Category: Families & relationships

Is Tony Abbott moving towards a coherent ‘modern conservatism’?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 27 Comments

John Howard said that he supported ‘modern conservatism in social policy’. I argued several years ago that this seemed to amount to more emphasis on facilitating the social institutions conservatives did like – such as supporting families through generous handouts – and less emphasis on prohibiting or penalising things conservatives did not like.

During the Howard years, however, there were anomalies in this approach, which Tony Abbott seems to be moving towards removing.

Earlier in the month, Abbott announced a paid parental leave scheme. While this didn’t go down very well in his party room, I argued that it fits with a ‘modern conservatism’ that recognises that married women work, and that this is a factor in both deciding to have children and in the care of their children. The social science case for giving women six months off to care for and bond with a newborn child is far stronger than the case for longer term income redistribution in favour of families.

Yesterday, though learning from his previous mistake of making major announcements without consulting colleagues, Abbott indicated support for improved legal recognition of gay relationships. As The Age reported: Continue reading “Is Tony Abbott moving towards a coherent ‘modern conservatism’?” →

Familism meets feminism

~ Andrew Norton ~ 40 Comments

Like big business and the some (most?) in the Coalition party room, I’m not keen on Tony Abbott’s ‘big new tax’ plan to fund an exceptionally generous income-maintaining parental leave policy.

On the other hand, I do think it is a natural evolution of recent Australian conservative thinking. As it put it in my ‘big government conservatism’ article a few years ago:

Modern conservatism.. does not actively discourage or prevent departures from the norm in social and family relationships. So no-fault divorce stays, [and] single parent benefits are retained … . Rather, modern conservatism uses the state’s financial resources to ‘support families in the choices they wish to make’, to ‘help families struggling with the challenges of modern life’.

What this means is the ‘familist’ state increasingly contributes to activities which were once the family’s responsibility. The massive expansion in the FTB scheme and the baby bonus under Howard, and the rapid expansion in childcare subsidies, are all part of this. Parental leave is a logical extension of this trend. Indeed, the social science case for full-time parenting in the first six months of a baby’s life is far stronger than the case for the FTB handouts.

Abbott defends his scheme in these evolutionary terms: Continue reading “Familism meets feminism” →

Does the Intergenerational Report under-state future family costs?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 4 Comments

At the time of the second intergenerational report, I lamented the rapid increase in family payments. Fortunately the third intergenerational report shows that these have since stabilised.

Indeed, annual per person family payments (Family Tax Benefit, childcare, Baby Bonus/parental leave) are at $980 a year for 2009-10 only $10 higher than forecast for this financial year in 2007. FTB is slightly down (the means test on FTB B?) but childcare is up by 75%.

Rather optimistically, family payments are forecast to have slightly decreased by the end of this decade to $960 a year. I find this difficult to believe. For a start, there are already active plans to increase FTB handouts via overcompensation for the ETS. While the Coalition may be able to stall this for a while, their overall weak political position means that Senate obstruction has a use-by date. Continue reading “Does the Intergenerational Report under-state future family costs?” →

Education and living alone

~ Andrew Norton ~ 1 Comment

The Age this morning reports on research by David de Vaus and Sue Richardson on living alone. Though the economic incentives are to share – especially as governments bias more policies against singles – living alone is becoming more common. The proportion of people living alone increased from 11.9% in 1996 to 13% in 2006.

As de Vaus and Richardson note, educational disparities between men and women are part of the explanation. The tables in the paper make it a little hard to see what’s going on, as they report different groups as a % of the living alone. It is clearer when we look at the numbers of people in the different groups. Continue reading “Education and living alone” →

What about the children?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 10 Comments

Last week’s Senate report on same-sex marriage usefully summarises many of the arguments for and against.

Some of the arguments presented by gay marriage opponents concerned children. The Australian Christian Lobby put it this way:

It [gay marriage] discards the significance of marriage as an important social good held by a shared community as a public commitment to family and the raising of children.

But it really isn’t clear that the ACL’s position against gay marriage is consistent with their concern with children. The 2005 Private Lives survey found that 4% of gay men and 16% of lesbians currently live with children. So the ACL’s position seems to simultaneously that marriage is important as a public commitment to raising children and that the children who are going to be living in gay households anyway should be denied that public commitment.

One unexplored issue in the Senate report is whether gay marriage would substantially increase the number of children in gay households. Continue reading “What about the children?” →

Canberra’s gay-only civil union ceremonies

~ Andrew Norton ~ 5 Comments

The civil unions stoush between the ACT and federal governments is on again.

One of the issues has been the ceremony, which the federal government says makes ACT civil unions too like a marriage. According to The Age

This time, the territory assembly amended its laws on the advice of two leading Queen’s Counsels – including the now federal Solicitor-General Stephen Gageler – to answer criticism that the scheme would mirror marriage.

