by John Howard
The diversionary strategy was highly successful. In cooperation with the states, we established a regime whereby a person caught up, for the first time, in the criminal justice system because of drug use would be told that he or she could agree to undergo an extensive course of rehabilitation and, if so, no further action would be taken. If this offer were not taken up then that person would continue to be dealt with through the criminal justice system.
There were some Liberals, and even more members of the Labor Party, who joined the then fashionable stampede to decriminalise marijuana use. They still flirted with the now totally discredited theory that marijuana was a harmless recreational drug. The linkages between marijuana and chronic depression and/or schizophrenia are now clear. That was not so obviously the case in 1998. Jeff Kennett encouraged debate at that time. He is now firmly against decriminalisation.
The Government also provided generous financial support for a youth suicide prevention program, under the leadership of Dr Ian Webster. The unexpected, and usually unexplained, suicide of a child is about the most confronting and traumatic experience that any parent could have. As a member of parliament some of the most moving discussions I had were with constituents in exactly this situation.
To reach back over one’s life and interaction with a son or a daughter, desperately trying to pinpoint the moment or occasions when the wrong thing was done which may have triggered an ultimately tragic act, must be painful beyond belief. Yet that experience was the nightmare of far too many Australian parents. In so many cases, drug addiction was the core of the problem.
For those who dismissed the value of investment in programs confronting drug abuse or the high youth suicide rate, the figures are a persuasive answer. The heroin death toll in 1998 was 927, in 1999, 1116; by 2005 it had declined to 374. Critics will say that it was all due to a shortage of heroin. There was a reduction in supply, but that was not the only explanation. The Tough on Drugs campaign, and not least the effort made to encourage parents to talk to their children directly about drug issues, had had a real impact.
I attended many launches of individual Tough on Drugs programs with Brian Watters. Brian would finish his short speech at a launch by referring to a forthcoming event such as Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day or Christmas, and then simply say that, as a result of the Tough on Drugs strategy, there would be a specific additional number of young Australians spending that occasion with their families than would otherwise have been the case. Those present were left in no doubt about what was at stake in fighting drug addiction.
In 1996 the suicide rate amongst young males, particularly those living in rural areas, was one of the highest in the world. According to Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)-sourced statistics, the suicide rate for both males and females declined by 37 per cent between 1998 and 2007. The most remarkable improvement had been amongst young males, where a 50 per cent fall was recorded between 1997 and 2007. I have written about the issues of suicide and drug abuse together because of weighty evidence that the two are causally related.
The high youth suicide rate bothered many young Australians. For each of the last seven or eight years as Prime Minister I, along with the Leader of the Opposition, would attend a conference in Parliament House which brought together young men and women from all around Australia to talk about personal beliefs and the values of our society.
I spoke about my own values, spiritual beliefs and what meaning I found in life. On quite a number of occasions the question was asked of me, why did I think the youth suicide rate in Australia was so high. It was not an easy question to answer. The high suicide rate clearly troubled those young people. I replied that one of the reasons was that we no longer lived in a society governed by absolutes. Everything in life had become relative. Taking one’s life had been, years ago, one of those taboo, or absolutely unthinkable, acts, which only the most completely desperate contemplated. Perhaps society’s steady descent into relativism was one of the explanations why suicide, especially amongst the young, had become more common.
Recently the term ‘middle-class welfare’ has been used, pejoratively, to attack payments and tax concessions to people whom the critics believe should not be receiving them. The use of the term ‘welfare’ is dishonest, because the payments under attack are not true welfare or income-support payments; rather, they are measures to change individual behaviour in pursuit of good public policy or, in the case of Family Tax Benefits, recognise the cost of something society regards as vital — the bearing and raising of children. By contrast, the unemployment benefit is a true welfare payment, because it gives the recipient a basic level of financial support to keep him or her from poverty.
The universal 30 per cent private health insurance rebate is frequently attacked as middle-class welfare. It is not a welfare payment. The welfare component of the health system in Australia is the financial support for consultations with a GP and free public hospital treatment available under Medicare.
The private health insurance rebate is an incentive for people to take out private health insurance, so that the private hospital usage it supports will carry some of the load that would otherwise be carried by the public hospital system. If the incentive is withdrawn, or too heavily means-tested, then there will be a decline in the number of people being insured, which in turn will push more people into the public hospital system at an increased cost to the taxpayer. That would be a bad public policy outcome.
For many years companies in Australia have been provided with tax and other incentives to invest more heavily in research and development. It is beneficial, economically, to have such investment and, therefore, incentives through the tax or payments system to induce more of that investment is good public policy. By analogy, means-testing the private health insurance rebate would be the equivalent of denying research and development tax concessions to highly profitable companies.
The middle-class welfare argument becomes even more illogical in the case of tax benefits for the cost of having children. It also raises the issue of horizontal equity in our taxation system.
