would administer the payments. It is quite simple. The reality is it is not a workplace entitlement. This is the party that introduced WorkChoices, the party that tried to remove every workplace entitlement that ever existed—penalty rates, leave loading and the like—the party that is still trying to destroy unions so that workers have no bargaining clout at all, the party that wants every worker to individually negotiate their conditions so that workers will end up pitted against one another, the party that wants to drive down wages and the party that blamed workers on less than the male average weekly earnings for the demise of the auto manufacturing sector and the difficulties of SPC Ardmona. This is the party that did all those things and now wants the public to believe that it is the party of workplace entitlements. The Abbott government has never defended workplace entitlements in this country but has miraculously seen the light and is now supposedly standing up for workers in saying that they should be paid more. It is nothing but spin.

As I said a moment ago, if it is a workplace entitlement, then quite rightly it should be a matter negotiated between the employers and the employers. Some employers in the past had already done that. There was nothing stopping workplaces and employers from negotiating a paid parental leave scheme of whatever kind they wanted with their employees, if they wanted to do so. And, as I said, some had already done so.

Myth No. 3 is that the Abbott government scheme is fairer than the existing paid parental leave scheme. How can paying some mums more than others be fair? The scheme that we have, the existing scheme, treats all mothers equally. It is funded by the government; it is not paid for by the employers, albeit that some of Australia's largest companies will be required to pay an additional 1.5 per cent tax so that it can be partly funded. No other government social payment that I can think of is set on the basis of a person's income. When it comes to government payments, all Australians are treated equally. We did not pay unemployment benefits, retirement and disability pensions or the baby bonus on the basis of what a person's previous income was. Everyone was treated equally. All mothers and all babies should be treated equally, because they are equal. The Abbott government's Paid Parental Leave Scheme effectively discriminates between one mother and another. It is not fair on mothers. It is not fair on babies.

There is, however, another aspect to the unfairness that goes to the heart of this budget. How can it be fair to increase medical costs by imposing a $7 GP co-payment or a $7 X-ray co-payment or a $7 pathology test co-payment? How can it be fair to take young people off Newstart and reduce their payment by $48 a week by putting them on the lower payment of youth allowance? How can it be fair to cut pension increases by changing indexation method? How can it be fair to provide only six months of benefit each year to the under 30-year-old who happens to be unemployed? How can it be fair to increase petrol prices across the board to everyone? Indeed, how can it be fair to cut $5,500 of support to low-paid apprentices and then give them the alternative of a loan instead? To do all that and simultaneously bring in an unnecessary, uncalled-for and unfair paid parental leave scheme that pays some mums $50,000 is simply an injustice. In fact there is no social justice in the government's budget.

I have to say that this policy highlights the government's confected budget crisis message. If there was truly a budget crisis, as Abbott government members would have everyone in Australia believe, why would you bring in this very generous scheme now, when you claim that the country cannot afford it? I could accept if members opposite said it is an aspiration that we want to move towards sometime in the future. But to bring it in right now, when you claim you need to balance the budget, simply does not stand up to scrutiny, and it is simply not believed by the broader community. This scheme will cost the Australian public $5.5 billion a year or $21 billion over four years. It does not make sense.

There is another aspect of the government's Paid Parental Leave Scheme that concerns me. There are many women who work within a family business or who operate their own businesses. What is to stop these people, when they intend on having a child, from artificially raising their salary so that they can maximise their paid parental leave entitlements. It can be done if you own and operate your own business or if you have set up a family business and you are effectively both the employer and the employee.

There is one final matter that I want to raise with respect to this issue that is of deep concern. That is the question: who really is going to pay for the government's very generous Paid Parental Leave Scheme? The belief is that over 3,000 of Australia's largest companies will pay a 1.5 per cent levy—and they will in a direct way. But the effect of that levy is that it will be shareholders who will ultimately pay the levy. Many of these shareholders are retired people who rely on their investments and the return on those investments. This is a concern that was reported in media articles prior to the election in September last year, with some estimates being that this Paid Parental Leave Scheme will cost self-funded retirees around $360 million a year. That is because the 1.5 per cent levy paid by companies will not attract franking credits and, therefore, shareholders and investors will miss out on those franking credits which they would otherwise have received. So, indirectly, the cost of this scheme is being heavily transferred onto self-funded retirees and investors.

