I work in local government and am eligible for 16 weeks paid leave on half pay or 8 weeks full pay, conditional on having worked for them for at least 12 months. Unfortunately for me (and I am still so upset about this!) I have worked for them for about 16 months, but the first 12 months I was on a traineeship with them which apparently 'doesn't count'...so I don't get any paid leave at all. I can get up to 2 years unpaid leave and can go back to work part time until my kids reach school age.

At the moment I think leave really depends on who you are working for. Hopefully one day (it has been promised...but who knows when it will actually happen) there will be a nation-wide maternity leave scheme. mum's are one of the most important things in a baby/child's life and I don't think we should be forced to go back to work due to our financial situations.
Storm, You just reminded me with your story of your really unfair treatment re the traineeship (that really sucks!!!) one of the BIG differences we found with work conditions in Australia and the UK is there are so many ways employers get out of doing their statutory obligations in the different ways they employ people. My DH and I found that it was really hard to get permanent full time work in Australia and alot of the maternity benefits and leave etc are dependent on being perm full time. Lots of people are employed on a casual basis and this disqualifies them from so many benefits although the higher pay is always sold as a sweetener. I worked for a govt dept in Australia for about a year before they would employ me as permanent. So when they finally did employ me I would have had to wait another year to qualify for mat pay. I know this can happen in the UK as well but we found it more prevalent in Australia. The job situation for us got pretty bad. I was trained in Australia as a teacher but even so had to move outback to get work and even that only came up after a 6 month job search (and in that time it was impossible to get supply work). DH had a job at one point working about only 5 hours a week. We ended up spending all our savings we had brought with us from our UK house sale just paying for rent and food while we tried to find jobs.