“If a person’s sole source of income is the taxpayer, the
person, as a condition of benefit, must have contraception. No
contraception, no benefit.”
So began my column in The Australian of December 30 last year. A minor tsunami ensued. In addition to 500, overwhelmingly favourable, comments on the newspaper’s website, there were more than 432,000 “shares”, which meant that a huge number of readers wanted others to read it. And they did — at least 1.5 million.
Clearly, many Australians are seriously worried about intergenerational welfare: people who have children while on welfare are likelier to do so if they come from a family that has been on welfare.
Some charming twitterer suggested I was making a bid for Australia’s “most repugnant person of 2014” because, they argued, “poor people … have human rights”.
Others asked whether I had a parliamentary pension. Others defended me by saying, “if he does he certainly earns it”. And finishing with the comment “name me a politician who would even open the subject but let’s not play the man on this important discussion”.
The Australian’s editorial of January 3 this year was very cautious — “We do not necessarily agree with Johns” — but, fortunately, in its inimitable style, it published the piece regardless.
The original article was written in response to two stories.
The first was news that a Cairns mother had murdered seven of her children and one other child. Inquiries revealed that the woman had her children to four different fathers.
In the second story, a mother and two fathers were fighting a state government department in court over the long-term guardianship of four children. The mother had six children to the two fathers. The mother is on a disability pension and is in supported accommodation. All six children are in care.
It was time to write the book. The book is now filled with case studies. Finding these was difficult. I applied to the Chief Magistrate of Queensland, who is responsible for the Children’s Court of Queensland, and to the head of the Queensland Attorney-General’s Department for permission to access files.
Despite providing assurances of anonymity of those involved in Children’s Court proceedings, permission failed to materialise. Only when I informed the department head that I would publish a statement detailing the eight-month delay did I receive a response, within hours, denying permission.
The other reason to write the book was to answer the critics.
The religious, Catholics especially, argued the dignity of the individual and the sanctity of life would be violated under a “no contraception, no dole” regime. But Catholic women in Australia are as likely as non-Catholics to use artificial contraception. Some Catholic women urge that “women practise sexual restraint and demand men do the same”.
The slogan coined by English suffragette Christabel Pankhurst, “Votes for women and chastity for men”, is a lot more practical. It reminds women that the first was a breeze compared with the second. I would rather intervene to save women from irresponsible men than wait for men and women to give up on sex.
Some on the Left were outraged because they believe that beneficiaries have rights. It is not a human right to raise a family at someone else’s expense. Welfare rights are not human rights; they are gifts of other taxpayers, granted under very specific conditions. The Left frets about overpopulation and argues for restricting childbirth in the name of saving the world from climate change in 100 years. It appears not to worry about the unsupported child to be born in nine months.
My libertarian colleagues are squeamish about compulsion. They need to be reminded that it is not compulsory to take a benefit. Their hope, a world in which there are no benefits and charity alone steps in to help the unfortunate, is impractical. Stopping welfare may stop intergenerational welfare but it would not stop intergenerational poverty. The welfare state is here to stay. I am a supporter, but it has a downside. It helps to create the next generation of dependent citizens.
When someone chooses to take a benefit, it is reasonable for taxpayers to place conditions on the benefit. The condition lasts only so long as the person is on the benefit. If someone is on an unemployment benefit they should be searching for work, not starting a family. If someone is on a study benefit, they should be studying, not starting a family. If someone is on a parenting payment they should be bringing up their family, not adding to it.
I applied to a previous regime to find out the number of children born to women on benefits in Australia. The typical response was: “the department does not keep that data”. That, of course, was duckshoving. Having almost completed the book I had one last shot at finding out. Graciously, new Social Services Minister Christian Porter had the department provide an estimate.
We now know there are perhaps as many as 60,000 children born each year to women who are on a benefit, which is almost 20 per cent of all Australian births. As eminent Australian economist Deborah Cobb-Clark, who has studied intergenerational welfare, remarked, “Will there be enough policy levers if it is not all about income or education?” I’m here to tell you that we’ve done all that, and it doesn’t work: middle-class professionals soak up most of the money.
I have spoken to scores of police, judges, lawyers and social workers dealing with children in crisis. They are sick to death of the poseurs in this field; they want some early intervention that really works.
We need to intervene in a more deliberate and immediate way to place women on a benefit into the situation they would otherwise be in if they were in a relationship and had a job and were planning for a family.
