Editorial: Payout for parents a minimum effort

You know a decision is unwise when a Government delays it for as long as possible then does the minimum necessary to keep faith with its political commitments. This Government could hardly have done more to demonstrate its doubts about paid parental leave, an Alliance contribution to the Coalition's programme.

It took until yesterday, two years since the election, to announce the terms of the benefit and it has postponed the previously announced starting day from April to July 1, the beginning of the next Budget year. It has agreed to an entitlement much lower than the Alliance had sought, and it will be paid from taxation rather than by employers, which the Alliance would have preferred.

The estimated cost, $42 million a year, is less than half the original proposal. The Prime Minister might as well have come right out and said: "We know this is not very smart but we have to do it."

Paid parental leave is one of those proposals that can be justified only in isolation from other, possibly more urgent, demands on the public purse. It is an idea with obvious appeal to couples who are thinking of having a baby, and to many other people who sympathise with the financial hurdles of childbirth in this age of double-income households. To do without one income for three months or six requires careful household management and, in some cases, no doubt, considerable hardship. Shouldn't the Government help?

The Government cannot consider any hardship in isolation, and nor should intelligent voters. The Budget will never be bottomless. Every new demand on public money should be weighed against needs more pressing. Right now, for example, cancer patients are waiting six months or more for radiotherapy. How urgent does paid parental leave seem in comparison?

The comparison may be invidious but so are many that ministers and cabinets must make every week of the year. Uncomfortable as it might be for them, the Alliance's Laila Harre and other proponents of paid parental leave should be invited to explain how the difficulties of planned parenthood compare with those of cancer sufferers who face months of waiting and wondering whether their tumours are winning the battle. Even at a reduced cost of $42 million a year, the parental leave payments would go some way to attracting the radiation therapists the waiting patients need.

How needy are most intending parents nowadays, anyway? They are wisely delaying their families until their careers are under way and a home has been established. They receive fully subsidised maternity services just as previous generations did. And the law already gives them unpaid parental leave, with no loss of employment, for up to a year after a birth.

Many plan to resume their careers within a few months by putting their babies in daycare. Those who have difficulty budgeting for those few months loss of income would not seem well placed to afford day care or, indeed, for all the costs of raising a child.

It bears repeating that this is not denying the difficulties of those few months when one parent is out of the workforce, but they need to be kept in perspective against other life problems people face. The need for paid birth leave obviously varies with the level of household incomes.

The glaring weakness of the Alliance proposal was that it would be paid at 80 per cent of regular weekly earnings to rich and poor alike, thus paying an unnecessary benefit to those who can easily afford a baby and might even have paid parental leave in their employment contracts already. Labour - or was it the Treasury - has at least insisted on redesigning the scheme to help the needy most.

So a parent will qualify for $325 a week before tax, or the equivalent of her weekly wage, whichever is lower. The after-tax payment will be $198.25 to $256.75 depending on the individual's tax rate. Already the Greens complain that it will not be paid to self-employed parents and the Alliance indicates it will now campaign to extend the scheme.

Paid parental leave is not the wisest use of limited state funds. It is a political pay-off, the price of coalition government, at a cost to genuine needs.