Abbott's parental leave non-policy
March 8th, 2010 by Mark Bahnisch | Published in Ethics, Industrial Relations, Media, Parenting, Policy, Politics, Women | 46 Comments
Tony Abbott has chosen to mark International Women’s Day which is, to his mind, of course, all about “benefits… provided to families with children”, by announcing a policy for six months’ paid parental leave at actual salary levels, funded by a levy on big business.
Or has he?
That’s the impression given on the tv news tonight, but a reading of Abbott’s actual speech shows that it’s not a policy announcement.
Rather, Abbott is determined to show that a Liberal government would:
let people know what it has in mind well before positions are finalized because the job of government is to make the best decisions, not to pretend to have all the answers from the beginning.
So, what’s been reported is actually not firm, and is supposed to be some sort of example of Abbott’s idea of the policy making process, to provide a point of contrast with what he alleges the Labor government’s approach to policy to be. This is something he has in mind, rather than an announcement, and it will be subject to consultation and further reflection, and so on. It will be interesting to see if this is the way it’s reported, and whether all the qualifications, musing and speculation in his speech make it into the papers.
I rather doubt that the Liberal Party, not traditionally known for imposing “special levies” on the top end of town, will actually take this funding mechanism to the election. Abbott’s rhetoric is very much a bob each way, with a few sops thrown out to those who might be sceptical about the big government nature of this idea, and also incidentally includes a little story about his own ‘getting of wisdom’.
Such a proposal is, of course, consistent with a conservative approach to the welfare state, which is far from inconsistent with a big government philosophy, although the provision of a near universal benefit funded by a highly differential tax on business is quite eccentric. The framing of the speech shows a lot about Abbott’s paternalism, and the patriarchal nature of his beliefs about women. But, somehow, I suspect all this will get lost in the spin. Who’d have thought?
Whatever the Macchiavellian motivations behind the Abbott thought bubble, he seems to have enraged his natural allies, the BCA. Surely this can’t be good for his cause. Of course, he may have privately reassured them that this policy won’t be implemented, unlike WorkChoices v2.0…
I was going to ask if this was a core promise but it sounds like it hasn’t even reached any promise level yet.
However, it is good to know that it is OK to raise company taxes to pay for promises. Spending the company tax rise he was thought bubbling about to improve health is not going to lose votes.
Quite bizzare. Can’t wait to see the reaction from his media spruikers, Shanahan, Devine, Sheehan etc.
They’ll tie themselves in some pretty funny knots teling us why a great big tax on the big end of town is such a good thing.
Mark, sometimes you let your bias get the better of you. Whilst he gave himself wriggle room to alter the plan and didn’t set a date to start, it is clear that this is just the beginning of consultation, meaning that he gets to make the annouincement more than once (many times). It is a bold step, really forging into a Labor heart land issue. He might kills any business donations to the Libs, but they don’t have any at the moment anyway. Good way to soften his eventual roll out of IR policy too. Smart politics. I think that polls have tended to overestimate Labor votes in the past, so my guess is that the party polling must be pretty tight …. interesting move.
Very interesting and strangely refreshing to see Abbott’s proposal get heat from the BCA. I wonder what Abbott’s flag-fliers over at The Australian are going to make of this in tomorrow’s morning edition?
If Abbott goes on like this, he is going to create some serious confusion about what an Abbott Government actually stands for. He can’t just go on floating slightly nutty ideas out there without the support of the shadow cabinet, or even the conviction to follow them through himself. He has to realise that he is leading the alternative government of Australia now, not doing a book tour for Battleines II.
Now that Turnbull chap. At least he was a bit consultative?
So, Abbott’s in favour of great big new taxes on business to fund his own policy priorities, then?
I have the question on this policy that I’m surprised noone else has bought up yet.
Will this paid parental leave be available to same sex couples?
Or would that be too ‘scary.’
Tony Abbott loves to announce ‘clayton policies’, but when is he going to announce real costed policies. He has announced $15b worth, with two new taxes imposed and no new savings.
Who else has missed out on all of the largest handouts from the coalition government?
First home buyers grant – no
Baby bonus(s) – no
Maternity Leave – no
When I hear Hockey saying ‘leaving a debt for our children’, it drives me crazy. In the last 12yrs people who missed out on all of the above ARE paying for the little dears handouts.
