Paid Parental Leave (PPL) affects women and men in different ways; it is not gender neutral. This submission responds to the terms of reference through a gender lens. NFAW is a strong supporter of PPL, and was part of the coalition that promoted the policy prior to the Productivity Commission Report1 (Productivity Commission, 2009) that led to the introduction of PPL. In that report the Productivity Commission identified the following commonly agreed objectives (at p XIV):
• generate child and maternal health and welfare benefits by increasing the time parents take away from work. The Commission estimates that the average absence will increase by ten weeks. Many more families would have an increased capacity to provide exclusive parental care for children for six to nine months
• promote some important, publicly supported social goals, and in particular, that having a child and taking time out for family reasons is viewed by the community as part of the usual course of work and life for parents in the paid workforce
• counter some of the incentives against working posed by the tax and welfare system - potentially contributing around six months of net additional employment for the average woman over her lifetime • increase retention rates for business, with reduced training and recruitment costs.