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Speaker 1: My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Arunda

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Speaker 1: Bungelung Calcuttin woman from Gadighl country. The Daily oz acknowledges

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Speaker 1: that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the

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Speaker 1: Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres

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Speaker 1: Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the

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Speaker 1: first peoples of these countries, both past and present.

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Speaker 2: Good morning, and welcome to the Daily os It's Thursday,

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Speaker 2: the twenty seventh of October.

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Speaker 3: I'm Zara and I'm Tom.

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Speaker 2: The dust has now settled on the federal budget, the

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Speaker 2: first of the Albanesi governments. Tom's had some sleep and

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Speaker 2: some time to digest it all. We're going to take

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Speaker 2: a closer look at just one aspect of the budget,

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Speaker 2: and that is what was in there for parents. But Tom,

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Speaker 2: before we get there, what's making headlines today?

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Speaker 3: Well, Zara, in case you hadn't had enough of numbers,

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Speaker 3: this week, the abs IS released its latest inflation figures

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Speaker 3: for the year to September. Seven point three percent was

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Speaker 3: the number. That's the highest level of inflation since nineteen ninety.

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Speaker 3: It comes, of course, the day after the federal budget

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Speaker 3: had its own predictions about inflation. It said that inflation

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Speaker 3: would peak at seven point seven five percent at the

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Speaker 3: end of the year, so we're certainly getting close to

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Speaker 3: that number now.

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Speaker 2: Medibank has confirmed that all of its customer data had

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Speaker 2: been accessed in a cyber attack earlier this month. Data

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Speaker 2: from health claims was also compromised in the breach, which

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Speaker 2: could reveal details of customers health procedures. Medibank's CEO apologize

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Speaker 2: unreservedly for the breach, calling it quote a crime design

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Speaker 2: to cause maximum harm to the most vulnerable members of

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Speaker 2: our community.

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Speaker 3: Sportswhear Giant added ass cut ties with Kanye West following

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Speaker 3: the rapper's anti Semitic comments in recent weeks. The company

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Speaker 3: called West's comments, which The Daily Os has deemed unsuitable

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Speaker 3: to include in this podcast, unacceptable, hateful and dangerous. They

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Speaker 3: estimated the cost of cutting West out of the company

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Speaker 3: would be three hundred and ninety million Australian dollars from

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Speaker 3: their net income for twenty twenty two.

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Speaker 2: And finally, for some good news, a ten year old

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Speaker 2: girl has climbed all two hundred and eighty two Scottish

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Speaker 2: monros after beginning the journey as a four year old

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Speaker 2: quin Young climbed her one hundredth Monro, which is a

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Speaker 2: Scottish mountain with a peak of over three thousand feet,

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Speaker 2: last August, with her father saying she wanted to climb

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Speaker 2: every monrow before finishing primary school. Young said she felt

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Speaker 2: proud of myself, but also a little upset because the

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Speaker 2: adventure with my dad's kind of finished. How beautiful, all right, So, Tom,

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Speaker 2: there was a lot in the federal budget earlier this

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Speaker 2: week and a lot to kind of break down. But

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Speaker 2: one of the things that we've certainly been speaking about

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Speaker 2: around the office is what was in the budget for parents?

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Speaker 2: Can you just start us off by setting the context.

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Speaker 2: Why has the federal budget included all these measures for parents?

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Speaker 3: Well, Zara, it really comes in the context of I

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Speaker 3: suppose we're talking about cost pressures in so many different

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Speaker 3: aspects of life, and the cost of parent children has

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Speaker 3: been a really significant issue for a long time really

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Speaker 3: in Australia, and there's a gender dimension to that issue

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Speaker 3: as well. We know there have been lots of stats

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Speaker 3: that have come out recently and stats over many years

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Speaker 3: really that in terms of the caring responsibilities, unpaid care

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Speaker 3: and in terms of the decision to stay home and

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Speaker 3: look after children. That we know that still today, overwhelmingly

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Speaker 3: it's more likely in heterosexual couples that it'll be the

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Speaker 3: mother that does that, and that's got all sorts of

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Speaker 3: economic impacts for I guess the participation of women in

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Speaker 3: the workforce. That time out of the workforce often kind

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Speaker 3: of results in lost income, and it's a big part

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Speaker 3: of debates about the gender pay gap and so many

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Speaker 3: other discussions about gender equality. A lot of it really

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Speaker 3: does come back to a real gender breakdown in parenting.

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Speaker 3: It's a big part of the story. And so there's

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Speaker 3: kind of two places where the government comes into that story.

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Speaker 3: One of them is in the way that the government

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Speaker 3: funds and supports parents to put their kids, young kids

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Speaker 3: into childcare. And the other one, going back even earlier

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Speaker 3: than that, is the way the government supports and requires

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Speaker 3: parental leave when parents have newborns. And we saw some

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Speaker 3: significant changes on both of those fronts in the budget.

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Speaker 2: Okay, so what was actually in the budget then?

