It would be “manifestly unfair” to prevent parents’ accessing both their employer and government paid parental leave schemes from 1 January, Nick Xenophon has said.
At a press conference in Canberra on Wednesday Xenophon said he had received calls from distressed pregnant mothers about the proposed changes, but signalled his party may support the government’s bill if the start date were changed.
Senator Derryn Hinch has gone a step further, in comments to Guardian Australia he said he would support the PPL bill if the start date were pushed back to 1 July.
In Adelaide on Wednesday, treasurer Scott Morrison told FiveAA Radio that the government had the support of the One Nation party, Bob Day and David Leyonhjelm for $6bn worth of social service cuts.
Those include changes to PPL, the proposed four-week wait for the dole, abolishing family tax benefit end of year supplements and eliminating the energy supplement for future welfare recipients.
The federal government currently provides parents with 18 weeks’ PPL at the level of the minimum wage. Employees may access the scheme alongside their employer’s scheme.
The government has proposed changes to the PPL scheme to prevent parents with generous employer schemes from accessing both, or limit government payments to a top-up of the employer’s scheme to the value of 18 weeks’ pay at the minimum wage. The changes would apply from 1 January.
On Wednesday, Xenophon said applying the paid parental leave changes from 1 January would be “manifestly unfair for any woman who is pregnant” and would be opposed by his party.
Xenophon said it was “de facto retrospective given that many women have planned on the basis of this scheme, in terms of planning their budgets”.
He said 1 October was another potential start date, noting that nine months after the bill passed parliament would reflect “the normal gestation period”.
“There is a lot of negotiation to do with [social services minister Christian] Porter and Mr Morrison in relation to that, including issues that have been raised with me about the whole aspect of there not being any means test for the household as a whole,” he said.
The Nick Xenophon Team has already expressed its opposition to the four-week wait for the dole and tax cuts for businesses earning more than $10m a year.
Asked about the other measures supported by One Nation, he said: “I’m very happy for the treasurer that he’s got One Nation and senator Day and senator Leyonhjelm on board, but he hasn’t got us on board.
“I expect the treasurer will be a tough negotiator and he should expect us to be tough negotiators when we talks to us about these proposed cuts.”
Morrison said the Nick Xenophon Team is “in the box seat” because Labor, the Greens and NXT’s three senators are sufficient to block budget cuts.
At a press conference in Adelaide, Morrison said if NXT blocked savings “the government will have to look at other measures, because the option of not returning the budget to balance ... is not an option that the government’s prepared to contemplate”.
