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This article uses time-diary data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC; N = 2,157 weekday diaries; N = 2,110 weekend diaries) to examine differences in infants' time with a resident father at age 4-19 months according to fathers' duration of leave around the birth. Results showed that those infants whose fathers took 4 weeks' leave or longer spent no more time with their father than did infants whose fathers took a shorter leave or no leave. We observed a positive association between any leave and sole father care on weekend days but not weekdays. The findings suggest that moderate increases in leave duration may not promote greater father involvement in Australia.

Since the early 1980s Australian public policy has undergone the most major transformation since Federation. This transformation has been underwritten by two key principles: liberalism--the view that citizens are autonomous individual actors whose interests are best served when they are free from coercive government interventions into individual action; and marketisation --the belief that free markets are arenas which best enable individual autonomy and produce efficient economic outcomes. These principles define 'neoliberalism' or 'hard liberalism'. After summarising the major policy changes identified with neoliberalism in Australia, the paper introduces a new research project that examines its impact on socioeconomic inequality, gender inequality and politics and culture. Inspection of relevant data indicates that there are important trends in inequality, public opinion and political behaviour that warrant this investigation. Keywords: Neoliberalism, Inequality, Politics, The 1980s and 1990s saw the most profound transformation of Australian public policy since World War II and one that fundamentally reworked a framework in place since Federation (Castles et [...]