Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources and Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Fair Work Amendment (Baby Priya's) Bill 2025 with incredibly mixed emotions. I thank those other members of the Senate who have spoken on this with great care. As somebody who has also lost a child, the idea of not recognising, in any way, the pain and difficult times that a family goes through then is abhorrent.

This legislation is being guillotined, and I can't let that go past because this is not just about the tragic circumstances of losing a child for a family. There are more issues to be examined. We had a very comprehensive speech this morning from Senator Canavan, and I thought he did a terrific job in that regard. I want to raise another issue, though. Small businesses across Australia are under incredible pressure. When the minister spoke to this legislation earlier this morning, she made the point that this is not about there being a definition around stillbirth or losing a child during maternity leave; it is about fair work. And this is the bit that I think we've not had the opportunity to examine.

In this country, around 10 weeks of leave is provided by small businesses to their employees. Small businesses have that relationship with their employees. Their employees are an incredibly important part of that broader small-business family. Yet, with the guillotining of this legislation, with the lopsided discussion, there is no ability for the employer groups to be a part of this discussion. They are removing the ability for the employer and the employee to have this relationship that I have enjoyed as an employee over many years. In fact, during the sad time that I referred to at the beginning, my employer was extraordinary. But we will remove that. We will once again move to legislate every part of our lives. I don't think this helps to provide respect to that relationship or to allow a robust and successful relationship. Imagine if we start legislating for what can happen in a marriage or in other sorts of relationships in our society. I think this legislation, whilst incredibly worthy at its heart, is not dissimilar to the domestic violence leave legislation that we passed last year. We have removed a societal cost to a small business cost. There are those on the other side who talked about the price of this being small. Well, if you're a small business with only a small number of employees, the price that you pay for providing all of these benefits that we desire under our modern society is significant. In the AFP, I understand, the leave entitlements are something like 14 weeks a year. Small business, as I said, is 10. These are genuine costs for people who are doing it incredibly tough at the moment. The inability for those people to be able to have a relationship and a discussion with their employees seems incredibly heavy handed.

There will be those who think that I'm missing the point of this legislation, and I acknowledge that. I understand what it's trying to achieve. I certainly sympathise to the bottom of my heart with Baby Priya's family. The sadness must seem at times to have no limit. But I do caution that when we guillotine legislation like this, without allowing everybody to have a say, without proper debate and discussion, we deny real people in our society who should be involved in this. Senator Canavan made the point this morning that we undermine the trust and the respect and the responsibility that is given to this parliament and this Senate. I think the guillotining of legislation, particularly important legislation, is unparliamentary. It's undemocratic. Australians expect better and more. The more difficult the topic, the more important it is that all Australians get to have a say. We cannot be righteous and say, 'This is the only way,' in this regard. That is what healthy democracy is about.

So I rise to represent the other half of this relationship, being the employer groups—the employers who have for so long been able to make generous and appropriate arrangements with employees who have all sorts of different requirements. Will we move next to legislating for greater leave if one of your parents dies? What about a sibling? I think that's currently three days. Where are we going to start requiring that employers should take on the financial responsibility? If the government believes that this is important legislation, did the government consider that the government would pay for it? Of course they didn't, because this is a government that will always shift the cost to small business—the very group that, at the moment, is going into liquidation, administration and closure faster than at any point in our history. I think we should care about that.

I think this is an incredibly important group of people. They provide the apprenticeships to our young people. They provide the opportunity for school attendees to work part time in their businesses. They give a go to people who would not fit into a bigger corporate structure. Particularly in the places where I am from in regional and rural Australia, it is small businesses that turn up and continue providing services, often at cost to themselves. They don't pay themselves. They instead pay their employees, their workforce, their suppliers and all the government fees and charges that continue to grow.

The point that I seek to make is that guillotining this legislation is bad for Australia. It's bad for our democracy. It's bad for the standing that this parliament has in the minds of those people that we come here seeking to represent. It is bad for a sector of our community and our economy because, as we seek to make good a harm, we have not had any ability to look at what that price is. I don't think that's fair. I think it really diminishes the government in my eyes, but, worse, I come here to represent people who provide jobs to thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of Australians, and their voice has been completely lost and disregarded in this. I don't think that's right.