The current scheme is working well. 340,000 mums have benefited from it since it has been in place, and I understand that some 40,000 dads and partners have also benefited from the dads and partners pay that was also introduced. This scheme is neither fair nor just. There is no need and no demand for this scheme, and I have heard no public outcry from the broader community to bring it in and to bring it in now. Frankly, there is no benefit to the nation if the Abbott government's generous and unfair Paid Parental Leave Scheme is brought in. It is bad policy and it should be rejected by this House.

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Over the course of question time in the last fortnight, honourable members have been treated to a discourse of recitation of various comments I have made on the public record over time. So it seems only fair to begin this speech on the Paid Parental Leave Amendment Bill 2014 by quoting a set of words from 2002: 'Compulsory paid maternity leave? Over this government's dead body, frankly.' That was the now Prime Minister in 2002. Since that time Mr Abbott, the Prime Minister, has shifted his views on parental leave. It is not improper for someone to shift their views on an issue—indeed, I have shifted my views on GP co-payments to now adopt the same position as that of health experts across the spectrum and the Medical Journal of Australia's editorial today. It is, however, noteworthy that the Prime Minister has shifted his view from supporting no parental leave to supporting an unfair parental leave scheme.

The nation of course already has a parental leave scheme. It was put in place in January 2011 and since then more than 340,000 families have benefitted from it, as well as an additional 40,000 benefitting from Dad and Partner Pay since it began in January last year. Ours is a scheme which benefits those on low and middle incomes. It ensures that people who are worried about whether or not their financial position will allow them to have a child are able to have a child with the knowledge that there is a scheme that supports low- and middle-income earners. This is not that scheme.

The government's scheme is a scheme which is neither fair nor reasonable nor fiscally sustainable. It is a scheme which gives the most to those who have the most, which gives $50,000 to millionaires but merely minimum wage to those on minimum wage. It is at odds with Australia's carefully targeted social safety net—one of the most carefully targeted in the OECD. A typical developed country gives twice as much in government assistance to those in the bottom quintile as to those in the top quintile. Australia gives 12 times as much to those in the bottom quintile. That is why Australia has been able to sustain a government share of GDP ratio, with the federal government being about a quarter of national income and the overall government share being about a third—in marked contrast to countries like the UK, where the government share is 40 per cent or many parts of Europe where the government is effectively half the economy.

This is a European style social program, but the government intends to finance it with a Mexican style level of taxation to GDP. That means that so many in the rest of the community have to bear the burden. If you want to pay for a European style social program with American style levels of tax, you have to make savage cuts to other parts of the community. We have seen analysis from Ben Phillips and NATSEM—part of which I tabled last week—which has shown that in 2017-18 a couple with children in the bottom quintile see a 6.6 per cent drop in their disposable income while a couple with children in the top quintile see a 0.3 per cent rise in their disposable income. That redistribution from bottom to top is the result of a 'knights and dames' approach to social policy. This is a budget for the cigar chompers and for the knights and dames, but a budget that leaves middle and lower Australia behind.

The question of a wage replacement parental leave scheme was considered by the Productivity Commission when it did the investigation that underpins the current scheme. As the member for Griffith noted in a terrific opinion piece in Women's Agenda:

The 2009 productivity commission report into paid parental leave expressly disapproved of a scheme like Mr Abbott's, instead recommending for the option that Labor implemented—parental leave at the minimum wage.

The member for Griffith then went on to quote from the Productivity Commission:

Payment at a flat rate would mean that labour supply effects would be greatest for lower income, less skilled women—precisely those who are most responsive to wage subsidies and who are least likely to have privately negotiated paid parental leave.

Full replacement wages for highly educated, well paid women would be costly for taxpayers—

the report said—

and, given their high level of attachment to the labour force and a high level of private provision of paid parental leave, would have few incremental labour supply benefits.

The report also noted that high earners 'usually have better access to resources to self-finance leave.'

