PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Mr VIOLI (Casey) (11:40): I'm glad to rise and speak on this motion. Paid parental leave is an important topic. It's quite amazing how far we have moved as a country in the last decade alone.
I think about my own journey. When my son was born in 2015, I was entitled to two weeks of leave at the minimum wage, paid for by the government. We've moved a long way since then.
Unfortunately for my wife, she was—conveniently for her employer at the time, but not so much for us—made redundant when she was pregnant, so she didn't get the benefit of any employee leave or government leave. That is the world that some people have to inhabit. I will definitely not name that business; I don't think it's worth bringing up 10 years later.
But what it goes to is the importance of that financial security. As a good friend, an older gentleman, said to me when kids were on the way, 'Good luck; your expenses double and your income halves.' Unfortunately for us, given that redundancy, that was literally what happened. The importance of this is twofold.
It is the financial support that we give to families but also the message that we send to young Australians: that we want them to continue to have families and we want to ease some of that burden for them. I know that in the last parliament, when this legislation was passed, it was supported by the coalition. It had bipartisan support to increase the paid parental leave, and we also supported the increase to the superannuation being paid on that leave, although we did want to make an amendment to give a little bit more flexibility and choice to those who were taking leave, particularly in a high-cost environment.
As a coalition, we wanted to give families the choice. They would have three options: they could have kept that option of getting superannuation; they could have taken the immediate benefit of going from 26 weeks to 28 weeks of leave to give them that money when they needed it today; or they could have chosen to take that money as a lump sum, because superannuation is absolutely crucial but we're also asking people to lock it into a box and wait potentially 30 or 40 years to get access to that money.
In circumstances like mine, that money could have been really impactful at that time. I still remember from my accounting course that the net present value of a dollar today is a lot more than that of a dollar in 30 or 40 years. So it was disappointing that that flexible choice couldn't be given to families last term.
While paid parental leave is really important, we should also be realistic about what it's providing. It is providing payments from the taxpayer—from the government—to families that need them, but it is at the minimum wage, so we can't pretend that receiving this money is going to solve every problem and make it completely easy for families and suddenly all their financial burdens will disappear.
The reality is that, to make sure that families can continue to grow and that parents don't feel that financial burden, we need to continue to bring down inflation. We need to solve the economic problems across the country, because, if you bring inflation to a sustainable level, it means that the price of everything is not going up every week and it means that, for those who are receiving that paid parental leave, that money can go further on food, on rent and on their electricity bills.
Unfortunately, after four years of this government, we have seen that inflation is again above the band—and well above the band. The trimmed mean, the one that the RBA looks at, went from 3.4 per cent to 3.6 per cent last week. This is a treasurer that has completely failed the Australian people and that has completely failed Australian families.
He is unable to sustainably address this cost-of-living crisis. Under his watch, it is getting worse and worse, and Australian families are paying the price. The Treasurer and the Prime Minister are not able to sustainably bring inflation down.
They have no answers to the economic challenges we are facing. While measures like paid parental leave are so important, they will help those temporarily, but they are again treating the symptom and not the cause of the economic challenges that the Australian people face. When I speak to members of my community, they are angry and they are frustrated.
They feel like they are on an economic treadmill and that that treadmill is getting faster and faster every day and that that speed is getting sped up by this government that does not have any solutions to the challenges they face. We need to get back to basics. We need to make sure government spending is sustainable and that there is a positive plan for the Australian people moving forward.