Excluding people who work for state and local governments from an Abbott Government national paid parental leave scheme would leave behind almost 708,000 Australian women.
Frontline workers like public school teachers, nurses, and police would not be covered.
Yet, at the same time, Tony Abbott wants to pay high flying bank executives and lawyers $75,000 to have a baby.
It is now clearer than ever that this $75,000 would come at the expense of women working on lower salaries.
Mr Abbott needs to come clean about which women wont be covered by his scheme.
At the moment, his scheme would leave women in the following state and local government jobs behind:
- Teachers and teachers aides
- Nurses, orderlies and other health support staff
- Police and other emergency services workers
- Librarians
- Child protection workers
- Disability, aged care and child care workers
- School, hospital and local council support staff such as cleaners, orderlies, canteen workers and bus drivers.
These women should not be disadvantaged by Mr Abbotts desperate scramble to make his rolled gold scheme affordable.
When asked to give further detail of who would be covered by his scheme today, Mr Abbott would only guarantee that he would have more to say about his scheme in the coming weeks.
Labor has introduced Australias first national paid parental leave scheme and more than 270,000 working mums and their families have already benefitted from our scheme.
Labors scheme does not leave out those women who need it most Tony Abbott needs to explain why his will.
Number of female employees in state and local government by state
| New South Wales | 200,194 |
| Victoria | 164,806 |
| Queensland | 159,779 |
| South Australia | 57,573 |
| Western Australia | 83,724 |
| Tasmania | 20,645 |
| ACT | 11,134 |
| Northern Territory | 12,405 |