So it’s ironic that they are proposing a new tax, and hypocritical they are opposing the legislation for the health insurance asset test saving about $1.7b. Hockey & Abbott love to scream about a big new tax on the CPRS (when it’s not) while their own climate policy is paid for by the tax payers. Hello new tax . While today proposing another new tax, which would effect me as business will pass on the cost.
I thought the Liberal party were suppose to be the party of low taxes and less regulation. Tony Abbott is not making any sense, until the MSM start asking these questions, then he’ll keep getting away with it.
Robert @ 5. Of course business will be happy with it.
Six months at full pay.
Fine. Especially under WorkChoices. Just lower your wages to factor in six months leave or get people to sign it out of their employment contract.
Problem solved.
I think its a con. Time will tell.
Maybe its an opening gambit? Say business will foot the bill, then two months later make some concessions to the BCA saying the government will fund 50% etc etc?
That way it looks tough on business initially but eventually try and get a compromise they intended all along, so as to tax companies with minimal griping.
This is just more off-the-cuff pseudo-politics from Mr. Abbott. At what point will the MSM call him on his lies and backflips? Opposed to taxes hikes but in favour of them, he hates bureaucracy but is determined to put them in charge of his climate change policy and a global warming denialist who is determined to tackle climate change. The Liberal Party is an incoherent mess at the minute but the MSM treat him as if he’s a serious contender for the highest political office in the land. Baffling.
Aren’t these much the same companies we weren’t allowed to impose a CPRS on, because they were providing services out of the good of their hearts and shouldn’t be punished with a Great Big Humungous Gigantic Tax just because they were being nice?
Or are these a different kind of company, who aren’t striving to continue to make Australia great, with their sole purpose in mind the creation of jobs for hardworking Australians?
This is a classic Howardism – buy off the aggrieved sector of the electorate with a massive cash bribe. Abbott is buying women’s votes. A reasonable strategic gambit because he has to gain ground off the ALP somewhere.
But Abbott has also alienated the Business sector on this one and may thus lose precious donations = funds for media time in election campaign. Tssk may be right that Abbott’ll smooth Business’s feathers by returning Work Choices but I don’t think so. Every news outlet in the country is on Red Alert waiting for him to do so and it’ll lose him votes.
This is politics pure and simple and I think you’re all frankly trying to see plots when there is only one: there are lots of women in particular who voted for Howard in 2004 but didn’t in 2007. There are ‘working families’ that need to be won and these people are more important than big business electorally. That it will lead to higher prices at Coles and Woolies is too difuse to really bite and small business is excluded from the levy … it is pretty clear that the Libs don’t see votes in buddying up to the BCA. There might be reform kudos from BCA endorsements but few votes.
When I heard this pronouncement on paid maternity leave today I rather hoped that his earlier comment that he was “dead against it” would be remembered and quoted by journos.
It has been of course, at least on the ABC, so no matter how much he protests about conversion or what Mark describes as his ‘getting of wisdom’ it seems he’s given Labour another brilliant sound bite for their election campaign. The first being his opinion about climate change being “crap” followed by the Coalition’s big direct action plan to limit it.
Does he really think Australian voters are credulous fool?
Great, the 40th anniversary of the Female Eunuch and Abbott is the second politician in the space of a week [Mike Rann being the first] to address women voters and talk about nothing other than parental issues.
I don’t want to diminish the importance of parental leave, but right now I’m too peeved to read beyond the first paragraph of Abbott’s speech.
I’m grateful that someone is at least shining a light on policy issues [or the lack thereof] with Abbott. There seems to have been a heck of a lot of incredibly superficial media discussion about the man since he took over the leadership.
Does the Monk understand the primal forces of nature he is attacking here? This proposal is a redistributive tax levied on corporate Australia to fund social engineering—this is more daring than Labor’s super policies ever were. Superannuation isn’t really robbing Peter to pay Paul, it’s a fairly conservative contributory scheme. Same goes for Medicare.
Don’t get me wrong. I’d thrill to this if this were 1974 and EG Whitlam was proposing this, or if this were 1906 and we were talking about the not-dissimilar principle of the Deakin Lyne tariff (taxing specific businesses for social policy aims).
