Tuesday 7 March 2017

12.15 - 1.30pm, Miller Theatre
JG Crawford Building
Speaker: Matthew Taylor

Parental Leave Pay (PLP) provides $12,000, to just under 170,000 families every year. At an annual (gross) cost of $1.97 billion PLP provides $672.60 a week for up to 18 weeks that the primary claimant , 99.4 per cent of whom are birth mothers, remain on parental leave after the birth of a child.

In Budget 2015-16 the Abbott government courted controversy by proposing a dollar-for-dollar reduction in PLP for every dollar of PLP claimant’s Primary Carer Pay (PCP) workplace entitlements. In the wake of wide spread concern about the design of the Removing Double-Dipping from Parental Leave Pay budget measure it was abandoned and replaced with a week-for-week reduction by the Turnbull government in the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook 2015-16. More recently the government has signalled its intention to follow through with PLP reform while providing a two week increase in PLP entitlement as a sweetener to get the reforms through the Senate.

Matthew Taylor is a Research Fellow in the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods. His research interests include economic modelling, applied econometrics, labour economics and social policy.

More information and registration is available here.