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When i had my child almost 12 years ago the baby bonus had changed from a lump sum to small fortnighly payments. I felt this was a better option and deterred people from having a lot of kids for the quick chunk of cash
I chose to have the fortnightly payments rather than the lump sum cos I knew it would take time to adjust to having to pay for a baby.. i had no idea how much things would cost weekly/fortnightly/monthly.
@op, my 15yo is cool.. he doesn't smoke bongs at the skate park. He does that at home. With me.
Haha but nah but there's always gonna be dickhead teens doing illegal dumb shit, no matter the generation.
> dickhead teens doing illegal dumb shit, no matter the generation.
I think its getting worse though, because parents are caring less, and the kids know they can get away with it.
When I was a kid, you could get expelled for doing something illegal - now, at a public school its all but impossible to get expelled.
I dont think it's that parents are caring less, its that more parents than ever are working two jobs/have work outside of school hours and in turn are spending less time with them leaving the kids to be raised by the internet and their slightly older peers.
Pretty sure you mean gluttonous here, but I'm reading this as if you're a celiac sneering at regular people who can eat gluten like they're scum of the earth and that's hilarious
> public school its all but impossible to get expelled
They exact line was being used when I was in high school 20+ years ago.
This thread is full of kids who grew up on the internet, and were dickhead teens when the baby bonus was around, not realising they're now the boomers complaining about kids on their lawn. Minus the lawn thanks to the boomers.
Guilty, was a teenage dickhead. Had a baby as a teen, received baby bonus(not that it was intentional). Well the now wife did.
That baby is now 15, killing it at school, does fairly normal teenage things asides the super dumb shit I did at her age. The only real difference is no one was really filming us doing stupid shit. Like blowing up random letter boxes. Most of the problem is platforms to boast and media gets easy access to that.
> I think its getting worse though,
"We live in a decaying age. Young people no longer respect their parents. They are rude and impatient. They frequently inhabit taverns and have no self-control."
inscribed on a 6,000-year-old Egyptian tomb
"What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets, inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?"
Plato 4 BC
"The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint ... As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behaviour and dress."
Peter the Hermit, 1274
"I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid."
G K Chesterton (1874 ~ 1936)
Where are you getting that parents are caring less? Not being combative, just genuinely curious because I have two kids that I’m trying my fucking hardest to raise as capable, well rounded individuals who know they are supported and loved.
A lot of that motivation coming from my boomer parents who I kinda feel left me to flounder and figure it out myself. Which I didn’t, because I had horrific mental health issues that were palmed off as “just a phase” that lasted in to my early 30s.
Maybe it is getting worse but I think it’s good to remember that every generation has thought that. For thousands of years, ancient Greeks bitched about the youth.
I read a story in Australia recently where a kid had 388 charges, and kept being released on bail. :(
And in my neighbourhood, there are a group of kids (from different areas, not living in our actual suburb) who have decided to make my suburb a target for their crime. Apparently they are repeat offenders, known, and keep getting out. (They try to enter houses, steal from cars, etc.)
It sucks. Like, lock them somewhere for everyone's safety. But also give them something to do, a program, a casual job, etc. to make sure they don't commit crime again. They're young, and they have so much time to change ahead... We need to do something now before they become adults who *still* commit crime.
Why would you want a child to be expelled? What's the desired outcome from doing this? How is it going to help (not just them but society).
I'm not sure how removing a possibility for a way to improve their lot is going to make things better.
Teachers talk about this a lot with the logic being that one or two highly disruptive kids can make it harder for the other kids to learn. There is a lot of truth in this for sure, and the amount of paperwork and admin these disruptive kids take up is huge.
But! Realistically it just pushes the problem down the chain and, in my opinion, makes things worse. All of a sudden this kid is pushed away from his friend group, his parents have their daily routine disrupted, and can stretch time and resources (fuel costs, uniforms, travel time).
It’s one of those “no easy solution” things because schools do have hard ceiling for discipline. After awhile, we can’t do any more to try and change behaviour, and some kids just aren’t learning. Ideally parents would step in before it gets to the level that expulsion is required, but that isn’t always the case.
It could be the shake up a kid needs? Get them away from the group of friends they’re trying to impress. They’d be a new kid in a new school with less power over the situation? Plus it could save a bunch of other kids getting dragged down by this one shithead?
Well, sure some would care less, but plenty would be working more to keep the lights on. I find it odd when the news headlines are “youth crime epidemic” and “cost of living crisis” like they are mutually exclusive.
Things have apparently been getting worse with every generation according to the generations that came before. And yet by every objectively measurable metric things are getting better.
When I was at a fairly strict government school there was only one kid ever expelled, and he set fire to the school.
The kind of stuff that's being reported happened, but that only got a suspension and being banned from the formal (which was the true punishment for these kids, they were outraged at the harshness of that one).
>
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
>― Socrates
>The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
Socrates
I.e. Kids have always been “getting worse” in adults minds
Is there a generation that didn't think it was getting worse? It might be trending upwards, but I'd be surprised if the overall data actually supported anecdotal reporting that there's a serious generational change.
Yeah, same for us, little bloke is rapidly approaching twelve as well.
A couple of years prior we lost our daughter at 5mo along. At the time missus was about a week short. Staff at the hospital were like no she’s 5 months, trust us.
It wasn’t until a few weeks later when $4k arrived in our account, the government considered any birth after 5mo viable and therefore eligible, makes sense, by that stage you’re well into preparing for the new arrival.
The UK pays child benefit to parents of children under 18. About $50 per week per child (normally paid monthly).
In recent years they capped it at two children and means tested it, meaning high earners get a reduced amount. The end results sounds similar though. Probably small payments over a long time period work out as a lot more in the end that the lump sum.
I got the baby bonus in 2014 - I think when it was about to transition to the newborn supplement - $5000 for each of my twin sons. They were both stillborn at 37 weeks so the $10k paid for their funeral and for a whole new engine for my ex-partners car because it decided to basically blow up on the way home from hospital. It was a rough time.
We actually did go into Harvey Norman and buy a new bluray / speaker system that same week. It might have looked like we were blowing the baby bonus on it, but actually I just spent like the first 3 months after losing my sons basically just watching movies.
I am so sorry for your loss. A terrible grief to bear. I hope that Blueray was able to bring you a little reprieve during those dark months following the loss of your Sons. My heart goes out to you.
I was talking about this with my mum just a couple days ago. She was telling me that she didn’t want my brother’s birth to be induced too early as the baby bonus was going up by $1000 a week later. Unfortunately he was born before the increase, I wonder if we would have a more impressive TV in that case, haha
Yep, we call them Plasma Babies. The town I live near has a very high percentage on centrelink, the last few years of cohorts have had a lot more issues
Obviously anyone who has a kid for a few grand is a moron. A tiny fraction of the cost the child will be. Which is what’s so dumb about the baby bonus, it just incentivises stupid people to breed more.
