Labor weighs 20 weeks paid parental leave for fathers

Labor weighs a plan for men to access 20 weeks of commonwealth-funded paid parental leave in the first two years of a child’s life to meet the needs of modern families.

Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth says she wants to begin talks with business on how gender equity can be promoted in family life.

Men could access up to 20 weeks of commonwealth-funded paid parental leave in the first two years of a child’s life, with Labor to commence discussions with business on how to encourage more fathers to stay at home and look after young children.

Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth said she supported the principle of flexibility in a plan included in the Morrison government’s last budget to allow couples to share the 20 available weeks of commonwealth-funded paid parental leave and was ­reviewing the legislation to make sure there were no unintended consequences.

But Ms Rishworth flagged the need for further reform to mirror the changing gender roles.

“Society has changed. A lot more men do want to play a role. And a lot of men do say they want to be the primary caregiver for some period of time,” she told The Australian.

“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, whose husband took a year of unpaid leave after the births of their children, said she would have a “really good look” at how the government could support the needs of modern families and give parents the flexibility to choose how they shared their work and family lives.

“I’m having a really good look at what can be done with paid parental leave,” Ms Rishworth said.

Amanda Rishworth with her son son Oscar at Parliament House in Canberra last month. Picture: Andrew Taylor

“There is a real opportunity to have a conversation with employers about how we get the system to work for families.”

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

Georgie Dent, executive director of families advocacy group The Parenthood, said big business had come a long way in the past five years in urging men to take time off when a couple had a baby, but warned Australia was behind comparable nations in gender equity for parental leave.

Ms Dent said the key to promoting gender equity in leave schemes was removing the different policies for primary and secondary care givers, instead offering the same amount of paid leave for each parent.

She said it was also important that employers encouraged men to take the parental leave that was on offer.

“There is no doubt that over the past three to five years there has been a concerted effort among some of the larger corporations in Australia to really, specifically, encourage dads to take extended parental leave,” Ms Dent said.

She said companies had taken positive steps including removing labels such as “primary” and “secondary carers”. “Where they have announced generous policies and they have made a public demonstration of wanting dads to take those policies, dads take them,” Ms Dent said.

“And we know dads take leave when it is offered and it is ­encouraged.

“When I talk about progress I mean things like corporations offering 18 weeks of paid leave to any parent within the first 12 months of the baby coming. And having flexibility about how and when that is taken.

“So that if dad wants to take a month when the baby is first born and then take more three months later, then that is fine and ­allowed.”

Ms Dent urged the Albanese government to step up on the commonwealth-funded scheme, describing it as inadequate by global standards.

“Dads in Australia take less than 20 per cent of the parental leave days that dads take globally,” she said.

“That is because our policy settings, aside from America, we’ve got the least adequate paid-parental leave scheme in the OECD.”

The Parenthood is calling for a commonwealth parental leave scheme of 12 months shared between a couple paid at the full working wage.

Ms Rishworth said she wanted to begin talks with business on how gender equity could be promoted in family life.

“What we really need is employers, who like to put money up for paid parental leave, how that interacts and works in with the government system,” she said “I know that a lot of employers are putting more generous paid parental leave on the table to encourage, to retain staff.

“So I think there is a real opportunity for a discussion with employers about how we make sure that their system is working with the government’s system and how we can best maximise that and best meet the needs of Australian families.

“I’m not going to be too prescriptive right now. I’m going to have those conversations with Australian families. I’ve had my own experience, where my husband took 12 months of leave himself. It was unpaid.”

A Workplace Gender Equality Agency survey released in February showed half of ­employers in male-dominated industries did not offer paid primary carer’s leave, compared with a quarter of organisations in female-dominated industries.

The survey showed only 12 per cent of workers who took primary carer’s leave were men.

Ms Rishworth said gender roles were slowly changing and parental leave needed to reflect that. “I do think things are changing but I wouldn’t say we are there yet. It is still, usually, if a couple is having a baby ... that the woman would be taking the parental leave,” she said.

“I do think we are starting to see that slowly change but the systems need to support that change.”

Ms Rishworth said that during the Covid-19 pandemic , the woman in the house still undertook a lot of the unpaid work.

“A lot of the evidence suggests the unpaid work was disproportionately done by women,” she said.