Logie Jan: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months’ Paid Leave) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 03 December 2014. Volume:702;Page:1103. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green):I am grateful to take a final call on this very important bill and to speak to new clause 8 the consequential amendments after seeing this Committee vote down the bill as it got narrower and narrower to try to deliver the 26 weeks—which all the health evidence all the economic evidence and all the social evidence showed us was our benchmark for looking after families and workplaces and most important babies in this country.It has been a bit of a demoralising experience I think for many of us in this House to go through this process. There were the numbers in the House to get it through and the Government stalled and threatened to use its financial veto. And then we lost the numbers. Even for the families in absolute need—those with premature babies those with children with disabilities and those with multiple births—the Government does not believe that it can find $6 million to be able to take care of those families. It just boggles my mind that we hear so much rhetoric from that side of the Chamber about taking an investment approach and yet the Government cannot come up with $6 million. Or you know to give it credit about the full cost of it it would be $55 million over 7 years. The Government cannot come up with that to care for families in the most need in this country at the time in their lives when we can make the most difference for babies and for the lifetime development of those children as well as the stabilisation of those families.I just wonder what the Government means when it says “investment” because if that is not investment then what on earth is? I really do wonder. When we have seen that child poverty is such an issue in this country—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Narrow it down.JAN LOGIE: I know; I will narrow it down. It is to the point of investment which is around the narrowing of this bill. We have seen how just by small investments like this Australia has reduced child poverty by 30 percent while this country has reduced it by 3 percent.I just cannot understand what this Government’s concept of investment is when we know that we can make a real difference when 99.9 percent I think it was of submissions supported 26 weeks as a baseline. That is what all of the evidence tells us is the baseline—not 16 weeks; it is 26 weeks. It is a very disappointing day to stand in this Chamber where this Government is depriving our families and depriving babies of that base provision leaving us lagging behind the rest of the world in support for families when we think of ourselves as a developed country as a country founded on principles of decency. The Government is not demonstrating an understanding of investment it is not demonstrating a sense of decency as it votes this bill down.The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 472 in the name of Sue Moroney to add new clause 8 be agreed to.