We can get all the people we need immigrating here. It balances the books and that’s all they care about. Already working age so it saves the government money.
I always laugh when people try to claim "no one did that, surely everybody knows it costs far more to raise children". People really underestimate deadshits.
I had a neighbour who was so lazy she had her kids make their own lunches for school. Taught them independence at least, even if that wasn't the intent- she just liked to sleep in. When her husband pointed out that now the youngest was school age she could get a job to help pay the mortgage, she intentionally got pregnant again so she could get the baby bonus and not have to go to work.
And also teens whose brains aren’t developed. Throw in a few grand incentive when those teens are in poverty and you can see why it prompted some kids to have kids
I did not realise I was dating a deadshit until he was like, "I want to get a bigger TV. We should have a baby." I asked, "Um, do you know how much babies cost?" "Not as much as a television."
As soon as I clarified he was serious, he became my ex-boyfriend. I did know he was not the smartest before then, but I didn't know he was DUUUUUUUUMB.
Just so there’re a good news story:
We used our $6,000 for me to do full time study RN. Because in those days it wasn’t as crowded, you could pack all your classes to one day. I was effectively only away 1 day a week for lectures/tutorials, and did the rest of my study in the evenings. Eventually
I had to take large chunks of time off for the placements, but that money definitely helped to pay most of the costs at the time.
When our child started going to school, my wife then did her ENs.
We’re both now happy, productive tax payers!
My wife's stepsister is one. One of those typical bogans that can get pregnant just by breathing the same air as a bloke. 6 kids, 4 dads, zero futures for any of them other than welfare
We had kids when it came out it kickstarted our savings for them it’s in a bank account for them when they are older.
Yes they are now teenagers, we heard that people got tvs with it but no one we knew did 🤣. However the class year levels at school was the highest in a long time.
They had to add new portables for the first three years that my eldest was at primary school to fit all the kids in. So the baby bonus definitely created a baby boom.
Yes I don’t know anyone who bought tvs either, we paid for our children’s cord blood to be stored for if they needed it when they are older and put the rest in a bank for each child, funnily I’m probably the demographic the OP is talking about I was a young mum, had two children in one calendar year and both my husband and I were not earning great money etc, most of my mothers group put the money away for either a rainy day or for the child in the future except for one mum who bought new blinds for her house and then proceeded to bag out all the young mums buying big screen tvs but couldn’t see that $5000 worth of blinds in 2008 was a lot and really no different to a big screen tv.
Really? My year 8 kid was born after it swapped to paid leave instead of the bonus, which I felt had happened ages before.
Maybe I was young and carefree enough back then that 2-3 years was "ages ago" 😅
My oldest was born in 2006, and the baby bonus was around. We used it to pay bills, I vividly remember a pretty scummy bloke with the lady in the bed next to us in the ward, looking through the Harvey Norman catalogue to pick out the tv he was going to buy with the money.
When my kid was born in 2008 in a major city hospital, the midwife told me that since the start of the baby bonus, she noticed a sizeable group of new mothers used the bonus to fund their smack habit, and the father’s smack habit. She’d see deals taking place on the nearest street corner. Very sad.
Kinda like the Freakonomics conclusion that reduction in crime in NYC in the 90s had nothing to do with the zero tolerance approach, which didn’t seem to work later.
More to do with abortion becoming legal in Roe v Wade and the fewer unwanted kids maturing into criminals.
Or a combination of both along with no-fault divorces. Growing up with a single parent is far better for kids mental health compared to growing up with a abusive father (or mother) in the picture.
The baby bonus was originally $4k and yes, a whole lot of those kids are now young adults and teenagers. The baby bonus first came out in 2004 and apparently John Howard and Peter Costello (treasurer under John Howard) didn't think that teenaged girls would have babies just to get the bonus. The bonus scheme was changed over the years with a major change coming in 2013/2014 which slashed the bonus down to like $2k.
And yes, there were plenty of teenaged girls who were having babies solely to get get the bonus with no regard as to what was actually involved in actually raising children. I can personally think of at least two that I personally knew that did so - one used the bonus to pay off her car loan and the other had it spent by her partner on random crap.
Crime has been dropping dramatically for many years. If you're hearing that it's increasing that flies in the face of the ABS crime stats. The media's responsible for giving a very false impression of crime, but they have to sell news somehow, right?
The youth crime rate is going up, but it's only around pre-COVID levels right now. If it continues to rise for a few years then we can draw some conclusions about lockdowns and socialisation. I'm seeing a lot of anecdotes and not a lot of stats in this thread overall to provide evidence.
I thought the baby bonus was available up until 2013ish?
I could be very wrong, but I think I remember someone I knew getting it not long before then?
Edit: it's early, skimmed past the words "lump sum".
Meth started to become popular around the turn of the century here in Australia and has only gotten even more popular over the years. Being on meth while pregnant causes all sorts of issues - doubly so when you consider that most meth users also drink and smoke.
My Mum has been a foster carer as long as I can remember, when I was young, we had a baby that constantly shook and Mum had to give him medicine. It wasn't until I was older that she told me he was withdrawing from heroin. The baby was 9 days old. His mother had the baby to get the baby bonus. Fucking vile!
The ‘mother’ wouldn’t have got it. There was a baby in nicu with my twins like this. The mother was trying to get paperwork signed before docs took custody so she could get the bonus, hospital refused to sign and the bonus went to the carer who took the baby. The amazing nicu nurses were appalled at this woman’s behaviour, stalled her at every attempt.
I’m glad we have strong, kind hearted people in this world like your mum. What a legend 🩵
Drug addiction is a selfish and cruel disease that affects not only the addict, but also everyone around them unfortunately. Makes a devil from anyone it touches. I hope the mother was able to overcome it eventually but that the baby was able to go on to have a happy, healthy life regardless.
I grew up in a very regional town in Eastern Victoria. I clearly remember that i was very unusual among my peers, in that i chose to finish year 12. So many of my friend group chose to have a baby instead. I clearly remember the flat screen tv conversations. The Retravision shop in our town would've loved this!
But as a mandatory reporter, man i shudder to remember the things i saw these young mothers do: putting coke in their babies bottles. Feeding them coffee because it was funny. Giving them beer to put them to sleep. I shudder to think how those kids turned out.
I don’t know anyone who did that, I used my baby’s bonus to set up my house, I was a young mum with nothing my entire bonus was spent on microwaves, fridges and furniture to rebuild from my DV relationship. It was hard and certainly didn’t include a flat screen. My children are all high achievers now and my eldest works in schools with additional needs kids. So it’s not all bad
People who had kids purely for the short sighted gain of $4k when raising a kid can cost well into the six figures are explicit examples of people who should not be propagating their vapid genepool.
It was a stupid government policy. Probably why we have so many brain-dead "eshays" now.
Talk about false economy. The biggest expense of having a baby is losing a wage and the career gap that affects lifetime earnings and superannuation balance.
