We did it - paid parental leave is in the 2009 budget!

 Read the Rudd Government's news release here: Rudd Government to introduce paid parental leave

 Unions welcome the historic introduction a universal, government-funded paid maternity leave scheme covering the majority of Australian women and their families.

"The campaign to win this essential piece of social infrastructure has taken 30 long years," ACTU President Sharan Burrow said today.

"This is a major achievement for the thousands of women and men who have worked so hard to bring this scheme to fruition.

"Importantly, the scheme will cover hundreds of thousands of women in lower paid jobs with poor job security, especially in hospitality and retail where there's been very limited access to paid maternity leave.

"The Rudd Government has rightly concluded that this money will go directly into spending on the necessities that go with having a new baby at a time when most families have been reduced to living on one wage."

"It also recognises that paid maternity leave is good for business and the economy because it will help keep skilled, experienced female staff attached to the workforce."

Treasurer Wayne Swan has today confirmed that a universal paid maternity leave scheme will go ahead, with funding to be committed in Tuesday's Budget.

Ms Burrow said the 18-week scheme would give mothers time to bond with and breastfeed their babies without financial stress forcing them back to work too early, sometimes within weeks, as is currently the case.

"The ACTU and unions will continue to help working women bargain for measures to help balance their work and family responsibilities," said Ms Burrow.

 After 30 years, PML finally in: a great first step

 Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick, has applauded the federal government's announcement that funding for paid parental leave will be included in Tuesday's budget, with a commencement date of 1 January 2011.

Commissioner Broderick said this was a great first step and emphasized the importance of effective awareness and education campaigns aimed at both employees and employers in the lead up to the commencement date.

"The implementation of a paid parental leave scheme in Australia is a major triumph for not only mothers and parents, but for our community," said Commissioner Broderick. "Not only does it send a strong message that women matter in Australian workplaces, but it is a critical piece of social infrastructure that will help deliver stronger economic outcomes for families, businesses, the economy and our community as a whole."

Commissioner Broderick said it was significant that the government had seen fit to implement a paid parental leave scheme despite the extremely challenging economic circumstances facing Australia at present.

"Implementation of a paid parental leave scheme in this budget says that the government recognises how imperative it is for the stability of our families and the success of our businesses that people who take time off to have a child - and lets face it, we are talking mostly women - have the surety of returning to their jobs after spending those critical first developmental and bonding months with their newborn," Ms Broderick said.

The Commissioner said that the scheme would assist women to maintain skills and income by encouraging workplace attachment for workers who have historically been forced to downgrade in both areas when they have a child. It would also benefit businesses, and therefore the economy, through the preservation of corporate intelligence and skills.

"Leading up to the implementation date, we must see a commitment to building awareness and understanding of the scheme in our employers and employees, as failure in this area has cost paid parental schemes success in other countries," Ms Broderick said. "It is also imperative that a continuous program of monitoring and evaluation forms part of the scheme so that its effectiveness can be optimised in the short to medium term and maintained over the long term."

Ms Broderick emphasised that Paid Parental Leave is a workplace entitlement and should be available to all women, not just those earning less than $150,000.

Commissioner Broderick thanked the many organisations that had advocated so hard over the last three decades and particularly, in the lead-up to this budget. She said their tenacity was one of the main reasons we are now seeing implementation of a paid parental leave scheme.

The Commissioner said it was an historic day for women and parents in Australia.

http://www.humanrights.gov.au/about/media/media_releases/2009/33_09.html

 Update 14 May 2009

 Productivity Commission release

In last night's Budget, the Government announced that it will introduce a paid parental leave scheme on 1 January 2011 that is based closely on the recommendations of the final report of the Commission's Inquiry into Paid Parental Leave, see http://www.pm.gov.au/media/Release/2009/media_release_0981.cfm.

An outline of the announced scheme can be read on the website of the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs at

http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/about/publicationsarticles/corp/BudgetPAES/budget09_10/parental_leave/Pages/AustraliasPaidParentalLeaveScheme.aspx

The Commission's final report was forwarded to the Government on 2 March 2009 and the key features of its recommendations are as follows:

• The Australian Government's statutory paid parental leave scheme should be taxpayer-funded, and should:
   
  
  • provide paid postnatal leave for a total of 18 weeks that can be shared by eligible parents, with an additional two weeks of paternity leave reserved for the father (or same sex partner) who shares in the daily primary care of the child
  • provide the adult federal minimum wage (currently $543.78) for each week of leave for those eligible, with benefits subject to normal taxation.
• All those employed with a reasonable degree of attachment to the labour force should be eligible, including the self-employed, contractors and casual employees.
   
• A broad range of family types should be eligible, including conventional couples, lone parents, non-familial adoptive parents, same sex couples, and non-parental primary carers in exceptional cases, so long as they meet the employment test.
   
• Those families not eligible for paid parental leave may still be eligible for paternity leave, the baby bonus ($5000) and other financial support through the social transfer system.
   
• Employers should participate in the scheme by:
   
  
  • acting as paymasters where the employee had sufficient workplace tenure, with the government prepaying employers by instalment to avoid cash flow impacts
  • providing superannuation contributions for long-term eligible employees, though this measure should be deferred for at least three years and reviewed at that time.
   
• Such a scheme would meet a range of commonly agreed objectives. It would:
   
  
  • generate child and maternal health and welfare benefits by increasing the time parents take away from work. The Commission estimates that the average absence will increase by ten weeks. Many more families would have an increased capacity to provide exclusive parental care for children for six to nine months
  • promote some important, publicly supported social goals, and in particular, that having a child and taking time out for family reasons is viewed by the community as part of the usual course of work and life for parents in the paid workforce
  • counter some of the incentives against working posed by the tax and welfare system -- potentially contributing around six months of net additional employment for the average woman over her lifetime
  • increase retention rates for business, with reduced training and recruitment costs.
   
• The Commission estimates that its recommended scheme would cost taxpayers around $310 million annually in net terms, or about $260 million without paternity leave. There would be an additional net cost to the economy of $70 million if super contributions were introduced in the future. (The overall cost estimates in the Commission's final report are lower than in the draft report. This is primarily because they rely on a more sophisticated model of the welfare and tax system and take better account of those families that do not use their entitlement to statutory paid parental leave.)
   
• These costs take account of significant offsets from reduced social welfare payments (including removal of the baby bonus for parents using the scheme) and the tax revenue from paid leave. The costs would be much higher without these offsets.

The Government's announced scheme generally follows these recommendations, but does not include paternity leave and sets an income threshold for the primary caregiver. This reduces the estimated cost from about $310 million to about $260 million.

The report has now been released and is available from the Commission's website at http://www.pc.gov.au/projects/inquiry/parentalsupport. Printed copies have been posted to all who made submissions to the inquiry.

The Commission thanks all those people and organisations that contributed to this inquiry.