Thank you, Babette, for telling Abbott, Hockey and the rest of the Coalition where they have gone so badly wrong.

The Abbott government seems to have turned its back on two-parent families struggling to survive on one breadwinner's income.

How can the Liberals and Nationals justify lavishing benefits such as paid parental leave on couples fortunate enough to have two full-time incomes and at the same time offer little or nothing to the unwaged at-home wife?

At the beginning of World War II, both the conservative United Australia Party under Menzies and the Australian Labor Party under Curtin supported the introduction of Child Endowment as a way of acknowledging the vital unpaid work done in the home, usually by mothers.

Now, 75 years later, we have both our major party blocks supporting the opposite policy. The conservative Coalition and Labor both support financially penalising two-parent families where the mother chooses to leave the paid workforce in order to raise children.

Labor under Rudd and Gillard slashed Peter Costello's baby bonus and increased funding for institionalised child-care.

The Liberals under Abbott and Hockey (and Peta Credlin, who seems to be the real power behind the throne) seem bent on perpetuating this anti-family jihad with their extravagant paid parental leave (PPL) scheme.

The only equitable policy would be the old Menzies/Curtin model of assisting families in a non-discriminatory fashion.

Financial assistance to families with children should take the form of an administratively simple $6,000 yearly cash payment (or tax deduction of equivalent value) for every child in the household under 17 years of age.

Such a policy would give parents maximum choice on how they raise their children.

The party that adopts this policy will have my vote at the next election.

John Ballantyne, Melbourne.

John from Melbourne, "Now, 75 years later, we have both our major party blocks supporting the opposite policy. The conservative Coalition and Labor both support financially penalising two-parent families where the mother chooses to leave the paid workforce in order to raise children"

As long as lobby groups can convince political parties that they can manipulate the media at will to embarrass, and they might deliver a small % of votes but enough to possibly swing a seat, the said political activists can influence policy.

The problem is that there is a silent majority. Just ask your local pollie who only gets to hear from the squeaky wheels. All the local pollies I have dealt with through voluntary work (school, sporting and community) have always heaved a sigh of relief when they came to our fund-raisers and AGMs because there were usually no secondary agendas and traps awaiting them.

However what politicians need to understand is that the silent majority who are too busy working, taking care of loved ones, providing for the future and living, do become exasperated and tip governments out of office.

This is a good article. Thank you to the author.

This articulate letter is spot on in everything it
says.

A question to the so called feminists out there,

Why are you supporting the idea that traditional
women's work, looking after babies and small children
has no value. That only women who work out side
the home are entitled to payment for staying home
looking after their children?

This is the belief that kept women enslaved and financially impoverished for centuries.
That their work had no monetary value to men or society.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for women working
outside the home when they have little children. I have encouraged
my daughters to do exactly that. Which they do.

What I am against,
is women who call themselves champions of women's rights
agreeing with men that motherhood has no value when done by women
who want to stay home and look after her their own babies for a couple
of years.

Why do you hypocritically line your own pockets while disparaging
the traditional work of women? Women the planet over need
a financial value put on the work they do as women.

I have read reports that show, daycare that includes some very basic or toddler steps, literacy and numeracy, incorporated into best practice child care, improves average rest of life numeracy and literacy, and or, identifies problems like dyslexia, before it has a chance to impact negatively on the learning progress, and early enough for remedial learning to make a huge difference.
One study of Australian voters showed that a huge majority would change their voting patterns, if this early learning were to be abolished, as Edmund Burke seems to want?
People who place their kids in long daycare, have little or no other choice!
That being so, it ought to include some early start education options, that give kids a flying start, in their overall education, and the later opportunities and huge advantage, that that early start can provide.
As for family payments A+B, I'd scrap them in favor of a serious lift in the tax free threshold, that would assist many more, and just not involve busy people in so much unnecessary time consuming complexity, which then results in an even larger bureaucracy!
And the one stop option for school and daycare is just too pragmatic a solution to shelve, as is much more local autonomy!
Which by the way, coupled to a direct funding model, would shave as much as 30% off of public health and education, both of which now need to be means tested; but particularly, if the age of entitlement is over.
People everywhere would be vastly better served by a really good education initially, so that they too get a chance to opt for the best paid professional jobs, rather than extend middle class welfare to people who should not need it!
Just that much change, would likely put the budget back in surplus, and limit the need, to attack the needy, as would equal treatment of super and pensions.
Why, someone with a good super plan can retire at 55, use up all his or her super, in say, 15 years, and then claim a full pension!
Rhrosty.

The science of climate change
First thing raised against sceptics – “Not a climate scientist – not even a scientist.
Was Al Gore, Lord Stern, Ross Garnaut, Peter Shergold? On the Climate Commission out of 6 there are only 2 scientists who have some expertise in climate, Prof Tim Flannery (Australian mammalogist) palaeontologist, environmentalist and Will Stefan a climate scientist.

Previously climate scientists trained in a specific branch of science (Climatology, Meteorology, Atmospheric physics, Oceanography, Geophysics, etc) and to analyse data, is such training adequate to make predictions about future temperature trends over the next 100 years. A scientist would need training in a branch of mathematics including, Applied mathematics, Mathematical modelling, Numerical modelling, Bayesian inference, Mathematical statistics and Time series analysis.
Universities now offer courses in Bachelor of Computational Science (B.Comptl.Sci) which include modules on Differential equations ,Mathematical Methods,Numerical and Computational, techniques, Simulation and Modelling,Large Scale Matrix Computations, Programming and so on. One can also specialise in a major which include, physics , environmental modelling, genetics , mathematics (fundamental and applied) and computer science.
Science is a journey -it is never `settled'- (what crap!)
In 1977 Time magazine carried as its lead story – How to survive the coming ice age.
However in 2006 Time magazine carried as its lead story – Be worried, Be very worried. Global warming is upon us.
That’s a very quick turn around. So what generation of scientists got it wrong? The ones who claimed a cooling in 1977 or the ones claiming global warming in 2006?
Even the Met Office in London and the Royal Society, have distanced themselves from the claim that increased carbon emissions is driving increased extreme weather events. In fact extreme weather events have declined by 30 percent over the past two decades, this is well documented in Indur Goklany's book, `The Improving state of the World. (2007)
The idea that a 2c rise in temperature is to be feared or that the 1c rise over the past 150 odd years, is much ado about nothing. The underlying mechanisms of the change remain uncertain and largely unknown.

Red baron,
interesting if ill-informed contribution, to an article on paid maternity leave!
I'm still trying to figure out the relevance?
Rhrosty.