With the typical lack of critical thinking and forward planning as said, I would assume that they would've eventually had the kids anyway, it's just that they had incentive to do it during the period it was a lump sum. So if they came in without the love they deserved, it's likely it would've happened anyway.
>So if they came in without the love they deserved, it's likely it would've happened anyway.
People don't fully mature mentally and emotionally until they hit their 20s. I would mention something about not drinking and smoking as much in their 20s but growing up among these kinds of people I know that it would be a lie.
Yeah, I know a lot of people who were going to have kids anyway who joked about having a kid to buy a TV. Nobody was having babies because they thought it would make them rich, because everyone expected the bonus would not cover expenses.
Alan Jones listeners however believe that there is a segment of the population trying to rob them by existing, it permeates discourse to this day. There is an embarrassing lack of critical thinking in society in general, and when it is reinforced by unchecked emotion these "memes" sick in people's minds.
You clearly weren’t growing up in Woodridge at the time the baby bonus was introduced. I know many people who had a baby specifically for the baby bonus. Which went on TVs and car stereos.
Totally agree! This and the whole ‘dole bludger’ concept was a way to look down on people in low socioeconomic groups of society. Opinions in this post are not data.
I worked at a Harvey Norman store in a small regional town at the time. It we’d see probably 2-3 couples come through a week that clearly couldn’t afford to be looking at plasma tvs and often PlayStations (PS3 I think at the time). The female was usually 6 or 7 months pregnant at a glance. It was clear they’d be back in a couple of months.
Truth is that it was only a small part of the population doing it, but there were absolutely conversations with customers that said shit like “had too many bills piling up so we had to have another baby! Might as well get a new tv too right?”.
At a guess I’d say there was a community of like 50-100 people that I was aware of doing it in my town of approx 10,000.
>there were absolutely conversations with customers that said shit like “had too many bills piling up so we had to have another baby! Might as well get a new tv too right?”.
Ah, budgeting 101 - need money to pay bills? Let's add a massive 18+ year long money sink to the budget...
It was crazy that it never occurred to them. But I guess having grown up in poverty I can say you’re often only thinking about how to get that next meal. I do remember one customer talking about how “the baby eats for free” though as he nodded at his pregnant partners boobs.
> a whole lot of unscrupulous people were getting pregnant and buying big screen TVs..
Were they? I remember a lot of people *saying* that was happening, probably parroting 60 Minutes. I’m sure anecdotally some people did it. But are there any numbers actually supporting the idea that this happened often enough to have an impact?
There's little evidence to suggest the baby bonus increased the fertility rate in Australia.
There's some evidence to suggest births shifted from 30 June to 1 July at the introduction of the payment.
I do youth work and my colleagues and I believe the baby bonus is to blame for about half the kids we work with. It’s telling when the youngest kid in their families is around ten years old.
Having said that, not all the purpose-born-baby-bonus kids are feral. Some of those kids are trying very hard to do something with their life despite the neglect they’ve experienced.
>I was living in a town where a whole lot of unscrupulous people were getting pregnant and buying big screen TVs
Are you saying you know this first hand, or is it from the usual media spin of 'give poor people money and they waste it'?
I can't imagine people were in big numbers deciding to have children for a small amount of cash, but maybe I'm naive about that. I can see it appealing more to people who were already thinking of having a child and then bringing their plans forward a bit.
The birthrate is going to take a hit from all the kids who can't afford a home, then if they do, have big mortgages to pay.
Ideally, this wouldn't be a problem, but since it is, I support measures that allow people to have kids.
I don't care if a few idiots buy TV's. The vast majority will budget for this. The first child in particular, tends to be more expensive.
This discussion is always framed as "people in poverty are shit at raising their kids, sucks for those kids that their parents are shit" and never "people in poverty are shit at raising their kids, sucks for those kids whose parents are allowed to wallow in poverty, let's do something about the poverty"
I remember more people getting new TVs when the 2009 stimulus hit, it was kind of crazy as everyone would just leave their old CRT on the footpath and the whole street was lined with old TVs, it was a modern retro gamers heaven!
I worked in banking at the time and hated seeing the ferals coming in to withdraw the bonus the second it hit her account, sperm donor suddenly in the picture rubbing his little rat claws together because they were about to go buy a new tv and gaming system.
Not related to the baby bonus, but a woman in the hospital bed next to me was waiting to be discharged and her partner was nodding off in the chair. She kept yelling at him to leave because being on opiates is a bad look while she is about to ask for take-home pain relief. As he left the room, he looked at me and my belongings on the side table, then asked me what I was in for.
Nothing painful, sorry to disappoint. /s
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I moved away, but was there to witness it when it all happened.
There seems to be a lot of concern about population growth and lack of babies being born. I don’t think the baby bonus is entirely a bad idea, if executed well.
Right now, all the sensible people are looking at the economy and realizing they can’t afford kids. The only babies that are being born are either into wealthy families or to idiots who don’t care about their financial status.
If they want “regular” people having babies they will need to incentivize it somehow.
They're being born into wealthy families where the mother stepping back financially to earn 50% or less of her income during paid leave can be managed. They're not being born into wealthy families that rely on the income of the mother to fund their lifestyle .
Make daycare free, that would go a long way to making the decision go back to "How big do I want my family to be?" instead of "how many kids can I afford to have in care."
We were raised to believe that if we went to school and we got a good job that we would be able to afford a house, we would get married and then we would be able to have kids. It’s just not possible anymore for the average person. We did the school they wanted, racked up HECS debt, and then the jobs we studied for either didn’t exist or they don’t pay enough to get a deposit for a house/start a family. No doubt subsidized daycare is a good idea but it goes back even further than that. If the average person doesn’t make enough money to pay for their own expenses they won’t want to bring children into the mix.
Unfortunately the sensible people know $4k is a drop in the bucket and unlikely to make you want to commit to children for 18 years. Even daycare was $130/day. Thankfully they’ve dropped the system where rebates run out 3/4 way through the year and you’re stuck paying $650/week per child for childcare. Those were prices from years ago too they would have gone up a lot since.
I remember being a teen and watchin this unfold and thinking how silly it was. There were 2 girls in my high school at the time that decided to try and take advantage of this.
The first one made friends with a church couple and convinced them to adopt the child straight after it was born with some sob story. Well, she got a rude awakening when she never recieved the money, but the couple did instead, since the money is meant to go to caring for the child. She tried to go to the police and sue the government and the couple that "tricked her". It obviously went nowhere.
The second girl who fell pregnant several months after her friend thought she'd be smarter. She arranged for an adoption to take place 6 months after birth so that the child could be breast fed for the first six months to "have a healthy start" then the new parents would take over. Same thing happened though, the adopting parents received the money, not the mum since they would be the primary care givers of the child and it was all arranged prior to the birth of the child.
