Perhaps the Liberals can explain their rationale for paid parental leave. Paid parental leave is to financially assist mothers who give up work to have a child.
Point 1. Does a mother who is earning $150k deserve more financial assistance than one earning $30k? In the Liberals plan, the first mother gets $75k and the second only $15k. Both make a choice to have a child yet one gets five time more reward because she was in a higher paying job.
To extrapolate this logic, to save money, we should encourage low paid workers to have more children. A woman on $30k could have five children for the cost of one child to a $150k earner. Is this some Liberal productivity plan we don’t understand?
Maybe we are looking at the wrong end of the stick. Maybe women on higher salaries produce more valuable babies according to the Liberal view. Perhaps that was what Tony Abbott meant when he said the PPL scheme is “all about” encouraging women of “calibre” to have children. Stop the peasants breeding!!!
Point 2. If you don’t work, you get nothing. Is this a punishment for being unemployed. Here is a hypothetical. A woman earning $150k loses her job and shortly after becomes pregnant. She has difficulty finding a job and has a baby while unemployed. Under the Liberal plan, she would not be paid.
Not only has she suffered the hardship of loosing a job, and not being able to obtain another. The Liberals now take away her paid maternity leave. Talk about kick someone when they are down.
Point 3. The top 3,000 companies will have to pay for all this. We will leave aside the concept that Liberals are supposed to be the friends of big business. Trying to relate that fact to an additional tax of 1.5% on the top 3,000 companies defies rational thought. This is particularly so given the volcanic eruption from Tony Abbot when Labor put a super profits tax on the mining industry.
The real question is why the top 3,000? Why not the top 5,000 or 50,000? Why are the top 3,000 companies given the job of supporting all women entitled to PPL. It can hardly be aligned with the Liberals ‘user pays’ philosophy. Company 3,000 gets to pay PPL for employees in company 3,001. Lucky them.
The whole concept is flawed. It is based on ‘illogic’ rather than logic. The Liberal backbench does not like it. Business does not like it. In fact the only people who do like it are those who see a bonus coming their way when they have a baby.
The really worrying part is that it is the brainchild of the person who wants to lead the country. If this is indicative of how deeply he is capable of thinking through a policy, Australia should be scared. Very scared. If this is an example no wonder they are reluctant to announce policies.