Learn from the mistakes of others

the speech was a statement of government policy back in 2003. the government is on a crusade to increase the 'fertility rate' - their 'economic modelling' hasn't factored in the fact that were not producing children like we're 'sposed to ...

kids are expensive - and increasingly 'difficult' to raise/manage/fit into lifestyle. very time consuming. large families are also hard to have. all that giving birth/having pregnancy stuff. also, 'large' families are unnecessary.

relationship stability will continue to be a problem, not only because of the government's obvious economic and social policies/agenda, but because fewer people actually grow up these days. unless and until people are expected to learnand practice things like people skills, and such-like, they're not going to bother - already a whole lot of other things they have to deal with ahead of another person's interests etc.

the marrying later is also related to the maturing later. and marriage is no indicator of stability or maturity. the more important indicator is that people are not settling down until later in life than used to be done. maturity is much harder for the poor bean-counters to assess, let alone factor into their beautiful spreadsheets.

i certainly don'tneed to be reminded of hecs or housing costs. mind you, hecs is not really relevant. you don't even see an effect until you're being paid decent(ish) money. starting salaries/wages, and living costs do bite.

sole parent families are a consequence of many factors. they really hit home in the lower socio-economic band. some choose children to supplement their meagre incomes, others end up with them ...

more affluent parents can afford nannies, etc. but that doesn't address the effects fo the breakdown of the family that had been a part of human societies for thousands of years. the invention of the "nuclear family" stripped out a lot of the 'unpaid' social and economic support structures that had maintained societies for millenia. it's more than just about a "me generation" - though that was a pretty obvious result.

remember, this speech was given long before the new laws were unveiled, let alone rammed through to us.

the social results of the economic policies of this federal government might well be obvious to us, but they don't think so. one of the reasons i posted the speech was to point out that none of this is of recent invention in liberal party economic policy.


i'm considering creating a political party ...