Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Flexibility Measures) Bill

Paid parental leave is about equality for women, equality and care for children and equality for everyone. Economic empowerment is what paid parental leave seeks to provide—to say that, just because you choose to have children, it doesn't in any way diminish your rights to live a good life and to be paid a wage. The reality is that only some people have that privilege, but it is something that is important to all of us.

In this place today, we stood in silence, in one of the more moving moments I have had in this parliament, remembering Hannah Clarke. It reminds us that people are at their most vulnerable when they have just had a baby. The data tells us that is one of the times in a woman's life when there is the highest risk of being a victim of domestic violence. For women aged 25 to 44, the greatest health risk they face is not cancer. It's not road accidents. The greatest risk they face is domestic violence. When we think about these things in the broader context, paid parental leave seeks to achieve equality, and it is an important building block in making sure we have a fairer and more equal Australia.

I want to thank the former Minister for Women, Kelly O'Dwyer, for her work on the government's Women's Economic Security Statement of November 2018. This bill is part of that work, a legacy that continues some nine months after she left this parliament—and, indeed, continues to move us in the right direction.

Flexible paid parental leave, when you think about it, is absolutely sensible. Different parents, different families, have different needs, and different children have different needs, and so allowing the 12-week parental period to be available as one continuous block and then a six-week flexible period to be taken within the first two years makes sense for so many families across Australia. Indeed, if you look at the 2017-2018 financial year, some 159,372 families accessed the Australian Paid Parental Leave Scheme. It is amazing to think that just 10 years ago we didn't have this scheme at all, and now there are more than 150,000 families on an annual basis accessing this scheme.

For those who've fought for these changes, for the rights for parents to have paid time off with their children, it is something that pre-dates many of us in this place. It has been a long fight, and I want to also thank everyone who has been part of the campaign for paid parental leave and who continues to campaign to make this system fairer and even more equitable.

In 1979, the Commonwealth legislated to give 52 weeks of leave for Commonwealth employees. Back then, just 0.4 per cent of the population—that's women Commonwealth employees—were given 52 weeks maternity leave in the maternity leave act. That was 52 weeks unpaid. While by today's standards that is an incredibly inadequate provision from the Commonwealth—indeed, the Commonwealth could have afforded to do a little more—it was 41 years ago, and it started something much bigger.

In 1990, Australia ratified the ILO's 1981 convention on the rights of workers with family responsibilities. That continued us on the path towards more support for families with children. Also in 1990, the Department of Industrial Relations initiated the work and family unit of the department to start to look more at how we can make sure we've got the right economic settings to support parents and support families. The United Nations' International Year of the Family was in 1994, the same year that the Keating government negotiated Accord Mark VII with the ACTU. That accord noted, 'In this International Year of the Family, we should also incorporate consideration of direct assistance to workers with family responsibilities.' That was an important statement for the ACTU and the government to make.

In May 1995, the government did announce a new maternity allowance as part of its agenda for families. This was the first time there was a direct, specific payment in the form of what then morphed into a paid parental leave scheme. It was a means-tested lump sum payment equivalent to six weeks of the parenting allowance, payable to women back then regardless of their status in the workforce. I note that it was continued under the Howard-Costello government with the baby bonus.

In 2009, we saw two further steps towards the legislation that we're amending today. The Rudd government referred the issue of paid parental leave to the Productivity Commission to see what would be the best way of building such a scheme not only to ensure that it supported the families that we needed to support most but also to make sure it was economically sound. And we saw an amendment to the Fair Work Act to ensure that parents would have the right to 24 months of unpaid leave with their children.

Then we saw the historic Paid Parental Leave Scheme, a huge achievement of the Rudd and Gillard governments and a huge achievement of Jenny Macklin, the former member for Jagajaga. It was something that ensured a government funded scheme providing the primary carer with 18 weeks postnatal leave paid at the adult federal minimum wage. Back then, it was $543.78 a week. Now, wages haven't grown as much as they should have since then, but it was a significant change. In 2012, we had dad and partner pay included in the scheme by the Gillard government.

All of these things came into my world on 21 October 2017, when my son, Leo, was born. My wife, Jess, was very fortunate to have access to the Paid Parental Leave Scheme. I was fortunate that my employer provided a significant amount of paid leave and then was happy to let me take unpaid leave so I could be off for three months. That was one of the best decisions of my life. I wish I'd taken longer. As I said, one year I was one of those 150,000 people who access this scheme and their family every year. But we know that the scheme isn't doing all that it intended to.