As a result, the Productivity Commission recommended a scheme in which 18-weeks postnatal leave could be shared by parents, an additional two weeks of paternity leave would be reserved for the father or same-sex partner and a broad range of families would be eligible as long as they met the eligibility test. The Productivity Commission noted that such a paid parental leave scheme would generate child and maternal health benefits, promote important social goals, help establish parental leave on the arrival of a child as the normal course in the paid workforce, increase retention rates for business and reduce training and recruitment costs. Such a scheme has now been operating very successfully, and many families—including our own—have taken advantage of this scheme.

It is fair, I think, in a household like mine—which is a higher than average income household—that, when we have a child, that child is not regarded as being of greater worth than any other baby born in Australia. But the government's scheme does not do that. Their scheme effectively provides a gold plated, diamond encrusted baby bonus to millionaire households when they have a child and yet it says to minimum wage families—to the families of cleaners, checkout workers, tradies and bricklayers—that, when they have a child, that child will receive less government assistance. This is unfair and utterly at odds with the targeted social safety net that has characterised Australia. If the Prime Minister were arguing for moving us to European style structures, the way to begin would not be to start by increasing expenditure, particularly when he is cutting back on so much assistance.

The government has struggled to find a respected economist who agrees with the government's claims that this scheme—moving from a fair parental leave scheme to an unfair one—will increase productivity or participation. Saul Eslake, hardly a cheerleader for this side of the House, has noted that in his view moving to an unfair parental leave scheme, a wage replacement parental leave scheme, will not have any impact on productivity or participation.

The Prime Minister has changed his view. He is certainly entitled to shift from the view he held a decade ago, when I note he was a government minister rather than a university student, but he has made the wrong choice. He has made a choice which sees the government implementing a scheme which is being criticised left, right and centre. The Motor Trades Association of South Australia has said:

… employers must play a role in the provision of paid parental leave. … MTA SA supports the employer obligation to act as paymaster and guarantee employment.

Innes Wilcox, from the Australian Industry Group, says:

The current system works well, there's no reason it to change.

Peter Anderson, the then CEO of ACCI, said in May 2013:

It is an excessive paid parental leave scheme.

Heather Ridout, former CEO of Australian Industry Group, said:

… on any measure this is bad parental leave policy and it's bad tax policy.

And that is before we go to the many government backbenchers, the brave ones who have been willing to put their names to their critiques, and to the many anonymous coalition backbenchers who have backgrounded journalists when speaking about the flaws in the government system. The member opposite asked me to name one. The member for Tangney has said:

I do have significant concerns. I think there are better ways to attack the overall problem: having affordable and easy access to childcare.

Now there is a member who should have been happy when Labor raised the childcare rebate from 30 to 50 per cent. Senator Williams refused to rule out crossing the floor and said:

I'm gong to have discussions with the PM to see what the final plan will be.

He is a member of the Nationals who is naturally concerned at the unfairness in this scheme and at the fact that rural and regional families will, by and large, not be getting the $50,000. The member for McMahon last week addressed the National Press Club and made the point that the government's extravagant Paid Parental Leave Scheme will cost more than the budget proposals that we will oppose over the forward estimates. So if the government is concerned about fiscal sustainability, it could start by dropping its promise to implement an unfair parental leave scheme. The member for McMahon, when looking at the proposals of a government which wants to send cheques of $50,000 to millionaires when they have a baby, while cutting the pension, freezing young people out of Newstart, reducing family payments, and cutting health and education, said:

This is just wrong.

I could not agree more. This scheme is replacing a fair parental leave scheme with an unfair parental leave scheme. It says that this is the Prime Minister's signature policy. While I fully understand that the Prime Minister might have shifted his view on an issue over the past decade, and I do not fault him for doing a 180 degree turn on a position he held while he was a government minister, he has made the wrong choice. He has shown himself to be the nation's first DLP Prime Minister by putting in place a scheme which is at odds with the means-tested social safety net which has characterised Australia.

