Paid parental leave backlash
The Government wants to rein in spending on paid parental leave to save money in the budget but there's a lot of opposition to the proposal. Courtesy ABC News, Channel 7.
The Coalition's paid parental leave changes make it seem like the government is made up of men.
You're 30 weeks pregnant. There's a foot sticking into your rib cage. You are constantly hungry but eating gives you indigestion. You haven't slept properly for weeks and won't again for years to come. You haven't seen your toes for several months and someone has to help you do up your shoes because you can't really bend over. Total strangers tell you what to eat and drink. You are completely and utterly freaked out about giving birth.
Everyone keeps telling you parenthood is the best thing you'll ever do but that seems very doubtful.
And now the government is telling you the leave arrangements you had in place no longer apply.
Has anyone in the Coalition ever met a pregnant woman? Much less been one?
The Coalition's changes to paid parental leave are back with a vengeance.
The original system was introduced in 2011 and based on a recommendation from the Productivity Commission.
It is a very modest scheme – 18 weeks paid at the minimum wage – by international standards and designed to complement schemes provided by employers.
The commission argued that six months was the time recommended by the World Health Organisation for new parents to bond with and breastfeed their infants and that six-month period could be reached if people had access to both their employer's scheme and the government's.
For a brief period the Abbott government thought it could do better and pay new mothers the equivalent of their salary for six months.
Then, in a startling over correction, the Coalition decided a scheme that had been designed to allow women to spend time with their babies was actually a rort that encouraged double dipping.
But it couldn't get it through the Senate.
Then things went very quiet with nary a mention of paid parental leave during the election campaign.
Social Services Minister Christian Porter, although careful to avoid the inflammatory language of some of his colleagues, now wants the scheme passed by the Senate and to come into effect on January 1, 2017.
That's nine weeks away.
Which means if you're entering the last trimester of your pregnancy you're now suddenly learning that the infrastructure of your carefully calibrated leave is about to be stripped away.
The government is not offering you any assistance with finding childcare.
Even if it could get a package of childcare reforms through the Senate they don't come into place until mid 2018, by which time your child will be one and a half and the government thinks you should have been back at work for at least a year.
Because that is what paid parental leave is all about, Porter told Radio National earlier on Monday.
It is not time to care for and nourish your little baby. It is a stop gap measure to stop mothers being unproductive members of society.
When host Fran Kelly asked Porter what the purpose of paid parental leave was he said: "It's always been the case that the scheme has been designed, and these changes are also designed, to try and ensure that as many mothers are participating in the workforce and are able to re-participate after the birth of a child, having provided for a fair amount of time to bond with the child after birth.
"I'm in a family that's been through that myself," he added, just to show he wasn't entirely unsympathetic.
Just where the babies are supposed to go when their parents are at work is anyone's guess.
Maybe they will be lucky enough to squeak into a quality childcare centre. Maybe their baby boomer grandparents will help out. Maybe the parents who can afford to take the economic hit will choose to give up work and stay home because they either cannot find care or they cannot bear the thought of leaving a four-month-old baby with strangers.
And some parents will find themselves without a job because they cannot find care and their employers are inflexible about the hours they work or when exactly they return to work. Even though such things aren't supposed to happen anymore they are all too common.
One thing is for certain – government ministers aren't lining up to mind the babies.