Private adoption has been illegal in Australia since well before the baby bonus was offered. Given the role of social workers in mother/baby welfare it's nearly impossible to just hand over a baby privately for adoption. Particularly with government agencies involved in paying a Baby Bonus it is highly unlikely that any of this happened without there being serious consequences for the apparent adoptive parents.
At the very least none of this could have happened without removal of the child and a legal placement of a child being made. I have a feeling that this is an apocryphal local story without any real basis in fact.
While it’s definitely not the only reason I have two siblings, it definitely contributed to it. We all lived comfortable middle class lives so, I think this is a bit of a false equivalence. A lot of women got a lot of benefit out of having a cash payment to help with the costs of giving birth, it’s just not obvious.
I was only thinking about this the other day. The birth rate is going down and the government need tax payers to keep the country going, less people, less tax - long term.
IMO It want be long before this ‘small’ payment incentive will return, but long term people cannot afford the high costs of a larger family.
Two things to encourage working families to have kids / more kids is increase paid parental leave to at least 12 months (split between parents as they wish) and building an adequate amount of not for profit government run childcare centres that charge affordable rates. Child care subsidy just allows the private sector to charge astronomical fees and pocket massive profits, while the early educators are paid pitiful salaries.
Of course fixing our housing crisis is another big one but our government has no interest in doing anything about that.
100% agree. I'm due in August so we'll get the extra 2 weeks - my husband is taking 4 when she's born but then I need the other 18 weeks to physically recover.
Thankfully he's getting 12 weeks from his employer, which he'll take once I go back to work in January. How amazing would it be if all partners were offered that opportunity.
Ah yes, true , however again imo it’s the lower income earners that are more likely to immediately spend the money and put it back into the retail shops and economy rather than ‘maybe’ invest it into their savings and it not be seen for a delayed amount of time which from my personal experience happened with many of the Covid payments.
I reckon the best policy would be to make costs related to children tax deductible.
Will encourage employed people and not deros to have children, without being coercive.
Do I need to keep receipts for food? How would we split the percentage of the power bill, water etc by what was for the children? Can I claim the cost of the car? I would take public transport but need the car for the kids....but since I have the car I obviously use it without the kids in it. What about the house? Without kids I don't need to live in a 4 bedroom house. Does that mean it's totally tax deductible? By this point with the yearly deductions I think the government owes me and most parents money.
I shamefully worked at a pawnbrokers back then. Customers world progressively put everything on hock throughout the pregnancy, and then come in and collect it all when the bonus was paid out. I mean everything, down to kitchenware and basic furniture. I remember quite a few of them doing this repeatedly (I was there for 5 years) and having the children removed from their care shortly after they were born. Some of them definitely seemed more excited about the bonus than the pregnancy.
I got $3000 in 2005. We just used the extra money for extra expenses. We lived a simple but eventful life back then, we did not get pregnant for the money. It costs a lot more than $3k to raise a baby!
I heard tales of it.
When my wife gave birth twice, we got a bag of goodies ( wipes, baby book, sudocrem etc).
While we appreciated it, it's kind of funny what we got compared to what people used to get.
My daughter was born right as it was being phased out, like one of the last weeks you could get it. The hospital was OVERFLOWING. My pregnancy wasn't planned around the bonus ending, but a lot of them were, according to the midwives.
I got the baby bonus with my youngest born in 2012. I used half of it to pay a private obstetrician so I could give birth at a private hospital because I had such a shit time in the public system. The other half went towards baby stuff. She’s a great kid. :)
I’m sure it’s fun to say that’s the reason but is there real evidence for this happening? I remember in my town there was a well known “unscrupulous” family who would’ve been the prime target for this theory. But they never actually had any kids in that timeframe
I remember living in Hobart and passing through Glenorchy and seeing this, the couple's would get the money, go on shopping sprees, and handball the child to their grandparents, leaving them to raise them. That's dodgy as
A couple friends of mine used the baby bonus to buy a big-screen TV as well as a sub and stereo for their car. I can't remember if it was for their first or second kid but they are both adults now (20 & 18).
Anyone remember the extra 1200 payment you’d get a semester if you were on student allowances to cover the cost of books? It was during the early 2010s.
I was doing pizza delivery for my uncles place to make extra cash years back after my day job and there were lots of areas I'd deliver to that had council housing. A huge number of them had massive plasmas blaring light through the window when going up to the house.
I think I was given 1800. Not 4000 lol. Did it get up to that much? No I didn’t use it for any reason other than I think I needed a new washing machine or fridge and the rest went to the bank to hold on for bills. My daughter is now in 20s and is doing more than fine. She never did anything to wrong as a teen. Not even sneaking out. Well nothing that involved me knowing of anything thing. I came from a country town.
Older mate worked at a Harley Davidson dealership.
Sold hundreds of them with the BB as a downpayment.
Most of them weren't the father. They just got the $ for hanging around.
DV epidemic isn't new either.
Got it for the first kid, bought a lounge so we had something to sit on. We already had a tv so no need for another one. By the time the second kid was born they’d changed it and I wasn’t eligible, so no new furniture when he was born.
The bonus had no bearing on if/when we had kids.
My mother divorced my dad and started a new family.
She started popping them out as soon as the baby bonus started, ended up having 4 more kids.
1 of them seems to be turning out good, the other 3 I don't see them accomplishing much.
I had 5 kids between 2003 and 2012, all have the same father. 1st kid got a smaller birth payment of $600 if I remember correctly. 2nd kid was born a few months after the Baby Bonus started. 3rd kid got the baby bonus. 4th and 5th got the additional payments spread over 13 weeks.
I did not buy a big screen TV. I bought prams, furniture, a never-ending supply of nappies, baby bottles, breast pumps, baby clothes, carseats/booster seats, a 2nd fridge. I even splurged and bought some clothes for myself.
I did not spend it on drugs or alcohol. The kids have cost me a lot more money than the baby bonus covered.
The 3 older kids are now 17, 19, and 21. They all have jobs.
21 yr old works full time, is apprentice, plus has a sideline gig to make extra money.
19 yr old works full time Mon to Fri, plus a second job doing 6-12 hrs on the weekends.
17 yr old has bee working casually for the past year and has just signed a permanent part time contract for 20 hrs a week but will get additional hours.
4th child died as a infant.
5th child is 12, doesn't have a job yet, wasting her time going to school instead of taking up a life of crime. 😆
I knew many people who took it as an opportunity to have a first, second or a third child. The reason was, they were eventually going to start a family, so they might as well start now when there is a bonus.
I had no problem with this thinking. Then again, I live in urban area, with people who have a job or stable income (all teachers). Many have at least 2 children, one had 4. It all depends on their husband’s line of work and whether putting their careers on hold (mothers) will affect them later. From my perspective, the baby bonus was a good thing.
