The Australian reports that Tony Abbott may review his controversial paid parental leave scheme and replace it with a new policy for childcare funding.
The original scheme proposed to pay a new mother’s full salary of up to $100,000 for 26 weeks. The policy has been haunting Abbott since it first was conceived; with many Australians arguing it is too generous and disproportionately advantages high-income earning women.
Now, it seems with the May budget’s popularity continuing to sink and the paid parental leave policy driving a some of the criticism, the Abbott government is being forced to reconsider.
This overhaul looks likely to include $7 billion of childcare funding. This comes as a result of a report from the Productivity Commission that recommended stricter controls of payments to higher-income earners. The new policy will also include a revised paid parental leave policy.
The paid parental leave vs childcare debate has been raging across Australia ever since Tony Abbott announced the policy last year. Does it have to be an either/or? Can we only have one or the other? Is it outrageous to expect both?
Ideally, no. But if we are in a position where we can only afford to have either a generous paid parental leave scheme or a more affordable child care scheme, which one will be more effective in the long term? Which will give us more bang for our buck?
While a generous paid parental leave scheme will be infinitely helpful financially for new parents while away from work, we also need to think about how to best enable mothers to return to work when this period ends. Without affordable or available childcare, how can we make sure women are able to re-enter the workforce – and stay there – after returning from parental leave?
If childcare continues to be prohibitively expensive and/or in short supply women’s participation in the workforce will continue to stall. Research and experience from around the world confirms that investing money in childcare is a better option to boost women’s participation in our workforce, which makes it a more beneficial option for Australian families and our economy in the long term.
The debate between investing in parental leave and investing in childcare will continue to divide us until we are able to provide generous support both during parental leave and in the years following it. Until then, we need to think about which option will be a better investment if it really is an either/or equation.
It will be interesting to see how this debate and the policies evolve.