Bring on the battle for the most generous publicly funded paid maternity leave scheme, in fact, let’s have all all out electoral bidding war on the issue with both sides throwing lots of money.
Tony Abbott has marked International Women’s Day by announcing a proposal to introduce a scheme that would see working women paid 26 weeks of leave at their salary level at the time of the birth.
The Opposition Leader stopped short of calling his plan a policy, saying it needed work and consultation with interest groups. Lots of women will be cheering at even the mention of it so I’m loathe to talk Mr Abbott’s plan down, but there’s one thing about it that really bothers me.
Mr Abbott argued in his speech at Manly today that even the publicly-funded element of the scheme should be tied to a woman’s salary because: “That’s the only way to avoid serious stress on the family budget until both parents can resume working or until adjustments can be made to family finances.”
The Opposition Leader has some experience with sudden diminishing household income. His own salary dropped after the 2007 Election when he was no longer a Minister and he had a bit of a whinge about it. Things have since been rectified in the Abbott house by his ascension to the top job in the Coalition.
There’s an argument that women on higher incomes pay more tax and therefore should reap higher benefits.
It might be logical, but it’s not fair. If our whole tax system was based on that principal our society would end up totally out of whack.
Women (and men obviously) should be free to negotiate what ever terms they can with their employers - if you can get a generous employer-funded maternity leave scheme based on a higher-than-average income bravo.
But when it comes to a government subsidy, funded by taxpayers, I reckon all parents should be in the same boat.
I would be uncomfortable with the government paying me more or less than the woman sitting next to me at work, even if, as Mr Abbott proposes, the scheme would have a generous cap.
There’s already a simmering tension built into both the Government’s scheme, which starts on January 1 next year, and Mr Abbott’s plan, in that it appears to significantly benefit working women.
What we don’t need is a scheme that pits all women against each other in a battle to get the most out of the government.
Caring for a newborn is hard for everyone - regardless how high or low they are on the income scale.
It’s fantastic that Mr Abbott has put this out there for discussion. He promised to release a detailed policy well before the election.
Here’s a chunk of his speech.
For most Australian couples, starting a family is the realization of a long held dream but it can also be the beginning of a household financial crisis. Before most families have their first child, both parents are typically in paid work and have developed patterns of spending that take two incomes to sustain. After becoming parents, one partner usually takes at least six months off work, sometimes never returns to the workforce and often becomes a part-time earner at best. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with this. Many women (and increasing numbers of men) choose to be full time carers for their children. It’s the price people pay to be parents.
Still, the loss of income normally associated with becoming a parent is one of the reasons why some couples never have children or have fewer children than, ideally, they would like. I’m not suggesting that everyone should have children. There are all sorts of reasons why people don’t end up doing so or choose not to. Even so, there would be something odd about a society which didn’t welcome children and encourage people to have them. Apart from being the next generation of productive workers and a sign of the confidence that we have in the future, there are few people who don’t miss them regardless of the reason for their absence.
Government can’t and shouldn’t try to dictate people’s reproductive choices. Any official demand for large families would be as odious as China’s now more-or-less-abandoned one child policy. Still, having children is as much a part of life as occasionally falling sick, taking holidays at least annually, and eventually retiring. Parental leave, therefore, ought to be as much part and parcel of any decent system of employment entitlements as sick pay, holiday pay and retirement benefits, all of which, one way or another are mandated by government.
This hasn’t always been my view. It’s the position I’ve slowly come to watching the way friends and family members have struggled to combine motherhood with very demanding careers and considering the options that I would like for my own daughters. It’s not fickle to change. It’s more likely to be wisdom than weakness. In any event, on the issue of paid parental leave, I consider that I have changed my mind rather than my values. I have always placed a high value on having children but now have a better appreciation of the policies that are needed if this is to be a more realistic option.
I used to think that employers should pay parental leave if they believed that it would help them to attract and retain their workforce but that they shouldn’t be forced to by government. This is the instinctive liberal/conservative position but it doesn’t take into account the social changes of the last two generations. For economic and personal reasons, the majority of mothers-to-be will be in the workforce and institutional arrangements should evolve to reflect this new social reality.
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