But I can’t get excited about Abbott being a crazyarsed contrarian, no matter how much he pisses off the big end of town.
On the off chance they take this to the election, it’ll be because the Coalition is comfortable with their leader being too clever by half with policy they can quietly shelve once they’ve lost. We’ll never hear of it again.
It is good because it gets mothers where they should be – with their kids, caring for them.
re Rationalist
As Graeme Richardson used to say – “whatever it takes”. This just shows how much of a Howard clone this guy really is. Just like ‘honest’ John he’ll say anything to get into office. Then the real, socially regressive agenda will be revealed. The joke of it all is that he is taken seriously by the so-called ‘meeja’.
Still we can see the signs.
Can you imagine the uproar from business groups if Rudd had announced something like this?
Abbott anounces his plan and….silence. Naught but the crickets chirping.
Business knows the score already and that should speak volumes.
And as yet, to the best of my knowledge, nobody in the offical media has used the phrase “middle class welfare”. A cap of 150K? Hmmm
Hell yeah, Nickws. I especially appreciated on Lateline when Abbott made this comment:
If any given ALP politician were to say something like this, could you imagine the Fin or the Australian’s business section?
I’ve always said it. Scratch a Jesuit and you find a socialist.
“Corin” @ 4 and 15: Another Young Lib sockpuppet?
The SMH online has three opinion pieces on it (Coorey, Hartcher and Grattan), and all are slamming it.
I must say I am fascinated also by this “thought bubble” policymaking process, complete with utter lack of consultation with his own party. That would be the reason Turnbull lost his job, no?
Abbott=DLP?
I’ve had a bit of time to think about my initial instinctive reaction to this.
As other commentors have suggested or inferred, Abbott needed something to get him back on the front page quickly after being lost in the outback. It was International Women’s Day. He needed to one-up Rudd. Hence, a more generous parental leave scheme. As has been pointed out it fits with his belief that women should be barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen, even if you have to pay them to be that way, since, in the post-feminist age, just telling them that’s how they should be doesn’t work anymore.
One really good thing has come out of this particular thought bubble, though: Labor has been given the green light to tax big business for social programmes, (as they should be taxed – if they can afford disproportionate executive salaries they can afford social levies.) And if the ALP does do this, for parental leave or any other social programme – not that I’m holding my breath- there’s nothing the Libs can do about it. Or very little that big business can say, since their response to Tones was barely louder than a murmur.
Liam – I’m not sure about the ‘Socialist’ tag. Dont forget that this guy was one of the biggest champions of Howard’s economic rationalist agenda in the 90s. He strikes me as being in exactly the same mould.
I’ve often wondered, Guido, if he would have been if he’d grown up a Victorian or a Queenslander. The DLP were never strong in NSW, but there’s a strong sense of the old ideas of the Catholic Worker movement in a lot of the things he’s stood for over the last decade or so.
A further note: conservative historian Ross Fitzgerald reviewed his book with this intro:
I knew it, I knew it.
Bolding mine.
Maybe the ALP can run a trolling slogan “Who do you trust to tax big business enough?”
I also like Tony writing off his part policy as reflecting his lack of maturity … I suppose it is different from the weather vane metaphor at least …
What surprises me is that it didn’t cocur to Tony to try outbidding the ALP by proposing an “add-on” bid to the ALP’s program. He supports the ALP approach but offers companies an optional top up, in which they borrow the money at, say, the OCA, and get a ten-year mortgage like loan to pay it back. You cap the top up benefit at 50K and then say if they get the employee back in, they get a tax credit at 10% of the value of the returning employees take home salary. If someone else employs them, that employer gets the benefit, so you encourage “post-bonding” reintegration.
The 50K top up would easily cover 26 weeks at most wages (or more at a lower rate or for a longer period of leave).
The ALP can’t complain because apart from the tax credit it’s essentially revenue neutral. Business doesn’t have to take it up so they can’t whinge either. And it’s more generous than the ALP’s scheme. It also looks a lot less like middle class welfare though it would still favour mostly upper middle class women — though not as much as Tony’s 150k cap would.
