If we want to give children the best possible start in life we know the early months and years are absolutely vital for social, cognitive and physical development. It's about what's in the best interests of children.
Women who continue to work after having a baby mostly do so because they need the income. We need to give new mothers some breathing space to bond with their baby, to give them a nurturing environment, to establish breast-feeding if they can and to learn how to care for their babies. All so that little babies will get a better start to life.
That's not to say that full-time mums don't need support too. They do. And this Government is committed to supporting all mothers, whether they are in a paid job or at home. We value the hard work of all mothers regardless of whether they are in paid work. That's why we provide support through a range of measures including the Baby Bonus, Family Tax Benefits A and B, the Child Care Benefit and the Child Care Rebate.
The way Australians live and work has changed enormously over the past decade.
Australians are working harder than ever. But they seem to be getting less in return. There is less and less time for the things that give life meaning. Community, family, relationships - these important features of the Australian way of life are becoming less habitual. Working families are struggling to stay above water, trying to cope with cost of living pressures and the demands of work.
One of the more disturbing aspects of these changes involves the place of children in the community. Children are increasingly seen as a burden, as carrying an impossible level of responsibility and compromise. We are at risk of becoming a child-unfriendly society. A place where children are seen as very much a private responsibility, with little profile in public domains like the workplace.
In this inflexible environment, parents in paid work are running themselves ragged trying to keep up with family responsibilities at home and the consuming demands of work. Keeping up with each day can be a feat in itself.
Working fathers are taking an increasingly hands-on role in raising children. But mothers in paid work are still bearing the brunt of the work and family collision, on average still putting in a 40 per cent greater effort on caring responsibilities compared to men.
Working mums are turning themselves inside out. They're exhausted. They feel like they never get the break they need. And they carry the perpetual guilt of feeling like they are doing both their paid and unpaid jobs badly. Coping with the impossible work and family balancing act is a daily challenge.
Some of the strategies working mothers use to cope are revealed in the Australian Institute of Family Studies's ground-breaking long-term study of Australian children, Growing up in Australia.
The landmark study reveals that mothers working full-time are spending only around four hours less per day with their young children than mothers who are not employed. These are mothers working full-time mind you, putting in at least a 7.5 hour day.
The study also reveals that working mothers only slightly reduce time with babies and young children, on average spending around two hours a day less with them than mothers who are not employed.
So where are mothers working full-time finding the make-up time to spend with their kids?
I know that this will not be news to any working parent in the room today. Working mothers rely on going without sleep and sacrificing leisure activities to spend more time with their children.
That's right, going without sleep and giving up personal time out.
Fathers do make up some of the time with children. When mothers work, fathers spend more time with children, although not as much as the time lost from mothers.
Against this unforgiving backdrop of work and family demands, it's not surprising to find that people are having fewer children.
Australia's fertility rate has dropped from a record of 3.5 babies per woman in the early 1960s to 1.84 a decade ago to a record low of 1.73 in 2001. Since then the rate has increased slightly to 1.81 in 2006.
What's very interesting is the Institute's research published earlier this year that revealed that the reason that families were not having more babies was not because they didn't want to. It was because they didn't have the confidence.
The Fertility and Family Policy in Australia study revealed most of the people surveyed actually wanted to have more children. Very few thought that their ideal family would be to have no children or only one child.
But couples lacked confidence in their ability to create and maintain a supportive family environment for children.
Working families want to have more children. They just don't think they can cope.
That's why the Productivity Commission Inquiry into Paid Maternity Leave is important.
Watching the contributions to the Inquiry roll in has been an invigorating experience.
There have been 228 submissions to the inquiry. Many from major organisations such as the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI), the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), the Business Council of Australia (BCA), the Australian Industry Group (AIG), and the National Foundation for Australian Women (NFAW) But there have been many more from individual parents and employers.
There have been a range of models put forward. ACCI, BCA and AIG have recommended a Government funded scheme of around 14 weeks, while the ACTU has proposed a Government funded scheme of 14 weeks at the minimum wage level with employer top-ups to meet replacement wage.
NFAW has proposed, through its so-called 'Perry Plan', 28 weeks paid leave funded through a levy on employers and employees. And last week we read about CEDA's model involving HECS-style loans that families would later repay.
These different models will all be examined closely by the Productivity Commission but the fact that so many people are thinking about different schemes of paid maternity leave is exciting.
