Tony Abbott's parental leave scheme is his first serious misstep. The plan allows for 6 months parental leave paid up to the equivalent of $150K per year, and it will be funded by a 1.7% tax on companies paying company tax of $5M and over per year http://bit.ly/abtVNd.

While it might put pressure on the government and please high-end professional women, as well as their much lower paid sisters, it will distort the tax base, penalise large companies for a populist policy and pay people for doing something that they ought to do for the love of it, thus undermining traditional liberal value of self-reliance.

You can see why Abbott is doing it - he has a problem with women, particularly middle-class ones - and this is one way of buying their approval. Yet it is so generous it may well backfire. It amounts to a $75K payment to a parent on the higher end, which is so ludicrously generous even the government might be able to lampoon it. It has also brought the business lobby out against it.

Even if it turns out to be smart politics, it represents a step on the road to South American populism that is unwise in any opposition that intends at some stage to be in government and is not in the best interests of the country.

Let's hope that Tony Abbott gets back to making the government accountable rather than providing distractions from their performance like this one.

Tony Abbott is no Mark Latham and until he stops shadow boxing as Latham did very successfully against John Howard, Tony will continue to run into challenges that while today may not be of concern the cumulative effect may be very damaging come election time.
A little less action and some real policy work may be the best thing for Tony Abbott. These new policies he is announcing were not in Turnbulls bottom draw, so one must suspetc Tony has rushed to the old desk in the study opened the policy draw and picked a few old policies dusted them off, a change here and there and we now have Tony's policy answers to everything.

This is aimed, at higher payed women, mostly in public service & academic jobs, I believe. Most of these are so rusted on labor, that no amount of bribery is likely to win their vote. Labor has already bought & paid for this vote, with their affirmative action policy.

The unfairness of the policy however, may cost him the vote of more than a few checkout chicks, & accounts clerks, & rightly so.

Tony's obviously in a bidding war with Kevin Rudd at the moment where he's got to fire his big guns to negate Kevin's.

I was thinking about Abbott's policy last night and thought that the $150k cutoff and 100% income compensation are too high.

A cutoff of $100k and a 75% income compensation would be better. That is, women who earn up to $100k would get 75% of their income for the period they are on maternity leave. I reckon this strikes a better balance as well as being more affordable. The deal can't be too low where women are dissuaded from having kids and it can't be too high where (some) women can bludge off the system and take it for granted.

I have to agree with Graham here. This is all about sly politics,
trying to buy enough votes to get him over the line, but its
bad economic policy and overall, not to the benefit of the
country.

The thing is, its not as if big companies will be the ones to
finally pay for it either. If big companies make less profit,
they pay less dividends. The major shareholders in big companies
are of course super funds, who hold that wealth on behalf of
super fund contributors. So if you have money in a super fund,
you'll be paying for it.

Tony is slyly taking money out of your back pocket and giving it
to those whose vote he might be able to purchase, to become
PM. Most likely, unless you think about it, you won't even notice.

In Russia before “perestrojka” paid maternity leave used to be for the period of one year. Mother would be getting full time wages to look after child. And up to three years right to return back to work to the same position she left before giving birth. Well, also paid [sick] leave for two months before child birth. Though no freedom to pass that all to father…
10% flat income tax