Was the dig at the "left" just to ensure this article would be published on the "right" leaning news papers and web sites?

What absurd logic in this article! The only reason that anyone could have for not supporting government assistance to parents is to weed out those of a low socio-economic background. Has the author ever heard of the concept of justice?

Governments should distribute wealth equally or at least have it available so that all can meet their needs when the time comes. No one ever needs to have a child. It is everyone’s right to have a child but that does not mean they have a right to government assistance any more than other people who make lifestyle choices according to their rights.

Our society should be built on justice first and foremost. When such basic principles are in order then we should concern ourselves with less fundamental issues. We should be making sure that wealth is distributed equally then everyone can choose how to use their share of the wealth. Everyone should have an equal amount of that wealth. As it stands people who become parents and receive government help have an unequal amount of that wealth.

You should not solve the problem of the ‘wrong’ people becoming parents by government intervention. It is society’s problem and that does not mean it is the government’s problem. Governments should not be in the business of distributing wealth on the basis of a person’s parental status at all. We need to find other ways to improve the overall ability of people to become good parents if that is what they choose. You do not solve one problem by perpetuating another problem which is the injustice to all those who choose not to have children or call upon the public purse to help raise them.

People, like this author, who just accept as given that governments should support parents show a distinct lack of understanding of justice. This is a bigger problem for society than the ‘wrong’ people becoming parents.

phanto, even if the parents don't need support, surely the children do?

Aidan:
Well, that is true but at some point in time you have to make a commitment to stop the injustice. You cannot ‘punish’ a child for the presumptions of its parents and children born to parents up until then should be supported since their parents had them on the pretence that they would receive assistance but you have to address the injustice as well. You have to say after a certain date no assistance will be given by the government to parents who choose to have a child. No one can then say that they chose parenthood under false pretences. In any case the support should not be assumed as an ongoing unchangeable right.

The element of justice should also weigh on the conscience of those who currently receive it but do not necessarily need it. There are many parents who could survive without assistance but take it on the presumption that it is their right. There are many parents who never take assistance.

If only that wish list, the social responsibility and true Christian nobility that might make it work, were actually possible phanto, what a wonderful world this would be!

If only it could be thus so!
Rhrosty.

Why this article at all? Is anything of the sort on the cards? Has anyone actually suggested either a breeder's license or a breather's license?

However, since the article was posted, I completely agree with Phanto:
Continue to assist those children already here, but no assistance to children conceived past a given date - and no publicly-funded schooling either for those conceived past that date.

Rich or poor, educated or otherwise and all that class nonsense - this should apply to everyone: people should pay for their own hobbies, procreation being no exception.

So, what if the baby bonus was doubled, and also treated as a sort of 'paid leave scheme', a compensation for an interrupted career path ? i.e. women got it,$ 10,000 per child, if they had to take leave from work to have their child, but it would be irrelevant, and unavailable, for those who were not working in the first place ?

i.e. an incentive for every woman to train and get a good education, to join the work-force, and then, when the time was right, to have as many children as she likes ?

Hence: no eugenics, no penalising working women, and compensation for being put at the disadvantage of an interrupted career: sounds like win-win-win.

But not if you want to stay on welfare all your life. Do we as a society want that ?

Just putting it out there.

Joe

Dear Joe,

<<But not if you want to stay on welfare all your life. Do we as a society want that ?>>

Given that the kind of jobs which suit many people were taken over by machines, then if you want to keep those machines, it's better to have people on the dole than to artificially create other jobs that provide no true benefits and at times even cause harm: such jobs cost 10 times as much as the dole per person.

Western societies already support eugenics, Gregory, unfortunately, it is eugenics in reverse.

We live in a society where people with low intelligence who are most commonly a burden on our society our far outbreeding the intelligent who are most commonly the productive who support the non productive. Smart females who pursue careers are hardly breeding at all. Extrapolate forward and you come to the conclusion that our society is doomed unless we reverse that trend. Our present $330 billion dollar dept and ever expanding welfare budget should give you a clue, unless Gregory, you yourself come from the shallow end of the gene pool.

Having a child is a public act. It immediately becomes the responsibility to the entire community to make certain that the child is fed, educated and trained in social skills. But people with very low intelligence are notorious for having kids with no thought to their welfare at all, and the children then become a burden on the rest of society, with the cycle repeating itself with every generation.