It is sound public policy to ensure that taxpayers who carry heavier family responsibilities than other taxpayers, at the same level of income, should receive some support through the taxation system for carrying those responsibilities. Is it really fair that a couple earning a combined income of $80,000 a year should be treated in exactly the same fashion, through the taxation system, as a couple earning the same amount but supporting two or three children? It is equally legitimate to ask the same question of couples on much higher incomes, particularly as we still have a strongly progressive taxation system.
To me, the answer to the question must properly be no. Surely it is in the national interest to encourage childbearing, to help with the cost of raising children and also to recognise the contribution made to society by those who care and provide for others out of their incomes?
That used to be a widely accepted belief in Australia. Many of those who currently attack Family Tax Benefits as middle-class welfare completely overlook the fact that, until 1987, the principal method of assisting Australian parents with the cost of raising their children was non-means-tested on parental income.
Over the years there have been many changes in the ways in which governments have sought to help families, and much complexity added, largely due to means-testing. Perceived gains on the equity front have been at the cost of heavy losses on the simplicity front.
When I became PM I wanted the tax treatment of families with dependent children to be made more generous and also extra tax breaks given to single-income families in recognition of the entire income they sacrificed when a parent stayed at home full-time to look after a child. Our 1996 policy gave increased tax-free thresholds for each child and significantly boosted the threshold for single-income households. Subsequent Family Tax Benefits continued to reflect these priorities.
In 2001 NATSEM, the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling at
the University of Canberra, released research which compared the disposable incomes of a range of families in 1996 with their situation in March 2001. It showed that at every level, there had been an increase in the disposable incomes of those families. In particular the relative positions of sole parents and single-income families had increased quite dramatically. It was irrefutable evidence that my policy goals for families had been achieved. The finding in relation to sole-parent families demonstrated that I had kept faith with my 1995 Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) speech promise that a Howard Government would protect the more vulnerable in society.
In 2002, departmental analysis threw up figures which formed an instructive backdrop to our examination of policies influencing the work/family balance and, in particular, the issue of paid parental leave. At that point 22 per cent of couples with dependent children were single-income families — a greater proportion, in fact, than the number of couple families with children where both parents were in full-time work. The largest group, at 27 per cent, was that of one parent working full-time and the other part-time. The remainder of families with dependent children were either sole-parent families or those where the parent or parents were unemployed. In 2009, the single-income cohort was 27 per cent, the two full-time earners’ was 22 per cent and one full-time/one part-time was 36 per cent. There was plenty of media and interest-group pressure for universal paid parental leave. The Sex Discrimination commissioner and feminist groups gave it iconic status; failure to adopt it meant that the Government was unsympathetic to the aspirations of modern women.
The deeper we delved into the parental leave issue, the more problematic it became. Any system which involved compulsion on business generally to provide paid parental leave would not be supported by my Government as, amongst other things, it would be manifestly unfair to small business. It would also disadvantage many women contemplating having children by reducing their attractiveness to potential employers.
Something like 45 per cent of the workforce enjoyed some kind of parental leave. It was widespread in the public service, and many large corporations had quite generous schemes. The Government should not reduce incentives for this to continue.
A further consideration was that of equitable treatment of all mothers of newborn children, irrespective of their work choices. I, and many of my colleagues, remained firmly of the view that the decision of a mother, or indeed a father, of a newborn baby to remain at home full-time for an indefinite period to look after that child should receive the same degree of respect, and financial recognition, as the decision of a parent to return to the full-time or part-time workforce as quickly as possible after the birth of the child.
Perhaps it results from the mistaken belief that only quite wealthy families opt to have one parent stay at home that there is almost blanket insensitivity to the fact that when that choice is made, the financial sacrifice by the family is usually greater than the cost of childcaring arrangements when both parents stay in the workforce. An entire income is given up. A large number of low-income families really struggle to achieve their desire to have one parent at home while a child is very young.
In putting together the details of a scheme, we found the potential for anomalies when parents, as they inevitably would, changed their minds about care arrangements after the birth of a child. How would one treat a declared stay-at-home mother who decides to re-enter the workforce? Conversely what of the mother who at the time the child was born intended to return to work, thus taking advantage of a paid maternity leave scheme, and then changes her mind and wants to remain at home indefinitely?
Given difficult experiences with recovering overpayments of family tax benefits, I was determined not to have a parental leave system which gave rise to that. Of even more importance, I wanted fair treatment of both stay-at-home and workforce-bound parents.
For these reasons my Government decided in 2004 not to have a separate paid parental leave system. Instead we elected to have a more generous, and new, baby bonus scheme. Its official title was Maternity Payment. The new baby bonus incorporated earlier schemes. It was set at $3000 in 2004 for each newborn baby, with increments of $1000 each in 2006 and 2008. At its 2008 level of $5000 it was broadly equivalent to 12 or 13 weeks’ leave at the federal minimum wage. Financial conditions permitting, it could be made more generous.
