‘To be told I am a double dipper and I’m rorting is a slap in the face to me and all public servants … on a normal wage,’ Lieutenant Commander Sandra Croft says

An Australian navy lieutenant commander has broken down in tears in front of a Senate committee at the thought of being forced to leave her baby “to bond with someone else” as a result of the Coalition’s plans to end so-called double dipping on paid parental leave.

Speaking as a representative of The Parenthood organisation, Lieutenant Commander Sandra Croft was giving evidence to a committee on legislation which would remove government-funded PPL for 34,000 mothers a year whose employers already paid as much, or more, than the taxpayer-funded scheme.

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Unions, employers, industry and women’s groups have attacked the changes. On Tuesday morning, the committee heard opposition from the president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Ged Kearney, a National Foundation for Australian Women representative, Marie Coleman, and representatives of The Parenthood.

Croft described herself to the committee as a “defence member and therefore an instrument of this government’s policy”. She said without the PPL she would have been left with only $120 a fortnight to live on after superannuation, housing, health and taxation was taken out of her pay cheque on six months half-paid leave.



“My son is two, he just turned two and he is very, very bonded to me,” said Croft, who served in the Middle East.



“He says mummy when he wakes up in the middle of the night. When I leave in the morning, he cries, and when I get home, he is very happy to see me. And I was with him for 24/7 for six months.

“And I just can’t imagine leaving a three-month-old baby. And leaving for work at seven in the morning and not getting home until six o’clock at night. And having that three-month-old baby bond with somebody else.”

Croft urged the government senators not to go ahead with the changes, saying the extra money in her pocket was the only thing that allowed her to take six months instead of three months of parental leave with her first child.

“I’m very, very committed to my job but if I didn’t have PPL paid to me, by the time all of my superannuation, housing, health, taxation and everything else is taken out of my half pay I would have $120 in my pay packet at the end of the fortnight. And you just can’t live on that.”



Croft said she had struggled with breastfeeding, which took four months to settle, and, had she have been forced back into work at three months for financial reasons, her baby would not have been properly breastfed.



Postings and deployments meant most servicemen and women plan families pregnancies carefully, Croft said. She told senators she was planning her second child and her “window of opportunity as far as my career and postings go is the next two months, otherwise it’s three years from now”.



The existing policy replaced Tony Abbott’s signature PPL policy – described as a “rolled gold” scheme – which he took to the 2010 and 2013 elections. Abbott originally promised to pay a woman’s full salary of up to $75,000 for six months’ leave. He revised the policy after opposition in the Liberal and National party rooms then dropped it altogether. At the time, Labor attacked the policy as paying off “millionaire mums”.

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When the government announced the changes, Abbott described current laws as “double dipping” because workers in departments such as human services, defence and health received up to 14 weeks of paid leave in addition to the basic government PPL of $11,500. Some – for example in the Australian federal police and tax department – receive 16 weeks in addition to the $11,500. Unions argue that those extra agreements are part of negotiated arrangements which are in lieu of extra pay.

Croft said the defence department’s existing PPL was great, as was the existing government scheme. Before the last election, she said, she had appreciated the Coalition’s attempts to add to parental leave.

But after the government announced the changes, she had contacted various government senators to urge them to stop the removal of PPL for affected parents but they told her it was fairer to remove them.



“As someone who is returning to work for this government, I don’t understand how those sort of delineations can be considered fair,” Croft said. “To be told I am a double dipper and I’m rorting is a slap in the face to me and all public servants, nurses, teachers, firefighters and the average public servant on a normal wage.

Kearney clashed with the Liberal senator Zed Seselja, who asked if she was concerned at removing PPL, why had she not supported the original scheme.

“As I said, our concerns with the [original] scheme were related to the fact that there was widespread objection to it from within the Liberal party itself, from the big employer groups, who we know are hugely influential over the Liberal party and also with the fact that it was … taken out of the workplace,” Kearney said.

“We see absolute sense in a system combined with employer bargaining and equity payment from the government … so you have an equity payment from the government that can be bargained up to full wages through enterprise bargaining, which we think is a good system.”

Coleman said the government PPL scheme was designed as a building block for parents and their employers, who may negotiate extra payments.

“The attempt to roll this back is absolutely an insult to Australian parents,” she said.