The Federal Government is playing down fears that small businesses will struggle to administer its paid parental leave scheme.

The scheme, which starts on Saturday, gives new parents 18 weeks of leave paid at the minimum wage rate.

Nearly 6,500 families have already registered for the payment.

But the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry says that while business largely supports the program, the Government should take full responsibility for implementing it.

"It sets itself up for a fall here by requiring quite unnecessarily small and medium businesses to be part of administering a Government payment system," chief executive Peter Anderson told ABC Radio's AM.

"If those arrangements do put unnecessary costs and red tape on businesses, then those business will lose confidence.

"Employers, particularly smaller businesses, are going to find themselves in a three-way dance between the employee, the government payment office and the business in trying to actually make some of the payments."

Mr Anderson says his organisation is prepared to lobby the Parliament for any changes it deems necessary.

"We want this system to work effectively and efficiently," he said.

"The Government has seen that a number of its worthy policies over the course of the past three years have been side-tracked by poor implementation.

"The Government's aware that it doesn't want a repeat of that on maternity leave."

But Families Minister Jenny Macklin says the Government has already taken steps to ease the burden on business and will continue consultations throughout the implementation.

"We understand they're very busy people, so we've made sure the money will be in their bank accounts in advance, that we allow the businesses to pay according to their normal pay cycle," she said.

"The mother has to do the applying for paid parental leave and she's the one that has to check with her employer about her eligibility."

'Cut back'

Meanwhile, ACTU president Ged Kearney says employers will try to cut back on their paid parental leave arrangements despite enterprise bargaining agreements.

"We know there are some enterprise bargaining agreements that actually have clauses in them now to say that we will pay paid maternity leave until a government scheme is introduced," she said.

"Now those agreements, at the time it might have seemed like a good idea in an effort to get paid maternity leave for those workers, but we know those agreements are going to be problematic for us."

Ms Macklin says she does not expect employers will dump their own paid parental leave schemes.

"I've had a number of businesses say to me they will keep their schemes and make sure that paid parental leave that's being introduced by the Government is available on top of their scheme," she said.

"So Woolworths, for example, Holden, Aldi, Rio Tinto, just to name a range of different types of businesses, have all said that they will maintain their own schemes.

"[But] we'll certainly be keeping a very close eye on it.

"We want to make sure the government-funded scheme is on top of employer-funded schemes."

Ms Kearney says rather than cutting back on paid leave, employers should look at adding to the scheme out of their own pockets.

"We are actually going to be encouraging employers to top up the government scheme to full wage," she said.

"This paid maternity leave shows that you value your female workforce, it shows that you actually value paid maternity leave and the important work that women play."