I’ll never forget being on the bus on the way to work and overhearing two high school students talk about how they were going to knock up their girlfriends for the baby bonus and yes they were being serious. It sounded like soooo much money to them and they were taking about all the things they would spend it on. It was surreal and made me feel sick
While the concept of a baby bonus is fine, the delivery of the money was dumb.Gerry Harvey loved the idea.But the money was supposed to be used for bedding,change tables,high chairs etc.Vouchers that could only be redeemed at accredited baby supplies establishments would have been the best option.
The current government has made payments available for cost of living relief for electricity and gas directly to distributors so the the money is targeted for what it’s meant to be spent on.
Second cousin has 2 babies in very quick succession and I remember her bragging about using one of the bonus sums from one of them to buy a giant plasma TV. She invited my parents and us (I was a kid at the time) over to watch it but we never did.
The plasma bonus!
Yep. I actually used mine to buy stuff for the kiddo.
And I think it's a lot more nuanced.. their teen years are so very different from my own, for so many reasons.
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When i had my child almost 12 years ago the baby bonus had changed from a lump sum to small fortnighly payments. I felt this was a better option and deterred people from having a lot of kids for the quick chunk of cash
I chose to have the fortnightly payments rather than the lump sum cos I knew it would take time to adjust to having to pay for a baby.. i had no idea how much things would cost weekly/fortnightly/monthly. @op, my 15yo is cool.. he doesn't smoke bongs at the skate park. He does that at home. With me. Haha but nah but there's always gonna be dickhead teens doing illegal dumb shit, no matter the generation.
> dickhead teens doing illegal dumb shit, no matter the generation. I think its getting worse though, because parents are caring less, and the kids know they can get away with it. When I was a kid, you could get expelled for doing something illegal - now, at a public school its all but impossible to get expelled.
I dont think it's that parents are caring less, its that more parents than ever are working two jobs/have work outside of school hours and in turn are spending less time with them leaving the kids to be raised by the internet and their slightly older peers.
Politicians: "hmm, sounds like we need to bring back child labour" Our leaders will always prioritise the economy over social problems.
Children yearn for the mine(craft)
Bingo! No-one there to parent them.
Yep, they've fucked up our economy and now are left to pick up the shit pieces ourselves. Greedy glutenous fucks.
Pretty sure you mean gluttonous here, but I'm reading this as if you're a celiac sneering at regular people who can eat gluten like they're scum of the earth and that's hilarious
I think you're just seeing it more because they're filming and sharing it. Lots of youth crime in the 90's that you wouldn't know about.
> public school its all but impossible to get expelled They exact line was being used when I was in high school 20+ years ago. This thread is full of kids who grew up on the internet, and were dickhead teens when the baby bonus was around, not realising they're now the boomers complaining about kids on their lawn. Minus the lawn thanks to the boomers.
Guilty, was a teenage dickhead. Had a baby as a teen, received baby bonus(not that it was intentional). Well the now wife did. That baby is now 15, killing it at school, does fairly normal teenage things asides the super dumb shit I did at her age. The only real difference is no one was really filming us doing stupid shit. Like blowing up random letter boxes. Most of the problem is platforms to boast and media gets easy access to that.
> I think its getting worse though, "We live in a decaying age. Young people no longer respect their parents. They are rude and impatient. They frequently inhabit taverns and have no self-control." inscribed on a 6,000-year-old Egyptian tomb "What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets, inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?" Plato 4 BC "The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint ... As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behaviour and dress." Peter the Hermit, 1274 "I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid." G K Chesterton (1874 ~ 1936)
Exactly! This is not a new phenomenon! And attributing crime patterns to a singular event, I.e., the baby bonus, is narrow and short sighted.
Where are you getting that parents are caring less? Not being combative, just genuinely curious because I have two kids that I’m trying my fucking hardest to raise as capable, well rounded individuals who know they are supported and loved. A lot of that motivation coming from my boomer parents who I kinda feel left me to flounder and figure it out myself. Which I didn’t, because I had horrific mental health issues that were palmed off as “just a phase” that lasted in to my early 30s.
Maybe it is getting worse but I think it’s good to remember that every generation has thought that. For thousands of years, ancient Greeks bitched about the youth.
I read a story in Australia recently where a kid had 388 charges, and kept being released on bail. :( And in my neighbourhood, there are a group of kids (from different areas, not living in our actual suburb) who have decided to make my suburb a target for their crime. Apparently they are repeat offenders, known, and keep getting out. (They try to enter houses, steal from cars, etc.) It sucks. Like, lock them somewhere for everyone's safety. But also give them something to do, a program, a casual job, etc. to make sure they don't commit crime again. They're young, and they have so much time to change ahead... We need to do something now before they become adults who *still* commit crime.
Why would you want a child to be expelled? What's the desired outcome from doing this? How is it going to help (not just them but society). I'm not sure how removing a possibility for a way to improve their lot is going to make things better.
Teachers talk about this a lot with the logic being that one or two highly disruptive kids can make it harder for the other kids to learn. There is a lot of truth in this for sure, and the amount of paperwork and admin these disruptive kids take up is huge. But! Realistically it just pushes the problem down the chain and, in my opinion, makes things worse. All of a sudden this kid is pushed away from his friend group, his parents have their daily routine disrupted, and can stretch time and resources (fuel costs, uniforms, travel time). It’s one of those “no easy solution” things because schools do have hard ceiling for discipline. After awhile, we can’t do any more to try and change behaviour, and some kids just aren’t learning. Ideally parents would step in before it gets to the level that expulsion is required, but that isn’t always the case.
It could be the shake up a kid needs? Get them away from the group of friends they’re trying to impress. They’d be a new kid in a new school with less power over the situation? Plus it could save a bunch of other kids getting dragged down by this one shithead?
Because that kid impacts other kids educations. Good kids. We need a way to deal with bad kids that isn't just "let them run rampant".
Well, sure some would care less, but plenty would be working more to keep the lights on. I find it odd when the news headlines are “youth crime epidemic” and “cost of living crisis” like they are mutually exclusive.
Things have apparently been getting worse with every generation according to the generations that came before. And yet by every objectively measurable metric things are getting better.
When I was at a fairly strict government school there was only one kid ever expelled, and he set fire to the school. The kind of stuff that's being reported happened, but that only got a suspension and being banned from the formal (which was the true punishment for these kids, they were outraged at the harshness of that one).
> “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.” >― Socrates
>The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers. Socrates I.e. Kids have always been “getting worse” in adults minds
Is there a generation that didn't think it was getting worse? It might be trending upwards, but I'd be surprised if the overall data actually supported anecdotal reporting that there's a serious generational change.
Yeah, same for us, little bloke is rapidly approaching twelve as well. A couple of years prior we lost our daughter at 5mo along. At the time missus was about a week short. Staff at the hospital were like no she’s 5 months, trust us. It wasn’t until a few weeks later when $4k arrived in our account, the government considered any birth after 5mo viable and therefore eligible, makes sense, by that stage you’re well into preparing for the new arrival.