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Speaker 3: So, as I said, there were really two main changes,

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Speaker 3: both of them we'd heard about in the weeks leading

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Speaker 3: up to the budget, but they were I suppose confirmed

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Speaker 3: for us on Tuesday. The first one was a change

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Speaker 3: to parental leave. So over the next few years, the

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Speaker 3: government plans to increase the mandated number of paid weeks

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Speaker 3: of leave for parents of newborns from eighteen weeks to

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Speaker 3: twenty six weeks, which is six months. But as well

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Speaker 3: as that, they're keen to emphasize what's called a use

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Speaker 3: it or lose it component to parental leave, which is

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Speaker 3: essentially it's something that Australia has had a very small

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Speaker 3: amount of this in the system in the past, but

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Speaker 3: it's common in other countries as well, where basically to

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Speaker 3: access that full six months parents have to so again

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Speaker 3: in kind of a dual parent family, both parents have

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Speaker 3: to take some leave to access the full amount, and

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Speaker 3: one of the main objectives of that is supposed to

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Speaker 3: be to encourage more fathers, specifically in heterosexual couples, to

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Speaker 3: take some of that leave and to I guess share

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Speaker 3: the care responsibilities more equally, and a lot of experts

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Speaker 3: argue that there's a link when you have systems like

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Speaker 3: that in terms of fathers taking more leave and then

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Speaker 3: subsequently kind of for the gender pay gap. So that

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Speaker 3: was one of the significant changes. There are sort of

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Speaker 3: some other changes just the way the system was framed

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Speaker 3: to I guess, make it more gender neutral language and

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Speaker 3: to incorporate couples who are not heterosexual couples, and I

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Speaker 3: guess to frame the whole parental leave system in a

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Speaker 3: more gender neutral way. And then the other change was

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Speaker 3: to childcare. So, as I mentioned before, the government pays

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Speaker 3: parents a subsidy for the fees to send their kids

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Speaker 3: to childcare. And this was really a change to the

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Speaker 3: rate of that subsidy. So the government sets, if you're

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Speaker 3: like a kind of a benchmark fee, which it considers

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Speaker 3: a normal fee level for childcare. It pays parents a

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Speaker 3: certain percentage of that depending on how much they earn.

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Speaker 3: And this basically for ninety six percent of parents with

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Speaker 3: young children, it increased that subsidy. And so essentially it's

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Speaker 3: kind of all in a wide range of benefits, including

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Speaker 3: for families on low and high incomes, that the government,

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Speaker 3: at the cost of kind of billions of dollars a year,

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Speaker 3: will pay additional subsidies for parents.

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Speaker 2: We'll be back in just a moment, but first a

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Speaker 2: message from our sponsor. You mentioned a little earlier that

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Speaker 2: this has been what can only be described as a

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Speaker 2: political battleground for a very long time. How did the

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Speaker 2: opposition respond to it?

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Speaker 3: So the opposition is broadly supportive. When we spoke to

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Speaker 3: Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume the other day, she said

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Speaker 3: to us that the Coalition would support these measures in

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Speaker 3: terms of voting for them in the Parliament. But it's

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Speaker 3: fair to say they expressed, I guess a broader range

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Speaker 3: of concerns, particularly about childcare. So on parental leave, their

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Speaker 3: main complaint was that it takes too long to kick in,

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Speaker 3: that it's only twenty twenty six when we'll get this

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Speaker 3: full six months of leave, and so that was the

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Speaker 3: criticism there, But when it came to childcare, it was

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Speaker 3: really more talking about the state of the sector. And

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Speaker 3: so the point that Jane Hume made to us when

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Speaker 3: he spoke to us the other day was that you know,

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Speaker 3: particularly in regional and rural areas, accessing childcare centers can

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Speaker 3: be a really real difficulty. Same in inner cities often

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Speaker 3: in terms of waiting lists and the really high price

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Speaker 3: of childcare centers in areas like that. So a number

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Speaker 3: of those sorts of issues, and then also you know

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Speaker 3: something that we've heard about in recent months, a workforce

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Speaker 3: issue in the sector. Childcare workers and early childhood education

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Speaker 3: workers are among the lowest paid workers in the country.

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Speaker 3: That's an issue that led a number of people from

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Speaker 3: the sector to stage a walkout earlier this year, calling

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Speaker 3: for better paying conditions, calling for I guess, you know,

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Speaker 3: sort of action to value and pay those workers more,

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Speaker 3: to attract more workers to the sector, and that's certainly

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Speaker 3: something the government is receptive to and recognizes as well.

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Speaker 3: So this budget did include asking the able C, the

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Speaker 3: consumer watchdog, to look at the childcare sector to figure

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Speaker 3: out what can be done to address some of these issues.

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Speaker 3: It's something that both sides of politics recognize, and I

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Speaker 3: guess alongside, you know, funding childcare and reducing the cost

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Speaker 3: for parents, there's that question about access and the sustainability

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Speaker 3: of the sector. That's a really important one to consider

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Speaker 3: as well.

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Speaker 2: Always helpful to have someone like Tom around to actually

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Speaker 2: explain these things and to take the jargon out and

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Speaker 2: to move beyond the numbers to just really understand how

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Speaker 2: budgets and how policy that is implemented by the government

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Speaker 2: will affect people like you and I. So thanks for

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Speaker 2: joining us, Tom, and thanks for putting an a stellar

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Speaker 2: effort during budget week. If you, like me, learned something

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Speaker 2: from today's episode, don't forget to hit subscribe so that

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Speaker 2: there is a TDA episode waiting for you every Weekday morning,

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Speaker 2: have a brilliant day, and of course we'll be back

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Speaker 2: again tomorrow