Australia, this is a conversation worth having.
So began my column in The Australian of December 30 last year. A minor tsunami ensued. In addition to 500, overwhelmingly favourable, comments on the newspaper’s website, there were more than 432,000 “shares”, which meant that a huge number of readers wanted others to read it. And they did — at least 1.5 million.
Clearly, many Australians are seriously worried about intergenerational welfare: people who have children while on welfare are likelier to do so if they come from a family that has been on welfare.
Some charming twitterer suggested I was making a bid for Australia’s “most repugnant person of 2014” because, they argued, “poor people … have human rights”.
Others asked whether I had a parliamentary pension. Others defended me by saying, “if he does he certainly earns it”. And finishing with the comment “name me a politician who would even open the subject but let’s not play the man on this important discussion”.
The Australian’s editorial of January 3 this year was very cautious — “We do not necessarily agree with Johns” — but, fortunately, in its inimitable style, it published the piece regardless.
The original article was written in response to two stories.
The first was news that a Cairns mother had murdered seven of her children and one other child. Inquiries revealed that the woman had her children to four different fathers.
In the second story, a mother and two fathers were fighting a state government department in court over the long-term guardianship of four children. The mother had six children to the two fathers. The mother is on a disability pension and is in supported accommodation. All six children are in care.
It was time to write the book. The book is now filled with case studies. Finding these was difficult. I applied to the Chief Magistrate of Queensland, who is responsible for the Children’s Court of Queensland, and to the head of the Queensland Attorney-General’s Department for permission to access files.
Despite providing assurances of anonymity of those involved in Children’s Court proceedings, permission failed to materialise. Only when I informed the department head that I would publish a statement detailing the eight-month delay did I receive a response, within hours, denying permission.
The other reason to write the book was to answer the critics.
The religious, Catholics especially, argued the dignity of the individual and the sanctity of life would be violated under a “no contraception, no dole” regime. But Catholic women in Australia are as likely as non-Catholics to use artificial contraception. Some Catholic women urge that “women practise sexual restraint and demand men do the same”.
The slogan coined by English suffragette Christabel Pankhurst, “Votes for women and chastity for men”, is a lot more practical. It reminds women that the first was a breeze compared with the second. I would rather intervene to save women from irresponsible men than wait for men and women to give up on sex.
Some on the Left were outraged because they believe that beneficiaries have rights. It is not a human right to raise a family at someone else’s expense. Welfare rights are not human rights; they are gifts of other taxpayers, granted under very specific conditions. The Left frets about overpopulation and argues for restricting childbirth in the name of saving the world from climate change in 100 years. It appears not to worry about the unsupported child to be born in nine months.
My libertarian colleagues are squeamish about compulsion. They need to be reminded that it is not compulsory to take a benefit. Their hope, a world in which there are no benefits and charity alone steps in to help the unfortunate, is impractical. Stopping welfare may stop intergenerational welfare but it would not stop intergenerational poverty. The welfare state is here to stay. I am a supporter, but it has a downside. It helps to create the next generation of dependent citizens.
When someone chooses to take a benefit, it is reasonable for taxpayers to place conditions on the benefit. The condition lasts only so long as the person is on the benefit. If someone is on an unemployment benefit they should be searching for work, not starting a family. If someone is on a study benefit, they should be studying, not starting a family. If someone is on a parenting payment they should be bringing up their family, not adding to it.
I applied to a previous regime to find out the number of children born to women on benefits in Australia. The typical response was: “the department does not keep that data”. That, of course, was duckshoving. Having almost completed the book I had one last shot at finding out. Graciously, new Social Services Minister Christian Porter had the department provide an estimate.
We now know there are perhaps as many as 60,000 children born each year to women who are on a benefit, which is almost 20 per cent of all Australian births. As eminent Australian economist Deborah Cobb-Clark, who has studied intergenerational welfare, remarked, “Will there be enough policy levers if it is not all about income or education?” I’m here to tell you that we’ve done all that, and it doesn’t work: middle-class professionals soak up most of the money.
I have spoken to scores of police, judges, lawyers and social workers dealing with children in crisis. They are sick to death of the poseurs in this field; they want some early intervention that really works.
We need to intervene in a more deliberate and immediate way to place women on a benefit into the situation they would otherwise be in if they were in a relationship and had a job and were planning for a family.
Australia, this is a conversation worth having.
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