PPL and the Age of Entitlement

[thebaldfacts]

The history of Paid Parental Leave in this country is a sorry testament to the age of entitlement and poor economic policy from both sides of politics and public service and union complicity.

Costello's $5K non means tested baby bonus was bad enough, but then Rudd/Gillard introduced a $11.5K baby bonus for anyone earning less than $150K (a move which the Liberals in opposition supported). Worse, this amount applied irrespective if you had an existing and more generous employer scheme. Over 60% of "double dippers" we're public servants who had access to their own legislated more generous schemes with minimum 12 weeks pay ( or 24 weeks half pay).

Of course Tony Abbott's signature PPL scheme was going to make things worse by offering 6 months for anyone on $150K or less, subsequently changed to $100K.

Fortunately, sanity has prevailed and Abbott's signature scheme was dumped and the government is moving to end the double dipping. Hopefully there will be bipartisan support on this.

Whilst the double dippers have done nothing wrong but merely claimed an entitlement that was available to them, it seems to me that both parties need
to be more prudent in how they spend our money, especially at a time we are running multi billion dollar deficits.

Proper means testing and treating all equally should be paramount.

[Wokko]

It's all bread and circuses now, I'd rather the money (if it must) get spent on some kind of big national project; think Hoover Dam, Snowy Mountain Scheme, Trans Siberian Railway. Something inspiring and of value for 50-100 years+. Not a handout to buy more shoes, a 2nd LCD for the bedroom and a holiday to Bali and a couple of Bintang singlets. Start a space program, build our own Submarines, lead the way on fusion research, I don't give a shit, just stop handing out tax dollars to the already gainfully employed so they'll vote Tweedledee instead of Tweedlefuckhead.

[David]

I'm happy for PPL to be means tested and proportionate. It's not about the debt so much as there's just no point in handing out welfare that recipients don't need.

[thebaldfacts]

This is a very disturbing development. The second time in a week you have agreed with me😄

[David]

Let's enjoy it while it lasts.

[Jezza]

The baby bonus is terrible! It should never have been introduced by Howard over a decade ago.

[Tannin]

[Tannin]

Ready?

Top post, TBF, I fully agree.

Also, I applaud the points made by Wokko and Jezza in this thread.

[Skids]

I think we all agree on this one

[watt price tully]

So all the blokes have agreed: parental (mostly women in reality) leave should be cut whether in part or full, that according to the thread title is part of the age of "entitlement" & the women who did use the services that are legally available & approved are labelled fraudsters, cheats & double dippers (at least the hairless one did have the grace to use quotation marks).

This seems to me to to be far too narrow in it's scope.

A few questions ought to be asked.

1. What is the right/appropriate/correct amount of parental leave / maternity leave in the main that we as a society in Australia should say is right for women to have post birth?

1 week?
3 weeks?
18 weeks?
26 weeks?
52 weeks?

2. What then is the amount at which such leave ought to be paid?

3. What are our values regarding supporting women who have children to have time to bond & raise their babies in say the first year of life fundamental I would have thought to stability for the future?

4. What is the role of the state towards affordable childcare (an oxymoron these days surely) ?

5. What then is the role of the state in the provision of things like sufficient mothercraft nurses etc that used be around / mother & infant centres or whatever it is these days?

These issues are inextricably linked to paid parental / maternity leave.

It needs to be a package, it needs to be seen in the wider context of a range of services & the current political expediency it is located in.

The use by Scott Morrison of the the term "double dipping" was a serious miscalculation & error of judgment: showed his true colours when under a bit of pressure.

Australia as I understand it has a poor record in the provision of parental / maternity leave when compared with the OECD.

Having said that let me say this - I supported the concept & ideas contained in parts of Mad Misogynist Miners Monk Maternity (parental) leave proposal - even though he was trying too hard to be a cleverdick by trying to garner some support from the women's vote (as he was as popular as a bacon roll in a halal butchery) at the time to women & I suspect he still is.

