Today’s SMH story about Tony Abbott’s parental leave plan is basically old news since Tony Abbott outlined his six month scheme of paid parental leave in his book Battlelines. Abbott suggested it was to be funded by a levy of 0.5 on payroll tax, rather than from general revenue, and presumably this is still his view, since he was critical of the government’s proposal.
I agree with Abbott’s views on some aspects of the current scheme, so maybe his proposals will be a useful goad to improve the present government plans.
Firstly, six months is what most people wanted for paid parental leave and Rudd’s 18 weeks plan was a compromise with future expectations, so perhaps the six extra weeks could be a vote winner for Abbott.
Secondly, Abbott will abolish the means test (Rudd’s plan only applies to primary carers who earn less than $150,000), which will please a few higher income parents and denies its workforce connection. Abbott also suggested in Battlelines that his version would pay replacement wages for those who earn more than the minimum wage, which would attract some higher income earners.
Thirdly, Abbott’s version might cover those 20% of new mothers who will not have a leave entitlement because they haven’t had at least 12 months with the one employer, and they may be pleased.
However, I remain sceptical about Abbott’s genuine commitment to women’ paid work roles, as even in Battlelines his ambivalence shows.
He wants women to have more children and wrote extensively about the problems of the low birth-rate. He praises the Costello call for families to have three children. He was once deeply opposed to paid maternity leave and stated it would happen over his dead body during the Howard years. He strongly supported the baby bonus because it wasn’t related to paid work and is still concerned about the equity of payments for those mothers not in the paid workforce.
In Battlelines, the section previous to the one describing ‘maternity’ leave (he never mentions the paternity option) is called The Child Drought. Following this with a section called A Fair Go for Working Mothers suggests his basic intention is to make higher family payments and leave an attractive combination to tempt women back into traditional roles. The next section is called A Stimulus Payment for Families and is about more money and there is no real discussion on paying for these costs except raising the pension age.
So in sum, I wouldn’t trust Tony Abbot to be a serious supporter of policies that would make it easier for us to combine parenting and paid work. He claims to have had a recent conversion, but I suspect it is fairly superficial because his other views seem to have stayed much the same. However, he has put parental leave back on the public agenda and it still needs attention.
27 Comments
“…he never mentions the paternity option…”
I don’t know why…my husband breast-feeds like a true champion.
I was back at work within a week.
Are you for real??
“…He was once deeply opposed to paid maternity leave and stated it would happen over his dead body during the Howard years…”
That’s a pretty definitve statement.
Could you provide us with a linked source?
MPM
http://www.findlaw.com.au/article/7144.htm 10 seconds work on Google; you are not a worker.
here ya go mama, para 4, last line. Now be quiet while the grown ups talk
http://www.findlaw.com.au/article/7144.htm
SBH
Grow up little boy. It was a simple request.
couched in your usual dumb%rsed attack mode and preceeded by a piece of nonsense.
I can see it now ‘ Now we’re in Government and seen the books theres just no way we can go though with this non-core promise…….sorry’
How borning, MPM with yet annother Troll comment.
Why are you even here? Just like causing a fuss? To be honest I’ve never really understood Trolls. Why would you bother moving around from one thread to the next making unconstructive and disruptive comments over and over again? Where’s the fun in that?
Nice on Eva! Abbott is about as trustworthy as the institution he holds his faith in, the catholic church. Nothing like that moment when he put his arm around Julie bishop and called her a “good girl”!! It’ll take a LOT of backpedaling and bullshitting to convince many voters that he’s changed his misogynistic paternalistic fundamentalist view points!
Eva, I think the point of your story is to never trust a politician – Labor or Liberal.
and, to think that the incumbent PM has not changed his tune on a few things!
Tony “Absolute Crap” Abbott will say whatever he thinks people want to hear.
His message changes with his audience, the political hat he wears at the time, and the wind.
He makes Mark Latham look stable, and Andrew Peacock look like a Policy Nerd.
Eva’s assertion about “policies that would make it easier for us to combine parenting and paid work” is simply code saying the government should pay women to have babies. I don’t see why. Babies should primarily be supported by parents’ money and government assistance restricted to providing supporting services such as health, education and associated facilities. There are far too many government handouts already without adding more. If you can’t afford a baby, don’t have one.