It's also been great to see business get involved with the Inquiry. As well as those I've mentioned, the Productivity Commission has received submissions from the Australian Retailers Association and the Australian Farmers Federation to name just a few.
The Government has made it clear that any paid maternity leave scheme will not have an adverse impact on small business. One of the Inquiry's terms of reference is to assess paid maternity leave models for their potential impact on the financial and regulatory cost and benefits on small and medium sized businesses.
We've seen a diverse range of large employers leading the way with Woolworths, Myer, Aldi and Dominos Pizza introducing paid maternity leaves for their staff
It's good business sense. For them, it's about retaining skills and encouraging their female staff to return to work after having a baby.
In their submission to the Inquiry, GM Holden said that their scheme of 14 weeks paid maternity leave, introduced in 2002, "has achieved the desired business objectives".
And it is clear to see why.
In the five year period between 2002 and 2007, 90 per cent of women who took maternity leave from Holden returned to work, compared to the 65 per cent who returned before 2002. The percentage of new female employees hired at Holden increased from 16 per cent in 2004 to 25 per cent in 2007.
These practices are helping business, they are helping women and they are helping families.
I need to declare an interest here. While it would be inappropriate for me to comment on the substance of the Inquiry, or any of the submissions, most people know that this is an issue very close to my heart.
I have been beating this drum since 2000. I was part of the push to include paid maternity leave in the Australian Labor Party platform for the very first time.
By 2004, I had developed the Opposition's Baby Care Payment to give all mothers a fortnightly payment linked to the minimum wage to help cover the costs of having a baby. Within weeks, the Howard Government had re-announced it as the Baby Bonus. The major difference between the policies? Labor's policy was to provide fortnightly payments, giving families regular and secure payments. The Howard Government's was to pay a lump sum.
In the recent budget we decided to introduce fortnightly payments for the baby bonus to give parents regular financial support after a baby is born.
So I am no disinterested observer in the debate about paid maternity leave.
Of course, there are no simple solutions. And Australians' work and family lives will always involve a series of trade-offs, sacrifices and compromises.
But if we keep children's interests at the heart of family policy debates then at least we will know that we are doing the right thing by all those mums and dads who do their bit by going without sleep so they can spend more time with their kids.
(This blog was also delivered in a speech to The Australian Institute of Family Studies Conference).
Jenny Macklin is the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. Elected as the Member for Jagajaga in March 1996. Jenny has previously held a range of shadow portfolios including Aged Care, Social Security, Family Services, Health and the Status of Women.
http://www.jennymacklin.net.au
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Make childcare fees part of the salary package
Paid maternity leave is only part of the problem, and a small one at that. Because at the end of those 14 or 28 paid or partially paid weeks young parents will face the exact same question: how are we going to care for our baby and sustain the family?
That's why I still believe childcare is a much bigger issue in Australia, in terms of its affordability, availability, and quality.
Just recently I've been searching for childcare options myself and was in for a shock to discover that all these lovely family day care centres require the full payment of their fees on the days when the child falls sick and does not attend. Some go as far as to require the full payment for public holidays. Considering that kids get sick almost constantly in their first few years while in childcare because their immune system is still developing and because viruses spread so quickly in that environment, one starts really questioning the value of such childcare and its real cost to the family budget.
The child gets sick, what's the mother to do? Stay home, loose her income and still have to pay the fees? Or send him/her to the childcare anyway, hence spreading the virus further? Unfortunately, it seems many parents decide for the latter, or have no choice whatsoever, while childcare workers don't seem to really care - so it's no wonder childcare centres and playgrounds are full of children, barefoot and barely clad at 13 degrees, with snot and dirt all over the face.
That's why many mothers face a difficult choice - to opt for a nanny, at the risk of blowing the family budget, or to stop working altogether and become full-time mums which often means loosing their job, skills etc.
So how about making childcare fees part of the employment package? And perhaps extend the number of annual sick days for mothers of young kids (from 0-5 year old)?
Reviewing the existing health standards in childcare would also be great.
To me (speaking from personal experience), one example of a well-organised early childhood system at a state level comes from an unlikely source and an entirely different day and era - the Soviet Union of the early 1970s.
