With the exceptions of the current account deficit and poor balance of trade figures, it seems thereâs nothing that escapes Federal Treasurer Peter Costelloâs desire to claim the credit. In question time on Thursday, Government backbencher Phillip Barresi obligingly pitched this Dorothy Dixer to the Treasurer:
My question is addressed to the Treasurer. Would the Treasurer inform the House of the latest ABS statistics on births and fertility rates? What policies has the government put in place which have helped families in my electorate of Deakin and right across Australia? Why is this important for the future?
The Permanent PM in Waiting was pleased to announce that fertility rates were up â from 1.78 births per female over her reproductive life to 1.83 â the highest rate in 11 years. And of course, itâs all thanks to the Howard government that Aussie couples are rooting more and, more to the point, rooting more productively. Thatâs more than you can say for what theyâre doing in the workplace, where productivity hasnât grown over two years.
Weâre still a bit shy of the Treasurerâs fertility target â 2.1 births per reproductive female, so the Treasurer repeated his call for Australians to have âOne for Mum, one for Dad, and one for the country.â? Donât forget, thereâs a total of $1800 in baby bonuses for couples who meet their quota.
Iâm happy, this inaugural Blue Balls Day to partially endorse the Treasurerâs call â Aussies should be shagging more. So tonight would be a good night to get into the bedroom and have one for yourself, one for your partner and one to video-tape and send off to the Treasurer. Gay couples too â the Treasurer can sort out which tapes he actually wants to watch for himself.
Gummo
It’s presumably some time since you (or someone near to you) had a baby. thanks to the generosity of Pete Costello, the amount you now get per baby is $4100, going up to $5000 in July next year.
Even more incentive to get going in the bedroom, I say.
Keee-rist!
I’m so broke right now I don’t think I can wait for the bedroom. Might just have to get the little lady to pop in to the office and test out the desk.
Have you been talking to my husband? Tell him I’ve got a headache.
$5,000!
That’s more bucks for your bang.
But there must be a level of financial incentive when performance anxiety becomes a serious consideration.
Think of Costello, over there in the half light, beside the wardrobe, hands in pockets, jiggling his loose change, reminding you: “Oh, Yes! Hit the jackpot, and some of this is yours!”
Wanted: Mum
Salary: $5000 one-off payment, no super
Now let’s run through your duties in your new role as mother. Your first task will be to conceive a baby, which is hopefully fun and enjoyable for all concerned. Then you get pregnant and for nine months your duties will be mainly to eat, feel sick, and go through a fairly astounding physical transformation. As most of this can happen without too much conscious thought on your part, we’d be happy for you to take another role during this time period. You may be subjected to lots of random belly-pattings and talking-tos, especially if you are seen to consume alcohol, cigarettes, sushi, or anything else deemed ‘not good for baby’, however, we expect you will handle this admirably given your previous track record as a woman of having every aspect of your life monitored by do-gooding outsiders.
At around the 9 month point we envision you giving birth. This task will involve pushing a whole human infant out of your vagina. We know it sounds difficult, but we assure you billions of other women have successfully performed this task with a minimum of complications. Of course, you’ll need to sign a waiver saying that we (the government of Australia) aren’t liable for any injuries you might receive in the course of this particular task.
From birth onwards your role takes on a new and very challening aspect! You will be responsible for managing a new team and one or more new employees. Your new team will include, at minimum, one very demanding and vociferous infant, and will also possibly include a well-meaning but often quite befuddled male partner. Some living arrangements will of course vary, but we prefer not to know if you’re doing anything unconventional. We also expect you to feed the infant from your breasts several times a day, bathe the infant, ensure he or she isn’t exposed to anything dangerous, drive the infant about, shop for him or her, and other tasks not yet specified.
If you do decide to sub-contract any part of this infant managerial task, we will unfortunately penalise you quite heavily, and you will also be subjected to fairly regular commentary about how by putting your child in care you are in fact turning them into a sub-human monster doomed to a life as a drug-addict and prostitute.
