State budget to provide paid leave for grieving parents

NSW women who suffer a miscarriage or stillbirth will be given one week of paid bereavement leave.

NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet is expected to say in his budget speech on Tuesday: ‘Having a miscarriage is not an illness; it is a loss that should be recognised.’ Picture: Dylan Coker

Women who suffer a miscarriage or stillbirth will be given one week of paid bereavement leave, while mothers who give birth prematurely will receive special paid time off up until the date their child would have reached full term under a nation-first policy in the NSW budget.

The landmark policy will apply to full and part-time workers within the NSW public service, but talks have also begun between Treasurer Dominic Perrottet and some private-sector employers who could implementing similar schemes.

The policy, details of which have been obtained by The Australian, will give women who miscarry or whose children are stillborn five days of paid time off.

Male employees affected by a spouse’s miscarriage will also be eligible for the benefit, regardless of whether their spouse works for the public service.

A second tranche of the policy will apply to mothers who give birth to premature babies, allowing them to access “additional premature birth leave” on top of their existing paid parental leave. The government will mandate that their parental leave not start until the date the baby would have reached their full term.

“NSW will lead the country with these provisions, and we believe other states and the private sector will follow,” Mr Perrottet told The Australian. “These are timely and important programs for people during what is one of the most difficult of times.”

In March, New Zealand became one of the first countries in the world to pass legislation ensuring mothers and their partners received paid leave in the event of a stillbirth or miscarriage, however that scheme provided women with just three days of leave.

Mr Perrottet is expected to announce the measure in his fifth budget speech – to be delivered on Tuesday – in which he will say: “Having a miscarriage is not an illness; it is a loss that should be recognised.”

Currently, unpaid special maternity leave is available for women who suffer a miscarriage. Unpaid parental leave is available for women who experience a stillbirth or who lose a child within the first 24 months of life.

The policy has been approved by the NSW government’s Expenditure Review Committee but has yet to be delivered to cabinet for final approval.

The public service will be told to absorb the costs within its existing budget, with the measure expected to cost up to $12m per year, depending on the number of people who access it.

Terminated pregnancies will not be covered under the scheme.

The announcement is one of several bespoke measures expected to be outlined in a budget that is set to forecast a record surplus of $500m by the 2024-25 financial year, a substantial turnaround in the state’s fortunes following the Covid-19 pandemic.

Instead of a forecast deficit of $16bn, earmarked in last year’s November budget, the state is now expected to record a significantly lower deficit of $7.9bn thanks to a booming property market and other higher than expected collections from GST receipts and payroll tax. In NSW, revenue is predominantly secured through GST payments, taxes and levies.

State expenditure is expected to increase temporarily over the next year as part of government efforts to support job creation. This will then ease over coming years as stimulus measures expire.

“We will continue to invest big in our gold-plated Covid defence – there will be hundreds of millions of dollars more and, as we have seen this past week, that is necessary,” Mr Perrottet said, referring to a new Covid-19 cluster that has emerged in Sydney’s eastern suburbs over the past week.

Cautioning that Australia remained in an uncertain economic environment, the Treasurer said the 2021-22 budget would be a “recovery budget” that challenged the rest of the country to adopt ambitious economic reforms.

“This budget throws down the gauntlet to other states and the commonwealth to tackle tough reform, because that is the only way to steel ourselves against the next shock and set up a better future for our children,” he said.