Although the pre-school stage was not obligatory and the population's demands were higher than available childcare places, pre-school education in the Soviet Union was still able to cater for over 70% of children. Women had four-month paid maternity leave (2 months before birth and 2 months after). The childcare fees were small and affordable to every family with any level of income, and usually workplaces had allocated childcare centers for their workers, ensuring that every newborn child was guaranteed a place in a near-home kindergarten. The Government's share in the financing of pre-school education was about 77%.
A standard childcare (kindergarten with a nursery) had a full time doctor and a nurse on staff who carried out regular medical checks and all necessary inoculations, as well as oversaw sanitary and hygienic standards of the centre, including food supplies, preparation and tasting. Regular meals - breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea - were prepared by a professional cook according to special dietary and health requirements; hot lunch, for example, included a salad, a soup, a second course and a drink. Menus varied from day to day. Meals were served with cutlery on clean tables (no eating with hands or on surfaces tainted by kids' craft activities). All utensils, equipment, recreational areas and toilets were meticulously cleaned. Every kid had a designated ‘locker' to store their clothes, and everyone changed their footwear when indoors (i.e. no sweaty feet). Educational programmes included dance and music lessons by trained professionals, ... well, the list goes on.
To be fair, Soviet kindergartens had their own flaws, mainly ideological ones (for anyone who is interested in the subject, I'd recommend a background paper "Early childhood care and education in the Russian Federation", commissioned by UNESCO and published in 2007) and in any case this system is inapplicable to the Australian reality for many reasons, but some elements might be worth considering ...
Good affordable childcare also existed in Australia
We too had good affordable high-quality childcare in Australia more or less in line with what you describe. It was largely thanks to the Child Care Act enacted in 1972 which created a commonwealth funding stream for 'local' child care services, and family day care services managed often via local councils.
The legislation was initially enacted by the McMahon government, in an attempt to increase the participation of women in the workforce. This bill lead to the establishment of long day care centres providing at least 8 hours of care Monday to Friday - operating 48 weeks per year, and run on a not-for-profit basis by a management committee drawn from the local community.
They were great - I went to one, as did my little sister - we were kept amused with educational games, it had a great little playground, we did painting, play dough, we sang songs in English French and Italian. We got fish fingers and vegetables for lunch (we got other lunches as well - but that's the one I remember). It used to cost my mum $21 dollars per week for both of us, in 1980, including lunch.
At that time the commonwealth based operational subsidy provided 75 per cent of the salaries of approved qualified staff, including a nurse for every 20 children and one teacher for every 15 children over the age of three, an one nurse for every ten children under three - and so on and so forth - I won't bore you too much with the details.
Suffice to say - commonwealth funding for childcare centres made high quality childcare affordable to all Australia mothers.
The demise of these centres, and the rise of costly profit-based alternatives was the direct result of the first Howard budget in 1996 which saw the removal of the operational subsidies - to save the government $118.4 million per year.
En masse the centres closed - or were bought out by ASX-listed profit-driven ventures like ABC Learning (which now owns my old pre-school). The ones that remained were forced to put up their fees, and many women were simply forced to leave the work force and return home.
In 2000 the Howard Government responded to public outcry over the spiraling cost of childcare by introducing the child care benefit rebate, to which the industry responded by raising it's fees.
In face in 2005 the National Centre for Social and Economic Modeling demonstrated that any increase in the rebate was followed by a price rise, making the approach virtually ineffectual when it came to reducing the cost of child care to families.
I haven't been able to come up with an over all figure to find out what the government is currently spending on the childcare rebate - but I suspect it's a good deal more than the $118 million initially taken out of the sector, accounting for inflation and so forth.
The quality of the care provided has not improved as the sector has moved from a not-for-profit to a profit based model, there is no requirement for childcare centres to employ nurses, and real wages across the sector have fallen dramatically in the last decade as have the levels of qualified staff (then they wonder why it's so difficult to recruit people to the sector).
What cost my mother $21 in 1980, now costs me $700 per week, of which a proportion is covered by the childcare rebate - and while I earn more than she did, wages haven't increased 33 times over like childcare fees have.
Moreover, the subsidy the Howard government removed used to go directly to pay staff ensuring quality, these days the rebate goes directly to the child care centre operators, and their interest is in making profits, not providing the best service.
Changes to the Child Care Act enacted in 1972 has made a few people very rich, at the cost of many. We're spending more money on a less effective system... go figure?
I only hope the current lot of the sheer strength of will to stand up to the wealthy few who've gained from the childcare sector, and create a service which once again caters to the needs of the many.