Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

In my contribution to the discussion on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2006-2007 and cognate bills, I want to concentrate on the issue of work and family balance in particular. It is a major issue that affects a lot of constituents whom I represent in this parliament. It is an issue about which much has been said by the government. I can recall some years ago the Prime Minister saying that this issue was a real ‘barbecue stopper’, and the Treasurer certainly raised expectations when he said in the lead-up to the budget that we ought to be looking at making this nation the most family-friendly place on earth. I agree but, when you look at the budget provisions, you will see that there are very many identifiable gaps. I want to suggest today in my contribution some initiatives that might inform the government about practical ways of addressing the work and family balance if they genuinely want to achieve progress in that area.

Interestingly enough, a recent Relationships Australia survey found that 89 per cent of Australians agreed that relationships do suffer because of work-life conflict and 40 per cent of parents felt that they had no real choice regarding their ability to balance paid work with family responsibilities. Around 95 per cent of men and 63 per cent of women with children under 15 are now in the labour force. As we know, there has been a steady increase in women’s labour force participation, which is particularly marked in the employment rates of mothers. That is why the balance between work and family life is so important and a particularly pressing issue for women.

Despite many profound social changes, women’s labour force participation is far more sensitive to the presence of children than men’s, reinforcing the historical role of women as bearing the primary responsibility for managing family life. Though the traditional family model of the male breadwinner out at work and the female homemaker at home looking after family now represents only a minority of couple families—around 30 per cent—it is women who have had to make the major adjustments in the balance of work with family life. The most prevalent household arrangement in families with children today in Australia is the female secondary earner working part time and the male being the breadwinner. That is certainly the largest group of couple families with children in the electorate of Throsby. Some 4,526 families that I represent fall into this category. I know that mothers work on a part-time basis so that they can take care of children. Their workforce participation rates increase as children get older. One-third of mothers are employed when the youngest child is under one, more than half are working by the time the youngest reaches primary school age and 70 per cent by the time the youngest child reaches secondary school age.

Women’s diverse requirements and choices about their transition back to work following giving birth require appropriate government support to facilitate those options. However, I find that ‘choice’ for some women I represent is a meaningless concept because of economic and financial pressures to return to work as soon as possible. It is also important that as legislators we do not miss the message revealed in recent HILDA Wave 3 unpublished research that, of the mothers who are not at work with children under two, 62 per cent indicated that they did not want paid employment at that point in time. These facts speak for themselves and call for a rethink of government policies, bearing in mind the different aspirations of women.

Specifically, I urge the government to extend the 52 weeks of unpaid, job protected parental leave following the birth or adoption of a child to two years; extend to eight weeks the simultaneous unpaid parental leave for both parents; and ensure compliance with the ILO convention on paid maternity leave, noting that in 2004 only 34 per cent of women had access to paid maternity leave in their job, which is an appalling situation considering almost 100 years have passed since the ILO first adopted its basic standard of leave for mothers. It is much to our shame that we are one of only two OECD nations that have not complied with that basic ILO convention. We ought to look at the British experience of providing parents the right to negotiate suitable hours of work following parental leave, with the proviso that an employer may reject such a request only if it is reasonable to do so. The experience in the UK shows that this can work well.

The juggling act for women is exacerbated when they run up against relatively unchanged institutions and workplaces that have not adequately responded to women’s increased participation. In the absence of responsive family-friendly environments, people are often forced to make hard decisions about starting families or deferring parenthood and very often end up with smaller sized families than they would prefer.

The OECD has noted that there is only a low penetration of family-friendly work practices in Australia. In the past, test cases before the Industrial Relations Commission, such as on parental and carers leave, introduced the minimum standards for all workers, but this option will be cut off in future under the Work Choices legislation. There are few statutory minima in Australia and only one specific family-friendly provision in the federal government’s new safety net—that is, the 12 months of unpaid parental leave, hardly nirvana. Most family-friendly benefits are in fact available only to a minority of employees, primarily composed of higher skilled workers in large and/or public sector enterprises. Recent ABS data, for example, show that only 27.6 per cent of women who work in the private sector claim to be entitled to paid maternity leave, and I represent many such women in my electorate. I think this highlights just how difficult it is to spread family-friendly conditions across a whole workforce in the absence of test case decisions with national application.

I made mention earlier of the high rates of part-time employment of mothers with dependent children. Quality part-time employment is a condition of employment widely sought by mothers whom I represent. But there are considerable problems currently with the quality of part-time employment, primarily because of the strong overlap of casual with part-time employment. Indeed, over 60 per cent of all part-time employees in Australia today are employed on a daily casual basis and, as we know, casual employment, by its very nature, represents a significant gap in eligibility for family-friendly benefits. Casuals today lack even basic entitlements such as paid annual leave.

