In 1995 Australia received close attention from the OECD and was the subject of a detailed OECD Economic Survey (OECD 1995a). Also that year the OECD Employment Outlook included a chapter on long term leave for parents, comparing OECD nations in terms of their paid parental leave provisions (OECD 1995b). The report drew attention to the increasing number of countries legislating for paid parental leave and that the average duration of statutory paid parental leave was also increasing. The report highlighted that Australia was lagging compared to many other OECD nations in that it did not have statutory paid parental leave provisions (OECD 1995b).
In 2002 the first volume of the OECD’s ‘Babies and Bosses’ series compared Australia with The
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Australia and the United States were the only nations which did not offer a statutory paid maternity leave scheme. The report also found that the statutory schemes of most nations paid a rate at, or close to, 100 per cent of the parent’s previous earnings (OECD 2007).
Unpaid parental leave
National unpaid maternity leave entitlements were introduced in 1979. A Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration test case led to the inclusion of 52 weeks unpaid maternity leave in federal awards for long-term employees who had 12 months continuous service with one employer (O’Neill et al 2010). Unpaid adoption leave was granted in 1985. In 1990, the provisions were renamed ‘parental leave’ and extended to fathers (Fair Work Australia 2011).
Unpaid parental leave entitlements were implemented legislatively in 1994 in the federal Industrial Relations Act 1988, and were carried over to the Workplace Relations Act 1996 and then the Fair Work Act 2009 (O’Neill et al 2010). The Fair Work Act 2009 provided an extension of the maximum period of unpaid parental leave from 12 to 24 months. The Fair Work Amendment Act 2013 (Cth) increased the amount of concurrent unpaid parental leave that can be taken by new parents from 3 to 8