But perhaps some of the conceptual slippage (which is really important politically) is understandable. The policy has more than one aim – and one of its aims is to foster early childhood development, and the assumption here is that direct involvement of a parent or parents is crucial at the early stages of infancy. But, nevertheless, it is worth reinforcing the fact that insofar as non working mothers have made a choice not to work, that under the current policy design, 10 hours a week for a year would be enough to trigger the paid parental leave entitlement.

So, that’s that. But there are some ambivalences around all this, some of which I share. Writing today in The Australian, George Megalogenis launches an assault on “middle class welfare”, giving readers a history lesson about when family payments took off, and pointing out that in the age of Menzies they were small change. The implication seems to be explicitly that politicians are in the habit of tossing bribes around, and that virtuous self-reliance was the norm for 50s and 60s Australia. What this ignores, though, is that Menzies Land was surrounded by high tarriff walls and as a result of the Australian settlement, had a highly regulated wage system that was openly premised (from Higgins onwards) on the male wage as a breadwinner’s wage sufficient to support two adults and the then average number of children.

As Kim pointed out in a post here a month or so ago, reflecting on Betty Friedan’s legacy, the second wave of feminism and the movement for women’s workforce participation coincided with the increasing inability of a sole wage to sustain the level of consumer demand that sustained a consumption oriented “modern industrial economy”. Feminism, if you like, lent a hand to save capitalism. Megalogenis is right to point to remaining hurdles in the tax/welfare mix to participation in the labour market, but I want to trouble the logic that this should be the sole aim of policy.

In doing so, I don’t want to argue that those barriers should not be addressed, nor that a thorough going review of the welfare and tax systems is in fact vital. The current demands for a $30 increase in the single aged pension are a symptom of the dysfunction inherent in segmenting the worthy demographics according to short term political advantage. Not only do such demands ignore those on disability and other pensions, but they also don’t do anything whatever to address the urgent needs of those who are poorest. (And not all pensioners are in that category – consider the plethora of concessions and also housing ownership, as well as the fact that many pensioners enjoy significant levels of wealth and income, not to mention the fact that the pension is set at a rate above the poverty line, unlike other benefits such as NewStart.) The recent Catholic Social Justice Statement identified horrific levels of poverty and social exclusion across a number of parts of the community, but as Eleri Harris noted in Crikey, it was more or less ignored in the media and political debate.

Lots of folks are actually “doing it tough”, and while that shouldn’t provide an excuse to ignore the need to redress the plight of pensioners of all stripes, nor should it mean that a quick fix should trump a holistic examination – with social justice principles foremost in mind – of disadvantage and welfare globally throughout the Australian community.

I was also interested to read this contribution from jo on the Parentonomics thread:

In respect of middle class welfare – I believe it psychologically binds people into a ‘cradle to grave’ welfare mindset and therefore they are more likely to feel emotionally connected to the system and will therefore support the entire system, including OAP’s, disabled and carers pensions, unemployment benefits etc, of which they may never need, as others may never require child related payments. (Not sure if there is more support for Govt welfare schemes than in previous periods, & how would you account for the relentless top down neo-con conditioning over past decade or so.)

Obviously, there are matters of fairness in respect of overall tax burdens, thresholds, bracket creep etc – and there is also the matter of the current situation where some pension payments have dropped below cost of living etc – which needs to be rectified and hopefully will be soon, but the idea that idea that people on middle incomes paying their correct level of PAYE taxes are just ‘bludging on the system’ is not reasonable and pretty narrow-minded, frankly.

This does underline the fact that in neoliberal regimes, the promotion of private “choice” (with reference primarily to healthcare and education) leaves the public system looking like a residual safety net, and as middle class voters withdraw from universal public health and education, correspondingly political support for universal provision has a tendency to drop. The same logic is at work with the division of welfare into “worthy” and “undeserving” recipients – which is why (among other reasons including basic civil rights) the small carrot/big stick approach to poverty and disadvantage is worth fighting, although very few are prepared to take up the cudgels.

There is no doubt that an “entitlement mentality” has been created, and that it becomes a social fact. In many instances such a mentality – which is encouraged by political segmentation of the population – undermines the universality and legitimacy of redistributive spending as a whole. But it doesn’t mean that we should place the purported needs of the labour market and the supposedly universal value of work (however demeaning, poorly paid and alienating the jobs provided are) above all else. What it does mean is that we should start thinking about employment rights and the welfare system from the point of view of the community as a whole, and particularly from the point of view of justice.

The baby bonus would be abolished and replaced with a $5000 parental allowance.