Oh dear Gary, here you go again! Bashing babies and their mothers .... metaphorically I hasten to add...such a nice -seeming man, not realising what you are saying ! "One estimate was about 108,000 babies were born because of the inducement of the bonus." Well that would have made a nice change from the 100,000 babies who are aborted annually in our country wouldn't it ? Abortionists growing rich on the tax payer's money! They don't do it out of the goodness of their hearts you know Gary ..they don't have any hearts! "The cost per extra child, for example in healthcare costs and other payments, has been calculated at $43,000." You put a price on human life? "Teenagers showed the greatest increase in the NSW birthrate. Others were left to deal with the outcomes of pregnancies that, but for the baby bonus, might not have occurred." That's interesting ..about teenage pregnancies ...your lot Gary, when you set about liberalising abortion laws 40 odd years ago, promised sex education would eliminate teenage pregnancies, child abuse ...and a lot of similar b...t and now you have the effrontery to blame the baby bonus for teenage pregnancies....it's more likely these teenagers were "latch key children"...had their mother been able to afford to stay at home by receiving a reasonable, ultimately economical child endowment,(do you deny children are a nation's most precious "investment" Gary? Not so long ago France was "begging" its people to have babies...French Muslims at least obliged )they would have been there supervising and guiding them in their most formative years instead of leaving them to be exposed to the sex sodden society in which we now live. The majority of them may then have gone on to being mothers at a normal age ..with a father to assist them in the upbringing of their families.

All much more economical...I am surprised you haven't tumbled to this Gary. Frankly I am disgusted with the politicians who today are so feverishly working to push all mothers from one workforce into another.

Fair comment is hardly the politics of envy runner, and the last refuge of the leaning and labeling over privileged; to somehow overcome any and all entirely valid criticism!
Rhrosty.

Gary states "Australia is a good and generous society"

Are we really? The maximum amount a single person gets on the Newstart Allowance is $519 a fortnight - how are people supposed to live on $260 a week? ($37 a day) How are they supposed to pay for rent, electricity, phone, food, internet access for job applications, clothing for job interviews, medicines, transportation? I don't know how people do it. The average bed in a sharehouse is $160-190 a week - forget finding a one bedroom flat at around $400/wk. Those that fail end up as one of the increasing number of homeless in Australia (1 in 200 Australians is homeless)

According to the Business Council of Australia, Newstart is so low it is an impediment to finding employment.

Add to that the fact that there are more job seekers than jobs available. According to experts there are 5-10 job-seekers for every job.

Wouldn't a just and generous society ensure those out of work have access to a livable social safety net that allows the unemployed to have the basics? Dignity? A roof over their heads, clothing, food, healthcare, education. The situation would be different if there were more jobs than workers.

We are being told that we are facing increasing automation of the workforce. We already have robots on production lines and in warehouses. We have self-driving mining vehicles. We have self service checkouts at all the major department and hardware stores. We have robots writing copy for newspapers. This is not pie in the sky stuff.

The jobs we can't automate we shift off-shore to places where human rights don't matter - how do you think we buy $5 shirts when someone has to grow the cotton, harvest it, process it, make it into material, make a design, make the garment, market it, transport it, make a retail markup - it's not just one person being shafted along the way, it is many people. It's modern day slavery. But that is what our workforce is "competing" with.

Laissez faire or neoliberal capitalism is amoral and needs civilizing.

Rather than 'ridding itself of the socialist objective', Labor's only hope is to revitalise and rebirth its socialist roots.

Populations of the world are finally expressing their utter and widespread contempt for the spectacularly failed, misguided neoliberal hegemony of the last 30 years, that has led to global financial disaster for all ordinary working people everywhere (but not the rich). Rather than despising the West's proudest achievement, the social security safety net, people across the world are coming more and more to realise that it is both vital and fundamental to maintain.

The rise of anti-austerity parties and movements such as Syriza in Greece (who have disgracefully betrayed their mandate, but it's far from over yet), Podemas in Spain, Sinn Fein in Ireland, the SNP in Scotland (and no, that's not just about nationalism) are proof that socialism is making a huge comeback.

Long-time outspoken socialist, Jermeny Corbyn, is sending panic waves through the UK Oxbridge/Etonian establishment by not only winning a place on the Labour leadership ballot, but he's starting to look like he might win.

It's not only the ALP that is losing electoral ground, but all centre-'left' major parties right across the Western world. The reason is obvious to everyone except the political, media and academic establishment, who have long since sold their souls to the big end of town. Continue to abandon your socialist principles and roots, and you will continue your descent into political oblivion.

In your dreams, Killarney :)

Clearly Gary is not saying that there should be no supports for people temporarily down on their luck, or in situations where they can't work, such as mothers of young children, or obviously in the case of disabled people.

And he does have a go at the Libs for their baby bonus scheme, which has trapped many young low-SES girls and women into a cycle of dependence on all the benefits one can rake in as a single mother, thus excluding them from education and work opportunities.

Is this so ? I went to the Gawler Show last year, a beautiful day in August (what ?!) and it struck me that - given Gawler's proximity to Adelaide most northerly suburbs - I was never out of sight of a young woman pushing a pram, with surly kids in tow.

I'm betting that pretty much everybody on this thread is more or less comfortably employed, living in the Goat Cheese circle. Do you understand that we each have only one life, and if we blow it, then for many people, that's it: a life of scrounging, hustling, chasing friends and relatives for money, lives that are boring and yet full of drama, with many visits to emergency wards ?

I have relations in this situation, one bright girl who has had both her legs broken by her beloved, neither of whom have worked a day in their lives. She would be fully conversant, up, down and sideways, with all the welfare benefits possible for someone in her category, while three of her siblings have gone on to become teachers, how they did that would be a complete and uninteresting mystery to her.

That's the choice for many people:

[TBC]

[continued]

* either get to know everything about benefits, and trap yourself in that life; or

* get to know everything you can about opportunities, in education, training and work.

And rarely will the twain ever meet. So: either step into a trap; or it's up, up and away - with all the risks attached to each pathway.

No work available ? Seriously ? There's seasonal work all year round, which back-packers are doing. Yeah, it's not much fun sometimes, but it's a job, it brings in a wage. You see a lot of the country, you meet some great people, so it beats daytime-TV. I've done a couple of years of it, and if I can, then it's possible for any able-bodied person.

Also, I'll bet that the next wave of entrepreneurs in Australia will be relatively recently-arrived Australians, hungry people who take life seriously.

Killarney,

The party's over. Every socialist revolution has gone belly-up, and degenerated into either fascism or something close to a failed state. I was raised to believe, but gradually, painfully, it has become clear to me that revolutionaries-in-practice fall into three categories:

* naïve workers, 'serving the people', busting a gut for the Party;

* the skivers who quickly work their way up the hierarchy, the managers, the planners, the professionals and assorted hangers-on;

* and the executioners, the moral police, the purgers.

Tell me where that hasn't happened, Killarney.

Joe