How Amy’s newborn dream turned into a financial ordeal

Amy McAuliffe loves being home with baby Bernadette, but she was considering whether she would return to work early because of a delay in receiving her government-funded parental leave pay.

McAuliffe, from Summer Hill in Sydney’s inner west, received the payment on Thursday, after a wait of nearly three months.

Amy McAuliffe with her daughter Bernadette, 9 months, waited three months for parental leave pay.Credit: Janie Barrett

“It’s been really tough,” McAuliffe said. “For the past few months, we’ve had to borrow money from my family and my husband’s family because we’ve had mortgage repayments to pay off as well, and it’s just not been feasible on one income.”

Thousands of parents have experienced similar delays, which Services Australia attribute to a spike in applications for parental leave pay because of increased eligibility.

Minister for Government Services Bill Shorten in November said that the former government had “decimated Services Australia’s frontline” and the agency would recruit 3000 new staff.

When Bernadette was born nine months ago, McAuliffe received employer-funded leave. When that ran out, she applied for the government scheme on November 13, thinking it would come through by Christmas.

‘It just felt like teetering on this tightrope.’

Amy McAuliffe

Services Australia transferred the money on January 24, and then she had to wait for the next pay cycle for her employer to pass it on.

“We’ve got two feet slightly back on the ground again. It just felt like teetering on this tightrope,” she said.

Parenting groups in person and online are full of chatter about people facing long delays for parental leave pay and also to add their newborn baby to their Medicare cards, and this masthead has spoken to more than a dozen parents who have waited for two or three months.

McAuliffe said she would try to ring Services Australia, only to hit a recorded message before the call would be disconnected. She ended up calling the complaints line instead, which involved waiting on hold for more than two hours, but helped to escalate her claim.

Amy McAuliffe said her parental leave was a beautiful time to bond with her daughter but without the parental leave pay she would have needed to return to work sooner.Credit: Janie Barrett

Other parents spoke of visiting a Centrelink office in person with a newborn in tow, or of lobbying their local members of parliament. Many new parents, who haven’t had the time or energy for such efforts, are still waiting.

For Bonnie Law, of Tempe in inner-west Sydney, it took more than 12 months before Services Australia paid the parental leave for the birth of her first child.

She survived because she had long service leave from her employer, but the timing of the backpay left her thousands of dollars out of pocket.

The money came through as a lump sum in July 2022. The increase to her taxable income because it was counted in the new financial year and coincided with her return to work meant Law ended up with a tax bill instead of a tax return.

The higher taxable income also made her ineligible for paid parental leave as an individual for her second child, though fortunately, she still qualified as part of a couple.

Services Australia reports that the agency processed close to 198,000 parental leave claims, and took an average of 25 days, from July 1 to December 31 last year.

The agency also said it enrolled more than 125,000 newborn babies in Medicare over the same six-month period, taking an average of 36 days.

Services Australia General Manager Hank Jongen said: “We know bringing home a new baby can be a busy and stressful transition for parents to navigate, and we sincerely apologise to anyone who has had to wait longer than expected.”

Services Australia encourages people to apply early, and allows applications for parental leave pay three months before the birth or adoption.