AUSTRALIA: Call for paid maternity leave

SEX Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick and union and business leaders have joined forces to call for a national, taxpayer-funded, paid maternity leave scheme.

Ms Broderick, ACTU president Sharan Burrow and Australian Industry Group chief executive Heather Ridout said the move was needed to bolster the Australian workforce.

"In an extremely tight labour market Australia's continuing economic prosperity depends on encouraging more women back into the paid workforce after they've had children," Ms Burrow said.

"At the moment, Australia has one of the lowest workforce participation rates in the OECD for women aged 25 to 44.

"Part of the problem is a lack of paid maternity leave and other measures to support primary carers."

Employers offering paid maternity leave estimated up to 90 per cent of female employees returned to their job, avoiding the cost of replacing lost staff.

Ms Broderick said the coming together of the three influential organisations was a watershed moment in the long campaign to have Australia catch up with the rest of the world on paid maternity leave.

"Two-thirds of Australian women have no access to paid maternity leave," she said.

"(Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission) HREOC has long recommended a national government-funded 14 week paid maternity leave scheme as a basic minimum standard for Australian women.

"It is important that small and medium-sized business not be adversely impacted by the cost or administrative burden of any scheme and proposals must not act as a disincentive to the employment of women."

Ms Ridout said the Ai Group - which represents 10,000 employers in manufacturing, construction, automotive, telecommunications, IT & call centres, transport, labour hire and other industries - supports an appropriate period of publicly-funded paid maternity leave consistent with community and international standards and at the level of the federal minimum wage.

"There is no doubt that a national maternity leave scheme would deliver tangible benefits to business, employees and to the broader economy and society and, of course, for the children themselves," she said.

"In addition, such a scheme would help keep women linked to the workforce and demonstrate formal recognition of the opportunity costs facing women in terms of lost income and interrupted careers when they choose to have children."