Mornings with Kerri-Anne 16/02/2009, Nine Network
Kerri-Anne Kennerley: The finance crisis may have another casualty, this time paid maternity leave. With the cost estimated at $500 million, can the nation afford a federally-funded paid maternity leave scheme? One guy who says no joins me from Brisbane, Senator Barnaby Joyce. Good morning, Senator, welcome to the program again.
Senator Barnaby Joyce: morning, Kerri-Anne. Thanks for having me on your show.
Kerri-Anne Kennerley: Your view of paid maternity leave, senator?
Senator Barnaby Joyce: Great idea we could have afforded last week and after Friday's package we can no longer afford. The money is just not there. We are heading towards being in hock $200 billion and quite simply the money is not. There it was all beer and skittles on Friday when they passed the package but it's only taken until Monday that we are seeing the reality of what is happening now. We just don't have that money. We would have to borrow more money. If we keep borrowing money at this rate we will end up printing money and it’s all over, Good night Irene. It is all over.
Julia Gillard talking to Laurie Oakes on Sunday and look at what she had to say. “Paid maternity leave will be considered in the butt context. Obviously things that amount to expenditure, particularly ongoing expenditure for the nation, will be dealt with in the budget condition text.”
Kerri-Anne Kennerley: OK. Considered in the budget context. How do you read that?
Senator Barnaby Joyce: "considered in the budget context" translates into English as "not going to happen". It's as simple as that. She knows what the game is all about. She should come out and say, "Listen, the money has gone. We can't afford it anymore. That's what we are going to do." They might try and morph it around so the employers are paying for the paid maternity leave. If they do that? What is going to happen? The most natural thing is when people deal with their monies. Now I can't employ ladies. I will have to employ blokes. That's the worst outcome. it is pollie speak for "we can't really afford it." What if business - it was forced on business? What's the result in your view? If it is forced on business, think of your own logical household budget. People say, if you employ this person, you might have to pay for them even if they are not here, but if you employ this person, that's not going to happen. You are going to make the choice, employ the person where you don't have to pay maternity leave and it is no news to anybody to find out that blokes are the ones that don't have babies and so that’s the ones they will employ. That is a bad outcome. We had the capacity to afford things like this before the spending spree, but it's finished since last week. It's only taken one weekend before the rality of this Labor Party management has started coming home and paid maternity leave is the first casualty. Get ready for a heap more.
Kerri-Anne Kennerley: How do we encourage women to stay in the workforce. We need their intelligence and tax.
Senator Barnaby Joyce: My whole workforce in my office is women. Everyone in my office is a woman, to the best of my knowledge. Of course it is crazy, we live in a world now where you need two incomes to pay for a house. We live in a world when people should have the same opportunities for progression. This doesn't put aside the realities of nature that women have babies and thank God they do otherwise I wouldn't have four kids and I am very blessed to have that. We had the capacity before for the Government to have money in the bank to be able to go into a process of at least mitigating and alleviating the financial pressures on ladies that have kids and want to stay in a job, but they have blown that, Kerri. It has gone. Now we are seeing with the $200 billion debt they now want a stimulus package. They won't be able to pay back their interest. Interest will start accumulating around $10 billion a year and all of these programs we could have done, this was going to cost about $450 million a year paid maternity leave. We are so tied now that even that is looking highly unlikely. we drag ourselves kicking and screaming into this century.
Kerri-Anne Kennerley: We are the only developed country without it. Australia, United States, Swaziland and Papua New Guinea. We are the odd ones out now the world.
Senator Barnaby Joyce: What we have to do is start dragging our budget back into surplus and make sure the money is there to pay women for paid maternity leave and we are not having to borrow money for paid maternity leave with no prospect of being able to repay it. To get our budget back into surplus, that's going to be real pain. How do we pay back $200 billion and that's the start figure? I reckon by the time we get to the end it will be more like 3 or 400 billion. What are we going to sell this time, Kerri-Anne? What is left? Last time we had $96 billion in debt we had to sell Telstra and Medibank Private last time. What do we sell this time? We know these people have been waiting for so long. What happens, we have to do something with the age pension.
Kerri-Anne Kennerley: What is your bet on that? Will they bypass that and put it at pollies' feet it won't happen. What's your bet there?
Senator Barnaby Joyce: They are heading in that direction. That was the first promise for the stimulus package
Said this would spread across the floor on Christmas day with "made in China" on the back. That will be gone. We should have useed that for pensioners. We gave them a one-off. They need a continuous income stream to take them out of where they are at the moment, into destitution line and into some sense of self-respect so they can pay for the groceries and rent and have some basic necessities of life which it cannot possibly pay for on the money they are getting at the moment.
Kerri-Anne Kennerley: Senator thank you for your time this morning. We appreciate it.
Senator Barnaby Joyce: It’s a pleasure Kerri-Anne.