Australia’s Paid Parental Leave Scheme
2. Why Australia needs a Paid Parental Leave scheme
A PPL scheme will deliver crucial benefits to prepare Australia for the challenges ahead and encourage participation and productivity now and in the future.
In support of a PPL scheme, the Productivity Commission inquiry into Paid Parental Leave: Support for Parents with Newborn Children concluded that:
- there is compelling evidence of child and maternal health and development benefits from a period of absence from work for the primary caregiver of around six months;
- there are sound rationales for stimulating women’s labour force participation rates to overcome the disincentives imposed by the existing welfare and tax systems on women’s labour force participation; and
- PPL could advance broad social objectives, such as achieving greater gender equity and balance between paid work and family life.
Women’s workforce participation in Australia has increased dramatically over the past 30 years. However, during the peak child bearing years, Australian women’s workforce participation reduces by a greater amount than for women in other leading industrialised countries.
Women in lower paid jobs have less access to employer-provided paid maternity leave
ABS, Employee Earnings, Benefits and Trade Union Membership, Australia, August 2008, Cat No 6310.0
The Productivity Commission inquiry found that current access to employer-funded PPL in Australia is highly uneven. In 2007 around 54 per cent of female employees and 50 per cent of male employees had access to some form of PPL. However, only around one third of employed women who actually had children received PPL from their employer. Seventy-four per cent of female full-time employees had access to PPL compared with only 32 per cent of female part-time employees. Similarly, the availability of PPL for public sector workers is nearly double that of private sector workers.
PPL is more available in some industries than in others. The industries with the lowest levels of access to PPL are award-reliant, female dominated, low skilled and highly casualised. PPL also becomes more common for both men and women as gross wages increase. In 2007, less than one quarter of women on very low wages had access to PPL, compared to three quarters on high wages.
Comprehensive access to PPL for all working women is unlikely to occur without action by the Australian Government.
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