Idolising Children?

New Matilda is undergoing a change, the magazine and policy portal will sperate and the policy portal will actually become the new Centre for Policy Development.

In the meantime, I’ve had a piece outlining some policy ideas around work-life balance published today - here.

The key to the piece is that policy can work over time. By this I mean it may not have an immeadiate impact, but good policy can actually change the atmosphere of a workplace and support cultural change in the long term.

That is what the ideas in Beyond maternity leave: policies to shift our work culture are about.

Interestingly, the piece was written before Labor decided to dump their own maternity leave policy.

Which makes getting beyong maternity leave that extra bit harder, or so you’d expect.

The ALP women over at Emily’s List should be angry. I know their focus is on getting more women elected to parliament, but someone has to ask exactly what do Labor think they are doing?

They have dropped their two-year unpaid maternity leave policy.

The idea is that it will give Rudd more “family-friendly flexibility”. But, all that gives him his some fancy alliteration.

In any decent suite of policies supporting families and supporting the development of children requires a decent policy on maternity leave.

I noted Jon Faine on ABC Melbourne the other day questioning whether Rudd is just a “lighter shade” of John Howard. If policy decisions like this keep being made there will be no doubt.

The ALP maternity leave policy was the backbone to their support for those families out there in the mortgage belts. That was the policy that says we value the fact you want to have children, we value the fact you feel over worked and want to spend more time with them, we value parents and we respect children enough to give them policies that mean working mums and dads can try as best they can to spend more time with their children - especially when they are very young.

This move has barely registered in the pages of the daily newspapers.

Of course, the policy is yet to be adopted at the national conference next month. I’d be urging Labor member’s to let those currently steering the ship that policies like this are not in the interests of their core constituents - working families.