John Linton .....in this new Australian society where the 'gummant' bails out reckless bankers and funds/forces other people to fund inadequately capitalised car dealers?........
......clearly not their husbands, 'significant others', their 'test tube' or their own family according to this:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/maternity-leave-exposes-culture-of-antagonism/2008/12/26/1229998733238.html
I'm assuming that the current group of people posing as a federal "gummant" have quietly 'forgotten' about their wild election promises of long periods of paid maternity AND PATERNITY leave - at least for as long as unemployment keeps increasing but just imagine what would now be the case if those communist loonies had actually rushed through that policy before the "GFC" had manifested itself.
Never having lived under a Communist government, at least until quite recently, I'n not 100% aware of the 'breed babies for the future glory of the Fatherland and the perpetuation of the worker's paradise" arguments that are used to base State intervention in the conception and nurturing of babies/infants. I vaguely followed the previous government's death throw economic explanations that Australia needed more children to ensure future public servants could be paid for doing nothing and future politicians could fly round the world in Presidential Class as a reward for being a party drone or apparatchik (depending on party).
I therefore can't begin to grasp why any Government should involve itself in the results of the sexual habits of the female percentage of the population that is of breeding capability.
However, acknowledging that if voters in various countries, for reasons best known to the individuals concerned, decide to saddle themselves (and everyone else) with communist 'rule' then I expect to see the continual stream of addled thinking that produced such gems of human benefit such as:
50 years of "cold war"
Genocide in Cambodia
Economic and social destruction of a magnitude of the "Cultural Revolution"
Automobiles of the exemplary quality of the Lada and the Trabant
Couture based on the elegance of the Russian babushka
Paid maternity leave will increase the available soldiers for our glorious Fatherland mein Fuhrer.....or - Paid maternity leave will increase the number of workers for the glorious worker's paradise comrade President....take your pick of which lunatic delusions you wish to be part of - it certainly isn't democracy as we have previously known it in Australia.
OK - I've enjoyed my Audi and realise that now I'll have to replace it with a "gummant" subsidised Holden or Ford made in "Australia" as the sales taxes on "luxury imported vehicles" is increased to 300% as they try and force people to buy the rubbish coming out of Fisherman's Bend or wherever they make those pieces of junk which will now be Federal "gummant" funded pieces of junk.
But that's OK because I won't be able to afford any replacement courtesy of the new 'real politic' of Krudd's communist aspirations - Exetel won't exist and I am too old to find another job - and I won't be the only male facing that situation.
Paid maternity leave......now where in Heaven or Earth, or Hell for that matter, makes it a small business owner's responsibility for paying some female they're not related to for the output of her personal sexual activities? Exetel doesn't make enough money to pay an employee to 'go on holidays' for a year - or whatever version of some of the wild election promises may eventually make their way in to law.
If a female wants to have children, and I understand that because of the species' drive for self perpetuation that is sometimes not a choice in the truest of senses, then it remains a personal decision not involving anyone else other than the individual female and her sperm donor (of whatever status the individual mummy to be confers on him - or, I suppose, 'that' in these days of sperm banks and AI (ironical that the acronym for "Intelligence" and "Insemination" is the same when linked with "artificial").
I have been very "lucky" apparently that I have been the father of five children and have been able to financially 'contribute' enough to the mother of my children so that she could leave her position of employment when the time came and 'financially support' her while she bore, nurtured, comforted, educated in the basics of being a human being and all the myriad things that completely fill every mother's day (and much of the night in the early months) without her having to "go back to work" and earn the required money herself thus negating most of the value of being a mother and removing from the child something they have genetically been programed to expect (and need) - the constant presence of their mother during their early, helpless years.
I don't think I was lucky - it seemed quite obvious that every other woman and man in the society in which I then lived achieved the same result with or without the assistance of their wider 'families' and didn't receive one red cent of 'financial assistance' from the "gummant" or anyone else - except immediate members of the family on rare occasions ("let me pay for a baby sitter so you can have an evening out - I know you can't afford it yourselves").
I can't quite think of the term that applied - it was something like "taking responsibility for your own decisions, actions and desires".
So OK - Commisar Krudd has exhorted the women of Austrailia to breed away and the State will pay. Probably a truly stupid concept, perhaps even more stupid that all his other doctrinaire concepts - though maybe that's too close to call. For a man who can p*** away $A10.2 billion in a single day scattering money all over the landscape the $$$ needed to pay maternity and paternity leave would be easy enough to print.
But....Exetel doesn't have a bank note printing press and, as far as I know, nor does any other small Australian business. Neither we, nor any other small Australian business, can afford either the financial or operational costs of Krudd's cummunistic policies on maternity and paternity leave. Arbitrary 'floors' of number of people employed before the provisions apply are equally non-sensical - if you think about such concepts for more than a billionth of a second - as are all the other mealy mouthed ameliorations currently being touted by the party faithful.
If the State wants to pay women to breed for the Fatherland then that's just one more expense for the State to bear - of course it's you and I and every other tax payer who will actually be paying for yet more of Krudd's grandstanding lunacy.
If Krudd expects his personal "Cultural Revolution" to be paid for by Australia's businesses then there will be a lot less businesses in Australia (I can think of a large number of countries that don't have such requirements) and those that are here will employ a lot less females - as well as a lot less males.
I wonder who will then pay the taxes for Krudd's other lunatic nonsenses?