I'll talk about the history of this. It is now a 10-year-old scheme. The economy has moved on, international expectations have moved on and there's a lot more that should be done. I received an email from a constituent in Eden Hill about what an extended paid parental leave scheme would mean for her. I'll quote from that email, with your indulgence, Mr Deputy Speaker. She says: 'Childbirth can be a very traumatic event for both mother and baby. Mothers can need time before birth off work due to dangerous pregnancies and time after the birth just to recover physically, mentally and emotionally. There are numerous other countries around the world that offer a year of paid maternity leave to mothers and fathers. I think this would benefit Australia a lot. I almost died giving birth to my child, and, while I was extremely lucky to have time off from work and I am so thankful for that, a full year of paid parental leave would have been wondrous and probably would have enabled me to take work off before the birth instead of working so close to her due date.' She says that there are many women in her workplace taking 12 months off to be with their babies but most of that time is unpaid, and she thinks that's unfair. She finally writes: 'I feel we don't only deserve an income but also superannuation during this time.' I think that's a debate that we're going to continue to have over the next decade as we continue to look at how we make sure our paid parental leave scheme does fit the expectations of our community and does fit the economic needs of our people. Indeed, it is now more than a decade since the Productivity Commission looked at our paid parental leave scheme. Maybe it is time the Productivity Commission once again looks at what Australia needs in a future-fit paid parental leave scheme.

Compared internationally, Australia has one of the least-generous paid parental leave policies in the OECD. Current rates of Australia's paid parental leave entitlement only cover an average of 42 per cent of the previous earnings of the participants in the scheme, amounting for most women to just 7.6 weeks of their full-time pay. I went through the history earlier where that first payment scheme in the 1990s provided for six weeks of payment. Now, recognising and not comparing minimum wages and minimum payments to people's full-time pay—but just 7.6 weeks of people's full-time pay? Hopefully, over time, we can talk about how we can do more in that space. Of 36 OECD countries, about half offered six months or more paid leave for mothers. Six months is the minimum recommended amount by UNICEF, and if we think about who would have a good idea of what the minimum should be, I would listen to UNICEF before I listen to many others.

In Norway, parents can access 35 weeks of paid parental leave at the full amount. Estonia offers mothers 85 weeks of paid leave. Hungary offers 72 weeks. Bulgaria offers 65 weeks. Finland recently announced that their paid paternity leave will be extended to nearly seven months, in line with maternity leave. This isn't some utopia; these are actual countries who are listening to the experts, listening to UNICEF and others, saying: how do we make sure that we give kids the best start in life, give parents the best chance to bond with their children and make sure that we actually value the work that people do that they have to give up in order to take some time to care for their children?

The coalition's record of paid parental leave is a bit all over the place. I commend them for bringing this legislation forward, which heads in the right direction, but it's like they've had to try every possible direction before finally landing on this point. In his quest to become Leader of the Liberal Party, Tony Abbott proposed what could only be described as an ambitious scheme.

Ms Thwaites: Rolled gold.

Mr GORMAN: Rolled gold—also a very high-taxing scheme, I think was the other point. I often get lectures from those opposite on Labor's tax policies. I think the idea that you would say, 'We're going to have an ambitious paid parental leave scheme, but we're only going to do it if you accept a huge tax on corporations,' was a terrible way to treat a very important area of social policy. In 2012 the then opposition leader Tony Abbott—he had so many roles it is hard to keep track—described it as a welfare scheme. This isn't a welfare scheme; it is about supporting parents and protecting people's workplace entitlements. We then had the legislation to prevent paid parental leave double dipping. Again, it was treated as some sort of a welfare payment and they said people didn't deserve it. It was all brought down to whether you were a worthy recipient or not.

Talk about going in every single possible direction! All that mess led us to nothing. Which scheme are we amending today? We are not amending the 'rolled gold' Tony Abbott scheme; we are amending the Rudd-Gillard scheme. And that's because it has taken six years for this government to take the policy area of paid parental leave seriously at all. While I commend the changes that are being made with this legislation, it is not the huge change that we saw when this legislation was first put through the parliament.

Think about the challenges faced by families on a daily basis when they deal with Centrelink. For some families, their first engagement with Centrelink is when they go to claim paid parental leave. We know that parents have huge trouble accessing childcare subsidies. We've heard stories in the last few days of Centrelink offices being closed down. This makes it even harder for families to access paid parental leave entitlements. I know a family who, when their childcare subsidy took seven months, were told it was because of a technical issue. They asked Centrelink what that technical issue was, but they still don't know.

I worry that, as we continue to change these schemes, it creates more and more pressure on an understaffed Public Service. It creates more and more pressure on those who work in Centrelink. It creates more and more pressure on IT systems, which we know are well and truly behind the modern IT systems that are needed to run the complex social security architecture that Australia relies on in 2020. Indeed, when I recently visited Centrelink, they referred to it as 'the mainframe'. That's a term I haven't heard in a very long time. I think that gives a really good sense of the ageing infrastructure that sits below our social security system. I have much more to say on how to improve all the other parts of our family welfare system, but I will end it there. Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker.