Street Maryan: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental  Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Street Maryan: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental  Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:628;Page:598] 
MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 It is a delight to contribute to the debate on the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill. I am especially pleased to hear the contributions from members on the opposite side of the House. I welcome all the latter-day converts to paid parental leave. I am very pleased that members opposite have finally seen the worth of paid parental leave having had an unblemished history of opposition to it until this moment. However I welcome their conversion.  
I want to make a couple of comments. This is a progressive measure in a series of progressive measures and I think that is how good legislation is built. Five years ago I offered paid parental leave in a collective employment agreement that covered some 1700 employees in advance of legislation. So paid parental leave has been around for a long time but it has not been available to the extent that it became available in 2002 through legislation because there were not a lot of employers around who saw it as a useful productive worker and family-friendly measure to promote.  
In the public sector for example there used to be maternity grants for teachers and 6 weeks’ pay was provided when women left to have their babies. In the health sector women tended to be given a grant on their return to work. So there was no incentive to remain at home with the child but in fact there was an incentive to get back to work as quickly as possible. That anachronistic crude retention device has long since been overtaken by what parents and families now require as a better understanding of working life and home life requirements in the workplace. So we moved from maternity grants grants on return to work some kind of split arrangement of the two 3 weeks’ paid leave when one left to have a child or to adopt one and 3 weeks when one came back to work to a system that was introduced with the legislation of the Labour-led Government in 2002 which actually provided money when people needed it most—not when they came back to work but when they left to have their child or to adopt their child. That has been progressively improved from 12 weeks to 14 weeks and it will be improved in the future. This is simply another progressive improvement that has taken this understanding of the need to support families who are working and allows self-employed people to take advantage of the same provision as employees.  
So I welcome this as a sensible measure. It was something that became apparent in the course of the application of the paid parental leave provisions and the thousands upon thousands of people and therefore families who have taken advantage of paid parent leave since its inception in 2002 will now be augmented by another 2000 or so who will be eligible to take advantage of it. We should not underestimate the impact and the benefit of this for the families who are represented by the parents who will avail themselves of those provisions.  
I would also like to add my congratulations to the Minister because she has shepherded the whole progression of paid parental leave from the beginning and I am very pleased to add my support. The fact that self-employed people will be able to access the same provision—the maximum of $357 or so per week after tax—is a benefit. I look forward to hearing expressed the series of congratulatory notes that I am sure will be sent to the Minister for the work she has done on bringing this bill to the House.