We already practice mandatory birth control with inmates in mental asylums because even Gregory can figure out that having such unfortunates breed together is guaranteed to increase mental asylum patients. Paying people with very low intelligence not to breed would go some way towards alleviating the problem.

The smart Chinese are already ahead of the pack here. If there is one thing the Chinese admire, it is brains. China's One Child Policy was never enforced on China's top scientists or bureaucrats, which is one reason why Chinese people are so smart. So you had better wise up Gregory, or learn to speak Chinese while it is still voluntary.

The author is right.
It is an extremely slippery slope for a Government to decide who can breed and who can't, and worse, not support any children born 'mistakenly'.

Someone mentioned China, where they have forced abortions if there is already one child, and there is a huge problem of not enough females in the population due to males being the more popular child. Do we really want to go down that path?

I would worry that this measure would just be the start of Government domination of our lives.

Would they then decide that we should exterminate all those who have turned 65 so they won't need to pay old age pensions, or pay for the increasing medical bills that we all generate as we get older?

What about those people who are born into a 'perfect' family but are disabled or chronically ill?
The Government may want to save money by cutting out the disability pension and exterminating all those who are costing so much on welfare.

Where would all this stop?

So see the problem globally, which it is. Let's say my heart is torn by those "Save the Children" adverts and being very rich, I shipped out boatloads of food to save them. I would feel great for being such an altruistic person and be applauded by many. But what would happen in the real world? Thousands of children would benefit. As soon as they were old enough, they would all go about having sex as people do, even more babies would be born and they would once again be starving, only far more than before! This has been going on for generation after generation, as we in the West refuse to take family planning seriously, refuse to give women in the third world a choice about how many kids they want to have and foolishly only focus on children. The Catholic Church and religious right in America, have alot to answer for.

Yabby, historically the main reason poor people have had so many children is to ensure that at least some of them will survive. And that's still the case in many countries.
____________________________________________________________________________________________

LEGO,
<<We already practice mandatory birth control with inmates in mental asylums because even Gregory can figure out that having such unfortunates breed together is guaranteed to increase mental asylum patients.>>
ITYF it's because they don't at the time have the mental competence to raise children.

You're ascribing far too much to genetics. In reality most stupidity is caused by environmental factors. And genetic engineering has made eugenic arguments moot, as it's almost inevitable that in the future some people will hack their own germline DNA to increase the traits they find desirable – so breeding success will not be the only driver of trait prevalence.
____________________________________________________________________________________________

Joe,
Despite what Tony Abbott thinks, it's grossly unfair to pay more money to those who don't need it than to those who do. And it's quite stupid to pay those who are working not to work while denying the payment to those who are unfortunate enough not to be working.

Hi Aidan,

Not sure what the connection is. Still, okay, I'll give it a go.

* A flat baby bonus (say, $ 5,000 for the first, $ 7,500 for the second, $ 10,000 for the third) to women who have to take time off work, AND their jobs held open for them whenever they wish to return to work.

* Standard fortnightly payments to all mothers, those with a work history and those without, until the child is sixteen or whatever it is these days.

* Free TAFE or university study for mothers without any work history, AND free child care while (but only while) they are studying, and for the first two years once they find employment.

That might work :)

Joe

Suzeonline:

Pensions and assistance with medical expenses are genuine welfare. Assisting people to have children is not welfare it is a gift from the government to assist certain lifestyle choices. You need money if you are old and cannot work and you need money if you are sick – these should be available in any civilised society. You do not need children.

Whilst children who already exist may need their parents to be assisted it does not follow that governments should guarantee that such assistance will be given to parents in the future. It might be compassionate to care for children but compassion and justice are not the same thing. To just be compassionate and never deal with the injustice which contributes to the situation which calls upon compassion is to bury one’s head in the sand.

If that government assistance did not exist then there may be a lot less need to call upon compassion. You have to value both compassion and justice but you will never begin to deal with the injustice until you acknowledge that it exists.

Aiden, historically people had large families, when they had sex on a regular basis, as is common. Ask those large Irish families of 12-14 kids as to why and you will soon be told. Given a choice, we know that even in the third world, family planning is what they choose. The Guttmacher Institute have published data on this, all about unmet needs for birth control in the third world.

So how many kids would any of you have had, if it were not for family planning which we in the West now take for granted? Just look at history.

Phanto, I beg to differ.
This government is trying very hard to up the age we can get an aged pension...if we get one at all. The same is happening with people on disability benefits.
What makes you think that parents will be the only ones targeted for their welfare payments?