This is a major issue which government policies and the budget fail to address when you consider that today 40 per cent of women with children under 12 who are employees are in fact casually employed. We are getting to the stage where nearly one in every three women who work is being employed as a casual. The irony is that casual employment today is disproportionately made up of the very people who have particularly strong needs for family-friendly benefits and, regrettably, they are precisely the people missing out. Unfortunately, as it operates today, part-time employment too often represents a trade-off for many women, whereby, in return for the opportunity to work reduced hours, women tolerate poor conditions and lack access to family-friendly benefits.

Time does not permit a detailed analysis of all the family unfriendly provisions contained in the Work Choices legislation, but it is absolutely correct to assert that the employment standards of many women will only be as strong as prevailing minimum legal standards and no stronger. The Spotlight AWA, to which we have made much reference, is a classic example of that contention. Experience to date shows the pitfalls of individual bargaining. Data from the department show that the level of provision of family-friendly arrangements in AWAs in 2002-03 was pathetically inadequate. From a random sample, we learnt that only eight per cent of AWAs had paid maternity leave. Only five per cent had paid paternity leave. Only four per cent provided for unpaid purchased leave, with only a quarter of AWAs providing for some form of parental leave, be it paid or unpaid.

As an immediate step, I suggest that the government, if it is serious about work and family, should firstly expand the safety net in the Work Choices legislation to incorporate family-friendly provisions, guarantee the payment of penalty rates, shift loadings and overtime, give priority to collective over individual agreements, restore the right of national test cases to be handled by the Industrial Relations Commission, introduce legislation along the lines of the UK Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations which ensure that part-time workers are not treated less favourably in their terms and conditions of employment, and investigate the reasons for the very high levels of casual employment among women and the options for their conversion to permanent part-time work.

With an ageing population, the issue of workforce participation is a key economic consideration for this government and for the opposition. In this regard, the government needs to appreciate that Australia’s female participation rate of 56.6 per cent is only moderate by OECD standards and is particularly low among mums and women over 55. The OECD has described motherhood in Australia as having a particularly marked dampening effect on women’s employment. This low participation rate may represent a choice willingly made by some mums. However, as we know, there are constraints that impact on their choices. For example, a shortage of suitable child care, inflexible welfare and often unsuitable work provisions combine to discourage potential second income earners from returning to work.

Just as there are considerable costs for women who leave the paid workforce to have children, the decision to re-enter work also has significant financial implications. The effect of taxation, loss of government payments and benefits as earnings increase and the escalating costs of child care act as a disincentive to many mothers whom I represent who want to return to work. According to a recent study by Professor Apps, second earners in Australia—overwhelmingly women—face an average tax rate of around 50 per cent, the second highest in the developed world. Often women I represent come to the judgment that there is no economic incentive to return to work because of the impact of these high effective marginal tax rates. Let me quote one of my constituents, who said:

I’ve looked at going back to work part time but we are near the means test maximum. So if I did go to work we would lose the staying home allowance, and any family payments. These amounts are tax free so after going back to work, paying for child care, holiday care and all the costs of travel, uniform etc earning a wage but then paying tax I am not that much better off ...

So there is no doubt that, among current government policies—or lack of effective ones in areas like child-care provision—there are constraints that act as significant disincentives to women’s increased labour force participation in Australia. It may well be time for this government to consider the replacement of the family tax benefit scheme, with all its complexities and in-built disincentives, with universal payments for all children aged one to five years. Such a scheme was recently introduced in Austria and appears to be working well. It is time also that all governments guaranteed universal access to pre-school education in the year before primary school age.

The Treasurer has often argued in this place that demography is destiny, and we all appreciate the economic consequences of Australia’s declining fertility rate. There is now, however, strong international evidence that a good work-family balance has a positive effect on a nation’s birthrate. Today countries with higher employment rates for mothers also have higher fertility rates, and it is precisely these countries that provide a range of positive policies to support a better work-family balance. It is an important message for the Howard government, and one they cannot ignore.

As I said at the start of my comments, the Prime Minister identified work and family issues as the barbecue stopper. Unfortunately, his barbecue stopper has become a fizzer. In the lead-up to this budget the Treasurer promised a lot, saying we ought to be looking at making this the most female-friendly place on earth. We can all agree with that noble sentiment, but it takes more than just rhetoric to achieve good outcomes. This budget fails to make any significant advances in enabling parents to balance their work and family life and their obligations, and with the introduction of the regressive Work Choices legislation that balance will become even more problematic in the future. The international evidence about public policy settings that assist employees, households and employers to achieve work-family balance is clear. The case for serious action by this government is compelling.

See this speech in context