Working families!! my foot.

What this means and has always meant policy wise is two working people who have children.

Full stop.

Now like most people I have a family I am part of a family and that's the way I see my situation. No I do not have children, does not having children automatically exclude you from being a family? No.

I have a husband, parents, siblings, grandparents and these people are my family. Some of us work, some have retired, many need some sort of ongoing support to live happily and safely. As a family we work at various different jobs, some paid and some not. Those who look after others in my family save the health care system a motza, because as they say, that's what families do. And my "working familiy" works damn hard at doing it can I add.

Under this definition of working then, aren't we all working families? So where are the rest of us in the policy deliberations then?

Her's an idea paid maternity leave debate should become the debate for paid caring leave, use it for having your children or looking after frail and ill older people or a dying loved one in your "working family" for a set period of time.

Now that's what I would call a policy platform for working families.

And As a 30 something female voter can I just say that if I hear that term once more out of a pollies mouth I shall scream.

Tens of thousands of Chinese working families have just had their children killed in a massive earth quake, 420,000 homes were destroyed just last night and here in Australia we have the mind numbing whinging about "working families".

Nita, you really, really need to get a life dear if that is all you can whine about.

Marilyn I don't know what you're trying to achieve but mocking someone for not wanting to subsidise your own greed doesn't come across too well.

Dear Marilyn
I have a life, and I didn't think I was whinging.

I am merely suggesting that the term "working families" does not encompas a broad definition of the words working and family.

I am suggesting that having a scheme where one can choose to have paid leave for other things that may benefit a comminity and this nation(having children is not the be all and end all of nation building) may be a better policy for working families.

Oh and seeing I have spent time in China teaching at a school that was the spitting image of one of the schools that collapsed, I am quite upset at both that and your display of a complete lack of manners