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Paid Parental Leave - House of Representatives
27-May-2010
Ms LEY (Farrer) (1.34 pm)—I am really pleased to speak on the bill which introduces the government’s paid parental leave scheme and, in so doing, I draw a clear distinction between the government scheme and the one that the coalition is proposing by way of amendments to this Paid Parental Leave Bill 2010 and cognate bills.
We would all agree that paid parental leave is needed desperately and needed sooner rather than later. The length of paid parental leave now available to parents through private enterprise and the Public Service varies greatly from, in some cases, a few days, to 18 weeks. Few schemes meet the widely acknowledged ideal leave period of a full six months, and that is something that we would agree on both sides of the parliament. Mothers choosing to stay at home bond with their babies over those vital few months of life and they really do need a full six months.
Labor has not adopted the internationally recognised standard of six months, but their scheme—the subject of this bill—has chosen 18 weeks, hoping that employers would top-up the leave entitlement to make up to 26 weeks.
Most employers that do not already have a more generous scheme in place are just not in a position to be able to afford to top-up any new scheme. Meanwhile, the inequity which sees only some 23 per cent of the lower paid and part-time working women being offered parental leave continues to persist. These bills will do nothing about that inequity. So if you are a young woman entering the workforce now, you are most likely to choose an employer that has their own paid parental leave scheme in place rather than one that does not.
After the government scheme commences, you are still more likely to seek out an employer with a company scheme—for example, the Public Service or any one of Australia’s large corporations—rather than a small business which has been funded to provide the government’s 18-week minimum wage scheme.