The government rails against the 'age of entitlement'. The Treasurer is happy to beat his chest about the age of entitlement, yet when it comes to making a real policy decision that would show that the government is actually willing to pass bills that uphold that 'age of entitlement' rhetoric, the government falls at the first hurdle. Indeed, the government sold this policy going in to the last election on the basis that parental leave is an entitlement. Put another way, entitlements like a reasonably indexed pension are being taken away from older Australians while for millionaires who are having a baby it is a case of: welcome to your new age of entitlement; welcome to an age of entitlement that will see $50,000 go to millionaires to have a baby while 20-somethings who lose their job are forced to go six months without Newstart—a period during which those of them who have cars might well sleep in their cars and those who do not have cars will be homeless and looking for handouts and charity from the rest of the community.

This is a scheme that has been critiqued up hill and down dale, not just by those of us on this side of the House. And that is what should have given the Prime Minister a hint as to what a poor policy it was. Those of us on this side of the House oppose it because it is unfair, but many on the other side of the House oppose it because it is fiscally irresponsible. Senator Alan Eggleston said, 'I think it should be supported, but there seems to be widespread concern that the cost is pretty high at the current time.' In August 2010 the Australian Financial Review quoted an unnamed National Party member who described the scheme as a 'heap of …'—I will not finish that sentence there. Peter Costello disapproves of the scheme, Peter Reith has said that it is 'obviously bad policy' and Nick Minchin has said, 'I've been on the record many, many times as saying that I am not a supporter of the paid parental leave scheme'.

This is a government whose budget increased the deficit this year, increased the deficit next year, increased the deficit over the forward estimates. So, for all the talk about this being a budget that does the heavy lifting, it is anything but. This is a budget that increases the deficit but then sets it out redistributing in a most un-Australian way. And after a generation when battlers have done worse than billionaires, this is a budget that redistributes from battlers to give to billionaires. This is bad policy, and it should be dropped.

Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to sum up on this debate on the Paid Parental Leave Amendment Bill 2014. Those listening must be a little bewildered about what the debate is on. It actually relates to an administrative or pay clerk burden that the current scheme imposes on employers, but it seems to have been a good opportunity for members to take some broader arguments out for a run. I thank them all for their contribution—and I particularly thank those who were relevant to the bill. There was a spiritual connection, at best, to some of the remarks, but I will try to confine myself to the bill as the responsible minister summing up and look forward to the broader debate on having a paid parental leave scheme that supports smaller and medium-size enterprises in the same way that large corporates and the public sector have enjoyed for many years, and that will be a debate I will relish.

But my purpose for rising tonight is to sum up this Paid Parental Leave Amendment Bill 2014. To remind the House and those who are listening of what the bill is actually about, it is about amending the paid parental leave legislation to remove the current requirement for employers to be the pay clerk for the government-funded Paid Parental Leave Scheme to their eligible long-term employees. I will go through some of the detail of that, because its thoughtfulness seems to have been lost, going by some of the contributions. This bill actually aims, from 1 July 2014, to see that employees are paid directly by the Department of Human Services, the very arrangement that operated for the first period of the former government's scheme, a period in which the former Labor government claimed enormous extraordinary success. We are seeking to re-establish those arrangements unless an employer opts in to provide paid parental leave to its eligible employees and an employee agrees for their employer to pay them. This is about an opt-in machinery. Those employers that have already incurred considerable expense to change their payroll and their accounting systems, who are of a mind to carry out that pay clerk function on behalf of the Commonwealth and whose employee wishes that to be the case will be able to continue to do so.

So for those examples raised by members opposite where people seem to be busting for this opportunity, that is not denied them. I have not found anybody that actually feels that way, although I will keep looking. I certainly have not heard of any employer organisation that is adamant that this imposition and burden should continue. But for those who are so inclined this bill enables that to continue. So there is no disadvantage to anybody, particularly mindful that a number of employers have already incurred considerable expense at changing their systems in response to the former government's mandated requirement.

