Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Community Services) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I thank the Senate for its indulgence. The Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, the Hon. Jenny Macklin, has released a fertility policy statement today in which she refers to how Australians are working harder than ever but are seeing little return for their toil. She has referred to children as being increasingly seen as a burden. I quote: ‘Children are increasingly being viewed as carrying an impossible level of responsibility and compromise for parents.’ As a parent, I have some disagreement with this particular statement and a number of others that are in this document. Children are undoubtedly an obligation, but they should never be referred to as a burden. They are an obligation in which parents rejoice; parents rejoice in their ability to help foster and nurture the development of our future generations.

I understand that Minister Macklin has made these comments in reference to what had hitherto been a declining birth rate in Australia. Over the decade in which the previous government was in power, the birth rate actually climbed, however subtly. That demonstrated that support for working families and for parents was very much forthcoming. The fact is that Australian people are choosing to have fewer babies than they would have had in generations past. But that does not mean that they are not having children. Yes, mothers are often having children later in life, but that is simply because they have other opportunities available to them. Those opportunities are available by virtue of increasing education among women. More women are now committed to careers and to the workplace environment.

The minister talked about how a declining birth rate has not been arrested. That is simply not true. The birth rate increased under the previous government. It is now approximately 1.86 children. I am not sure how you have 0.86 of a child, but the fact is that the birth rate is slowly increasing over the course of time. This is a tribute and a credit to the policies of the previous government.

In reference to some of the suggestions that the minister has made, she has asked the Productivity Commission to look at the economic and social costs and benefits of paid maternity, paternity and parental leave. Paid maternity leave would certainly benefit working women. But the baby bonus, as it is referred to, is paid as a lump sum to individuals irrespective of their work status. In effect, they are getting many weeks worth of the average wage, which will assist them in bringing home their children and with the initial costs associated with child care. The extension of this into paternity and parental leave is quite a vexed issue. It relates directly to the environment in which women find themselves. Often, they want to pursue their careers. If they choose to pursue their careers and choose not to have children, no amount of money will change their minds, quite frankly, because that is what they are committed to. We should not force people to have children by any stretch or try to bribe them to have children. All we need to do is to ensure that children are born into an environment in which there are sufficient resources to get them through to school age and through school, where they can be taught to grow up into responsible and well-educated citizens who have opportunities.

I am a bit worried about this because the minister has acknowledged that the Productivity Commission’s report will not come up with a magic bullet—words which in fact bear a remarkable similarity to what the former Treasurer, Peter Costello, said in a press interview in 2002. In fact, they were the words: ‘There is no magic bullet.’ But Treasurer Costello acknowledged that support for parents does not limit itself to paid maternity leave or maternity leave full stop. There are any number of women who choose to stay at home and look after their children or who choose not to enter the workforce on a full-time basis. These are the people that this statement by the minister completely overlooks. That is what concerns me. We should not be forcing people back into the workforce if they do not want to go into the workforce but choose to stay at home and look after their children. There is no more honourable profession, in my opinion, than that of staying at home and helping to raise your children and providing them with the guidance that is necessary. And those people need to be given the appropriate support for this.

This is what I think the government has overlooked. It is so obsessed with giving people opportunities to return to work that it is overlooking those who are pursuing the equally valuable and important task of staying at home and looking after children. Over the course of time these sorts of costs—maternity leave and such—will be borne either by the taxpayers of Australia or by individual businesses. The real test will be how we implement that whilst maintaining prudent fiscal responsibility and support for mothers—and fathers, quite frankly—who choose to stay at home and raise their children, thus relieving our childcare centres of overcrowding and thus relieving the public purse in many instances from having to look after their children.

I welcome any inquiry that is going to support families and encourage children but I have concerns about the scope of the reference that the minister has proposed. I think the government would do much better to consider in a much broader approach the potential benefits of maintaining support for non-working mothers. There needs to be further encouragement along this line because no child is better off than when they have a parent at home with them for as long as possible until they start at school.

Question agreed to.