Do you believe in involuntary euthanasia? The government would if it would save them money. paying welfare money for the aged, mentally or chronically ill people.

In your make-believe world where the Government will only pay for a certain number of kids on welfare, what happens if a 'mistake' happens and a 'surplus' pregnancy occurs?

Will we drag them off for an abortion, like they do in China?
Or will we wait until it is born, then take the baby away forcefully to be put out for adoption or to be raised by the state?
Or will we leave it with their naughty unemployed mother and just let them sink or swim with no financial support?

Suzeonline:

The issue I am trying to raise is whether or not the government should, as a principle, give assistance to all parents as it more or less does now. I am not talking about genuine cases of welfare and need. So many people would not be able to afford to have children if it were not for this assistance and I think that is fair enough since it is not a need to become a parent.

You talk about what would be exceptions to that principle. What principle do you think should be the case? If you are trying to mount an argument for certain action you have to begin with some principle whether you acknowledge it or not. It seems to me you agree with the government that all parents should be given assistance simply because they have made a lifestyle choice to become parents. This would then cover the cases of genuine welfare but it also means that non-parents are treated unjustly by the government.

Questions about pensions and euthanasia are irrelevant since they are based on different principles. No one is denying that genuine welfare should be given but the overwhelming majority of people do not need assistance because they do not need to be parents.

If you stop giving assistance for the wrong reasons it may solve the problem of having to give so much welfare.

Well that didn't take long. Next article, those wanting trains to run on time will be compared to the Nazi's, with their well organised train schedules.

1. The World has too many people now, we will have even more by 2050.

If you do agree with that statement then having more children won't help. If you don't agree, stop reading now.

"In fact, the whole idea that ''it is not a human right to raise a family at someone else's expense'', if applied would lead to the end of a whole range of measures designed to assist women who have children, ranging from maternity leave to subsidised childcare"

The purpose of taxation should be to modify behaviour eg high taxes on cigs referring to 1., Encouraging more births is the antithesis of what we need to do, ipso facto modifying tax policy to make it more difficult is a GOOD thing, not something to be scoffed at.

Once a child is born we need to look after it, but lets discourage them from being born. Unpaid maternity leave is a good start.

We should have free over the counter contraception, free vasectomies and encourage significantly reduced child breeding.

A whole slew of issues arise from having less children but that does not negate the point that having an infinite number of children makes any sense at all. Allegorically, whole slew of issues arose from giving up slavery, that doesn't mean we shouldn't do the right thing.

Phanto, I doubt that the paltry supporting mother's benefit encourages anyone to breed.
Don't you think there are a myriad of other issues involved in having babies?
Some sad people do it just to have someone to love, or someone to call their own, others have them to try and keep a partner with them, and many others have them out of ignorance about sex or contraception.

So what you are saying is, yes give the financial aid to the 'deserving' parents, but not the others? How will we police that? Where do we draw the line?
Do you not think governments already try damned hard to not spend much on this issue?

I agree that paid parental leave for well off parents should not be provided by the government, but only as a perk from businesses who want to keep their good employees,

To Aiden.

Calm down, switch on your critical analysis circuit, and examine your own words objectively.

Your position is a contradiction. You claim that genetics has little bearing on intelligence, and then you claimed that genetic engineering can increase intelligence.

Environmental factors like acute malnutrition, or lead contamination in potable water, does adversely affect the intelligence of entire peoples within entire geographic areas. But for you to claim that intelligence levels within the entire human race is primarily a factor of nutrition, is just plain bonkers. Perhaps you suffered from acute malnutrition in your infancy? If all we have to do to create a race of super smart Einstein's, is to make every kid eat his veggies, then why is it that every kid who has eaten his veggies is not an Einstein?

Intelligence is part of our DNA and it is heritable. Smart parents usually have smart children. Dumb parents almost always have dumb children. Those dumb parents and their dumb children become a huge social problem for advanced societies because the productive are forced to care for the unproductive. This is OK so long as the numbers of dumb people stop rising compared to the numbers of productive people who are forced to keep them. The problem for western societies is that the reverse is happening. Our welfare state is going to end up looking like bankrupt Detroit unless we reverse this trend. 16% of aboriginal children in the Kimberly's are suffering from Foetal Alcohol Syndrome. Public schools for aboriginal children have feeding programs because aboriginal parents can't be bothered to feed their own kids. If aboriginal parents are too drunk to produce healthy babies and to feed them, why should the rest of society be footing the bill

LEGO ". If aboriginal parents are too drunk to produce healthy babies and to feed them, why should the rest of society be footing the bill"

What, exactly, do you think we should do with these kids then LEGO?

