The Inverse Problem...

...The "inverse problem" consists in using the results of actual observations to infer the values of the parameters characterizing the system under investigation...

...The character of the problem here is the prepondency of the poor to breed...!

As the breadwinner in a single-income family with four children I often felt discriminated against. Particularly when our income was just above the cutoff for many things that supported larger families.

We never got the Colour TV Bonus from the Ruddster. We got savaged with thousands to repay in Family Allowance because periods out of work made my income hard to predict.

We lived through it fine and now our kids are grown and some are struggling to finish studies and find work.

The PPL scheme is a Mercedes plan for a country in need of cutting back to a second-hand Toyota. It is however very fair; the people who get the most have paid the most tax, their partners likely pay the most tax, and will all their lives. YAY fairness!

It is a corrupted and vicious feature of Government that the people like me pay lots of tax and get very, very few handouts; and often I find the penalties and costs to get the measly share near the cutoff level, make it far worse to be in the system than out of it.

I rejoice that this viciously redistributive system is now not taking tax from me; I have been forced overseas to find work, and my tax now supports a foreign bloated plutocracy instead of the Australian 'taker' class.

The better off, who have been granted undeserved entitlements in recent years, courtesy of a wasted mining boom mark one, and the structural deficit that that simpleminded vote buying largess created; is a dog coming back to bite our economic backside.
The money proposed for helping just around 150,000 rich women to have babies, would be better spent in providing child care for all working women, regardless of their economic status, albeit, I would make it means tested, just to be sure, it actually assisted those millions who really needed it!
I'm am also open to the idea, of making nannies a tax deductible item, for very productive people, who run businesses that employ others, or earn more than 200, 000 per? The larger the gross, the bigger the deduction!
Other than that, we do need to crack on and for once and for all time end costly duplication, which could be costing the budget bottom line as much as 30%!?
Moreover, we could save as much again by more regional autonomy, and direct funding of most essential service!
We with just one single exception, are the most over governed people on the planet, and just need to get much of this unproductive parasitic element off our collective backs!
I mean, State parliaments, cost us 70 billion per, just for their existence, and before so much as a single piece of legislation has passed!
One only need see the sorry procession currently making its way to ICAC, to understand, that there are real savings to be made, just by closing down state run opportunities for endemic corruption, and indeed, its extreme cost to all those mugs out there in mugsville.
I am amazed by the memory loss of some of the participants and wonder, how on earth could these people, with their completely disabled memories, actually run or manage or oversee a business or serve as politicians/public servants?
Don't they keep diaries anymore?
Surely blind Freddy would and could do better, or even a drovers dog?
Rhrosty.

the parental scheme has no chance of success. Leave the wastage to Labour/Greens who destroyed a good economy in next to no time. Abbott obviously had a brain freeze. Thankfully those with unfrozen brains won't let this through. Abbott himself must be releived.

Congratulations to Babette on her excellent article. It’s well thought out and written. Unfortunately Mr Abbott is surrounded by careerist women at home where his 3 daughters have apparently some strong emotional connection, and of course C-O-S Peta Credlin at work. So feminism is alive and well at the very pinnacle of Australian political power. Don’t know what the answer is. It’s a pity the Prime Minister doesn’t have at least one son, and also a pity that his COS wasn’t a good bloke as Mr Abbott ran relate to feminist demands but is unable to relate to men's needs or single income families, who in the main, rely on men to support them.

Well, as the mother of four, grandmother of 19, and great grandmother of 5, I totally disagree with the comments about the PPL. Firstly, why is it acceptable for female politicians and public servants to receive an extremely generous parental leave program, and not women in private industry. Public Service women get 14 weeks at FULL pay, then are able to claim either the baby bonus or the Centrelink parental leave scheme. The leave can be stretched out and taken at half pay, so that a woman earning $200,000 a year (some public servants) can take 28 weeks off and be paid $50,000 plus. Yet this fact rarely get mentioned.
The other comment I take issue with is the one about disparency in the amount paid to each woman. Is it so difficult to understand that the money is not being paid for the baby, but for the woman's time? Are we to seriously entertain the idea that a brain surgeon should be paid the same for her time as a cleaner? Do we have so little value and respect for women who struggle for years to gain professional qualifications that we can then tell them their qualifications have no monetary value.
I fail to understand how any women wouldn't support this scheme. God knows I wish it had been around when I was trying to juggle work and babies. We are constantly being told that women are underrepresented in government, business, the professions. Well doh! I wonder why?