This is a bit off-topic but it is something I want to share because I don’t think I have seen it covered before in the Australian press. It is about paid maternity leave, a topic that seems to have gone off the radar a bit since the government introduced the baby bonus.

I am working in Switzerland at the moment. The pharmaceutical industry union has recently managed to negotiate 18 weeks of paid maternity leave. Of course, it isn’t so surprising to hear that other countries offer paid maternity leave to women. What was surprising was to read that the union bargained for this because they calculated that it is cheaper for companies to pay maternity leave for 18 weeks than to lose their female employees! The costs come mainly from recruiting and training the replacements. Also, loss of knowledge and talented workers was included. They didn’t factor in higher labour costs in general coming from a smaller pool of potential employees in industries where there are shortages of workers, which was in fact the case in Switzerland. This is also relevant in Australia in some industries.

The costs associated with losing female employees after they have children very much varies between different industries, however the idea that it is in some circumstances more cost effective to introduce paid maternity leave was to my knowledge never mentioned in the maternity leave debates of a few years ago. Paid maternity leave and other family-friendly policies like supporting the introduction of childcare facilities at the workplace could in fact be cheaper for employers in the long term.

Given the propensity to support non-gov schools, I’d be willing to bet that ABC is getting some of the money by one route or another!

Total spending rose by 2.1%. Defence + public security spending rose by 7.5% (this includes border controls etc). Education spending rose by 5.4%. As the budget paper notes, “Growth in the Schools Sub-function averages about 7.4 per cent per annum in nominal terms from 2002-03 to 2005-06. This primarily reflects the impact of the needs-based funding arrangements (based on the socio-economic status of the school community) for non-government schools…” (private sources make up only 43% of funding of non-government schools!). Schools take about half of the total education spend and universities about a third. Pre-schools are included in the budget, but their share is obviously tiny since they don’t rate any comment.

In the social security and welfare budget, “assistance to families with children” rose by 4.0%. The budget paper says:

Expenses under this sub-function ensure that families with children receive financial assistance towards the support of their children. The majority of these expenses are paid through Family Tax Benefit (FTB) Parts A and B, Parenting Payments (Partnered and Single) and Child Care Benefit. This Sub-function also includes provision of further assistance to families through the introduction of the Baby Bonus, providing benefits of $85 million in 2002-03, rising to $510 million in 2005-06.

The growth in this estimate is due to a combination of indexation of the payments (FTB and Childcare Benefit) by the CPI, increasing use of child care services and increasing Parenting Payment (Single) expenses. Parenting Payment (Single) expenses are increasing due to a combination of growth in new claims for this payment and indexation of the payment, including the Government’s commitment to maintain the pension at a minimum of at least 25 per cent of MTAWE.

I’ll try to find something for more recent years, but so far the indications are that growth in child care spending is lagging well behind growth in other major areas, especially defence and public security.

This might be a good honours project.

I agree that it would be instructive to compare the relative increases in child care and defence. Do you know anyone who could do this exercise? Reminds me of the old women’s movement poster (from the 1970s!) about – I paraphrase here – looking forward to the day the Defence Department has to run a cake stall to finance a fighter plane, the way women did back then to raise funds for child care. Today’s comments in the Austalian by ABC Learning chairman Eddie Groves that he wants to be the “Macdonalds of child care” is chilling. The federal government is abdicating its responsibilities to future generations of Australians by its neglect of education at all ages.

On the other hand, per capita spending on education has fallen under Howard – as well as under his predecessors. Keating talked airily about the ‘Clever Country’ – by which he meant technologically savvy, but it’s not just a question of ‘clever’ it’s also a question of a more general ability to think. We import skilled migrants (whose education has been paid for by other countries) and starve our own kids of education so that we can provide tax cuts to the rich. Skilled migrants have a higher chance of being employed than people born in this country. I have nothing against skilled migrants, but shouldn’t we level the playing field a bit?

