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Maternity Leave/Allowance

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Whiskers said:
It just doesn't seem right when a young teacher works all those hours and has to pay some child care to go back to work while another young girl can just have a baby get the bonus plus welfare and few overheads like child care.
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And with parental leave allowances teachers are especially well benefited.

In reality, it will happen like it does here in Sweden...two people I know, a friend and a colleague are married to teachers. Teachers, as you must know, receive a lot of holidays. In Sweden when teachers are on school holidays they are actually paid just like they are working. What this means is that within the Swedish system these couples have done the following:

Couple 1 (2 kids): Mum gives a large share of her leave to the father, and together the mother and father both take 12 months off to spend time with the kids. They have chosen to do this when the kids are a bit older, 4 and 2. It allows them more flexibility with regards to activities and travel.

Couple 2 (2 kids): Dad gives a large share of his leave to the mum (who is the teacher), and the mum then takes several years off to be at home with the children.

In both cases the jobs of each parent are guaranteed during the times of leave. Believe me, people are ingenious, if you implement a policy that is as humane as this the system will bend around it. People learn to work with it and plan for it. New opportunities arise for people seeking temporary employment, for example.

I for one am very much looking forward to my partner popping out a couple of kids so I can take my next sabbatical.
 
theasxgorilla said:
We don't want you to be a martyr though do we?

Australia is a rich country...should people have to battle through like this to have a family? Oh that's right, it's engrained in our mentality that the more you battle the more genuine you are.
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That is your conclusion - martyr? I am simply stating facts of the differences when I had children to when your generation will have children. The government support was completely different. You obviously don't appreciate the generation difference and cultural ones.

Having jobs was a necessity to supply a descend income to support my family. Are you insinuating that I work for a pat on the back?
 

Giving a parent maternity / paternity leave does not guarantee a well developed child. It can happen in the poorest regions and the wealthiest where I have seen delinquent activity from youth and toddlers. I personally put the behavior down to lack of parental discipline. Parents who watch their own child aggressively talk or act to another without intervening are acting irresponsibly.

When you have your own children and raise them around other children of similar ages and various environments you may be in a position to tell me if maternity / paternity leave makes a difference to child behavior.

Yes this is diverging from the thread. However, what you instill in law and parenting now can have consequences for the next generation. It is evident in your conclusion of my work ethic under a different environment which is incorrect.
 
theasxgorilla said:
Is that the purpose of the legislation? I thought it was to encourage people to have children and to make it more convenient and secure for them to do so.

Are you suggesting that Australia needs to reduce it's population?
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I'ts not the purpose of the legislation, that's for sure.

But I also don't think our environment can actually sustain ecologically, a larger population healthily.
The mum apparently had to go through the courts when she had me, to get her job back. Because at that stage, if you were married, and had kids or something, you actually were not legally allowed to go back to work in teaching. Something really bizarre like that. It wasn't that long ago either.

It really worries me that the baby bonus generation of kids will be brought up as if, and will feel as if they were only had for money, not for the inherent sake of having kids. That worries me a lot.

Even the mum who is a rabid feminist seems to be, from the conversations I've been having with her at least, thinking and of the opinion that the current generation of parents and especially mothers have it all wrong, on a whole range of issues. Mainly that small business and society as a whole shouldn't bear the burden of lifestyle choices. A lot of these things aren't rights...
 

With all due respect, you are describing how it was for you. Similarly the Australia of today is made up of approximately 20 millions realities. I'm close to people doing it tough, and I could as easily cast generalised aspersions that these people consistently made bad decisions based on poor judgements that led them to where they are. But that gets us no where.

If a system comes along to make the new status quo more humane for families then I'm all for it. It's unfortunate that it didn't happen on your shift. Maybe it will benefit your children so they don't have to do it as tough as you did.
 
chops_a_must said:
A lot of these things aren't rights...
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Why not? Imagine it was a right.

Imagine it was a right for a woman to work, invest in a career, have a family, be allowed to take time off (with some pay), the father too, and for both of them to be able to return to their original jobs? Or to use the leave to work 4 days a week for a period of time, 9 days a fortnight, or however it suits them.
 
theasxgorilla said:
Why not? Imagine it was a right.

Imagine it was a right for a woman to work, invest in a career, have a family, be allowed to take time off (with some pay), the father too, and for both of them to be able to return to their original jobs?
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The reality is you can't have all of those things and do them all justice.
 
theasxgorilla said:
I'd dearly love to see the supporting evidence for that claim Tyson.
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Think about it mate, the Australian worker is quite well paid / hour + the working week is limited to 38 hours and pentaly rates apply for any work above this rate.

+ out of the 7.6 hours of paid work comes a number of paid breaks, + In australia we have lots of public holidays where they are paid when the don't even turn up + 20 days annual leave every year + leave loading where the wage is increased by 17% for the 20 days annual leave + we give Aussie workers 5 sick days + if we keep a worker for 10 years we have to give them 3 months paid leave in addition to all the other leave. + the 9% super contribution.
 

Ha! I wish I was paid that well!
 
fimmwolf said:
To some degree economic growth requires population growth. New babies = new working population.
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Sooner we realise that we need to have negative population growth the better.

Of course we can run out of crude oil, we can run out of food first to see it as necessary component of our future.
 


But to have this as viable business model we cannot expect small business with couple of employees to be able to compete with large businesses and be able to afford it.
 
