Response shows depths of hostility towards ‘double-dipping’ mums

THE government’s hostility towards mothers accused of “double-dipping” in the parental leave system has been exposed.

A telling response to a freedom-of-information request has revealed the depth of Coalition hostility towards mums accused of “double-dipping” in the parental leave system. Picture: iStock

A TELLING response to a freedom-of-information request today reveals the depth of Coalition hostility towards new mums who want both government-backed parental leave and time-off granted by employers.

FOI authorities rejected the request because it would have taken 550 pages to list all the invective in official correspondence levelled at “doubled dippers” — including “rosters” and “frauds”.

There were too many insults to log without going to great expense.

The government is expected to announce yet another version of the paid parental leave scheme today in to a bid to pass legislation making double-dipping illegal.

The response to the Labor-originated FOI application — which has been seen by news.com.au — said it would take a public servant four days to process the information.

And that was just for the five months — January 1 to May 14, 2015 — that Scott Morrison, now Treasurer, was minister for social services.

The government today faces demands that it confirm or deny reports it has a new parental leave proposal, apparently designed to win over crossbench support for legislation ending double dipping.

The proposed law in its reported new form would guarantee a 20-week break for all new mums, two weeks more than under the existing scheme.

But it would outlaw taking both the public scheme and additional parental leave won at a workplace through enterprise bargaining.

The new version outlined in news reports would add about $1300 to income for those on leave, and leave about 60 per cent of mums better off or unaffected.

But it would strip about $700 million worth of entitlements from public servants, who currently can exploit both forms of paid leave.

“There’s always negotiations with the Senate and the minister — in this case Mr (Christian) Porter — is handling those negotiations,” Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) summit in Lima, Peru, yesterday.

“And we’ll find out on the floor of the Senate how successful they are. But I don’t want to run a commentary on them any more than he would.”

The requested report relates to the time last year when now Treasurer Scott Morrison was social services minister. Picture: AAP Image/Lukas Coch

The Prime Minister said of dealing with a Senate he didn’t control: “I think with the Senate, again it’s a long game and we work away, we respect every single Senator.

“They are all elected by the Australian people, they all have a vote and we’re working hard to achieve a majority on the floor to get our program and the bills we took to the election passed.”

Labor is waiting for details on any paid parental leave scheme but social services spokeswoman Jenny Macklin focused on prospective losers.

“Make no mistake, 70,000 new mums on modest incomes will be thousands of dollars worse off; 4000 new mums will lose access to the government paid parental leave scheme completely and be more than $12,000 worse off,” Ms Macklin said in a statement.

“Pregnant mums need certainty when planning for the birth of their baby; the last thing they need is confusion about how much paid parental leave they are entitled to.”

The FOI request, lodged by Labor last year, was for references to the insults in official correspondence to then social services minister Scott Morrison and his department. It covered all ministerial communications, not just Mr Morrison’s.

Joe Hockey started the name calling when he said in May 2014 double dipping was “basically fraud”. Mr Morrison called it “a rort”.

The Labor FOI application was rejected because it would have involved “a substantial diversion of resources” even when the period covered was reduced.

“The scope of your revised request still covers approximately 550 per worth of material,” the response from a review by the information commissioner said.

“A large amount of time would be necessary to locate, retrieve and copy relevant documents.

“In addition, a significant amount of time would be required to prepare a schedule of documents.

“I estimate that the total time required to search for and retrieve the documents … would amount to 28 hours, or four full days of processing time.”