One can't ague that PPL, is just the same as say, work entitlement, extended sick leave!
Even there, there is never ever full wages replacement, but a percentage! 75-85%!?
And usually from super plumped up with a centre link sickness benefit?
The taxpayer funded sickness benefit component, is virtually the same maximum for all who qualify; and never ever adjusts anywhere but downward, as your personal means increase?
Which simply makes the quite risible PM's argument, both specious and spurious!
The only case that can genuinely be made here, is that over the top, public service entitlements, must be brought into line, with the general public average, not visa versa!
Now if the PM were to mount a similar case and funding for child care, he may not only have much more support, particularly in his own ranks, but earn highly deserved kudos from the general public as well!?
Rhrosty.

I think that this is an important article especially for MPs in marginal seats who are going to get it in the neck at the next election. I might point out that any mug can run Australia on the basis of families having two pay packets. It's more difficult to run Australia on the basis of families having one pay packet but it can be done. Sir Robert Menzies did it in the 1950s and so did Ben Chifley in the 1940s. The family is the basic unit of society. The state is the family of families so that if the family is sound the state will be sound. (This is state in the more general sense not States like Victoria.)

Mr Abbott has shown that he is flawed like every other human being. His ambition has caused him to compromise what is decent and fair for children needing a mother to nuture and bring them up in early days. This is a well written article. Hopefully mad Clive Palmer and his circus will stop Mr Abbott from introducing his idiotic pp scheme.

Thank you, Babette, for giving our Prime Minister the sage advice he sorely needs but is not getting from his Cabinet colleagues, the Australian Productivity Commission and the powerful feminist lobby.

Tony Abbott and Treasurer Joe Hockey are continuing Labor's policy of cutting family tax benefits to single-income two-parent households while subsidising (through the paid parental leave scheme) well-off households on two full-time incomes.

Such retrograde, anti-family policies are sheer madness.

I'm afraid that Tony Abbott, if he doesn't heed Babette Francis's rebuke and change course, will face the wrath of disillusioned voters at the next election

Babette,

I agree with everything you wrote but Abbott had to offer the PPL due to the hysterical 'Abbott's a misogynist' smear by the handbag hit squad.

When you have an all-powerful pressure group like feminism, it distorts the political process. That is simply what happened here.

Abbott had to neutralize the political threat at almost any cost. After all, if Labor were re-elected there would be not be 5 billion extra outlays for self-serving feminists but 500 billion for every self-serving group in the country. We would go from a massive surplus to a Greece in a decade. Astonishing.

It is refreshing to hear a call for a commissioner for men and boys too. I feel especially sorry for boys in today's schools. They are bastions of feminism where everything male is seen as wrong. This is degrading and would never be tolerated for any other group in society.

Babette, you are a disgrace, using Tony Abbott's obvious distress at believing he had fathered a son out of wedlock not long after training to be a priest, to push your anti-abortion barrow.

How do you know that he and his wife didn't try hard to have a son themselves?
And then to have a go at his gay sister to push your anti-homosexual barrow.
It isn't your business.

If I was Tony Abbott I wouldn't listen to a word of this absolute rubbish article.
Abbott knows that he took his 'signature policy' of PPL to the polls last year, and many people voted him in because of it.

If there were all these horrified 'pro-family' voters out there who didn't want this policy brought in, then they didn't show at the polls did they?

Babette didn't bother to include single mothers in her hand-wringing over how hard it is nowadays to be a stay-at-home mum. Not a word about helping them out. Or is poverty the conservative's mandatory punishment for a woman who, by choice or necessity, has to raise her kids without a man's benevolent support? (Rhetorical question only. No reply required.)

Neither did she take into account the fact that women who stay at home with the kids will be the future prime victims of the Coalition's war on the aged pension. Or doesn't she realise (or care) that the longer a woman stays out of full-time work, the less opportunity she has to save for a self-funded retirement?

And doesn't she bother to take into account that, in today's real estate market and user-pays society, a double income is now mandatory in order to even raise a family at all (or to ensure today's mums and dads don't have to fall back on the aged pension in the future)?

And as for the implied assumption that one has to bear sons in order to fully understand 'real life' - well, that sort of thinking is more at home in those woman-hating cultures she so loves to berate.

Susie, well said. Use of Abbott's not son and his sister to add to the punch of the article are not in good taste.

I'm not a fan of the policy and I know the horse has well and truly bolted in terms of broken promises (at least as far as many people understood them) but I'd still rather not see another broken promise.

If Babette is struggling to work out where the male influences are in Abbotts life she could have a look at the list at http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/Parliamentary_Handbook/Current_Ministry_List

Plenty of ambitious males there.

There are far better things Abbott could have done to help families but the PPL policy was the one he took to the election.

R0bert

Babette
You show an unusual disregard for two of the most important relationships in a man's life. A father and son relationship.
Tony does have a father and I can tell you my relationship with my father was the relationship that grew most over time and is consistantly the one that has influenced me more than any other.
The other are the relationships with my daughters partner. He has become my son. That is a delight and I am aware of the influence we often unwittlingly but positively exert over each other.
Tony has a father in law and is likely with daughters to develop similar important relationships with their partners, whether male or female.

Babette you as a woman need to learn of the existance and importance of these relationships to men.
You need also recognise that men who start families also benefit from the ppl.

You seem to think with a feminist bias.

Babette Francis has utterly convinced me, very grateful for her persuasive essay.

-PPL is a dead-end philosophically and contemptible for the majority of Australians who are disposed to vote for non-radical liberals like the ALPGreens.

-Western social policies are heading toward proper recognition of mums and dads and families. Demographic, strategic and economic doom caused by post-Communist left (Frankfurt School non-economic determinist 'cultural marxism') has left countries no option.

-It is regressive, short-sighted, extremely wasteful, and cruel treatment of the men and women who carry the greatest burden raising Australian citizens capable of ordered liberty. The ones who will actually carry the nation through time.

-Lets hope Coalition MP's rightly kick it to the curb.