Happy said:
But to have this as viable business model we cannot expect small business with couple of employees to be able to compete with large businesses and be able to afford it.
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How do they (small businesses) compete for human capital if by taking a job with one you know you are signing up for a job that is exempt from parental leave?
 

Yes, you are right Tyson, it is relatively good in Australia...but to say that the benefits are more than anywhere else in the world is dubious. Without any evidence it sounds like you are saying that it's already good enough here, we can't possibly do any better.

You sound like a boss Tysonboss...it's understandable that you look at the issue from this point of view.
 

Sexism - is that your experience to form your idea?

Land to fill?....Would you willing live in Alice Springs?

More babies does not mean more tax payers. That is an assumption. There will always be children born with disabilities, and those that choose not to develop their lives through education and live on the dole.

I agree we have in imbalances problem in the near future.. Have you thought of charity work? I do Meals o Wheels and assist the elderly when I can.

We are in trouble all ready with climate change - chops agreed - I do not believe you can change it in 20 years it may take centuries (plastic, polystyrene) if we haven't be blown off the face the earth by a comet or nuclear warfare.

If you find Sarah so appealing apply for Green card.
 
Green08 said:
Sexism - is that your experience to form your idea?
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It was a joke (j/k).

Green08 said:
Land to fill?....Would you willing live in Alice Springs?
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Why take it to extreme, we can grow many small Australian cities. Serious effort should be placed on developing other cities of Australia, but that is a separate, yet important topic.


Green08 said:
More babies does not mean more tax payers. That is an assumption. There will always be children born with disabilities, and those that choose not to develop their lives through education and live on the dole.
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If push come to shovel, dole can go... I don't care. Please make some sense, you are again focusing on the 5% (extreme), not the 95% taxable babies.


Green08 said:
We are in trouble all ready with climate change - chops agreed - I do not believe you can change it in 20 years it may take centuries (plastic, polystyrene) if we haven't be blown off the face the earth by a comet or nuclear warfare.
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Agreed to an extent, sustainable living should be encouraged.



Green08 said:
If you find Sarah so appealing apply for Green card.
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Or can go on a date with her lookalike

It was also supposed to be a sarcastic comment. I don't like her political views. Neither do I like Obama. I like Ron Paul who is shunned by US media and public.
 
theasxgorilla said:
.

You sound like a boss Tysonboss...it's understandable that you look at the issue from this point of view.
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Yes I am looking at as business owner, I understand the numbers behind most businesses,

the average business has a profit of about 10% of gross revenue,... Staff costs make up about 35% of gross revenue so increasing staff costs by 10% can reduce the bottom line profit by 35%, bringing there profit down from 10% of gross turn over to 6.5%.... and that's for a succesful business, a struggling business may only be making 5% of gross turn over and 10% change in staff costs may push that down to 1%.

Most business owners that I know are some of the hardest working people in Australia, and I will always resist anything that is going to take away the fruits of their hard work.

The average business owner takes on all the risk, works more hours often for less pay, less holidays, less breaks, no long service leave, etc,etc.

and if you put more burden on business it will be at the expense of the small business owner, Being forced to pay maternity leave may result in them not having their own kids, increasing super contributions may result in them reducing there own super contributions.
 

On your last point, I hope no Australian women are inspired to go out and shoot animals, want to teach creationism in schools, deprive teenagers of sex education, and force women to have babies they don't want.

You say "more babies mean more tax payers for the future".
Well, that was presumably the basis for Mr Costello's urging the women of Australia to have "one for mum, one for dad, and one for the country".
And to that end he introduced the now famous baby bonus, currently $5000 per child.


The problem with this brilliant idea is that the $5000 has encouraged young women who have no idea what to do with their lives, who have often not finished school, to see the whole $5000 as some sort of magic solution to the dullness of their existence. They have never worked and don't really plan to.
So they become 'career mums'. If a single mother has three or four children her sole parent pension plus rent assistance is considerably more per week than the earnings of a lot of working people.

So are these young women going to model the behaviour to their children which will result in taxpaying adults to support the future ageing population?
Unlikely. They will for the most part be another generation on welfare and, far from relieving the tax burden, will contribute further to it.

I'd contend that the people who have the babies which will grow up to contribute to our society in every way are not going to be influenced by a $5000 baby bonus. These people will have children because they want them for their own sake and they are prepared to fund them.
 
Julia: The main purpose is to help struggling families as pointed out by ASXgorilla.

Again we are focusing on 5% people who will abuse the system. Some critical tests and checks can minimize that.

When we consider a solution for the population, generally average or mean of the population is taken into consideration. That is precisely the reason these special case are not taken seriously, but provide a great talking point for the media.


I can see the aspect of small business suffering from this proposal. Some additional tax breaks for these businesses should also be considered.
 
mayk said:
Julia: The main purpose is to help struggling families as pointed out by ASXgorilla.

.
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If they are struggling it is because of their own actions, throwing a one off payment of $5000 will not help them,

We need to have more financial education in schools, thats the only way we are going to help the average family. we are giving students an industrial age education and expecting them to live in the information age.
 
mayk said:
I can see the aspect of small business suffering from this proposal. Some additional tax breaks for these businesses should also be considered.
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These are good ideas. I have stated from the beginning (didn't I???) that small business needs to be given special consideration.
 
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