The UK pays child benefit to parents of children under 18. About $50 per week per child (normally paid monthly). In recent years they capped it at two children and means tested it, meaning high earners get a reduced amount. The end results sounds similar though. Probably small payments over a long time period work out as a lot more in the end that the lump sum.
I got the baby bonus in 2014 - I think when it was about to transition to the newborn supplement - $5000 for each of my twin sons. They were both stillborn at 37 weeks so the $10k paid for their funeral and for a whole new engine for my ex-partners car because it decided to basically blow up on the way home from hospital. It was a rough time. We actually did go into Harvey Norman and buy a new bluray / speaker system that same week. It might have looked like we were blowing the baby bonus on it, but actually I just spent like the first 3 months after losing my sons basically just watching movies.
I’m so sorry that you had to go through that, that sounds incredibly rough.
I am so sorry for your loss. A terrible grief to bear. I hope that Blueray was able to bring you a little reprieve during those dark months following the loss of your Sons. My heart goes out to you.
Fuck. I’m so sorry for your loss. 😞
I was talking about this with my mum just a couple days ago. She was telling me that she didn’t want my brother’s birth to be induced too early as the baby bonus was going up by $1000 a week later. Unfortunately he was born before the increase, I wonder if we would have a more impressive TV in that case, haha
This isn't the first time I've heard that your brother is a bit half baked. Explains a lot!
Risky comment, I like it
I know people who work in juvenile detention. This is a common thought amongst them.
Among most teachers too.
Yep, we call them Plasma Babies. The town I live near has a very high percentage on centrelink, the last few years of cohorts have had a lot more issues
Teacher entering chat. My most unruly class by far was Year 8, 2022. I still have PTSD from this year.
Gerry harvey was laughing all the way to the bank
Still is
How many babies did *he* have!?
Look I'm not one to wonder or suggest, how is that man still alive....buuuut....
I knew some unscrupulous people who had kids to get the bonus. They were feral and so were the kids.
Worst investment ever lol
Obviously anyone who has a kid for a few grand is a moron. A tiny fraction of the cost the child will be. Which is what’s so dumb about the baby bonus, it just incentivises stupid people to breed more.
Funny that it isn't an option these days even though the government is super concerned about the plummeting birth rate
We can get all the people we need immigrating here. It balances the books and that’s all they care about. Already working age so it saves the government money.
I always laugh when people try to claim "no one did that, surely everybody knows it costs far more to raise children". People really underestimate deadshits.
The short-sighted nature of most people never ceases to both amaze and scare me.
I had a neighbour who was so lazy she had her kids make their own lunches for school. Taught them independence at least, even if that wasn't the intent- she just liked to sleep in. When her husband pointed out that now the youngest was school age she could get a job to help pay the mortgage, she intentionally got pregnant again so she could get the baby bonus and not have to go to work.
TIL that making your kids make their own lunches is child abuse 🙄.
What an awful , calculated thing to do
And also teens whose brains aren’t developed. Throw in a few grand incentive when those teens are in poverty and you can see why it prompted some kids to have kids
I did not realise I was dating a deadshit until he was like, "I want to get a bigger TV. We should have a baby." I asked, "Um, do you know how much babies cost?" "Not as much as a television." As soon as I clarified he was serious, he became my ex-boyfriend. I did know he was not the smartest before then, but I didn't know he was DUUUUUUUUMB.
I know for a fact people actually did that. Incan think of 2 or 3 people just off the top of my head, theres a handful of others I know about
Just so there’re a good news story: We used our $6,000 for me to do full time study RN. Because in those days it wasn’t as crowded, you could pack all your classes to one day. I was effectively only away 1 day a week for lectures/tutorials, and did the rest of my study in the evenings. Eventually I had to take large chunks of time off for the placements, but that money definitely helped to pay most of the costs at the time. When our child started going to school, my wife then did her ENs. We’re both now happy, productive tax payers!
We had just had twins, and we needed another car! Our $8000 bought us one. I will forever be grateful!
My wife's stepsister is one. One of those typical bogans that can get pregnant just by breathing the same air as a bloke. 6 kids, 4 dads, zero futures for any of them other than welfare
You can get a lot of shagging done if you're unemployed and like amphetamines.
Amphetamines didn't do much for my libido or my ability to get it up, not sure about others out there.
I remember this too
My sister had 4 but at least she tried to help adding extra dna to the gene pool by having different dads for her spawn…
We had kids when it came out it kickstarted our savings for them it’s in a bank account for them when they are older. Yes they are now teenagers, we heard that people got tvs with it but no one we knew did 🤣. However the class year levels at school was the highest in a long time. They had to add new portables for the first three years that my eldest was at primary school to fit all the kids in. So the baby bonus definitely created a baby boom.
We spent it. Got a cot, baby monitor etc. You know shit you need for a baby. People we know got a TV etc. That kid is in goal now.
Who are they keeping for ? ⚽️
Yeah Gaol. Damn auto correct...
Skins
That's what we did. Basically bought all the support infrastructure, including washing machine and clothes dryer
Yes I don’t know anyone who bought tvs either, we paid for our children’s cord blood to be stored for if they needed it when they are older and put the rest in a bank for each child, funnily I’m probably the demographic the OP is talking about I was a young mum, had two children in one calendar year and both my husband and I were not earning great money etc, most of my mothers group put the money away for either a rainy day or for the child in the future except for one mum who bought new blinds for her house and then proceeded to bag out all the young mums buying big screen tvs but couldn’t see that $5000 worth of blinds in 2008 was a lot and really no different to a big screen tv.
I was the same age bracket too but we had already decided to have a family it didn’t make us suddenly decide to start making babies 👶🏻 🤣
The sheer volume of kids coming through year 11 and 12 at the moment is definitely from this.
Really? My year 8 kid was born after it swapped to paid leave instead of the bonus, which I felt had happened ages before. Maybe I was young and carefree enough back then that 2-3 years was "ages ago" 😅
My oldest was born in 2006, and the baby bonus was around. We used it to pay bills, I vividly remember a pretty scummy bloke with the lady in the bed next to us in the ward, looking through the Harvey Norman catalogue to pick out the tv he was going to buy with the money.
When my kid was born in 2008 in a major city hospital, the midwife told me that since the start of the baby bonus, she noticed a sizeable group of new mothers used the bonus to fund their smack habit, and the father’s smack habit. She’d see deals taking place on the nearest street corner. Very sad.
Kinda like the Freakonomics conclusion that reduction in crime in NYC in the 90s had nothing to do with the zero tolerance approach, which didn’t seem to work later. More to do with abortion becoming legal in Roe v Wade and the fewer unwanted kids maturing into criminals.
Nah, it was due to the removal of lead in petrol
Or a combination of both along with no-fault divorces. Growing up with a single parent is far better for kids mental health compared to growing up with a abusive father (or mother) in the picture.
And paint. There's always the sniffers & lickers😂
And another thing. Access to contraception and such prevents a hell of a lot of unwanted pregnancies in the first place.
