A quick reminder about the birds and the bees for our federal parliamentarians – the standard pregnancy lasts nine months, give or take.
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Getting pregnant is another matter.
Which makes it all the more confounding that senators Nick Xenophon and Derryn Hinch think that moving the start date of any changes to paid parental leave back to October 1 next year is an astute move.
In Senator Hinch's case, he's up for a start date of July 1 next year.
Assuming the best possible scenario for the Turnbull government is that its changes are passed in November, that still leaves only seven months for people to absorb the news and get pregnant, if that's what they want to do.
Because we all know getting pregnant is as easy as that.
Guys, are you really so out of touch?
But the start date has become a big distraction from the main issue, which is the changes themselves. Changes that the Turnbull government never even took to the Senate last year because it could not win the support of Senator Xenophon.
About 18 months ago Joe Hockey and Scott Morrison found themselves embarrassed when they described women who used paid parental leave as it was always designed to be used as double-dippers and rorters.
The government's man (yes, another one), whose job it is now is to get these changes passed, Social Services Minister Christian Porter, uses very different language but the perception has stuck.
Suddenly it feels like we're back in the dark ages, when motherhood was the most important thing women could ever do – so long as they didn't expect any help.
So let's go back to the scheme itself and the Productivity Commission report that it is based on.
The commission was very clear that parental leave is a workplace entitlement, not a welfare payment, which is why it is paid by your employer, not the government.
It is 18 weeks at the minimum wage which is $672.70 a week. That's $17.70 an hour, although anyone who has been a parent would know, the real hourly rate is much lower because parenting is a 24 hour a day job, not an eight hour shift.
The 18 weeks were always supposed to be paid to women (and it is overwhelmingly women who claim the payment) in conjunction with whatever scheme their employer provided.
It is means-tested on the income of the mother at $150,000 a year. Again, the means test applies to the mother's income because it is designed to be a workplace entitlement not a welfare payment.
More than 75 per cent of people who participated in the scheme are on incomes of less than $70,000 a year, according to the Department of Social Services.
That's a touch more than a third of the $199,040 per annum base rate paid to federal MPs (68 per cent of whom are male).
Thanks to the enduring gender pay gap and a combination of other factors generally related to being mothers, the average woman's taxable income was $54,137 in 2011-12.
Australia's scheme, introduced in 2010, is described by the Economist as "stingy" by international comparisons, with OECD figures on the minimum length of paid maternity leave ranking us just above Portugal and the United States – which does not offer any leave at all.
An independent evaluation by the University of Queensland commissioned by the government found Australia's scheme had been successful in achieving its aims.
The aims included not just increasing the numbers of women going back to work after having children, although the scheme did that, but also "allowing those carers to take time off work to care for the child after the child's birth or adoption", "enhancing the health and development of birth mothers and children" and "promoting equality between men and women, and the balance between work and family life".
The government's changes would strip support for about 80,000 new parents each year.
Eighteen weeks would still be paid to people whose employer offered no parental leave.
But people whose employers did offer parental leave would only be paid the difference between their employer's scheme and the government's. So if your employer offers 10 weeks' leave the government would only, if the changes are passed, pay for another eight weeks.
What the government is doing is scrapping three out of the four intended aims of the scheme.
Women's health, their babies' health, having time to care for their baby and continuing to strive for equality between men and women are no longer of concern.
All it is interested in is getting women back to work.
