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

From the debate today, we could all enjoy Tony Abbott’s wonderful social policy adventure. The Greens are obviously on board. If it were not such a serious matter then perhaps we could have such a light debate today. The problem is that this is a very serious matter. As I indicated in the adjournment debate last night—and I probably will not have sufficient time now to go through all of the detail here; I will follow through later this evening—the serious issues at stake here should not be of the nature of the banter that we have just been enjoying. When we go back and look at the history of this matter—and perhaps Senator Hanson-Young might absorb some of the aspects here—we can see that, yes, it is definitely about time we acted. But suggesting that there has been no action in Australia for 30 years is a bit rich.

I remember the very first thing I did in this chamber when I entered in 1995. I was six months pregnant at the time. Personally, I would not have been entitled, but that was when a Labor government introduced a maternity allowance in Australia. That maternity allowance, as Senator Hanson-Young will acknowledge, was based on welfare related payments, although they were not to be means tested against a spouse’s income, and they introduced for the first time as an entitlement for women in the immediate period before and after childbirth. That was back in 1995. There were some enhancements to that program when the previous government adjusted it and turned it into what they then characterised as the baby bonus—a cheap and light tag that I do not think an entitlement of this character should ever have been called, but there were some improvements for women. However, as even Senator Abetz characterised today, there are a lot of gaps in this debate that Tony Abbott has introduced, and I will cover some of them. Before I do that I want to also comment on this procedural farce—or fraud, as I would call it.

The Greens say that they have introduced a bill. Well, how many bills have the Greens introduced? How many bills have ever made legislation? For them to portray this procedural fraud in such a serious policy issue is an outrage. For them also to join with Mr Abbott in sticking his chin out on this particular issue is a joke. All of us could have predicted that in Tony Abbott’s leadership of the opposition he would fairly soon stick his chin out somewhere. He has probably chosen a poor area from my point of view in terms of the issues of policy that I value, but I think he has made a poor judgment on the views of Australian women about these issues also. This is partly why we have various iterations of the policy. Let us run through a few of them and then, if I have time, we will get to the gaps.

How will it be funded? First up, Sharman Stone was working on one which would be funded by taxpayers. But the announcement by Tony Abbott was that it would be funded by a big new tax on big business, which of course Australians all understand will translate to increases in costs and other charges that they themselves will feel very quickly, let alone the technical issues about how you separate these different businesses and the problems that will be created by businesses avoiding getting into those categories to avoid this big, new tax. Apparently now, in the next iteration, if you listen to Julie Bishop, this big new tax will only be temporary. I am a bit confused over exactly who has authority in the Liberal Party. I remember when the shadow minister said there was going to be a $30 increase in pensions and very quickly afterwards she was shut down and that was not going to be the case. So is this going to happen here? Must we wait to see a notice on a Liberal senator’s board—as I did as I walked down the corridor—which is apparently now on their website, before we get further details of the next iteration?

I am very pleased that, as Senator Abetz seemed to indicate, the opposition is now talking to Liz Broderick, because perhaps that explains the next iteration I saw. We are now giving some assurance to part-time working women that they will not miss out on at least the minimum-income level of support, which was the most obvious, glaring gap in this scheme on the first day. Most of the newspaper reports picked it up straightaway. If you are a low-income, part-time working woman—which, let us face it, are most of them—then you are not going to get very much out of this scheme. You are probably going to get less than the minimum wage, if anything, and you will lose out from the Tony Abbott scheme. So, if the opposition has repaired that aspect of their original proposal, that is great. That is very assuring. But of course what is not assuring to the Australian public at large is the credibility factor. Talk about policy on the run: we announce a policy on International Women’s Day, we have not consulted cabinet, we have not consulted business and indeed we probably have not even read the Productivity Commission report that investigated these issues in considerable detail.

The Labor Party has the ambition of 26 weeks leave too. That was part of the Productivity Commission’s brief. But what it also dealt with was a whole myriad of aspects in a fairly complex policy area that needed to be taken into account. I wait to see the next iteration of the opposition’s policy in this respect, because there is still one area that is missing. They are suggesting that their new public funded schema will absorb people’s current entitlements. Why should low-income, part-time working women in retail pay in their taxes dollars to help fund women working in full-time, high-paid, high-level jobs, with reasonable levels of income, through public spending?

I wonder what the next area Tony Abbott is going to come up with that we should introduce full income replacement for. Will there be other areas, apart from parental leave, that he believes should now attract full income replacement? Not only are we going to have middle class welfare; now, according to Tony Abbott, we are going to have higher class welfare. We are going to start funding schemes and absorbing existing entitlements into public spending. Our scheme aims for 26 weeks too. I think the figure was that 90 per cent of women would combine existing entitlements with our 18 weeks and achieve that goal, and certainly we have objectives for the longer term on superannuation and additional support. (Time expired)