PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Mr KENNEDY (Cook) (11:51): Paid parental leave matters deeply to Australians. It matters to new mothers, it matters to new fathers, it matters to babies, and it matters to families trying to manage one of the most important and demanding moments in a family and a baby's life. Let me be extremely clear.
The coalition fully supports paid parental leave. Unlike One Nation, who questions this program, Australians will stand with mothers, will stand with fathers, will stand with babies and will stand with families on paid parental leave. Let me make this very clear from the outset.
This is not about whether families should receive paid parental leave—of course they should. This debate is about whether families should be trusted with greater flexibility and choice in how the leave is used. The coalition's approach is simple.
We trust families, we empower mothers, we empower fathers, and we look after babies. Every family is different. Every household is different.
You have different work arrangements—work from home, work in the office—different financial pressures and different caring responsibilities. Every family has different needs. Some families have one parent who's self-employed.
Others have one parent in shift work. Some families have a parent running a small business. Some families have one parent with insecure work or casual work.
Some families have grandparents nearby, while others don't. Some families have health challenges. Some have mortgage pressures.
Some have no practical choice about which parent can stay home and which must work. This is why a 'one size fits all' approach doesn't work. It needs to be tailored to each individual's family circumstances.
The best people to decide how your care is organised in your child's first year of life is you, not politicians, not bureaucrats, not people inside this Canberra bubble. It's parents and families. Government should support families' choices.
They shouldn't be dictating families arrangements. Paid parental leave should provide support. It should provide security, and it should provide flexibility and choice.
It shouldn't be designed around the assumption that the government knows better than you in how your kids should be looked after. Labor repeatedly tells Australian families that from 1 July they'll receive six months of paid parental leave, but what Labor doesn't always explain is the fine print. We haven't just learnt this around the budget.
We've learnt this around this scheme as well. From 1 July 2026, the scheme rises to 26 weeks or 130 days, but, in a two-parent household four weeks are reserved for each parent on a 'use it or lose it' basis. That's right.
Both parents have to use at least four weeks, or you can lose that time. That means, in many two-parent families, the primary carer simply can't access the full 26 weeks in the way that suits that family best. The primary carer generally may be able to access a maximum of only 22 weeks, with the remaining four weeks being reserved and protected for that other parent.
If that other parent can't take that leave because of work, because of cost-of-living pressures or income pressures these families might be facing or because of business obligations, the family may lose access to that entitlement. For some families, the way the scheme is structured it means you and those families will not get that full entitlement. This is the problem.
It's not a debate about whether one parent should care more than the other. It's not a debate about whether fathers should take leave—of course fathers should be supported to take leave. Of course shared care matters.
Of course both parents play an incredibly important role in the earliest days of a child's life. But encouraging shared care is not the same as punishing families who can't make Canberra and the Labor Party's preferred model work. A family should not lose support because they don't fit neatly in Labor's preferred structure of how your family should live its life.
Supporting families means trusting those families, trusting that they know best. It means recognising the same policy works very differently in different families. We cannot believe a government that should be honest with Australian families about what this scheme actually provides.
The choice is more important, the flexibility is more important, and they must have respect for parents to allow you, the parents, to decide what's best for your child. (Time expired)