E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TRUDY MCINTOSH: Well Paid Parental Leave has officially been extended to 26 weeks for families. Joining me now to discuss is the Social Services Minister, Tanya Pliberset. Great to see you.
MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES, TANYA PLIBERSEK: Great to be with you.
MCINTOSH: Is this the right balance struck now for Paid Parental Leave? Labor has expanded it since you took office in 2022, from 22 weeks. Is 26 weeks the right amount or are you going to look to continue to expand this?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, first of all, Labor introduced the first, very first paid parental leave scheme. Jenny Macklin was the Minister for Community Services in those days and I was the Minister for Women in 2011 and we were really proud of that. We were one of the very few advanced countries in the world that had no paid parental leave. We then looked for an opportunity to expand it. As you say, we're now at the full six months. From yesterday, 1st of July you get a full six months of leave. It's paid at more than $1,000 a week, we're also paying superannuation on top of that. We've given more flexibility for parents to take time off together and more people are eligible because we've lifted the thresholds. So, we're very proud of the way we've expanded paid parental leave and we always look for opportunities of doing more for parents and families.
MCINTOSH: So you could potentially go to the next election promising more over time, obviously you can't do it all in one hit but will you expand it?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: We're certainly not proposing that at the moment. But I'd say as a general thing, we always look for ways of better supporting families. So, it's not just paid parental leave that increased yesterday. We increased Family Tax Benefit yesterday. There’s a whole range of other cost of living measures as you know that came into effect, higher wages, lower taxes and a whole range of other supports like the three hours of free power for people on the, on the national grid. We are a Labor Government, we know that people are feeling pressure. We will always look for opportunities to help out.
MCINTOSH: I wonder if one of those potential future ambitions for this would be to lift it beyond the minimum wage. That's just what it's paid at at the moment. For most mothers that does mean they take a pay cut when they're on the government scheme. Are you comfortable with that? Is that a prudent use of taxpayer money or should it be higher?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Oh, look, I'm not going to speculate. If we make changes in this policy area we'll do that through our proper processes first of all and then we would make an announcement. But I'd say a couple of things about it. Understand that for some people it is taking a pay cut. We see about 68% of businesses now offer support on top of the government funded scheme and they do that because it helps them attract and retain the best workers. Some companies or some institutions offer a year, in some cases even two years of paid leave as part of -
MCINTOSH: Some small businesses don't offer any at all and those people have to rely on the government scheme.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: That's true, but almost 70% do and that's not nothing. That's very significant. And the other thing I'd say is this scheme applies equally to people who are working part time and casually. So, for some people it might actually be an increase on what they're taking home every week.
MCINTOSH: You've claimed last week that paid parental leave is at risk from right wing parties, including One Nation. Pauline Hanson has now explicitly said she supports it. She's also gone as far as saying she supports your extension to 26 weeks. You can't claim now it's at risk, can you?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, since 2017 she's been saying things like women just get pregnant to get the money. In April this year she said, you've got the equipment, love. You know, if you take time off to have a baby, that's your problem. And she said it at the press club just a few weeks ago. And then she's experienced criticism of that from the many, many families who will tell you that this is an absolutely key part -
MCINTOSH: But if she's now saying she supports it, you might have actually got her to agree that it's not at risk anymore. Should we take her at her word or could it be a broken promise?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: I would love to think that my powers of persuasion are so good that I've changed a long held belief of Pauline Hanson.
MCINTOSH: So you think she's saying it for convenience?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: I think she's saying it because she's had pushback from the people that she claims to represent. I mean, Pauline Hanson's running around the country saying she's for working people, she's for people doing it tough. She's always been critical of paid parental leave. She's never backed increases in the minimum wage. She says Australian workers are lazy, they should be easier to sack and they're paid too much and businesses are doing it tough because they have to pay award wage increases. She is not someone who stands up for the working people that she claims to represent. In fact, she's always doing the bidding of Gina Rinehart, flying around in her jets and doing her bidding. She is the Gina Rinehart representative in the Australian Parliament, she’s not representative of working Australians.
MCINTOSH: I wanted to move on another idea that potentially could help families income splitting is something favoured by One Nation and Nationals Leader Matt Canavan. A mum could earn under this idea $200,000, the husband could earn $100,000 and they can split their income to reduce their overall tax as a family. Is it worth considering as an idea?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, we know that the people who benefit most are people on higher incomes when you take this approach. And what has always worried me about this is it actually provides an incentive to return to a time when you had a high earning, usually male breadwinner and a lower earning person or a zero earning person who's not in the paid workforce, who's bearing all of the responsibilities at home. That's fine when everybody agrees to that and things are going well. If relationships break down, the person who's been out of the workforce is generally the one who ends up staying poor for years or decades afterwards. In most cases that's a woman and her economic situation rarely returns to what it was. After divorce, the higher earning spouse, usually the man, his economic situation returns back to what it was within a few years. So, what you're doing is locking in that gender pay gap and even retirement pay gap. If you're out of the workforce for all those years and you're not getting superannuation and you retire poor because your relationship has broken down, what you're doing is really effectively locking in that inequality between men and women's economic situations for the long run. So, I never just discount ideas, I'm always willing to think about, discuss ideas.
MCINTOSH: Sounds like it's a non starter.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well it's a very, very expensive way of, you know, taking a bit of pressure off families. Very, very expensive way of doing that. And for people whose relationships don't last, it is a way of locking them into poverty for the long term.
MCINTOSH: I wanted to finish on the budget sales pitch. We're at the end of the long sittings of Parliament, Midwinter Ball last night. One of the auction winners is a mortgage broker who didn't like Labor's CGT changes. He's going to have a hit of tennis with the Prime Minister. Do you reckon the PM will have an open mind to hear one of his biggest critics, some of the pushback we've seen?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, the Prime Minister is a really good listener and I'm sure he'll give the guy a good hearing and a good game of tennis. But what I would say about the tax changes that we are pursuing through the Parliament is they are all about getting a generation of young Australians an opportunity of home ownership that they have not had in recent years. So, our 5% deposit scheme, our changes to capital gains tax, if you want to negatively gear, you'll still be able to. All of the existing properties are grandfathered. Everybody who's doing it now will keep doing it on those properties. And if you want to do it in the future, you have to invest in a new home. That is not a big ask. You still get the tax benefits, but you also add to housing stock in this country.
MCINTOSH: Tanya Plibersek, Social Services. Minister, great to see you. Thank you.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Pleasure to talk to you.