Economists warn Pauline Hanson’s stance on parental leave and childcare could set back decades of progress

Economists have warned that the suite of family policies proposed by One Nation leader Pauline Hanson could reverse decades of progress for working mothers, damage national productivity and deepen gender inequality.

Maternity leave and the gender gap

In a speech to the National Press Club on Wednesday that was briefly interrupted by a protest organised by GetUp!, Hanson appeared to question the principle of paid maternity leave. “If women take time off and they are not paid their wages because they’re not working, fair enough. Why should business pay? But they’re not at work. That’s the difference. That’s why the pay gap is there,” she told the audience.

Paid parental leave is not compulsory for employers, though many offer it to attract and retain staff. All employees are entitled to 12 months of unpaid leave. The government’s Paid Parental Leave scheme, which from 1 July offers parents 26 weeks at the national minimum wage, is part of a phased expansion: under current policy the scheme provides 24 weeks from July 2025 and will rise to 26 weeks from July 2026, according to the government’s published plans. Historically, Hanson has argued that paid parental leave could be exploited, claiming women could “get themselves pregnant … just for the money”.

Dr Leonora Risse, an associate professor in economics at Queensland University of Technology who has previously worked for the Productivity Commission and Harvard University, said any move away from paid leave would have severe consequences. “Questioning these policies is actually winding back the clock to many decades back, where it wasn’t an even playing field, and the gender gap was much wider,” she said. “It isn’t just the financial implications for women, it is also setting women back in terms of decision-making, having financial independence, having a say, having status and respect in society.”

Risse emphasised that competitive paid parental leave helps women maintain their connection to the workforce, which in turn lifts productivity. “If women can sustain their involvement and their attachment to the workforce and to their employer during their child-bearing years, that’s positive for productivity because it maintains a good job match,” she said. “We’ve worked really hard to validate that case and to prove that it has a productivity benefit as well as a wellbeing benefit.”

Silvia Griselda, research manager at the e61 Institute with a PhD in economics from the University of Melbourne, whose work focuses on the gender pay gap, childcare and labour force participation, warned that encouraging women not to work would stunt economic growth. “Women, on average, tend to be more educated than men, so if you’re asking half of the workforce to not work … it means that we are kind of limiting the growth and the productivity of the Australian economy,” she said. Griselda added that such a shift would create skills shortages, forcing Australia to rely on higher immigration to fill gaps.

Guardian Australia asked One Nation whether the party would continue to support government-funded paid parental leave, but received no response.

Income splitting and financial independence

Hanson also called for the introduction of income splitting for families with at least one dependent child. Under the proposal, both parents would add their incomes together and split the total, meaning the combined income would be subject to two tax-free thresholds. One Nation’s website states the policy will “encourage parents to look after their own children, and reduce the cost to the government of childcare, especially pre-school. It will also encourage homeschooling.” The party claims the measure would save a single-income family earning the average wage approximately $9,500 per year in tax. Similar arrangements exist in countries including France and the United States.

Risse cautioned that income splitting, while superficially equitable, could undermine women’s hard-won financial autonomy. “One of the ways in which gender equality policies have progressed over time is for women to actually gain the right to have their own bank account, their own financial stream, and not to be dependent,” she said. “Income splitting could sound potentially equitable in practice, but it also introduces potential risk or compromise in terms of women’s financial independence.”

Griselda linked the proposal to broader economic harm. “Her point is we don’t like to pay tax, that we should reduce the tax, that’s why we shouldn’t pay for parental leave or childcare. Let’s let the mother stay home. This in the long run, or even in the short run, will definitely limit the economy.”

Childcare overhaul plans

Hanson also called for a radical overhaul of the childcare system, which currently costs about $16bn a year. She described the system as “completely out of control” and demanded an investigation, proposing that government funding be paid directly to parents rather than to childcare providers. She questioned the requirement for childcare staff to hold degrees, citing her own experience: “I was a mother of four children. I didn’t have a university degree to look after my children. Why do we now expect these childcare centres to have students or people with some sort of degree to look after a child?”

Caroline Croser-Barlow, chief executive of early learning advocacy group The Front Project and a former public service policy adviser, pushed back strongly. “We have an economy that expects two parents to work and then say we’re not willing to invest in high-quality safe environments for your child,” she said. “You wouldn’t let a plumber work on a house without a map of the plumbing, right? So why would you let people looking after your children, developing their brains, without having had the opportunity to learn and understand what really works?”

She also warned that channelling money directly to parents carried “very high fraud risk” and could compromise both quality and safety. The current childcare system is regulated under the National Quality Framework, with the government providing assistance through the Child Care Subsidy. Despite record female workforce participation of 63.5 per cent as of July 2025, the national gender pay gap remains at 11.5 per cent, and women continue to undertake significantly more unpaid care work than men. Griselda concluded that the combined effect of Hanson’s proposals would be damaging for households and the economy at large.