Placing childcare at the centre of the government’s 2015 budget is a step in the right direction. The childcare sector is in desperate need of reform and clearly doesn’t meet the demands of a 21st century Australian society where women make up 46 per cent of our workforce according to the recent Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Labour Force Survey.
Getting more women into the workforce and into full-time work - currently 21 per cent of working women are in part-time work compared to 9 per cent of men - is going to be a consistent focus of government. The G20 led by Australia last year set the ambitious target of a 25 per cent reduction in the gender gap by 2025 in order to increase productivity and deliver economic growth.
The 2015 budget has also reflected this push for greater growth. The government tried unsuccessfully with paid parental leave, which could have been a real opportunity to create tailored pathways back to work for women. In fact there’s a possibility we could end up going backwards on progress, locked into the bottom ranks worldwide when it comes to paid parental leave. It wasn’t that long ago in the lead up to the G20 that Prime Minister Abbott asked: "Why should Australia be one of just two OECD countries that does not base paid parental leave on peoples' real wage?"
It doesn’t seem like the opponents of paid parental leave are ready to answer that question. With the scheme all but obliterated for the foreseeable future the new focus, with the help of the productivity commission, is childcare. We only have to look at our own childcare provisions in the Blue Mountains to see that something needs to be done if we are going to provide real support for working parents who require quality and flexible childcare for their families.
Australian Bureau of Statistics research tells us that 59 per cent of residents in the Blue Mountains commute out of the area for work. Every one of these commuters who have children in childcare would know and understand the difficulties of getting back to pick them up by the centre’s closing time.
This is why reforming the childcare system is not just about more money into parent’s pockets - the changes proposed by the government in the 2015 budget will mean that families with household incomes up to $165,000 (and both parents in the workforce or studying) will be better off by $30 a week or $1,500 a year - it’s about creating support systems for working mums and dads.
Will subsidies for nannies help provide the answer? Perhaps it will assist some families in the Blue Mountains where there’s a lack of flexible hours for childcare and before and after-school-care, but the issue isn’t just about childcare. There is no way that sustainable economic growth will be possible without structural changes and the creation of better ways of doing things. We need to start looking at innovative and forward-looking solutions that support women who want to stay in their careers and families who are the backbone of our country’s prosperity.
It’s time to stop focusing on the politics and fiddling around with the numbers. Without a clear plan, we will be stuck tweaking the edges and arguing about double dipping rhetoric, and with a senate that continues to stall progress. It can’t be done without bi-partisan support and collaborative input from government, business, the non-profit sectors and wait for it - working parents. If there isn’t collaboration, for every proposed policy on this issue by the government there is every chance it will be blocked. There are already rumblings that this will be the case, particularly with proposed changes to the Family Tax Benefit and the end of jointly paid maternity leave from the government and employers.
What is the outcome of the government’s proposed plans continually being blocked? Doubt in the community about the right path forward for working parents and a lack of progress. No family benefits from this.
But the upside is that we have a real opportunity to get it right. Other countries are doing it. The reason why Scandinavia has the highest proportion of women in the workforce is that they have good childcare systems, coupled with fantastic paid parental leave schemes for both women and men, and flexibility when it comes to work. They understand and support the benefits their governments’ forward thinking policies bring to their countries, and they are willing to pay for it through higher taxes.
The OECD supports this multi-faceted approach. A 2012 OECD report on gender equality in education, employment and entrepreneurship states “better and more affordable child care and more flexible work conditions are key to helping parents to be in paid work or increase hours and work full time.”
As Joe Hockey said “now is the time for all Australians to get out there and have a go,” but for this to truly work we need to be thinking about the whole package; a plan that we can all buy into and support for the sustainable growth of our economy and, most importantly, the benefit of our families.
Melissa Grah-McIntosh lives at Mount Riverview in the Blue Mountains. twitter: @MGrahMcIntosh
