I agree with Individual on this.
Not all the retired people are 'poor old pensioners' at all.

While all our elderly deserve to be looked after in their old age by providing them at least a minimum wage, many people have squandered their lives away and not made provision for their retirement, when they could have done.

I believe we should be supporting parents to stay at home with their newborns as long as possible, as this will benefit society in the long run , more than giving more money to the pensioners would.

Yes Suze, but one failure in the system is that those who plan well and figure quite well off, not rich, often get reduced pensions, while those who squandered theirs get looked after, by the very ones who did the right thing.

I have always thought that an old age pension should be a percentage of the tax one has paid during their working lives, with a build in safety net of cause.

It's what I refer to when I say, reward for effort.

I know some aged pensioners who feel a sense of entitlement because "I paid taxes all my life".

Well I'm paying taxes too but I'm also funding my own Superannuation and so will never get the pension they do.

Australia is the only country in the world that pays people not to work indefinitely.
The US makes you take out personal unemployment insurance while working and when that runs out it's welfare and that's much lower than what we get.
I believe that in the old USSR you didn't get a pension unless you worked a minimum number of years.

So why should I have to pay to subsidise what is essentially somebody's personal lifestyle choice to have children?

If you can't feed them, don't breed them. If you really want them, make some personal sacrifices or simply do without.

We're creating a nation of social parasites who want to cash in on their entitlements like those aged pensioners - but much sooner.

This is one of those subjects 'you never talk about at bbq's.' And one where there can really be no generalization. Reward for merit is a pretty solid one though. There are people all across the board, including some aged pensioners, who have been and are dishonest, dodging the system, benefiting at others expense without a second thought. While the others have followed the rules bestowed upon us by the powers to be, to very little reward for their hardworking efforts of a comfortable retirement.
In a perfect world, anyone shafted by the system regardless of their honest efforts would receive justice. Assistance given to individuals and families who despite their efforts and hard work are struggling. Those who make the decisions to give or take away monetary assistance, as well as all the other decisions that usually are non beneficial to the population, be given the opportunity to justify their large earnings and numerous bonuses, to themselves and us. Moral satisfaction that the reward for your work efforts is well earned and justified.

The government’s paid parental leave scheme is bad policy even by Liberal Party standards.

First it introduces more, rather than less, red tape in the form of a new levy on business. The replacement of 5% of company tax by an equivalent levy is a relatively small change, but it is a change in the wrong direction that increases red tape rather than reducing it as the Liberal Party promised it would do. The only way to reduce red tape is to reduce it. This is not an opinion; it is a tautology.

Second the effect of that change in the company tax will be to reduce the investment incomes of retirees, the incomes of superannuation funds, on which many people rely for their retirement and equity investment incomes in general. For the majority of super fund investments this reduction would amount to about 3% of total share investment incomes. The gross reduction in superannuation and equity investment incomes is estimated to be
$1.7billion per year by Robert Gottliebsen; a significant amount of super-fund returns.

But the worst aspect of this proposal is the Liberal Party’s use of a contractual entitlement as a basis for government welfare payments. They argue that because an employee takes annual leave on full pay, then the government should continue this scale of remuneration for tax-payer funded parental leave. Only politicians, with their perk-driven source of pocket money, could accept that such an argument for welfare payments.

I'm with you on this, rache.

>>So why should I have to pay to subsidise what is essentially somebody's personal lifestyle choice to have children?<<

Surely, the only possible rationale for spending taxpayer dollars on the process of raising children is if the product is ultimately owned by the taxpayer. I can see a few objections to this from parents, so we can probably ditch it as a proposition. (Shame though. The ramifications of taxpayer-owned children really should be explored, I think...)

But what is left? If as an employer I can rationalize the expense as part of, say, an employee retention policy, all well and good. But turning it into a universal "right" is going to be massively counter-productive, adding yet another to the list of government "vote-for-me" bribes that lacks any semblance of public-good justification.

Nanny-state bunkum.