LEGO, there is no contradiction in what I said. Intelligence, like most traits, is due to a combination of genetic and environmental factors, with the latter usually having a much greater influence. And there's far more to it than just nutrition. Indeed you mentioned fetal alcohol syndrome: one environmental factor that has a huge negative influence, yet you seem to be treating it as a genetic trait!

You're also wrongly assuming that those of low intelligence are unproductive.

Naturally selected genetic factors won't control the way the population's heading because, as I said, we're developing the ability to actively control genes, and even a small amount of this will be enough to counteract the genetic drift you're so worried about.

Our welfare spending is mostly pensions, and is not sending us bust at all.

Does it really matter in this debate whether intelligence is caused by genetic or environmental factors, or a combination of both?
For whatever reason, educated intelligent people usually produce educated, intelligent children, so a licence to breed seems good policy, with the minimum IQ limit at perhaps, 150.

Hi Susioncrack.

Identify those aboriginal and white parents who do not look after their children, "steal" them, and put them into government care where they can be educated, fed correctly, taught basic hygiene, taught some self discipline, and taught how to become productive citizens who work for a living. Oh, that's right. We are already doing that. Aboriginal children are already being removed from their neglectful parents in far greater numbers than during the so called "stolen generations" period.

What our society should seek is to discourage parents with low intelligence from having kids. Perhaps we could link social security payments to those already deemed to be unfit parents with the number of children they have?

To Aiden.

Thank you for clarifying your position. We both agree that nature and nurture are both factors in raising intelligence. We disagree on the degree that nurture is the primary factor in raising intelligence. No amount of education or nutrition can make a child with low intelligence into a mensa. If it could, we could empty our child psychiatric wards by educating them and feeding them right. Human beings have different shapes, different sex appeal, different colours, different physical abilities, and different intelligence levels. And they are born that way.

Most people with low intelligence are unproductive. They fill our welfare queues, fill our hospitals because of their diets and behaviour, and fill our courts and prisons. In 1965, 3 % of the working age population in Australia was on welfare benefits of one sort or another. Now 16 % of adults rely on welfare. . Another take on this – in 1965 there were 22 taxpayers for every one person on welfare; now the number is 5. Extrapolate forward, and you see a vision of Greece, Spain, Cypress, and Ireland, with their own national insolvency problems. The populations of these countries and their elected representatives were acutely aware of their financial insolvency, decades ago. But like irresponsible creditors with a new credit card, they borrowed until they could borrow no more, and they wished away their problems until the bailiffs arrived.

LEGO,

Low intelligence isn't what gets people admitted to psychiatric wards!

Do you think the idiocy that you (and Tony Abbott) display extrapolating statistics by assuming trends will continue at the same rate (rather than looking at the reasons for those trends) is genetic? I certainly don't!

In 1965 unemployment benefits did not exist. Now they do, but the proportion of people on them is much LESS than it was 25 years ago.
In 1965 people didn't live long after retiring. Now they do, but we have a superannuation scheme to limit its cost to the nation.
Family payments have been introduced by governments, but are unlikely to increase much.
And with medical improvements, and the NDIS removing barriers to getting disabled people into work, it's likely DSP payments will fall in future.

Greece, Spain, Cyprus and Ireland have limited credit because they're in the Eurozone and don't own the ECB. Australia owns the RBA, therefore has unlimited credit in Australian dollars. And since the 1990s the Australian government has maintained a policy of not borrowing in currencies other than Australian dollars, so is immune from national insolvency problems.

And although people with low intelligence are more likely than average to be unproductive, that does not mean that most of them are unproductive.