Your new role as the mother of an infant will of course change rapidly and we hope you will enjoy the lifelong and challenging commitment you have made. Salary is non-negotiable, though we encourage you to pursue private investment.
Oh Kate, thats so fantastic I had to copy it and forward it to the women I work with!
So, fertility rates are the highest they have been for 11 years – and the Howard Government has been standing on our necks for 10 and a half years.
Looks like Howard and Costello are responsible as much for the decline in birth rates over this period, as for the recent increase in birth rates – after motherhood was commodified with the baby bonus.
Didn’t Andrew Leigh do some research that found there was little or no correlation between these payments and fertility rates?
Some call it prostitution, Costello calls it the baby bonus.
Don’t know about any research by Andrew Leigh. (Though I think there is a little bell ringing somewhere in my mother-addled brain that reminds me I saw something somewhere that related the current increase in the birth rate to the changing age profile of mothers – Peter McDonald the ANU demographer might be a better bet).
I suspect it’s probably a little too early to tell whether the baby bonus is actually influencing the current upturn in the birth rate, but at one level at least I hope it doesn’t. I don’t really like to think about the kind of person who might have a child in order to get their hands on $4,000 or $5,000.
Anyone with a slightly longer time frame can probably work out that $4,000 is pretty small beer against the lifetime cost of raising a child (with or without family tax benefit). And those people will probably have the same number of kids they would have had without the bonus.
Very good, Kate.
The salary should be upped from $5000, though. Taxpayers with dependents get breaks through the family tax benefit system. I think Part A can be up to $4000 per year for kids under 13. Part B, which is for single-income families, can be up to extra $3500 or something per year for kids under 5.
Child care supply is clearly an issue. But there are some serious subsidies (a 30% rebate I think). The Liberals are also looking at making it all tax deductible, which would help enormously. My view was always that, if anything, child care is likely to socialise kids at an earlier age, expose them to structured learning earlier, and just generally make them better put together. I am a heartless neo-liberal, though.
BBB
“child care is likely to socialise kids at an earlier age, expose them to structured learning earlier, and just generally make them better put together.”
Nothing controversial about that, BBB, IMHO. Sort of a replacement for the pre-industrial extended families that did the same sort of job. Dunno when or why we started thinking that 2 parents in a single house could provide all a bairn needs.
BBB’s right that there is more money to be had than just the $4,000 up-front bonus. But because the per child part of that (FTB part A) is income-tested on family income and the single income part (FTB part B) is income-tested on the second earner’s income, you really need to be a stay-at-home mum with a jobless or low-paid partner if you want to get anything approaching a ‘wage’. Middle-class mums who choose to go back to work aren’t really all that well compensated, except for a level of child care subsidy that doesn’t go anywhere near meeting that additional direct cost(but then, as Kate suggested, they aren’t real proper mums after all).
I suspect that we must be due for another big review of family and child care assistance though (we do that about once every 4-5 years or so).
Kate
Can I post that on a mothers’ forum I am part of? With full attributions and links to it here of course!
Oh, and maybe it was Bernard Salt that did the research you are all thinking about? Again, just dredging the dim memory….
Of course Megami.
Thanks Kate, it is here. I also linked to your website.
grace pettigrew is calling them commodities and Bob is calling them prostitutes. What bitter mean-spirited people you two must be to foist on ordinary Australian women these labels, just for receiving some financial assistance from their goverment.
Next from grace: unemployment benefits commodify the jobless.
BBB
BBB, it was a joke and I was just bagging the scheme, not the people who take it up.
Following the original baby boom, there was another huge spike in the birth rate in Australia in the early seventies. One would have expected another boom some twenty years later again, but not many people have babies at twenty any more. The second wave of baby boomers have now reached their mid-thirties and the women among them are scrambling to have a baby before it’s too late. Is that, rather than the stingy government bonuses (Singapore grants $15 000 per birth), the cause of the recent increase in birth rates?
my son is engaged to a girl who had a baby before they went together. he has been with her since the baby was 2 months old she is now 20 months old.his fiance still lives with her parents and they do not want the baby calling him daddy or us mommom and popop. they say they are lying to her. is this wrong?