Sharing parental leave part of more flexible workplaces

Millennials are matching and soon will overtake baby boomers as the nation’s largest demographic group, the 2021 census, the snapshot of the nation taken last August, reveals. And as a younger generation with fresh ideas becomes more influential, lifestyles and work practices need to change with the times. Greater flexibility to work in the office or at home is one of the positive legacies of the pandemic. Flexibility should also be at the heart of industrial relations reform and enterprise bargaining. It is good for productivity, workplace morale, and families and individuals.

For these reasons, there are many positives in Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth’s push to implement a Morrison government initiative to give fathers greater opportunities to stay home and look after their young children. Under a reform Josh Frydenberg included in his final budget in April, a couple would be able to share the 20 available weeks of federal-funded paid parental leave in the first two years of a child’s life.

Ms Rishworth, who practised as a psychologist before entering politics, has experience of the issue. Her husband took a year of unpaid leave after the births of their children.

“Society has changed, a lot more men do want to play a role,” she told The Australian. “And a lot of men do say they want to be the primary caregiver for some period of time. I’m keen to consult and talk with people about how we can best meet the needs of Australian families at the moment.” Ms Rishworth intends to have a “really good look” at how the government can support the needs of modern families and give parents the flexibility to choose how they share their work and family lives.

Under the existing federally funded parental leave, the primary caregiver receives 18 weeks’ leave, which men are ineligible for in a straight relationship unless there are exceptional circumstances. Men typically receive two weeks of federal-funded “dad or partner pay”, making it more economically viable for women to stay home and men to go to work.

Ms Rishworth is right when she says there is “a real opportunity to have a conversation with employers about how we get the system to work for families”. What is needed, she says, is “employers, who like to put money up for paid parental leave, how that interacts and works in with the government system”.

The principle of choice matters. And it would suit many families for the mum and dad to divvy up the 20 weeks. Their choice would depend on factors such as each of the partners’ respective salaries, the point each of them had reached in their careers, and who would enjoy staying home more.

Australia still has a distance to travel in the area of parental leave. The Parenthood executive director Georgie Dent said fewer than half of major employers offered paid parental leave. But the corporate world had come a long way in the past five years, with “a concerted effort among some of the larger corporations in Australia to really specifically encourage dads to take extended parental leave”, Ms Dent said.

For the economy and productivity, the upside of men taking longer parental leave and women taking a shorter amount of time off is likely to be that, across time, women’s workforce participation remains strong. When many employers are struggling to attract and retain staff, generous arrangements would work as a magnet for many men and women. The consequences of the ageing of the nation’s population, set out in Treasury’s intergenerational reports, are costly and serious. It is important that policy settings encourage families to have children – “one for mum, one for dad and one for the country”, as Peter Costello said 20 years ago.