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Proposed changes to Paid Parental Leave have been all over the news this week and amidst the noise and conflicting reports it's hard to get an accurate idea about what is going on.
Worse still the proposed changes have been touted to take effect from 1 January next year. Seriously! Pregnant women and families trying to financially plan for the arrival of a new baby do not need this kind of stress right now.
As you have probably heard the Turnbull Government has proposed legislative changes to prevent parents from 'double dipping', when it comes to receiving Paid Parental Leave.
Currently new parents can access both the government funded leave (18 weeks at the minimum wage) as well as any employer funded paid leave: 'double dipping' to coin a term you have probably heard more often than you'd like to in the last little while.
The government wants to save money by blocking new parents from receiving the government-funded scheme if they can access a greater amount of money via their employer-funded scheme. The change would affect around 80,000 (mostly) women who would be stripped of their government-funded entitlement, which equates to around $12,000.
Thankfully, it is looking increasingly unlikely the changes will take place in January due to strenuous opposition from the Labor Party, the Greens and South Australian Senator Nick Xenophon, who said the bill was 'manifestly unfair'.
Although this is good news for currently pregnant women, who will still receive their full entitlements, change is a coming and the Coalition seems determined to see this cost cutting measure through, with a change in law now predicted to happen in October 2017.
This means people thinking about starting a family should not count on being able to access both the employer funded and government-funded parental leave programs and should factor this into their financial planning.
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