Jo Briskey (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I came into this place, I spent about just over five years as the CEO of the Parenthood, Australia's peak advocacy body for parents and carers. Our work focused on how we make Australia the best place in the world to be a parent. I spent many hours in this building helping amplify the voices of parents and the needs that they had. When we talk about need, often this is expressed quite acutely in those first few weeks and months of being a new parent. I think, in particular, about the new mums that I met at my time at the Parenthood. Their stories were different, but, often, what they wanted most was the same, and that was time—to be able to afford just a few more months or weeks with their newborn baby.

Labor built this country's first national paid parental leave scheme. When it began in 2011, it gave families 18 weeks, and I watched it change households. I also watched how quickly it could be put at risk. In 2015, parents who used the scheme exactly as it was designed got branded double dippers by those opposite, as if caring for a newborn were a rort. To add insult to injury, the then treasurer announced these plans to end so-called double dipping on Mother's Day of all days. My job that year was defending the mums and dads whose only offence was wanting to spend more time with their newborn by utilising the scheme as intended. But the parents of Australia were not deterred by these attacks. They kept asking calmly, stubbornly and in their tens of thousands, and the country moved with them—unions, employers and, finally, this parliament. Yesterday, that ask was again answered in another large step forward—the biggest expansion of paid parental leave since Labor created the scheme.

This week, paid parental leave in Australia is now a full six months, 26 weeks, paid at a higher rate at just over $1,000 a week, with income limits lifted so more families qualify. Because we started paying superannuation on parental leave last year, taking those months with your baby no longer leaves a hole in your retirement savings. We delivered this because women should not retire poorer for having raised this country's children. The economic case for this reform is rock solid. Parents keep connected to work, and careers no longer stall at the first birthday. But, in the five years of advocacy, not one mum ever told me she wanted to leave just for some time off. She wanted it because you only get this chance with your newborn once, and it goes so quickly.

Our government's sole focus is on delivering real change for working people and their families. That is why, yesterday, every Australian taxpayer received another tax cut—13 million people keeping more of what they earn. Around three million workers on minimum and award wages got a pay rise, and among them are early childhood educators—those who I stood alongside in the Big Steps Campaign and those I've met locally, like Vanshika at Goodstart in Flemington—doing some of the most important work in this country. Our government has banned supermarket price gouging—it's now law with some serious penalties behind it—so working families doing the weekly shop get a fair deal. Superannuation now lands with every payday instead of months behind, which protects workers least able to absorb being shortchanged. Every one of those changes helps on its own, but, arriving all at once, they take the real pressure off working families. That is real change delivered.

I want to finish with the people who made this happen. To the parents of my community, the ones I've met out at local sporting fields and on the doors: you kept asking, and our government is listening. Change like this doesn't happen on its own. It happens when ordinary people organise. To everyone expecting a baby this year: congratulations. You will be among the first families in Australia to take the opportunity to have a full six months off. I hope you enjoy every single day. We know the job is not finished. There is always more work to do to support working families, and that's exactly what we focus on every day we're in this place and out in our communities.