If employers value their staff (and if the nanny state allows them), they will provide arrangements to retain employees after having a baby.
I agree with Captain Col. Until the baby bonus and other varieties of support for families with new children are consolidated in an appropriate way, the imposition of a further levy on the personal choices of others isn’t justified. The idea of employers shouldering an extra half-percent payroll tax burden (costing a certain number of jobs) to fund six months paid leave for a worker earning (let’s say) $150,000 seems a bit cavalier. He’d never propose the measure be funded by a levy of 0.5% on personal taxpayers, as he’d be shot down in flames. So why impose a further disincentive to employment in clearly shaky economic times?
The government’s proposals in this area are not well thought out either.
At the heart of all this is a personal choice to have a child. I see more value in encouraging a continued economic contribution by new parents through more generous and tailored child care arrangements than a short-term ‘tiding over’ for a temporary loss of income.
I too doubt Tony Abbott’s commitment to assisting women balance family, work and life. He knows he has an image problem with women and is trying to win them over – the trouble is the real Tony keeps getting in the way. He should stop trying to run women’s lives and stick to those things he knows like new taxes and denying the impact of people on the environment.
@OBlizzard
“…Where’s the fun in that?…”
The “fun” is seeing conversationally-challenged commenters like yourself waste 52 words in a stupid drive-by post that attempts to convey a profound intellect at work.
How “borning”.
Why can’t we fund child care the same way as we fund primary schools. Why is child care part of the health budget rather than education budget. Captain Col doesn’t argue the need to teach children literacy and numeracy. Why do people think that child care is optional. We live in a society which increases its GDP by increasing its participation rate by expecting women of child bearing age to work.
Many workplaces are hostile to working mothers. In many professions if a woman takes 5 years maternity leave she can pa to retrain again, so to avoid that imposition women return to work when their baby is 6 months old. Alternately professional women who have a career do not have children because child care is expensive, doesn’t fit in with working hours, and her income is needed to pay the mortgage. [What's a plasma TV look like?] Her alternative might be to rear her children on the sole parent pension.
In France mothers pay one euro a day for childcare, and there are lower staffing ratios than exist in Australia. The current funding model allowed ABC Learning Centres to grow big, line the pockets of the directors and ultimately go bust.
ABC Learning Centres centralised management and tight financial control provided basic care for its children. Mothers tried to avoid their centres because there were more toys, happier staff and better food at community run centres.
Billie, childcare IS optional. It is a cost that families would love to pass onto the state or the business, but nevertheless it is a cost that derives from their personal choice to have children. As I said in my previous post, this is simply trying to get ‘someone else’ to pay for your baby.
I have no problem with employers voluntarily providing subsidised childcare, but that has to be a business decision on their part.
If we want to increase the GDP of the nation we should get out of the way of business and allow them to operate profitably. Payroll tax is a tax on employment. There are many others hopefully considered by the Henry report.
I have no doubt that many workplaces are hostile to losing their workers and having to pay for them when they aren’t working. This doesn’t meant just working mothers. Every time we think up new, innovative ways to make someone else pay for our private decisions, we put a dampener on business.
Individual women are faced with workforce participation or child rearing.
You are right, at the moment child care is an individual’s choice born by the individual. At the moment industrious, educated women on modest salary chose careers and women who don’t finish high school have babies to collect the $5000 baby bonus
Billie you didn’t mention the loss to the economy when a trained experienced and capable woman decides not to re-enter the workforce because of the cost or availability of child care.
Capn Col many of these women get law degrees do their early work in private sector firms and then leave in their late twenties only to move to more enlightened employers. It’s why there are so few female law partners, judges etc. Child caring occupies a small part of a persons career and by facilitating child care we retain many good people who go on to contribute to the economy.
SBH I have no problem with facilitating child care, but not with tax money. I’m all for enlightened employers. Child care is a joint responsibility so it doesn’t have to be the mother who does it. No mentions here of dads doing it. If the decision is that the dad’s career takes precedence, then that’s again a personal choice.
