It has been shown time and time again that as women have more options than just being a baby machine, their priorities change more towards what men want.

While most of them want eventually to have kids, they leave it too late, or are not prepared to compromise.

This is the answer in a nutshell. If you want more babies, stop women working, take away their rights. Not really an option.

"Yet we all need the babies, who will become the service sector when we grow old."

Not really. Guest workers from other countries where people are desperate for work can provide the raw material for the service sector.

Okay, that's the cynical view. But the point is, aged care workers don't have to be born in Australia to look after their clients. They just have to be suitably qualified.

In terms of the main point I say can the "working families" rhetoric and use "Australian people" or "Australian citizens" instead. After all, pensioners and unemployed people also vote,

Author is using women rhetorically to feed his Knight in Shinning Armour ego trip. Ya know, saving the poor little dears, who havent been voting for themselves since suffrage. Typically patronising Lance-a-lot, feeding them that navel gazing 'lm a victim' rubbish. It positions their egoes very nicely for the attention starved fella who wants to save the 'weak and vulnerable.' Plus, writing a fluffly, wishy-washy article that whispers sweet nuthins is a good way to be liked by those one will save. Oh, they're soooo greatful.

Then again, the average voter is a bit of a short-term blockhead, so by all means join the club. Only really focused on the short term, like 'why should we support working families.' Yeah, as a single, child-free male l can relate to that, but l like to think l've grown up a bit and can see past where l am to where lm going. To wit... someone has to breed and raise the future generations of kidults that will form the society that will support me in my old age. Even if l do still harbour a bit of that 'what about me' ressentment of being left behind as a political demographic. Oh, the horror of not being recognised and slotted into a glib political marketing group.

Otherwise, lm not sure what the point of the article was, other than to shove people into the arbitrary classifications that social commentators are so fond of and pretty much lost without. The article looks like a bit of muck racking agit-prop.

An article concerned about a political party’s prospects and how they might be improved. It regards as an irrelevance - the negative impact by population pressure upon society, economy, and the environment all is dependent upon.

It does not matter a damn which political persuasion rules the roost if all parties are going to frustrate society’s ability to stabilize its numbers.

Australia’s fertility rate needs to stabilize. That is about 2.1. Total numbers need to be compatible with the land and climate’s ability to provide reasonable lifestyles for them. Currently the fertility rate is a little over 1.8. However, births will continue to exceed deaths for almost a generation due to existing age cohorts.
Demonstrably we are already too many for continuing with current lifestyles within the constraints of our landscape.

Worse still, our political masters are dictating that we multiply more, and also increase immigration. Until two years ago, the net total of Australian births over deaths, plus net migration, increased our numbers by a million in about four years. Now we have speeded up the process, and are heading for that extra million in maybe three years.

The Author’s priorities, like our current life-style prospects, are up the creek

Sylvia -

The idea that there is an ageing population crisis or that we won't have anybody to look after us in our old age is a lie. The population has been ageing since the end of WWII.

Remember the predicted crisis in the 1960's when everybody said in 2008, life expectancy will be 82 years (it was 70, then) and 20% of the population will be over 60 (it was 8% then) and that means that there will be nobody left to work and nobody left to look after us when we are old.

If you don't remember, it is because it didn't happen. There are probably some changes that have to be made, such as a higher age for pensions to kick in and more flexible working conditions so that older people will want to stay in the workforce, but those changes are nothing compared to the changes we are going to need to feed a world with 9.5 billion people and very little cheap fossil fuels.

There are many, many more difficult problems to solve than an ageing population and increasing the population makes most of those problems harder to solve.

When I was a "childless female" I still supported policies which supported families, as well as those that support unemployed people (when working) and those which support pensioners (even as a selfish teenager). I even supported increased hospital spending when I was not sick and increases to primary education well after I needed those services and well before I needed them for my own kids.

Crazy me!

Are we such a cynical electorate that we all vote with a tax-break in mind?