I rarely say this to learned academics, but, what a load of cockeyed codswallop!
Yes an economically illiterate Howard, (quote unquote) was family friendly, but that was mainly middle class welfare, handouts for the well to do; patent pork barreling, given to improve coalition votes; and for no other reason?
And in the process created a permanent structural deficit.
And only fixable by withdrawing all the welfare for the rich!
Had he been sincere, then all that extra help/entitlements, would have been at least, means tested.
You are right about an improved position of single mothers, I was raised by one, and the support there has risen from basically bugger all, to somewhere, well below the poverty line!
Well done, excellent work and an A+ for effort/spin!
There's nothing wrong with the occasional trip to a dream castle in the clouds/extremely unreal world, (viewed from on high/privilege, so as to actually miss all the bad stuff/the homeless, the under privileged etc/etc) but its definitely not a good idea to take up permanent residence!
Rhrosty.

"I think of myself as a pro-family libertarian. My view is that government should be kept as small as possible, but equity and the common good require assistance to families with children. At first sight this ideological category seems to be not very well occupied. Is it just me?"

It should be obvious that it's self-contradictory; and it's not libertarian either.

50% of such so-called family friendly handouts are just churn: robbing Peter to pay Peter. These could and should be abolished right off, without any legitimate complaint from anybody.

As for the rest, nobody ever justifies - because they can't - using coercion to take property from A (the owner) and giving it to B (political favourite) to pay for B's reproductive choices. How the advocates of such policies deal with this issue is, they just pretend it doesn't exist. No account is ever taken of the coercive nature of what is involved, and there's no attempt to reconcile the values sacrificed with the values intended or attained.

And the whole moral and intellectual incoherence is covered over with slathers of talk about "we", AS IF they were talking about a consensual process. Then when you ask who "we" is, they can never answer without self-contradiction. They are using it to include people who disagree with them, and people they are threatening to physically seize and lock in a cage so as to forcibly obviate the need to bother about consent. So it's the worst kind of moral fakery, fake compassion, fake concern.

However even if we accepted that premise
1. the policies are a mishmash of inconsistencies
2. the complications and inversions of tax and social security policy defeat their purpose, and
3. they actively destroy families because their entire process of reasoning from central planning is irretrievably invalid and unsound.

But one thing that does thrive and reproduce from all this is bureaucracies falsely called 'welfare', surprise surprise.

Personally, I feel this is nothing more than yet another Baby Boomer Bash, just a little more ornateley, and/or obliquely, laid out.
As for all the "data" and graphics, well..
I'll just quote an uncertain but insightful author...." Lies, damned lies, and statistics."

I think the comments to date are a bit unfair. I thought the article was a good overview, which illustrates the extent of the creeping welfare state. I was particularly interested to note that the biggest winners from welfare have been the elderly and single parents.

The quote below from the article makes important findings:

"As I have described it, we have a welfare system with no net support for couple families; 25 years of pro-family rhetoric and policy-making has merely resulted in a system of transfers from top to bottom quintile families, plus steady increases in support for sole parent families. We also have a steady trend towards welfare state expansion and increased government expenditure".

Bren, I agree

It would be interesting to see the data expressed as a percentage of household incomes not in “real" terms, though. Real incomes, and therefore taxes (and presumably benefits) tend to increase over time, and some of the upward trends in the charts may reflect nothing more than this normal growth process. Likewise, the growing proportion of incomes taken in taxes that partly offset higher real benefits could also reflect growing real incomes.

I agree with JKJ that the author's self-description as "libertarian" is off the mark, though. Alan clearly supports extensive income redistribution supported by taxation.

Talking about the baby boomer population, actually what percentage of the elderly, ageing population have been born in Australia?

We have had a monumental increase in the immigration rate.

This article appears to be one of the usual attempts to turn a class issue into a generational issue. Superannuation tax concessions for rich people are indeed far too generous -- why not a progressive system with taxes based on how much has been accumulated in superannuation, instead of giving everyone a flat 15% concession? The Australia Institute has calculated that it would be cheaper just to take away the tax concessions and give everyone the full pension, even at a higher rate than now.

http://www.tai.org.au/content/sustaining-us-all-retirement

So far as most people are concerned, the retirement income system is not generous. From a new OECD report:

"Australia's combined superannuation and pension system ranks relatively well on fiscal sustainability, but very poorly on the level of income it is delivering to retirees. Australia has one of the highest poverty rates among over-65s in the OECD." Apparently only South Korea is worse. Australia is the worst when it comes to level of replacement for wages, although part of this is due to the fact that the superannuation system is not mature.

http://www.smh.com.au/business/ways-to-fix-australias-pension-system-20140905-10d1tu.html

Well the last thing we needed was a researcher in public policy to tell us the welfare state is a failure.

It is patently obvious that when we pay some clown in the tax dept. to take money out of my pay, another in treasury to distribute it to the departments, another to syphon some off to policy adviser & consultants, another to pay my doctors bill, any ambulance bill, any time in hospital, & more to mind others kids in school, that there is little left to pay to families, or for families to pay for the things they need.

Just why we should be paying for others kids I have no idea, except perhaps it justifies a lot more public servants working in welfare departments, as school teachers & university staff.

So sorry Alan, most of us were well aware of the rip off of the welfare society, & huge public spending, & realised we would be much better off with no assistance, but with our own money to spend how we choose.

It really is a pity that we will have to go through a huge crunch, harming many, before we can get back to where those who do nothing worthwhile, get nothing much, including academics, bureaucrats & bludgers.

Divergence
They would be good policy suggestions if the aim was to make the working class and the aged population poorer, but in case you haven't noticed, the aim is the opposite.

Jardine,

How is cracking down on an egregious rort reducing the aged or working class people to poverty? What is wrong with a reasonable threshold for assistance, whether it comes in the form of a pension or in the form of tax concessions? The government is predicting that by 2016/17, the superannuation tax concessions are going to cost more than the Aged Pension, and they cost nearly as much now. A grossly disproportionate share of the tax concessions are going to high income earners who don't need help with saving for retirement and would do so anyway because they want a better standard of living in retirement than could be afforded on the pension.

According to John Hewson, 36.1% of the benefits are going to the top 10% of income earners, while the bottom 10% get no benefit and are actually penalized.

http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2014/05/the-super-gouge-needs-fixing/

I am amazed that you would justify this rort at the expense of people on modest incomes. Do people with more than $5 million in their self-managed super funds really need those tax concessions?

http://www.afr.com/p/national/tax_leakage_alarm_over_super_wealthy_kf7K4fYSDcSI1437kKAMUN