The advice suggests that if civil ceremonies were only open to gay couples, and not heterosexuals, it would be clearer that it did not contravene the federal Marriage Act, which by definition only regulates relationships between a man and a woman.

ACT Attorney-General Simon Corbell said that by making such a change, the territory had removed any federal justification for trying to quash the laws.

So the way to get around a law discriminating against gay people is to pass a law discriminating against straight people. The better solution is to change federal law, but the ACT’s law seems better than the status quo. Continue reading “Canberra’s gay-only civil union ceremonies” →

Should adultery be rewarded?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 16 Comments

The Herald-Sun leads this morning with the story of an ex-mistress who, thanks to new laws legally re-defining relationships, received a $100,000 pay-out from her lover when they broke up after 20 years. The case was settled out of court after the woman’s lawyers pointed out that ‘the laws give some mistresses, as well as de facto and same-sex couples, the same rights as married couples.’

As I argued when this reform was being considered, I think the state should faciltate relationships people want to have, but not impose rules on the parties unless there are strong public policy reasons for doing so. The most important to these is to provide for the continuing care and support for children. Partners (usually women, of course) who have looked after kids should get pay-outs after relationship breakdown to encourage active parenting.

But rewarding a childless mistress seems to me to be in an entirely different category. This encourages adultery and gold-diggers, at significant emotional and financial risk to the first family. While prohibiting this kind of behaviour is pointless, it should not be encouraged by lessening the risks/increasing the rewards to those threatening existing relationships. How relationship failure between married and not-married people is dealt with should be up to the parties involved, without any legal intervention.

Politics & partners

~ Andrew Norton ~ 10 Comments

I’ve argued that political philosophies differ in what role they see emotions playing in public life. While I suspect these differences spill over from (or into?) private life emotional styles to some extent, overall I would expect more emotional overlap in private than public.

While it’s not direct evidence, I thought a recent survey by Essential Research on qualities people seek in a partner by political affiliation was interesting. Out of 13 possible qualities respondents were asked to select the three they saw as most important (table under the fold).

With differences in order and rating, the Coalition, Labor and Green supporters all seek the same top five qualities: honesty and integrity, kind and considerate, sense of humour, similar interests, and caring friend.

The most surprising difference between them is that Greens (66%) are much less likely than Coalition (81%) or Labor (79%) supporters to put ‘honesty and integrity’ in their top three. The most sanctimonious group in public life is the most forgiving of moral failure in private life. Or perhaps Green supporters are just on average younger, and less likely to have felt the sting of romantic betrayal.
Continue reading “Politics & partners” →

Is the market the ‘greatest dissolver of the bonds of family’?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 35 Comments

Unhappily, the democratic Left also now embraced the other dimension of the 60s revolution, the abandonment of social responsibility and the pursuit of self-interest at whatever cost. This eventually provided the opportunity for the neo-liberals, in association with another force on the Right, the neo-conservatives, to make further great headway among the Western working class by supporting the values of social conservatism. By doing this, the neo-liberals managed to disguise from both others and themselves an obvious truth, namely that the untrammelled market was the greatest dissolver of the bonds of family and community.

Robert Manne yesterday, in another of The Australian‘s What’s Left series.

But how obvious is Professor Manne’s truth about the market and families? There is certainly no direct relationship in our current society – those with most market experience, people with jobs and money to spend, are more likely to be in couple or family housesholds. And the period of ‘neoliberal’ policy has coincided with a fall in the divorce rate. In 2008, it was at its lowest point since the liberalisation of divorce law in 1975.

It is nevertheless true that the unmarried or separated proportion of the adult population is high by historical standards. There are a number of proximate causes for this, which are interconnected in a complex web of cause and effect. Continue reading “Is the market the ‘greatest dissolver of the bonds of family’?” →

Do gays want to get married?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 13 Comments

One suprising aspect of the 2005 Private Lives report, to date the biggest survey of gay Australians, was the limited expressed interest in a ‘commitment ceremony’. Just over half of gay men and 40% of lesbians in a relationship said they had no intention of having such a ceremony.

It’s never been clear whether this meant that there was little gay interest in gay marriage, a reluctance to commit to their particular current partner, or whether it was the nature of a ‘commitment ceremony’ with no legal or accepted community status that meant support was low.

Another survey of gay Australians carried out this year finds that there is strong gay support for gay marriage. Only 1% favour no legal recognition, and more than three-quarters support gay marriage.

However, in response to the question

“If you are or were to become involved in a long-term committed same-sex relationship, in what way would you prefer Australian law to recognise your relationship?

Continue reading “Do gays want to get married?” →