Ending “double-dipping” of paid parental leave is an important test of bona fides now that two ministers have confirmed they accessed both private and public schemes, the treasurer said on Tuesday.
Joe Hockey said the government needed to proceed with its proposed PPL savings measure to show voters the government was motivated by “the national interest”, not self-interest.
Two economic ministers, Mathias Cormann and Josh Frydenberg, confirmed during budget week that their wives had accessed two paid parental leave schemes, conduct the government was intent on categorising as “double-dipping” or a “rort”.
Hockey declined to reveal whether either minister raised their own conduct during pre-budget deliberations, arguing it was not his habit to disclose what happens in the expenditure review committee.
But in his interview with the ABC in Adelaide he said the architect of the contentious savings measure was the social services minister, Scott Morrison, who had proposed it to offset his new spending on childcare.
Hockey said people should not be able to claim benefits from two schemes, and it was particularly important to proceed in light of the budget week declarations.
“Given they [Cormann and Frydenberg] took it, it’s all the more important that we remove it to prove we are not acting out of self-interest, we are acting in the national interest,” he said.
The government is proposing to save $968m overfour years by a measure it calls “removing double-dipping from parental leave pay”.
This saving, the fourth largest of the budget, will be used to help fund the $3.2bn families package, which includes an overhaul of the childcare system.
The government has faced intense criticism about the move because it is a significant departure from Tony Abbott’s long articulated desire to deliver a “signature” PPL scheme, and the proposed saving will also reduce the level of benefits many new mothers receive after the birth of their children.
The government compounded the inevitable public backlash when Morrison, backing the proposed saving, characterised the perfectly legal activity as a “rort”.
The current PPL scheme, enacted by the former Labor government with Coalition support, was designed to be a top-up, allowing mothers to claim both the taxpayer-funded scheme, and any parental leave benefit their employers offer.
After the two ministers revealed they had accessed the full range of benefits available under the current PPL system, the government began toning down the “rort” rhetoric, instead directing its rolling critique away from new parents and towards unions and employers.
On Tuesday, Morrison continued to reposition on his rort charge. “Look, it doesn’t really matter if Mrs Claus was claiming it, it was legal,” the social services minister told the Ray Hadley program in Sydney.
In his interview Hockey also rejected the idea that he had agreed with the veteran political journalist Laurie Oakes on 10 May that taking an allowance twice was “basically fraud”.
In answer to the Oakes question about “fraud”, the treasurer replied: “Well, it is. In many cases it’s mostly people who go on parental leave that earn more than $90,000 a year. But there are people at various levels who have been claiming parental leave payments from taxpayers as well as from their employers.”
On Tuesday Hockey said he had not agreed with Oakes.
The treasurer said they could continue to argue the toss about semantics, or they could get to the substance of the issue. Hockey said the government had listened to families and made a decision to prioritise funding for childcare, and that required budget savings to pay for it.
