SECOND CLASS MOTHERS
Posted on Tuesday, 21 October 2008
Paid maternity leave discriminates against stay-at-home mums, contends Tony Abbott
ONE-THIRD of Labor MPs are women and three-quarters of t hose were Emily's List candidates. Al one-quarter of the caucus, Emily's List is arguably Labor's most powerful faction. Apart from abortion, the cause that most galvanises these MPs is the right to paid maternity leave. That's why Kevin Rudd, in decisive action mode, says that it's time to bite the bullet on this issue.
If the Prime Minister thought that referring paid maternity leave to the Productivity Commission would pro- vide an economically conservative solution to his radical women's agenda, he was dead wrong.
The basic problem with the PC's recommendation is that it would create two classes of mother: first- class mothers in the paid workforce who could receive nearly $12,000 from the government (comprising 18 weeks at the minimum wage plus two weeks for the father if he takes time off); and second class mothers in the unpaid workforce who would receive just $5000 from the government (via a renamed baby bonus).
The PC distinguishes between paid maternity leave (which it describes as a workplace entitlement) and payments to mothers (which it describes as welfare). This particular workplace entitlement, though, is ultimately paid for by the government, not the employer. When both workplace enti-tlements and welfare payments come from government and aren't related to any particular job, this distinction is unsustainable. As well, the PC's categorisation misconstrues the baby bonus's original purpose. That the baby bonus was not means-tested shows that it was never intended as a welfare payment. That it was set at $5000 (about 12 weeks' pay at the then minimum wage) shows that itwas intended to be a form of government-funded maternity pay for some and a payment in recognition of the costs of having a child for others.
By reclassifying the baby bonus as a welfare payment, the Rudd Govern-ment has been able to justify taking it away from so-called wealthy families and to rekindle the demand for paid maternity leave over and above all other government payments.
Because the PC universal paid maternity scheme would be government-funded, Rudd won't be able to avoid responsibility for its unfair consequences. Under the scheme, a mother of one earning $150,000 a year could receive $12,000 from the government regardless of her partner's income. By contrast, as a result of the baby bonus means test, $150,000 families with a stay-at-home mum receive nothing on the birth of a child even if they already have several children. Because large families are not rich, even on $150,000 a year, Rudd, if he implements the PC scheme, will be making an ideological distinction be-tween different types of mother.
There are two ways to avoid this problem. The first, making universal maternity leave a charge on business (similar to compulsory superannu-ation) would upset the business lobby. The second , increasing the baby bonus and dropping the means test, would infuriate the Emily's List faction who think stay-at-home mums are letting down the side.
The more children a woman has, the less likely it is that she will be in the paid workforce, especially while her children are young. Providing more government benefits to employed mothers than to stay-at-home ones is not only unfair but it's going to strike many people as an attack on the traditional family. Conservative brow- nie points for making it easier for employed women to stay at home with their newborns won't outweigh the scheme's ideological bias towards the two-income family.
Adopting the PC maternity leave scheme would confirm the ways in which the Rudd Government is revert- ing to Labor type. The pre-election promises, Kyoto, the apology, with-drawing from Iraq and revising Work Choices, could be characterised as removing the hard edges of the Howard government. Means-testing the baby bonus, on the other hand, gutting work for the dole, reducing the obligations on the unemployed, softening immigration detention, undermining the Australian
Building and Construction Commis- sion, watering down the Northern Territory intervention, not increasing Australian troop numbers in Afghani- stan, changing the school chaplaincy program and, finally, the easy come, easy go attitude to the surplus smacks of Peter Garrett-style "changing it all once we get in".
Up until now, the only people Rudd has been prepared to alienate are the ostensibly rich. Adopting the PC mat-ernity leave recommendations would be popular with the commentariat, so couldn't really count as a hard deci- sion. It would, though, upset a lot of people who thought Rudd's conserva- tism just might be real.
Tony Abbott is Opposition spokesman for families.
Source: THE AUSTRALIAN