It is good seeing Abbott try to keep a promise. However it was a silly promise, & we should all hope he fails.

To me a kid is a kid is a kid. If we are going to support the mother of one, we should offer exactly the same support to all mothers. This is one area where one size must fit all.

However why should we support any. It is a life choice to have or not to have a kid. Surely it should be made with the intention to support that kid, & a decision made by the would be parents capacity to do so.

As others have said, most of us had no such support, & our kids are fine.

I hope this is a lesson to Abbott. Don't be a Rudd. Talk to your party room, before you have another rush of blood to the head.

Stupid off the cuff decisions is one of the main reason we wanted Rudd gone. Don't you start copying him, or the back door awaits.

An interesting bit of public lobbying, from "a Christian, pro-life, pro-family Australian Non-Government Organisation", who are a fringe groupuscule of predominantly religious folks.

"I am writing this in the hope that you will take note of the anxieties of a particular constituency of conservative voters who form part of the natural base of support for the Coalition parties."

This would normally carry an implicit threat, "...or we won't vote for you next time".

In reality, they have nowhere else to go. Hence the entirely apt response from Ms Credlin:

"We will have to agree to disagree"

In my view, the PPL proposals that Mr Abbott carelessly put his name to were little more than an election gimmick, from which for some reason he felt unable to back down. Unlike similar gimmicks such as "no cuts to the Aged Pension" and "no funding cuts to the ABC".

But hey, give him time.

This bill is not only outrageously unjust and unfair, it's an insult to feminism (or at least what feminism means to me). Nothing in any feminist theory that I know of justifies making the poor pay for the lifestyles of wealthy women.

As if it's not enough that almost 40% of the annual superannuation government contribution ($30 billion) goes to the top 6% of earners, we are now being expected to fork out even more inequitable government contributions that favour the rich.

And not only does it discriminate against stay-at-home mothers, as Babette succinctly argues, the bill also discriminates against self-employed women (identical to the ongoing superannuation injustices applying to women in both categories).

How the government can justify such blatant pro-rich discrimination in these austerity-mad times is beyond belief.

Pericles,

"In my view, the PPL proposals that Mr Abbott carelessly put his name to were little more than an election gimmick, from which for some reason he felt unable to back down. Unlike similar gimmicks such as "no cuts to the Aged Pension" and "no funding cuts to the ABC".

But hey, give him time."

Yup...I think at this stage of proceedings he'll be quite relieved when PUP blocks it in the Senate.

Killarney - Well said.

'An interesting bit of public lobbying, from "a Christian, pro-life, pro-family Australian Non-Government Organisation", who are a fringe groupuscule of predominantly religious folks. '

we know Pericles you prefer lobbying by a unChristian, pro death, anti family funded Government body who are predominantly non religous except for their gw faith.

Babette has highlighted a number of the inconsistencies in the Abbott PPL and the most obvious being the claims by Abbott and Hockey that, "if it's alright for blokes to get paid when on annual leave or sick leave why shouldn't mothers be paid when on maternity leave".

Clearly the annual leave and sick leave are employment entitlements paid as part of the employment agreement whilst Abbott wants his scheme to be funded, essentially, by the taxpayer: levies, taxes whatever.

The payment should be made by the employer and not Centrelink: the employer can recover outlays, if that is the way we go, by way of taxation offsets but, to maintain the link between the employee and the employer the payment must come from the employer as an employment entitlement