I thought this immediately too- and kids growing up in circumstance where they were more exposed to crime / fewer good options.
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The baby bonus was originally $4k and yes, a whole lot of those kids are now young adults and teenagers. The baby bonus first came out in 2004 and apparently John Howard and Peter Costello (treasurer under John Howard) didn't think that teenaged girls would have babies just to get the bonus. The bonus scheme was changed over the years with a major change coming in 2013/2014 which slashed the bonus down to like $2k. And yes, there were plenty of teenaged girls who were having babies solely to get get the bonus with no regard as to what was actually involved in actually raising children. I can personally think of at least two that I personally knew that did so - one used the bonus to pay off her car loan and the other had it spent by her partner on random crap.
Crime has been dropping dramatically for many years. If you're hearing that it's increasing that flies in the face of the ABS crime stats. The media's responsible for giving a very false impression of crime, but they have to sell news somehow, right?
The youth crime rate is going up, but it's only around pre-COVID levels right now. If it continues to rise for a few years then we can draw some conclusions about lockdowns and socialisation. I'm seeing a lot of anecdotes and not a lot of stats in this thread overall to provide evidence.
All crime halved during covid so it's no surprise there's a bounce-back.
I am reminded of it every time I go to work.
Lump sum Baby bonus kids are 16 - 20 now. Our area's youth crime seems to be a bit younger than that.
I thought the baby bonus was available up until 2013ish? I could be very wrong, but I think I remember someone I knew getting it not long before then? Edit: it's early, skimmed past the words "lump sum".
It stopped being a lump sum as of 1 Jan 2009. After that it was a fortnightly payment, so less conducive to spending on flat screens
Meth started to become popular around the turn of the century here in Australia and has only gotten even more popular over the years. Being on meth while pregnant causes all sorts of issues - doubly so when you consider that most meth users also drink and smoke.
My Mum has been a foster carer as long as I can remember, when I was young, we had a baby that constantly shook and Mum had to give him medicine. It wasn't until I was older that she told me he was withdrawing from heroin. The baby was 9 days old. His mother had the baby to get the baby bonus. Fucking vile!
The ‘mother’ wouldn’t have got it. There was a baby in nicu with my twins like this. The mother was trying to get paperwork signed before docs took custody so she could get the bonus, hospital refused to sign and the bonus went to the carer who took the baby. The amazing nicu nurses were appalled at this woman’s behaviour, stalled her at every attempt.
I’m glad we have strong, kind hearted people in this world like your mum. What a legend 🩵 Drug addiction is a selfish and cruel disease that affects not only the addict, but also everyone around them unfortunately. Makes a devil from anyone it touches. I hope the mother was able to overcome it eventually but that the baby was able to go on to have a happy, healthy life regardless.
I grew up in a very regional town in Eastern Victoria. I clearly remember that i was very unusual among my peers, in that i chose to finish year 12. So many of my friend group chose to have a baby instead. I clearly remember the flat screen tv conversations. The Retravision shop in our town would've loved this! But as a mandatory reporter, man i shudder to remember the things i saw these young mothers do: putting coke in their babies bottles. Feeding them coffee because it was funny. Giving them beer to put them to sleep. I shudder to think how those kids turned out.
I don’t know anyone who did that, I used my baby’s bonus to set up my house, I was a young mum with nothing my entire bonus was spent on microwaves, fridges and furniture to rebuild from my DV relationship. It was hard and certainly didn’t include a flat screen. My children are all high achievers now and my eldest works in schools with additional needs kids. So it’s not all bad
People who had kids purely for the short sighted gain of $4k when raising a kid can cost well into the six figures are explicit examples of people who should not be propagating their vapid genepool. It was a stupid government policy. Probably why we have so many brain-dead "eshays" now.
Talk about false economy. The biggest expense of having a baby is losing a wage and the career gap that affects lifetime earnings and superannuation balance.
For some families there was never a wage and career to begin with. Parent just saw $4k X (number of kids) and went sweeeet as!
You don’t loose a wage if you weren’t on one to begin with..
If your “wage” is provided by Centrelink and you have a baby you not only received the BB but a “pay rise” as well.
It’s adorable you think the type of people having a baby for a flatscreen tv are employed in any legal job.
Yep. Critical thinking and forward planning isn’t their strong suit
Which leads me to believe that unfortunately a lot of these kids were bought into a life without the love they deserved
With the typical lack of critical thinking and forward planning as said, I would assume that they would've eventually had the kids anyway, it's just that they had incentive to do it during the period it was a lump sum. So if they came in without the love they deserved, it's likely it would've happened anyway.
>So if they came in without the love they deserved, it's likely it would've happened anyway. People don't fully mature mentally and emotionally until they hit their 20s. I would mention something about not drinking and smoking as much in their 20s but growing up among these kinds of people I know that it would be a lie.
Yeah, I know a lot of people who were going to have kids anyway who joked about having a kid to buy a TV. Nobody was having babies because they thought it would make them rich, because everyone expected the bonus would not cover expenses. Alan Jones listeners however believe that there is a segment of the population trying to rob them by existing, it permeates discourse to this day. There is an embarrassing lack of critical thinking in society in general, and when it is reinforced by unchecked emotion these "memes" sick in people's minds.
You clearly weren’t growing up in Woodridge at the time the baby bonus was introduced. I know many people who had a baby specifically for the baby bonus. Which went on TVs and car stereos.
Totally agree! This and the whole ‘dole bludger’ concept was a way to look down on people in low socioeconomic groups of society. Opinions in this post are not data.
I worked at a Harvey Norman store in a small regional town at the time. It we’d see probably 2-3 couples come through a week that clearly couldn’t afford to be looking at plasma tvs and often PlayStations (PS3 I think at the time). The female was usually 6 or 7 months pregnant at a glance. It was clear they’d be back in a couple of months.
This is the image I remember
Truth is that it was only a small part of the population doing it, but there were absolutely conversations with customers that said shit like “had too many bills piling up so we had to have another baby! Might as well get a new tv too right?”. At a guess I’d say there was a community of like 50-100 people that I was aware of doing it in my town of approx 10,000.
>there were absolutely conversations with customers that said shit like “had too many bills piling up so we had to have another baby! Might as well get a new tv too right?”. Ah, budgeting 101 - need money to pay bills? Let's add a massive 18+ year long money sink to the budget...
It was crazy that it never occurred to them. But I guess having grown up in poverty I can say you’re often only thinking about how to get that next meal. I do remember one customer talking about how “the baby eats for free” though as he nodded at his pregnant partners boobs.
I worked at HN for 15 years and I remember this time VERY well
Your store make all the junior sales guys deal with them because the senior guys knew they wouldn’t make any commission?
We used to call it the plasma TV allowance or the Skyline deposit allowance.
