Australia falls behind OECD on paid parental leave

Labor has recently announced it is looking to Nordic countries for inspiration to overhaul Australia’s Paid Parental Leave scheme, which has been called out for being miserly compared to Australia’s OECD peers. Advocates say changes to the scheme could reduce the carer and housework gender gap, increase parent-infant bonding, reduce the gender pay and Superannuation gap, and improve overall health and wellbeing for families. In today’s analysis, Belinda Townsend (@BelTownsend) and Lyndall Strazdins, both of ANU and the NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence on Health Equity (@crehealthequity), provide some history and context for how the Paid Parental Leave Scheme came to be, outline some of its strengths and weaknesses, and provide guidance for how to improve it going forward.