Immorality Act

She is a member of the Order of Australia and was named one of 2025's Global Women of Influence.

Today, we're talking about what it costs to be powerful in public, but small in private, and what it takes to finally cut away what is no longer yours to carry.

Let's get to the podcast.

Hi, I'm Danielle and I'm so glad that you're here because together we're going to work through big stuff.

And so I literally built a business case for paid maternity leave.

I built a business case for childcare, for job sharing, for flexible work practices.

But the important one about the paid maternity leave was I showed them that If we pay 1,000 women, which was the average number of women going on maternity leave in a year in the 90s, six weeks paid maternity leave, and we did one week's paid paternity leave, and we increased the return to work rate from below 50% to 65% in what is regarded as a good project payback period, which is three years, then we would recover the costs of paying that maternity leave by minimising the costs of replacing those women.

Because back then we didn't have the internet, so you paid advertising costs, you paid recruitment costs, you paid consulting costs.