This bill will implement the government's election commitment to reduce the red tape burden and compliance costs on business and on the not-for-profit sector by ensuring that they are not required to be the paymaster for the government's Paid Parental Leave Scheme as a matter of course. It will benefit employers of all sizes, big and small, and importantly the not-for-profit sector as well. But small business, I am pleased to say, will be particularly pleased to know that it now has an opportunity to not incur the costs and compliance burdens by this imposition mandated by the previous Labor government. That will be a reduced compliance burden on the administration of the Paid Parental Leave Scheme. All of us know that when we have an employee taking paid parental leave it is a time of considerable adjustment. I think the Productivity Commission report characterises it as a period of dislocation. It is a time where much adjustment is already needed, and this is an unnecessary and unjustified imposition of yet another further burden on the workplace.

By cutting compliance costs, businesses large and small will have more time and resources to focus on what they do best and what we are encouraging them to do—that is, to develop their business. That is what they are there to do because that is their spirit and their purpose. We want to support that enterprise and support the creation of wealth and opportunity in employment. This is an obstacle that we can we move out of the road of employers big and small, and the not-for-profit sector.

I also table minor corrections to the explanatory memorandum. I would like to spend a few minutes touching on the particular points that have been raised. First of all there are the red tape reduction savings of $48 million—that is, on average, $1,783 per employer. That is could be well deployed into other activity—into other investments, into other opportunities for work or even into thoughtful gifts and best wishes to the lucky family. That is a serious saving. That is real. I heard some of those opposite challenging where that number came from. Ironically, it was in the former government's own report. The former government undertook a paid parental leave evaluation. Phase 2 was done by the Institute for Social Science Research for the University of Queensland. For all of the hand-wringing and bewilderment by the Labor Party about where this number has come from, it is their own number. That shows on average a $1,783 direct cost to employers. I would encourage those opposite to take account of them.

The critique went further. Wading through the contributions, I see there was the odd remark that actually related to the bill. I will seek to discuss some of those. It is worth remembering where we have come from. This measure is something that the coalition has put forward twice. It was voted down by the former government. On 20 February 2011 and 24 May 2012 we were seeking to reduce the red tape and compliance cost burden of the government's Paid Parental Leave Scheme, and we were voted down by the Labor Party. Now it is in opposition that blanket opposition has changed. Now the Labor Party seeks not to oppose this measure in a blanket sense but to reshape it so that the benefits are reduced to one-fifth. One-fifth of the benefits is all the Labor opposition is prepared to accommodate, which is quite ironic. Having been in blanket opposition and complete denial of the cost impact of their scheme on employers, Labor seem to have changed their mind. I believe the coalition has won the argument. We have made it clearly and consistently, and we have provided evidence to support it.

We are also pleased to recognise the support of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the chamber movement more generally in their Too Big to Ignore campaign. After six years under the former Labor government, where small business and family enterprises were incredibly neglected and ignored, they sought to elevate concerns. What was one of the key issues? This very measure that we are now implementing consistent with what we have advocated previously. And what did Labor do? It was on 5 March 2014. It again opposed the implementation of this coalition election commitment. This time it was not a blanket opposition but a bit of a change. What they were advocating was that that red tape reduction should be devalued to one-fifth of the benefit that we have identified.

It was a confused and complicated—in fact, a cobbled-together—position that Labor advocated. There is no clarity on who would be in or out. There are no costings. It will simply add to the burden that is carried, as the Commonwealth and the employer wonder who is going to decide whether they are in or out under the uncertain and confusing alternative that Labor advocated when they joined with the Greens to vote against this measure in the Senate. I am pleased that in this chamber Labor will not be voting against this measure. That is a wise move, but I wonder how they will again explain their conduct as they partner with the alliance team of the Greens to oppose this sensible measure.

Labor then said that in some of the research employers were not that unhappy about what was going on. That is an interesting argument. When you impose the risk of a fine of many thousands of dollars on a mandated requirement, small business and in fact all employers just get on with it. It does not mean they like it. When asked whether they liked it, I think about 85 per cent thought it served no good purpose. But these fines are significant, because, in the Labor cobbled-together alternative, there remains the risk of a $10,200 fine for individual breaches of confusing rules that Labor has yet to define or a $50,000 fine for corporates if someone cannot understand or find their way through the confusing and cobbled-together position that Labor has brought forward. So why deny the benefits? That is a clear question that Labor has failed to answer.

