The talking cure
BY KAREN FREDERICKS
Both the ALP and the Democrats have focussed on the "flying nanny squads" of the federal government's nine-point "Stronger Families" plan. This is a mistake.
The allotted sum, $65.4 million over four years, for "more flexible child-care" is a ridiculously cheap gimmick. The money will barely pay for pilot programs. Less than $20 million a year is chicken feed next to the billion dollars that has been cut from mass child-care provision by this government since it took office.
What the so-called opposition parties are not tackling is the ongoing program of social engineering behind the "Stronger Families" announcement. More than half of this $240 million package will go into "family, parenting and relationship counselling". This is in addition to the millions which have already been poured into marriage counselling since John Howard announced the "National Families Strategy" last June.
Howard's June 1999 press release gives a pretty clear description of the strategy:
"Our design for a National Families Strategy rests upon forging a new social coalition of individuals, families, business, government, charitable and welfare organisations — each contributing their unique expertise.
"We are developing a practical preventative strategy to help all Australian families with raising children, an early intervention strategy to address problems that arise in family life and specific policies addressing homelessness, drugs, suicide and public safety.
"The key themes of the strategy will be marriage and relationships, early childhood, parenting and balancing work and family, with recognition also of the special challenges facing families in rural and remote areas.
"There remains no substitute for strong and vital family life."
This strategy is not about making child-care more flexible; it is about making domestic arrangements less so. It is about making parenting within marriage the only real option available.
Howard has naturally ensured that a woman is the public face of the campaign: families and community services minister Jocelyn Newman. Under Newman's "welfare reforms", single parents (the vast majority of whom are women) will not be given the much-touted "choice" regarding their parenting arrangements. As soon as their children are no longer infants, they will be given the choice either to find paid work or lose their income.
Under proposed amendments to the Family Law Act, if a custodial parent (the vast majority of whom are women) fails to give access to a child to a non-custodial parent (the vast majority of whom are men) they can be imprisoned. In certain cases imprisonment will be mandatory.
.OTax advantages will accrue only to nuclear families. Subsidised private health insurance costs the same whether a family consists of one or two parents and the public health system shrinks daily. Child-care is increasingly out of the reach for single-income families and subsidies are progressively cut. Legal Aid in family law matters is practically a thing of the past.
But never fear, counselling is at hand. Most of the millions available for marriage and parenting counselling is going to the church-based charities such as Relationships Australia, Anglicare and the Salvation Army.
Distressed women seeking refuge from a bad marriage were once able to consult their local priest for spiritual guidance. This option has become decidedly unpopular in recent times, with many women opting instead for secular advice from women's legal and health services and refuges.
Now that the Howard government has "reoriented" government funding to community-based services and put contracts for legal, health, employment and other services out to tender, a large number of previously secular advice services are now church-run.
A woman who makes an appointment for family law advice at the local community legal centre is likely to find herself talking to a committed Christian (part of the job description) employed by one of the major church charities. (One lawyer working for a new church-run legal service recently told me that his case notes are regularly checked by a nun to ensure that he is giving "appropriate", family oriented, advice).
Howard's powerful array of tax, welfare, family law and community service "reforms" are already impacting massively on women's domestic and personal lives and he has only just begun. Given its agenda, this federal government is more likely to provide squads of flying pigs than affordable, high quality, flexible child-care on a mass scale.