From 1 January 2011, Australian families in which a mother was in the paid workforce before the birth or adoption of a baby may be eligible for a new Australian Government-funded Paid Parental Leave (PPL) scheme. The scheme provides eligible parents with up to 18 weeks of Parental Leave Pay, paid at the National Minimum Wage, following the birth of a child.

The Australian Government seeks to achieve three main objectives in introducing the scheme:

• to enhance the health of babies and mothers, and the development of children, by enabling working mothers to spend longer at home with their newborn children
• to facilitate women’s labour force participation
• to encourage gender equity and improve the balance of family and work life in Australian families.

An independent evaluation of the PPL scheme was completed over four phases between 2010 and 2014. This report describes the results of the phase 2 evaluation of the initial operation of the scheme. It focuses on answering the following questions: 

1. What are the main elements and components of the PPL scheme, their rationale and inter-relationships, focusing on the scheme’s original design?
2. How has the scheme operated on its implementation? To what extent is the PPL scheme operating as intended, and what factors have resulted in any discrepancies between intent and actuality?
3. What have been the immediate outcomes of the PPL scheme in its early months of operation, and what factors have impacted on these outputs and outcomes?
4. What have been the lessons learned about the design and operation of the PPL scheme?

The evaluation questions are answered primarily through data collected specifically for the PPL evaluation. The evaluation consists of: 

• A Policy Implementation (PI) study, involving 16 in-depth interviews with departmental staff and analysis of press coverage relevant to the development and implementation of the PPL scheme.
• A Mothers Process Evaluation (MoPE) study, involving a survey of a random sample of mothers who were eligible for PLP and had taken or were approved to take PLP (N=800) and those who were eligible for PLP but had applied for the Baby Bonus instead (N=101). In addition, in-depth interviews were also conducted with a subsample of 97 mothers and fathers. These interviews focused on groups of special interest (i.e. casual and self-employed before the birth, single mothers, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mothers, and fathers who took PLP).
• An Employers Implementation Phase Evaluation (EIPE) study, involving a survey of a stratified random sample of employers who had provided PLP to at least one employee (N=501) and in-depth interviews with a purposive sample of 41 employers.