The payment of a non-means-tested lump sum meant far less administrative complexity, no definitional problems and unarguably all mothers were being treated equally, whether they were returning to work or staying at home.
The Rudd Government scheme, intended to operate from 1 January 2011, would pay 18 weeks at the federal minimum wage. It discriminates against stay-at-home parents (who remain eligible for the baby bonus), and does so quite deliberately. The Families Minister, Jenny Macklin, boasted to this effect when she said in her speech introducing the legislation that 85 per cent of families would be about $2000 better off if they took paid parental leave. The policy announced by Tony Abbott was more generous and, as a consequence, discriminates even more heavily against stay-at-home parents.
I thought again of the estimable welfare organisations when I reflected on how the operation of the Family Law Act might be improved. For a long time I had imagined that, in some way, their marriage guidance and relationship activities could be more effectively involved in both holding marriages together as well as providing comfort and practical help when they fell apart. My social welfare advisor, John Perrin, put me into contact with a Sydney lawyer called Patrick Parkinson.
The two of us, ably assisted by Senator Kay Patterson, the Minister for Family and Community Services, developed the concept of Family Relationship Centres. Then to be fully funded by the Government, tenders for them were, in the main, picked up by the major religious groups through their existing marriage guidance and family relationship units. When a couple with children separate, a custody matter cannot be taken to court unless a genuine attempt has been made to resolve any differences through dispute resolution, using either a Family Relationship Centre or other registered dispute resolution provider. The role of the centre is to achieve, if possible, a total and non-litigious resolution of outstanding custody (now called parenting) issues between couples before they go to court. Because of their community focus and the variety of services offered, they act as non-judgemental shock absorbers for many couples during the early, difficult time following a separation. The 65 centres planned by the Howard Government are fully operational.
Many of my Coalition colleagues felt that the divorce laws had become unfair in their operation against fathers. Amongst the changes produced in 2005 was the introduction into the law of the presumption of joint responsibility, which did not, incidentally, mean that children must spend equal amounts of time with each of their separated parents, only that courts should be more accommodating to the interests of non-custodial parents. It was a long-overdue change which afforded proper understanding of the anguish and feeling of exclusion experienced by many fathers at the hands of Australia’s divorce laws. There is pressure to reverse some of the changes. If that occurs, many will be surprised at the backlash it generates.
The advice that John Perrin gave me in relation to these changes was his last contribution to better social policy in Australia. He died on 21 May 2006. At his moving memorial service at the Wesley National Memorial Church in Canberra, I reflected on just how faithful he had been to the values of a practical Christian life. A humorous, intelligent and engaging man, John had both applied his convictions and used his abilities, in the fortunate position in which he found himself, to bring about beneficial changes for his fellow Australians.
Finally, of course, reference must be made to the way in which the Government I led not only retained but measurably strengthened Medicare. When my Government was defeated on 24 November 2007, the level of bulk-billing in Australia for ordinary GP consultations was 78.2 per cent. It was an even higher figure for older Australians and children under 16.
It had been a long time since the ALP could mount any kind of argument that the Coalition had allowed bulk billing to languish. In addition, the Medicare Safety Net, whereby 80 per cent of the cost of out-of-hospital services, over and above GP consultations, in excess of quite generous thresholds for families and individuals, provided remarkable security and peace of mind to Australians in relation to their healthcare costs.
The Medicare Safety Net has been the most significant improvement to the entire Medicare system since its introduction in 1984. Yet the ALP voted against its introduction.
The area of continuing concern remained the public hospital system, which was the responsibility of the state governments, although the federal government has a vital funding role. Support for bulk billing and the Medicare Safety Net had given real substance to the commitment I made some 12 years earlier that a Coalition Government would not only retain but build on Medicare. Coupled with the way in which we had revitalised private health insurance, it meant that the Coalition Government had an impressive record in strengthening our national health system. There was much substance in Tony Abbott’s frequent question-time refrain that ‘The Howard Government is the best friend that Medicare has ever had.’
Australia’s health system, with all its faults, which are many, is better than any other around the world. On talkback radio I often said that if the battler were to get ill, it was better that he do so in Bankstown or Broadmeadows than in Brooklyn or Brixton. Political infighting, especially at a state level, denigrates our health services and the professionals who staff them far too much. I do not believe that a federal bureaucracy would run hospitals more efficiently than do state ones. However, devolved local control would bring a vast improvement. Australia should work to restore local hospital board control over our many public hospitals. It was Coalition policy in 2007. Tony Abbott has made it so again. We must maintain and, where possible, bolster the partnership between public and private hospitals. Our public hospitals need more beds and fewer bureaucrats.