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One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has walked back a statement insinuating she wanted to scrap paid parental leave, but maintained her concern about the burden it places on small businesses.
Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek on Tuesday accused Hanson of not understanding how paid parental leave worked, and said One Nation was pitting Australians against each other for electoral gain.
Following an address to the National Press Club last week in which Hanson questioned why businesses should have to pay, the party leader on Tuesday said she was “taken out of context”.
Speaking last Wednesday, Hanson said: “If women take time off and they are not paid their wages because they’re not working, fair enough. Why should business pay? But they’re not at work. That’s the difference. That’s why the [gender] pay gap is there.”
During an appearance on Seven’s breakfast show Sunrise on Tuesday morning, Hanson said: “It’s up to companies if they want to have it in their policy to give it to their workers. So, there’s no way, shape, or form that I am actually saying to get rid of it. I’ve seen it’s been very beneficial to women to get back in the workforce.
“It’s OK for government taxpayers [to] pay for it, but there are businesses, smaller businesses, that cannot afford it. [If] you put another pressure on the small businesses to pay for maternity leave, they’ll actually fold.”
Paid parental leave is offered to all parents and paid for by the taxpayer. The policy offers 24 weeks of paid leave at the minimum wage of $948.10 per week. On July 1, the period will extend to 26 weeks.
The government provides the funds to employers to be administered as leave. However, if there is an administrative burden that a business cannot shoulder, payments can be made directly from the government to the employee. Employers can also choose to offer their own parental leave packages that can run consecutively to government-funded leave.
In a statement to this masthead, Plibersek said One Nation “doesn’t even understand how the policy works”.
“Hanson has said multiple times over almost a decade she doesn’t support paid parental leave.
Obviously, Australian families have told her they want it and now she’s claiming she was taken out of context,” Plibersek said.
“But Senator Hanson is wrong, small business don’t need to force their workers to choose between career and family. Paid parental leave is taxpayer funded for all eligible families, whether they are self-employed, work for a small business or the biggest companies.”
Plibersek said the government was “proud” to be expanding the program, and slammed One Nation for wanting to “strip away workers’ rights”.
“Rolling back paid parental leave is just the start of their attack on women and families.”
Opposition social services spokeswoman Melissa McIntosh said she supported paid parental leave and worked through one of her pregnancies without access to such a safety net.
In 2017, Hanson opposed changes to paid parental leave on the guise that women “get themselves pregnant” to access benefits.
“I’ve gone through a bloody tough life myself as a single mother and held down a part-time job. I had no assistance, no help from anyone … we have such a welfare handout mentality,” Hanson said at the time.
The backflip from Hanson comes as her party navigates scrutiny of a number of its policies.
Hanson’s support is surging among women, a constituency that has proven vital to the success of conservative parties in recent elections. The failure of the Coalition to attract women in subsequent elections has been a factor in their drop in parliamentary representation.
In a poll conducted by Resolve Political Monitor and published by this masthead this month, support for One Nation rose to 24 per cent among women, and 22 per cent among men.
Hanson last week said she felt it was “too late” for abortions to occur after 20 weeks of gestation, and that after 39 weeks the procedure was “clearly not humane”, but did not outright oppose the procedures.
However, One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts has argued for an outright ban on abortions, telling a Brisbane conference this month that his “goal” was to end the procedures entirely. Fellow One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce this month campaigned against the rare practice of “sex selection” abortions.
