24th Feb 2011, 10:11 AM – Representatives Paid Parental Leave (Reduction of Compliance Burden for Employers) Amendment Bill 2010 - Second Reading - Read a second time

The majority voted against reading the Paid Parental Leave (Reduction of Compliance Burden for Employers) Amendment Bill 2010 for a second time.

This means that the majority of members did not agree with the main idea of the bill and so the bill was rejected.

The bill was introduced by the Liberal Party MP Bruce Billson as a private member's bill. Its purpose was to amend the Paid Parental Leave Act 2010 so that the federal department secretary would continue to administer the paid parental leave scheme. Billson MP said that this bill "is solely about reducing the compliance burden on employers in the processing and delivery of those payments".(Read Billson MP's explanation here. )

Background to the bill

On 1 January 2011, a paid parental leave scheme began in Australia.(Read more about the Government's paid parental leave scheme on the Department of Human Services website.) It offered eligible people up to 18 weeks of financial support at the rate of the national minimum wage.

For the first six months of the scheme, payment will be administered by the federal department secretary. After that time, employers will become responsible for administering the payment. The Paid Parental Leave (Reduction of Compliance Burden for Employers) Amendment Bill 2010 attempts to stop this transfer of responsibility so that the government continued to administer the payment.

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