The proposal here is also not so neat & tidy as the thread might otherwise suggest. The political tactics here are to link this with significant aspects of the disastrous budget of last year. PPL is part of the tactic to neutralize the budget as an issue before calling an election where the terms "double dipping, rort & cheats" (usually levelled at welfare recipients) is now being used to a direct this at women & divert attention away from the Mad Misogynist governments deceit.

[David]

WPT, my response related more to the middle-class welfare aspects of the proposal as well as the baby bonus (which was always bad policy). I also reject the government's corny 'age of entitlement' rhetoric and the use of it in this thread, but I didn't want that to get in the way of my brief moment of harmony with TBF.

The question of how much parental leave should be offered and how much should be subsidised by the government is a much trickier one and will probably garner much more varied responses. From my personal experience, I think babies need at least one parent at home (mother or father) on a regular basis, for pretty much as long as possible (a year might be ideal).

I don't know that it should be an employer's responsibility to subsidise that, though; certainly not beyond a standard leave period (say, six to twelve weeks). I'd prefer the rest be paid by taxpayers directly.

I also don't believe that the payment should be based on the employee's wage level. Once the leave period is over and the government payments kick in, everybody should get the same amount�a basic living wage. That's my view.

[think positive]

[Tannin]

1. What is the right/appropriate/correct amount of parental leave / maternity leave in the main that we as a society in Australia should say is right for women to have post birth?

None. Their own baby, their own choice. They can pay for it with their own money.

2. What then is the amount at which such leave ought to be paid?

Zero. See (1)

3. What are our values regarding supporting women who have children to have time to bond & raise their babies in say the first year of life fundamental I would have thought to stability for the future?

Fully support that. People who choose to have babies should indeed take the time and trouble to do it as well as possible. Most of them don't. Taking money away from responsible, child-free citizens in order to give it to people breeding huge families neither they nor the nation can afford is not good policy any way you slice it. If you want to talk about restricting payments to the first and possibly second child, I'll listen. Otherwise, they can pay for it all themselves. And hand back the massive tax breaks they get which no-one else gets.

4. What is the role of the state towards affordable childcare (an oxymoron these days surely)?

Undecided. I'm open to argument on that one.

5. What then is the role of the state in the provision of things like sufficient mothercraft nurses etc that used be around / mother & infant centres or whatever it is these days?

Very important. We need to distinguish here between things which encourage people to breed and shift the costs* of their lifestyle choices onto the rest of the nation on the one hand, as opposed to things which nurture the resulting children and help them grow into healthy, happy, productive citizens. I agree that it is difficult to distinguish between these two conflicting requirements, and also that no possible answer can fully satisfy both of them. Nevertheless, a good sensible starting point is that we (the nation) pay for health and education and try to make it as good as we can, but you (the citizen) defray the other costs of your own lifestyle choice and do not expect other citizens to pay you for your own selfish choices.

* Note that these costs are not just financial. Indeed the straight financial cost of extra babies to the nation is the smallest component of the overall cost, which is financial (large), economic (serious), environmental (huge) and future quality-of-life related (major).

[watt price tully]

[stui magpie]

Interesting discussion, I've read almost none of it.

The Gillard PPL was a monumental **** up from day 1. Feel free to search my previous posts on the subject to confirm. Welfare dressed up as an employer benefit, poorly thought out and costing millions in administration.

The Abbott plan, now defunct, had some promising components but also failed the most basic argument.

Paid parental leave for women should be a basic entitlement for employed women. FFS, the federal maternity leave act from the 70's, 40 years ago had the basics down pat, paid leave for 6 weeks prior to and 6 weeks post the birth. Just legislate that as a standard and be done with it.

As far as paying it as welfare, the current Lib proposal gets it right on one point, don't pay the welfare to people who already get paid by there employer, give it to the people who currently get nothing because they work in small business or other employment that doesn't provide that benefit. Simple logic. And FFS, treat it as a welfare payment and make the administration simple.

Should we be paying people to have kids is a whole different argument. Should a woman be entitled to paid time off work for a period immediately prior to and post the birth of a child, hell yes