We have to wean ourselves off asking other taxpayers to support our personal choices when there are perfectly adequate alternatives. Good people will always go on to contribute to the economy. I don’t think government provided child care is the best way to go.
Well I understand the point in general captain (sorry) but on the other side we need people to keep having children so that someone can provide for us in our dotage.
I agree full that child care is primarily the joint responsibility of both parents and our children had mum and dad take unpaid leave. I also agree that we would be a much better country if more people took more responsibility for themselves and the fate of their nation, so far so good.
The particular thing with child care is that without intervention by the government about 40% of the adult population were denied access to the very means which would allow them to take that responsibility. That’s not a situation that is reasonable in a modern democratic country. I’m not as opposed to tax being used as you are but I’d be happy to see a scheme where employers funded parental leave (as it’s general known in employment law these days) by a levy or directly and I think that such a scheme however funded would benefit both the economy and the society by allowing women the same means of control and involvement in the adult world as men have always had.
SBH, Sorry but your assumption that we need children so someone will look after us in our dotage is a little simplistic.
For starters if people didn’t have children, they will be far better off financially than if they did have children, they will be able to afford to look after themselves.
Secondly, the money spent on supporting the growing population would not be needed (think of all the housing and infrastructure needed to service the increase), this will leave plenty of money for aged care.
As dick Smith wrote in the teley:
Last year we added almost the equivalent of the state of Tasmania – 480,000 people – in a single year.
Think about all the roads, schools, parks, hospitals and homes in Tassie. That’s about what we have to build just to maintain our standard of living and we need to do it every 12 months!
He goes on to say:
It’s like a giant Ponzi scheme, a short-term fix that will do nothing to provide for Australia’s long-term security.
We should not be encouraging population growth in any form, it is just unsustainable.
But PeeBee, I’m with you on population growth although I wouldn’t quote Dick Smith on anything. It should be going down not up but who will actually do the caring? Who’ll sell us stuff like food, fix the roads, run power stations when we are too old to do that. With all that dough saved, will we build an army of aged carer robots to clean us up (botbots?)?
At any rate that discussion is slightly away from the central point that unless we provide the means for women to remain engaged in a life beyond the home we condemn them to a subservient life dependant on someone elses wage. The employment playing field for men and women needs to be equalised so that women have genuine choice and control over their lives.
I have to admit SBH, I was reluctant to quote Dick, but he is the only one of prominance that has spoken out on this issue. (I also have a sneaking suspicion that his 480k figure is wrong…. I don’t think he has counted deaths in there).
However the point is there will still be plenty of people to do those things you mention, because they are not needed for building infrastructure etc.
I am also in agreement that we should not condemn anyone to a subservient life dependant on someone else’s wages. But people should create their own means to take on the responsibility of raising their kids – whether through savings, negotiations with employers etc. I just don’t like to see tax funds used to fund people’s life choices. (Note here I see having kids as a choice).
To me the assertion that child care should supported by our government with financial incentives diminishes the role of mothering. In this society there is no financial cost ever given to mothering and this work that women do for society is, for the most part ignored as real labour.
The fact remains that while women (and I say women because it still remains largely a women’s role) stay in their homes and rear children without being paid our society will never value the true worth of mothering.
I believe that the role of a mother must be paid, not only through maternity leave but as a real and tangible contribution to our society.
Increasingly Australian employers are adopting American style employment practices, like workers only getting 25 hours work per week with one employer so they are not eligible for long service leave etc. Workers in this position have no bargaining power, they have limited job security and are less likely to choose to have children if they have to pay $80 per day per child for child care. Yes parents get a rebate at the end of the financial year – but parents who can’t get to the end of the financial year can’t put their children in childcare centres so fall back on family or community based arrangements.
If you say parents should take responsibility for rearing their children why don’t children pay to go to school?
The Australian governments pay for Catholic schools, so why won’t they pay for child care.
The NSW Catholic Education report said in 2007 funds came from
- 20% fees from parents
- 50% federal govt fund
- 21% NSW state government
- 10% forget
PeeBee raising children is a choice that 40% of the population can’t afford.
Has there been research showing which women are not having children?
Research has shown never married women are more likely to be educated and never married men are in low status, low paid occupations.
Are our child care policies encouraging dumb and uneducated women to breed?