Howard’s view of child care is of Victorian nannies and anyone (any female, that is) can be a nanny. This is the kind of attitude that puts Australian kids at a disadvantage compared to others. It shows up at every level – local university students are far less literate and less well educated than the German exchange students I teach, for example. School as ‘child-minding’ is no substitute for school as a place of learning. We need to put a LOT more money into education at EVERY level.

The entire budget for Iraq will do for starters.

Just wanted to say your article in the SMH on childcare and the concerns regarding costs, availability and pre-school education/development was spot on.

If the States and the Fed government can’t address this issue in a way that delivers real benefits for families Howard should suffer at the next election. Although Rudd may be able to exploit the line of co-operation with the Labour State governments, so far his policies on this issue have been scant and sound like an election ploy (i.e. a good sound bite and little substance or commitment to resolving both the short term and long term problems).

No one seems interested in addressing the short term problems for parents in affordability/availability. I know it not easy but no one puts forward a broad range of strategies – both short term and long term and able to be tailored for the benefit of families. I think the media and the government think that all parents are the same and their financial and other situations are the same and nothing could be further from the truth. Today, it can be both parents working (or wanting to) or one parent being the main breadwinner (mother or father). To assume that all family situations are the same is short-sighted.

I can’t see how either Howard or Rudd’s plans to date offer any real respite for working parents who are in a position to work fulltime. A ‘one size fits all’ approach is an intellectually lazy and insincere way of tackling the issues. Howard thinks that his baby bonus will be enough to appease families and a childcare rebate of $4k a year is enough (does he realize how that $4k is a quarter of the fees I pay a year??? I don’t think he is not really interested in tackling the broader issues.

Call me naïve but surely some one should be interested enough to develop a policy which has a variety of approaches both at the personal level (i.e. tax benefits for working parents to help them meet childcare costs) and at an institutional and broader level (finding the right incentives for operators to adopt standards which raise the bar in terms of care and achieve a good standard of pre-school education).

I am a working mother and don’t know when I will be able to afford to have another child – paying two lots of childcare or getting a nanny will be prohibitively expensive. It sounds mad when you consider that I am a lawyer, my husband is an architect and we both have really good jobs. Why can’t my child care payments come out of pre-tax income – I can’t see why a person who leases a car or laptop can salary sacrifice for that when I can’t do the same for the care of my child. Other forms of subsidies might not suit me and salary sacrifice might not be the right thing for others. I would like to have options to make it more affordable not something that is a ‘token’ benefit – like giving with one hand and taking with the other!

Enough griping – it is only through excellent journalism like your story that anyone will be called to account! I hope Bracks proposes something worthwhile and others are prepared to listen!!

Thanks again

CH

I just wanted to let you know that I really enjoyed your article in the SMH – ‘’The bottom line on good childcare’. All the issues you raised are critical and are not being dealt with appropriately at the moment.

I am the founder of a new national job classifieds service called http://www.careermums.com.au. The purpose of this service is to connect skilled women to flexible roles in the workplace. I have attached our latest press release for your interest.

Yours sincerely,

Kate

Kate Sykes

Director

http://www.careermums.com.au

p: (02) 6161 0128

f: (02) 6161 1019

m: 0400 823 914

e: info@careermums.com.au

I read your article “The bottom line on good child care” with interest.

I have two boys under the age of four and I work full time as a solicitor.

Both my mother and grandmothers had long teaching careers, and I am most concerned about the quality and type of education that my children will have.

My concerns include;

1. The cost. Both of my children attend four days of long day care per week and this costs me approximately $650.00 net per week. We need to earn in excess of $50,000 per annum before tax to pay for child care. I do not care how much money one earns, this cost is obscene.

2. Whether long day care centres provide the same type of early education as preschools

3. Why the tax care rebate is not available to pre school education

4. Why preschool costs are so different state to state.

5. Why preschools insist on a child being aged 3 as at January 1. My eldest child will start school in 2008, but he has a February birth date. This means he is only entitled to one year of preschool, whereas he will be attending school with children who have had the benefit of two years of preschool

I would be more than interested and happy to participate in any planned forum or discussion on this topic.

Kate