A new biography of Treasurer Joe Hockey has dropped a bomb on Tony Abbott’s contentious Paid Parental Leave (PPL) scheme, revealing that Abbott gave Rupert Murdoch a “full rundown” of the proposed scheme before announcing the policy in 2010 and without consulting his shadow cabinet or MPs. From The Guardian:
“The new leader, like many before him, had dinner with Murdoch, where he gave the media mogul a full rundown on the scheme – supplying enough detail for Murdoch to later have his Australian-based editors briefed on Abbott’s plan, which he considered a visionary approach to dealing with a real problem in his workforce. They were encouraged to support it, notwithstanding that it represented a tax impost and was skewed to be of most benefit to parents outside their middle-Australian readership.
“This fact was unknown to members in the party room, who condemned Abbott’s solo policy-making on such a fundamental issue”…
“The hardheads knew that it would open the Coalition up to an accusation of raising taxes…”
The AFR has more:
The book argues that Mr Abbott “had alerted Joe to the plan, but Joe recalls the subject as a brief add-on in a telephone conversation, with no specific date or details attached”…
“Joe says he didn’t think too much more about it, believing it was an un-costed proposal, not an Opposition policy. At least, that was until Abbott announced it publicly.”
So there you have it. The PPL scheme is entirely the brain fart of Tony Abbott. No rigorous policy analysis, consultation or internal debate was undertaken. Just a friendly chat with one of the Coalition’s oligarchic mates, whose newspaper staff also just happened to gain preferential access to the scheme.
And yet any impartial observer can see that PPL is both overly costly and inequitable, in that its is likely to provide minimal improvements in workforce participation, whilst conferring the greatest financial benefits to those on higher incomes.
Indeed, this is why the Productivity Commission’s Draft Report into Childcare and Early Childhood Learning, released earlier this week, explicitly criticised the merits of PPL and recommends that some of the $5.5 billion earmarked for PPL instead be spent on childcare:
The Commission considers that it is unclear that the proposed changes to the Paid Parental Leave scheme — which is more generous than the existing scheme and that recommended in the Commission’s 2009 report on paid parental leave — would bring significant additional benefits to the broader community beyond those occurring under the existing scheme. There may be a case, therefore, for diverting some funding from the proposed new scheme to another area of government funding, such as ECEC [Early Childhood Education and Care], where more significant family benefits are likely. Such a move could add up to a further $1.5 billion per year to Australian Government assistance for ECEC.
…the workforce participation of mothers of children aged under 15 years is affected by the costs and availability of suitable childcare.
Thankfully, The Greens appear to have changed their position on PPL, and now look like they will oppose the scheme in the Senate. From The Australian:
The government has failed to meet the key conditions laid down to win the Greens’ vote for the policy while new objections have emerged over the omissions from the budget. All crossbench senators are on track to vote against the policy while the Greens have hardened their position amid fears the government will cut spending in other areas to help pay for the Prime Minister’s election promise.
Treasurer Joe Hockey wrongly claimed yesterday the scheme was “fully paid for” by a levy of 1.5 per cent on big companies when the original costings show other savings will need to be found.
The Coalition’s election policy shows the PPL payments would cost $9.8bn over four years, but the levy would raise only $4.4bn over the same period…
The Greens will not accept any scheme that eats into general government funding, forcing the government to rely wholly on the levy…
Without the Greens’ support, PPL cannot pass the upper house, given Labor, the Palmer United Party, and the cross-benchers are also opposed.
