The NFAW and WomenSpeak/ERA, with valuable input from Professor Patricia Apps, independently held meetings to discuss the Henry Report at the University of Sydney through the Women and Work Research group, and at the University of Melbourne (Taxation Studies, Law School)
We greatly regret that this Review does not encompass payments for sole parents, as we consider that some of the Welfare to Work changes have been particularly disadvantageous to sole parents and their capacity to be successful or even adequate parents.
In the early 1980’s Australia had a highly progressive, individual based income tax and families received support for dependent children in the form of universal family allowances.
Since the 1980s the introduction of income tests on family payments has transformed Australia’s progressive individual income tax into a system with strong elements of joint taxation and a rate scale that has an inverted U-shaped profile – the highest marginal tax rates apply across low to average incomes and to the incomes of married mothers as second earners.
In its submission to the Henry Inquiry into the Future of Australia’s Tax System, the National Foundation for Australian Women calls on government to reform the Age Pension by creating a centralised retirement insurance plan for low-income earners and increasing the single pension rate, and to introduce policies to encourage women to work such as a national paid parental leave scheme.
Lower income earners, both male and female, cannot hope to save an adequate sum from the Superannuation Guarantee and voluntary savings. Their savings can however supplement the Age Pension set at an adequate level.
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The Productivity Commission was asked by the Federal Government in February 2008 to undertake a public inquiry into paid maternity, paternity and paternal leave, reporting by February 2009. The Commission put out a background paper in April 2008, followed by a round of hearings and submissions.
The origins of the NFAW role lay in the process of national consultations with women and their organisations during 2006 and 2007 on the impacts on their working lives of the former Government’s changes to the industrial relations system (WorkChoices). In consequence early NFAW discussions about a national system of paid maternity or paternity leave were framed around industrial relations policy.