Interesting article, in addition to the fact that this is not about left vs right, although it's portrayed this way:

1. The eugenics movement in it extreme form was not used by the Nazi's alone, much eugenics research and practice actually emanated from the USA http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1796 'The horrifying American roots of Nazi eugenics'.
2. The Rockefeller Foundation had been funding the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Germany till official declaration of war between Germany and the USA, according to Lia Weintraub in a research paper at Tufts University http://tinyurl.com/o4t7oqk
3. Post WWII 'Why the population bomb is a Rockefeller baby' http://tinyurl.com/373t2oq and Paul Ehrlich's role.
4. How is eugenics manifested in the noughties? From the Anti-Defamation League 'Ties between anti-immigration and eugenics' http://tinyurl.com/l3b638z

According to a close collaborator of Ehrlich's, John Tanton from SPLC article titled 'John Tanton and the Nativist Movement':

'Do we leave it to individuals to decide that they are the intelligent ones who should have more kids? And more troublesome, what about the less intelligent, who logically should have less? Who is going to break the bad news [to less intelligent individuals], and how will it be implemented?" http://tinyurl.com/5tm4eeg

Of course Tanton is linked to various 'environmentalists', centre left politicians, media and sustainable population movement in Australia, with several contributing to his journal The Social Contract Press, a very extreme version of Quadrant, with TSCP described by the SPLC as:

'The Social Contract Press (TSCP) routinely publishes race-baiting articles penned by white nationalists. The press is a program of U.S. Inc, the foundation created by John Tanton, the racist founder and principal ideologue of the modern nativist movement. TSCP puts an academic veneer of legitimacy over what are essentially racist arguments about the inferiority of today's immigrants.' http://tinyurl.com/3w83ykc

TSCP link is here with sample article featuring Australian 'demographer' and 'immigration expert' Bob Birrell titled 'Australia's cultural identity' http://tinyurl.com/kvmtawm

I think the point of the article in The Oz, with comments open, was to allow those with 'white nativists' sympathies to let off steam.... and also creating some confusion....

Whether you agree with him or not, where is the evidence that Gary Johns' concerns relate at all to eugenics? He could just as easily be concerned about inadequate parenting by uneducated single mothers of large, poor families on welfare.

Andras Smith is astroturfing and trying to hijack the thread. He has a job in the immigration industry, as an "education consultant" concerned with bringing foreign students to Australia with the lure of permanent residence. Because most of our population growth is from immigration and the rest is simply due to temporary demographic momentum, stabilising the population would mean cutting back on immigration, with negative consequences to Andras Smith's income. He therefore has a motive for smearing anyone who advocates such as course of action as a racist, eugenicist, or whatever boo word comes to mind. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which he quotes as a source, is notorious for trying to discredit and silence political opponents by smearing them as racists or "haters"

http://harpers.org/blog/2010/03/hate-immigration-and-the-southern-poverty-law-center/

Sustainable Population Australia is only concerned about numbers on environmental and quality of life grounds. It doesn't advocate any racist or eugenicist policies. If you follow the link to Bob Birrell's article, it is about Australian content in the media -- nothing at all to do with race or eugenics. Andras is counting on most people not bothering and just assuming that it is some racist rant.

I don't know if the Social Contract Press has published any articles by white nationalists, but by Andras' reasoning, Andras himself is a racist, too, because he publishes comments on Online Opinion, which also publishes comments by self-avowed racists and white nationalists.

"The author is right."

Posted by Suseonline, Saturday, 17 January 2015 11:56:56 AM

Politically: clearly.

@ Divergence

If The Social Contract Press TSCP contributors have naively been taken in by a white nativist anti-immigration magazine masquerading as an immigration, identity and social research journal, it does not say much about their own education and analytical skills (especially when other contributors are or have been highlghted in US media for their interesting views on minorities etc.)?

Like Ehrlich et al, most are very careful about what they write publicly including Birrell, but appears ambiguous (never +ve about 'other types'), and can then be transmitted on by fellow traveller journalists to reach their niche constituencies.....

It's no coincidence the same writers or contributors end up being reposted on right wing (that's being polite) websites, forums etc.., presumably without their consent, but importantly the negative memes and philosophy are being transmitted.

Curiously, some of the same TSCP contributors such as US 'white nationalists' are banned from the EU/Schengen Zone (for inciting hatred, sympathising with Nazis etc.), but are free to visit Australia and attend 'events' e.g. Jared Taylor of American Renaissance, who can use mainstream media sources from Oz to make his point, via articles inspired by Bob Birrell:

http://www.amren.com/features/2012/09/report-from-australia/

Immigration kills Australian culture according to Bob Birrell from NewsCorp:

http://www.amren.com/news/2010/03/mass_immigratio_1/

Migration Rort Crackdown needed according to Bob Birrell from Fairfax Investigations (really?)

http://tinyurl.com/pr8wnxj

I have no issue with Birrell personally, like other academics he is merely giving our laidback and culturally specific media, politicians and society the information they need to make conclusions about immigrants etc.