I have another post brewing on this issue, but can I just register my disappointment on this thread that Left ministers in the Rudd government are attacking Abbott from the right over his proposed source of funding. Since when was it a left-wing principle to oppose a great big tax on great big companies to fund a great big parental leave benefit? There may well be pragmatic reasons in terms of effective policy design to criticise this aspect of Abbott’s proposal, but to urge sympathy for the poor, put-upon top end of town is another matter entirely.
So readers are wondering if Abbott has been influenced by the DLP? Jesus Joseph and Mary !
Having known Mr Abbott in the 80′s as he championed the never ending past to students at Sydney Uni perhaps I’m expecting others to have access to what is common knowledge amongst other ex-student politicians-he is the living embodiment of the DLP’s principles.
How long the Liberal Party will tolerate this is open at the moment as they are watching the polls and wondering if it true that God works in mysterious ways?
“Jesus Joseph and Mary !”
What about the Holy Ghost, murph?
PN @ 33,
The truism is,as once explained to me by a prominent Labor politician who shall remain nameless, who greeted my joining the ALP in 1975 with the immortal words, “And I suppose you’re on the fucking Left?!” (I’m no longer a member and haven’t been for quite some time), “Big business runs this country.” This, I’m sure, is something Abbott is well aware of. If the Libs get into government, (which I’m beginning to fear, like some other commenters on LP – I don’t want to go out the day after the next Federal elections and have to say to my friends, “Welcome to Hell,”- ) this policy will NEVER be implemented, at least in its present form, because big business won’t allow it. Abbott must know this. So its just another one of his lies.
The brothers used to put JMJ on the blackboard every morning – Jesus Mary and Joseph.
As for Abbott’s stunt, it’s a classic wedge isn’t it? In one stroke, he defuses two perceived electoral points of weakness – women voters and unionists. He appeases the deficit fetishists by fully funding it. AND he does so by putting his hand in the pockets of big business, thereby channelling community post-GFC anger.
I like Paul Burns’ point: This gives Rudd the green light to stop treating the business lobby with kid gloves.
By the way, have you seen the ABC’s online coverage of the Abbott stunt? It looks as if it was written by his press secretary. Do the ABC hacks have have any bullshit filters at all or are they working for the ABC board directly these days?
Yes Paul, you are correct. There is no way known that this will ever be implemented and if he ever gets in (heaven help us all) the public will have had enough notice that he’ll change his mind on a whim or less, so nobody can say they weren’t warned!
Just remember that he’s a conviction politician. Don’t know how long that meme can stand the harsh light of reality.
Make that a great big new nanny-state direct action socialist, Liam.
Liam @ 30, please don’t defame the Catholic Worker movement by suggesting an association with Abbott, just because Santamaria stole the name for his newspaper.
CW are “committed to nonviolence, voluntary poverty, prayer, and hospitality for the homeless, exiled, hungry, and foresaken. Catholic Workers continue to protest injustice, war, racism, and violence of all forms.”
They’re most famous for helping to end the “duck and cover” air raid drills in the United States and for promoting “plowshares” actions to symoblically or literally disarm military hardware (which aren’t all by CW people, but a lot are).
Paul Said:
It’s not a principle, but wedging is effective politics. It is a political principle of success that you don’t want your enemies to get a discount on putting together constituencies that can’t live easily with each other. Howard showed how good that could be in 1998 when he squeaked home with a minority on the basis of Democrat support.
If Abbott is pitching social welfare, he shouldn’t get all the business vote too.
Well I just heard Heather Ridout on ABC radio and she was very direct and plain-speaking in calling Abbott’s brain-fart “bad policy” – no qualifications, no ifs, no buts. She said that the Liberals “should go back to the drawing board” on this plan and favours maternity leave entitlements being paid out of consolidated revenue ie. the government’s policy.
Apparently Joe Hockey is out there attempting to defend the Lib plan. Honestly, isn’t that guy tired of eating shit sandwiches yet? Although he does seem to have quite an appetite for them.
Oh hell—josh, you’re right. I meant Catholic Action, not Worker.
No worries Liam. Kinda ironic, considering Catholic Workers are more communist than the Communists! :-)
tigtog,
Wow, are you implying that mothers should not care for their children? I would certainly hate to grow up all deprived in your household. I would prefer to grow up in a household where my mother and father cared for me.
@45 – redundant troll is redundant.