Coalition betrays stay-at-home mothers

THE opposition's paid parental leave scheme released last week was not greeted with the universal hosannas Tony Abbott was expecting.

There are critics of the scheme even within the left journalistic claque, chiefly on political grounds and, most veterans of family policy are disappointed by Abbott's glib assumption that parental leave is the only part of family policy worth addressing.

However, among Abbott's solid conservative supporters, religious pro-family activists on the Right and the Nationals, the reaction has been anger, dismay and even a feeling of betrayal.

The anger among Abbott's traditional support base is two-fold. First, the parental leave policy was released in great haste with almost no consultation to deflect from the government's equally hastily released hospital reform plan. That is not only a more pressing issue but also probably more of a vote winner.

After all, a lot of people may remember that as health minister under John Howard, Abbott had a chance to fix hospitals and didn't.

Second, there is huge disappointment among pro-family activists that the opposition has not put the maternity leave plan up with a suite of other family policies, to make it part of genuine reform of family policy, which is already too piecemeal.

Tempe Harvey, a Queensland-based activist campaigning for neutral family payments and president of Kids First Australia, described the opposition's plan as "putting full-time mothers outside the workforce on a one-way train to oblivion".

The problem with the opposition's leave policy is not that it is not good enough but that it is too good.

It deflects our attention from the much bigger issue of what to do about income support for all families, whether the mother works or not.

A maternity leave policy in splendid isolation is simply caving into the Left, who always see family policy through the prism of the mother in the workforce.

During the past five to seven years the issue of parental leave should have changed.

It should have become less ideological and we should be looking more at holistic family policy. The reason is that we know the same women opt in and out of the workforce at different stages. Most of those part-time working mothers will also become full-time mothers, particularly if they have three or more children. This is something both sides of politics need to grasp.

Most mothers are adaptive. For the mothers of children under two, the statistics haven't changed much: only about 20per cent of mothers try to work full time, mostly after the first baby (for subsequent children it is less) and many drop out, even those who work from home.

About 50 per cent work mostly part time but very few hours, and then those part-time hours are extended as children get older. Overall almost 30 per cent drop out of the workforce altogether. Full-time working mothers of infants are still in the minority.

Until children are much older, women prefer part-time work, as all the surveys show, even the feminist ones, here and abroad, such as the seminal study done by British academic Catherine Hakim.

This scheme will allow low-paid women to get maternity leave after working part time, which is good, but because there is a work test a lot of mothers who belong to the same demographic, and who also once may have been employed, still feel they are being permanently left out simply because they are no longer employed.

The dissatisfaction from the Right on this matter cannot be ignored. This is not just a group of "back to the 1950s" nostalgic whingers, as they are so often portrayed.

Kids First Australia polled 500 voters in the marginal Queensland Liberal seat of Ryan in January and found that eight out of 10 respondents wanted neutral, equal payments for all mothers.

Last month, another survey found that seven out of 10 voters in Kevin Rudd's Queensland seat of Griffith also wanted neutral payments.

Last week I was told by a very senior Liberal that this move has "allowed Tony to do something more for stay-at-home mothers". I don't know what, but Abbott had better do it soon if he wants salve the anger of the Right.

Family policy must move beyond maternity leave only because if it doesn't this just narrows the choice for the majority of families.