Labor go on to say that their position is evidence based, which is not right either. In the Productivity Commission report in chapter 8, there are contested views on the benefits of the pay clerk burden being imposed. The report asserts that there is some value, some upside, in the signal of 'the payment as a work related entitlement', but there is no evidence to back that up. It says that it would 'encourage greater employee loyalty'. That is again something that is not evidenced. And then it says it would 'improve workforce and workplace attachment'—again as a 'framing device', which is the way it is characterised in the Productivity Commission report. It is an on-balance conclusion that is hotly contested. Now we have the evidence to show what the actual costs are, and there is no evidence to support the Labor position—no evidence whatsoever. Therefore it is bewildering to hear Labor saying they are strictly adhering to the PC report, which did not give the clarity of recommendation that Labor are asserting, only then to try to amend in the Senate the very measure we are trying to put forward and then move, in Labor's terms, further away from the Productivity Commission report. They cannot have it both ways.

The staying-in-touch provisions that are part of the scheme at the moment are unaffected by this bill, so that workplace attachment argument seems to have very little merit. In terms of engaging meaningfully between the employer and the employee, no-one has ever explained to me how an electronic funds transfer amounts to a substitute for a relationship. That is essentially the argument: an EFT payment processed at the expense of the employer would somehow build the relationship and the rapport with the employee. It is an absolutely ridiculous argument.

On the issue of the dissenting groups in the Productivity Commission report being criticised for not being able to quantify the costs associated with the paymaster function, again, things have moved on and we actually have those factual datasets, organised and provided for under the previous government. So, again, Labor has nothing to support its position other than simple obstruction of the government's trying to get on with its election commitments. The evidence backs that measure. The facts are on the table. The arguments—in amongst the practice runs for a debate for another time—have not illuminated any of the claims that there is some deficiency in the measure that the government is putting forward. Now we have evidence to show that the on-balance conclusions from the Productivity Commission report were not wisely arrived at, and Labor itself has moved away from what the Productivity Commission report recommended by its amendments in the Senate, which I understand it will continue to pursue.

In terms of consultation, again, ACCI, the New South Wales Business Chamber, Business SA, VECCI, the ARA—any list of organisations—are saying that the government should get the clear air to implement its election commitments. It is clear that that chorus is consistent. It was clear at the time of the introduction of the scheme. It was clear at the time when the coalition twice sought to amend Labor's scheme, and it is clear now. Labor should simply get out of the road.

Finally, there was some spurious suggestion that this bill amounts to a transfer of responsibility from business to government. Let me remind this House that, in its own report—this is the Productivity Commission report—Labor is happy to overlook the fact that, on page 8.33, the Productivity Commission makes the point that both a direct payment from the Commonwealth and a payment double-handled and via the employer will not have any significant bearing on the costs that the Commonwealth needs to confront. Why? I quote the report:

… both involve a similar process for payments just with different destinations.

That evidence was backed up by FaHCSIA's presentation to a Senate inquiry at the time, which said it did not matter where it was going; the process of generating those payments was the same. What we have done conservatively in the explanatory memorandum is recognise that there will be a need for some communication and some systems changes, but in terms of the transaction cost there is an immaterial difference. So for Labor to say we are transferring the responsibility from business to government ignores the fact that the government are processing these payments anyway; they are just not sending them to the eligible employees. They are sending them to the employers, who then have to double-handle those payments, incur the costs of systems changes and try to ensure that they get it right because there is a serious threat of substantial fines if they get it wrong.

This is a clear-cut case of an opportunity to reduce needless red-tape and compliance burdens. The Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, said on 19 March 2014:

We—

this is Labor—

are committed, in a bipartisan spirit, to the organised and ongoing effort to minimise, simplify and create cost-effective regulation.

Well, here is an opportunity to do that. I urge Labor and the Greens not to stand in the road of this again. There is no basis for doing so. Our evidence is compelling. Our advocacy is consistent. The consultation is absolutely of one voice, and that is: let the government get on with its task. I commend this bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.