Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Last week we celebrated International Women’s Day and today, as the Special Adviser to the Deputy Prime Minister on Work and Family Balance and Pay Equity, I had the honour of awarding the winners of the National Work-Life Balance Awards. Firstly I would like to acknowledge those national award winners. The standout national winner was a construction company based in Victoria called Probuild Constructions. Also winning were Minter Ellison in Perth, the Playgroup Association of Queensland, Norwest Childcare Centre Pty Ltd, Landgate, and Take A Break Away, an ACT small business award winner. I should also note the special commendations that the judging panel issued to DASI from Victoria, the Transport Accident Commission of Victoria, Woodside Energy, the Wrigley company and Sageco Pty Ltd.

These awards give me a chance to highlight that the Rudd government has introduced a number of policies to help women balance their work and family life and thereby improve the standard of living for them and their families. Let me go through some of those. With the changes introduced with the Fair Work Act, Labor established a special bargaining stream for the low paid that will benefit many women in low-paid sectors such as cleaning, child care and the community sector. Also we introduced a new right to request flexible working arrangements on return to work so that new parents can request to extend parental leave by a further 12 months or they can request part-time work arrangements to better suit their needs. We have also established a process for a pay equity test case—under the new, more generous equal remuneration provisions of the Fair Work Act—for the social and community services sector. This case was lodged by the ASU last week. These changes have occurred on top of improvements to childcare support with increasing the childcare tax rebate to 50 per cent.

Of course, the most important step has been in giving the opportunity for women to re-enter the workforce with the introduction of Australia’s first paid parental leave scheme. The government will soon introduce legislation so that from 1 January 2011 eligible employees will receive up to 18 weeks of taxable payments paid at the level of the national minimum wage. Mr Tony Abbott sought to gain some cheap points today on this scheme in question time. I think it is important to review some of what has occurred in relation to paid parental leave and the posturing that has occurred from the other side. Mr Abbott would have us believe that he has had a road to Damascus experience. He is now advocating six months paid maternity leave funded by a great big new tax on employers. Or is his maternity leave just his way of giving us women more time to think as we do the ironing? Mr Abbott’s scheme appears to have been a thought bubble which occurred to him when he was doing the ironing—well, maybe not the ironing; perhaps he was stacking the dishwasher. On the other hand, the Rudd government’s paid parental leave scheme was the outcome of extensive discussions with employers, unions and family groups and came after a year-long Productivity Commission inquiry. Mr Abbott’s proposal—policy on the run, drafted in haste, perhaps on the back of a beer coaster—will have adverse consequences for Australian working families, and I will come back to some of those later.

Mr Abbott’s recent comments on what housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing sent his Liberal colleagues scurrying for their ironing boards. The member for Sturt, Chris Pyne, was quick to point out that he does his own ironing. Senator Brandis went one further—he claimed not only that he did his own ironing but that he was very good at it. He even offered to do the ironing of others. There is dedication to the cause.