Pregnant women won't lose the paid leave they had planned - Women's Agenda

Pregnant women won’t lose the paid leave they had planned

The Government’s proposed 1 January start date for blocking so-called ‘double dipping’ of paid parental leave, looks set to be pushed back to at least 1 October.

A small amount of common sense has prevailed over the Government’s proposed Paid Parental Leave (PPL) changes, with a 1 January start date now looking unlikely — meaning women who’re currently (and in many cases heavily) pregnant now can still access to up to $12,000 in paid leave.

But incredibly, it took a cross senator to make it happen. Nick Xenophon, who appears to hold the balance of power in the Senate on the matter, has declared any changes from 1 January would be “manifestly unfair”. He told a press conference Wednesday that he’d received numerous calls about the proposed changes from distressed pregnant women and that such changes would have been “de facto retrospective.”

Still, it’s a reprieve that may only be for pregnant women. Anyone planning on having a baby in the near future still looks set to be blocked from accessing the government’s PPL scheme on top of their employer paid leave, with Xenophon signalling he’s more comfortable with a 1 October start day allowing for “the normal gestation period”.  Treasurer Scott Morrison says the Coalition Government has the support of the One Nation party, including Senators David Leyonhjelm and Bob Day – and despite the fact Day is resigning from Parliament later this year, after the collapse of his Home Australia Group.

Whether it affects women who’re currently pregnant or not, the PPL changes seem fundamentally flawed given Australia currently has one of the least generous such schemes in the world, and the fact it’s a scheme designed to merely enhance existing benefits provided by employers (some such benefits that unions have fought hard to achieve).

But it was the potential of a 1 January start date that was particularly hard to comprehend. Women and their partners don’t just get to seven months pregnant (or pregnant at all) without accounting for every dollar they’ll need to take time off work, and every day and week they can spend at home with their babies. To throw such plans so suddenly into disarray would have been a bizarre and unfair attack on new parents at their most vulnerable and difficult time.

The idea such a start date could ever be proposed makes you question what kind of reality the Coalition is operating in: one that thinks new mothers just don’t need or benefit from a top up on their paid maternity leave from their employers? One where mothers can afford to either simply accept what’s on offer from their workplaces (from the workplaces that even offer it) and take further weeks and months without pay?

Or perhaps they’re in a world where childcare is so accessible and so affordable, and with so many spots available for young babies, that new mothers have plenty of care options available to get back to work ASAP — if they need to or choose to. If only. 

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