CART (0)Comment: The ALP has turned its back on the promise to provide working women with paid maternity leave. The Baby Care Payment, announced last week “delivers on Labor’s commitment to 14 weeks paid maternity leave” according to one of the documents in the package. Yet this is not the case. The Baby Care Payment is a welfare measure, not a work-related one. It is triggered by the presence of children, not by the workforce status of the mother. It is means tested on family income at the time of the birth but it is not taxable. In both these respects the Baby Care Payment resembled the old Family Allowance payment introduced by the Fraser government back in 1976.
It is more generous than anything provided by the current government and for that reason is a welcome improvement on present policy. The Baby Care Payment provides for families earning less than $85,702 to receive a payment of $3,000 spread out over 14 weeks (amounting to $428.57 a fortnight for those eligible for the full amount). The payment would rise to $4,000 a year in 2007 ($571.43 a fortnight). The proposal replaces the current inequitable Baby Bonus and the Maternity Allowance. It is a more generous and more equitable scheme than the Baby Bonus and it should be seen, and applauded, as an encouraging step in recognising the costs of having children.
However it should not be mistaken for a paid maternity leave scheme. The Baby Care Payment is set at the Federal Minimum Wage, not at average weekly earnings, which would deliver a higher income during time out from the work force. The scheme does not conform to the International Labour Organisation standards for paid maternity leave schemes (which stipulates that women should receive two-thirds of the income they were getting when they stopped work to have their baby). Most countries in Europe pay between 80 and 100 per cent of the woman’s wages for periods varying from 14 weeks (in Germany where women receive 100 per cent of their wages) to up to 26 weeks in France (where the woman also receives 100 per cent her wages).
With Labor’s decision to abandon paid maternity leave there is now no chance that Australian women will enjoy this benefit since it is clear the federal government is unwilling to embrace this reform. Australia will join the United States as the two industrialised countries with no national paid maternity leave scheme.
Women deserve better.