Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Community Services, Indigenous Affairs and the Voluntary Sector) Share this | Hansard source

I might say—because I am invited to by the interjectors opposite—that I respect the work that the ministers opposite do in this area. But we should never allow our admiration for women in paid work to overwhelm our respect and appreciation for motherhood, pure and simple. That is the big gap in the statement that the minister for families has just made to the House.

In the printed statement which I was given a couple of hours before question time, the minister attacked the former government. In particular, she attacked the former government’s baby bonus. She said:

… for all the chest-thumping … it seems that the former Government fundamentally misunderstood the basis of the policy challenge before them.

The baby bonus is by far the most significant financial recognition that mothers in this country have ever had. If there is one thing that is responsible more than anything else for the welcome uptick in fertility over the last few years, it is that baby bonus. The slighting way in which the minister refers to the baby bonus in the printed statement provided to my office before question time makes me wonder whether this too might not be revised, amended or improved out of existence in the same way that the carers and seniors lump-sum payments have been under threat from this government.

Do we need another inquiry here? Do we need a Productivity Commission inquiry to cover much the same ground that was so well covered by my colleague Bronwyn Bishop’s committee report late in 2006? I have to say that I doubt it very much. It is perhaps typical of this government that, rather than give a substantial statement of where they stand and what they will do, they have simply announced another inquiry. Perhaps asking the Productivity Commission to look at this issue might alert the econocrats of this country to the importance of motherhood, but I very much fear that they will just tell us how we cannot afford it and how difficult and expensive it is. I regret to tell the House that the minister’s statement was a motherhood statement in every sense of that phrase—not something we really needed today.

See this speech in context