Paid Parental Leave reserved periods

Question

Mr Flavel: I just refer back to what I said earlier, which is that the hard evidence on this suggests that, in that model of unlimited choice, if you want to call it that, you just get a bias towards the mother. Senator O'SULLIVAN: Have they had that choice before? Mr Flavel: This is just based on evidence from overseas and other examples of where you have provided this leave- Senator O'SULLIVAN: Can you provide that evidence? Mr Flavel: Yes, I'm very happy to. I'm pretty sure-although somebody will correct me if I'm wrong-that the Women's Economic Equality Taskforce actually looked at this issue and actually made a recommendation, based on that evidence, to have a kind of use-it-or-lose-it or reserved weeks model to deal with that known bias.

Answer

Please see attached answer.

Documents

• Question with answer (PDF) (opens in a new tab)
• DSS SQ26-000705.pdf (opens in a new tab)