Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I raise one particular profession that is tremendously important to where I live—and Senator Farrell might possibly like to pop up and see some time. I live in the country, and one of the big issues we have in the country is that we cannot attract any women doctors. It is hard enough to attract doctors to rural and regional areas, as Senator Farrell would well know, but the really disappointing thing is that often you may get a husband and wife who are both doctors moving to your region; the wife then chooses to have children and we lose her from the workforce. Any initiative that would encourage women, particularly women in regional areas, to remain in the workforce or to return to the workforce reasonably soon after having their children, is a very positive thing for the regions.

But that also raises another thing in terms of equality. We have a situation at the moment where the federal government has a reasonably generous Paid Parental Leave Scheme in operation, a much more generous scheme than the one that offers the base wage for 18 weeks. Invariably, people who live in the country do not work for the federal government, they often do not work for the state government, and almost none of them work for large business. This means that women who work in rural and regional areas are much less likely—even if they want to—to have the opportunity to access any of the current more generous paid parental schemes that exist in our public sector and in our large businesses. I would draw to the attention of the House that there is an issue of equity here for women who live in the country, an issue of equity for women who work in small business. There is an issue of equity between women who work in the private sector and the public sector. So whilst I agree with Senator Moore that we do not need to open up the debate about a Paid Parental Leave Scheme, we do need to open up the debate about what is equitable.

It also hits quite hard another sector of our economy that is struggling at the moment—the small business sector. Small businesses do not have the same sort of hook and incentive to get the best female employees because those women are often offered greater incentives to work for the large companies or for the public sector and a small business cannot afford to put in place a Paid Parental Leave Scheme that would compare with the ones achievable for women working in those other sectors. I think we do need to look at the debate we have at the moment about equity and make sure that it is one of the issues discussed in this forum.

You hear the Leader of the Opposition Mr Shorten making comments about this particular scheme. The staff that work for Mr Shorten would be eligible for the more generous federal government Paid Parental Leave Scheme. It is very, very difficult for us to stand here when our staff are entitled to these more generous schemes, and say that people who are living out there in our electorates and in our states, who are not able to get access to this type of scheme, cannot have it but it is okay for us because we can offer it to our staff.

I go back to the issue of dissent. I do not think there is a massive amount of dissent in the Liberal Party outside of the expression of a point of view. I draw to the attention of the chamber to a quote that is often attributed to Voltaire, although I am not actually sure that he was the first person to say it: 'I can disapprove of whatever you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.' I think a true democracy would support that right to the death. So as we sit here talking about the semantics of someone saying that maybe the amount is a little bit too high or maybe the timing of the introduction is not quite right, I think that is really nothing more than semantics. Most disappointingly, there is this idea across the board that it is just another productive mechanism or initiative that the coalition is seeking to put out in the marketplace in the hope that we may be able to increase productivity in our economy. I draw to the house's attention the comments of the Productivity Commission in 2009 when it reviewed Labor's proposed scheme:

… would provide a strong signal that taking time out of the paid workforce to care for a child is viewed by the wider community as part of the usual course of life and work for parents, rather than a nuisance. A scheme that intends to signal this should be structured like other leave arrangements, such as those for recreation, illness and long service leave, rather than being structured as a social welfare measure.

It is obvious that we are all on the same page, but at the moment we seem to be seeking to be divisive for the sake of division, as opposed to delivering something productive for the women of Australia.

As another example of this situation and the ridiculous inequity, I draw the house's attention to an article that was recently in The Australian. It was written by Mr Chris Kenny, who is well known to all of us in this place, and he said:

Let us pretend for a minute that I work at the ABC—

I must admit, I did see some humour in Chris Kenny pretending that he worked for the ABC, but notwithstanding that—

hosting a current affairs television program on an annual salary of $280,000.

That seems to be a reasonable ballpark figure for a presenter's salary. If Mr Kenny—or Mrs Kenny, as we will call her—fell pregnant, she would be entitled under the ABC's leave program to have a benefit of 14 weeks off at full pay or 28 weeks off at half pay, or $140,000. The person working for the ABC would be paid $5,285 a week for 14 weeks, or for 28 at a half rate, which ends up as a total of $75,385. When you compare this to the government's current Paid Parental Leave scheme of $622 a week for 18 weeks, totalling $11,000, you can see the extraordinary inequity that occurs out there in the marketplace.

We need to be having a debate about what happens when all the women and businesses in Australia have the opportunity to have some sort of equity when they are competing for the services, skills and employment. The disappointing thing is that this is not the only our productive measure that we are putting into the marketplace that the Labor Party are trying to pull down. That the carbon tax is yet to be repealed absolutely beggars belief. The people of Australia said they wanted it to be repealed, but, for some reason, those opposite think it is still their right—despite the fact that they did not get the majority of the vote—to keep this tax that the Australian people do not want. It is a similar story with the mining tax and other budget measures.

In conclusion, I think it is time that we started having a productive debate about how we can put some of these more positive measures into the marketplace. Let's debate constructively the detail of it, and let's not tear it down for the sake of tearing it down.