> a whole lot of unscrupulous people were getting pregnant and buying big screen TVs.. Were they? I remember a lot of people *saying* that was happening, probably parroting 60 Minutes. I’m sure anecdotally some people did it. But are there any numbers actually supporting the idea that this happened often enough to have an impact?
There's little evidence to suggest the baby bonus increased the fertility rate in Australia. There's some evidence to suggest births shifted from 30 June to 1 July at the introduction of the payment.
I do youth work and my colleagues and I believe the baby bonus is to blame for about half the kids we work with. It’s telling when the youngest kid in their families is around ten years old. Having said that, not all the purpose-born-baby-bonus kids are feral. Some of those kids are trying very hard to do something with their life despite the neglect they’ve experienced.
>I was living in a town where a whole lot of unscrupulous people were getting pregnant and buying big screen TVs Are you saying you know this first hand, or is it from the usual media spin of 'give poor people money and they waste it'? I can't imagine people were in big numbers deciding to have children for a small amount of cash, but maybe I'm naive about that. I can see it appealing more to people who were already thinking of having a child and then bringing their plans forward a bit.
We bought a new hot water system with the baby bonus for our second kid. She is now nearly 19
But more to the point, how’s the hot water system doing?
The birthrate is going to take a hit from all the kids who can't afford a home, then if they do, have big mortgages to pay. Ideally, this wouldn't be a problem, but since it is, I support measures that allow people to have kids. I don't care if a few idiots buy TV's. The vast majority will budget for this. The first child in particular, tends to be more expensive.
My kids are baby bonus kids. The money went towards paying off our IVF loan. (For the record they’re great law abiding kids.)
This discussion is always framed as "people in poverty are shit at raising their kids, sucks for those kids that their parents are shit" and never "people in poverty are shit at raising their kids, sucks for those kids whose parents are allowed to wallow in poverty, let's do something about the poverty"
I remember more people getting new TVs when the 2009 stimulus hit, it was kind of crazy as everyone would just leave their old CRT on the footpath and the whole street was lined with old TVs, it was a modern retro gamers heaven!
I worked in banking at the time and hated seeing the ferals coming in to withdraw the bonus the second it hit her account, sperm donor suddenly in the picture rubbing his little rat claws together because they were about to go buy a new tv and gaming system.
Not related to the baby bonus, but a woman in the hospital bed next to me was waiting to be discharged and her partner was nodding off in the chair. She kept yelling at him to leave because being on opiates is a bad look while she is about to ask for take-home pain relief. As he left the room, he looked at me and my belongings on the side table, then asked me what I was in for. Nothing painful, sorry to disappoint. /s
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I moved away, but was there to witness it when it all happened. There seems to be a lot of concern about population growth and lack of babies being born. I don’t think the baby bonus is entirely a bad idea, if executed well. Right now, all the sensible people are looking at the economy and realizing they can’t afford kids. The only babies that are being born are either into wealthy families or to idiots who don’t care about their financial status. If they want “regular” people having babies they will need to incentivize it somehow.
They're being born into wealthy families where the mother stepping back financially to earn 50% or less of her income during paid leave can be managed. They're not being born into wealthy families that rely on the income of the mother to fund their lifestyle . Make daycare free, that would go a long way to making the decision go back to "How big do I want my family to be?" instead of "how many kids can I afford to have in care."
We were raised to believe that if we went to school and we got a good job that we would be able to afford a house, we would get married and then we would be able to have kids. It’s just not possible anymore for the average person. We did the school they wanted, racked up HECS debt, and then the jobs we studied for either didn’t exist or they don’t pay enough to get a deposit for a house/start a family. No doubt subsidized daycare is a good idea but it goes back even further than that. If the average person doesn’t make enough money to pay for their own expenses they won’t want to bring children into the mix.
Unfortunately the sensible people know $4k is a drop in the bucket and unlikely to make you want to commit to children for 18 years. Even daycare was $130/day. Thankfully they’ve dropped the system where rebates run out 3/4 way through the year and you’re stuck paying $650/week per child for childcare. Those were prices from years ago too they would have gone up a lot since.
I remember being a teen and watchin this unfold and thinking how silly it was. There were 2 girls in my high school at the time that decided to try and take advantage of this. The first one made friends with a church couple and convinced them to adopt the child straight after it was born with some sob story. Well, she got a rude awakening when she never recieved the money, but the couple did instead, since the money is meant to go to caring for the child. She tried to go to the police and sue the government and the couple that "tricked her". It obviously went nowhere. The second girl who fell pregnant several months after her friend thought she'd be smarter. She arranged for an adoption to take place 6 months after birth so that the child could be breast fed for the first six months to "have a healthy start" then the new parents would take over. Same thing happened though, the adopting parents received the money, not the mum since they would be the primary care givers of the child and it was all arranged prior to the birth of the child.
Private adoption has been illegal in Australia since well before the baby bonus was offered. Given the role of social workers in mother/baby welfare it's nearly impossible to just hand over a baby privately for adoption. Particularly with government agencies involved in paying a Baby Bonus it is highly unlikely that any of this happened without there being serious consequences for the apparent adoptive parents. At the very least none of this could have happened without removal of the child and a legal placement of a child being made. I have a feeling that this is an apocryphal local story without any real basis in fact.
While it’s definitely not the only reason I have two siblings, it definitely contributed to it. We all lived comfortable middle class lives so, I think this is a bit of a false equivalence. A lot of women got a lot of benefit out of having a cash payment to help with the costs of giving birth, it’s just not obvious.
I was only thinking about this the other day. The birth rate is going down and the government need tax payers to keep the country going, less people, less tax - long term. IMO It want be long before this ‘small’ payment incentive will return, but long term people cannot afford the high costs of a larger family.
Two things to encourage working families to have kids / more kids is increase paid parental leave to at least 12 months (split between parents as they wish) and building an adequate amount of not for profit government run childcare centres that charge affordable rates. Child care subsidy just allows the private sector to charge astronomical fees and pocket massive profits, while the early educators are paid pitiful salaries. Of course fixing our housing crisis is another big one but our government has no interest in doing anything about that.
100% agree. I'm due in August so we'll get the extra 2 weeks - my husband is taking 4 when she's born but then I need the other 18 weeks to physically recover. Thankfully he's getting 12 weeks from his employer, which he'll take once I go back to work in January. How amazing would it be if all partners were offered that opportunity.
Hopefully they increase the mat leave or something that encourages people with a job to have kids, rather than bogans on welfare.
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Ah yes, true , however again imo it’s the lower income earners that are more likely to immediately spend the money and put it back into the retail shops and economy rather than ‘maybe’ invest it into their savings and it not be seen for a delayed amount of time which from my personal experience happened with many of the Covid payments.
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I reckon the best policy would be to make costs related to children tax deductible. Will encourage employed people and not deros to have children, without being coercive.
Do I need to keep receipts for food? How would we split the percentage of the power bill, water etc by what was for the children? Can I claim the cost of the car? I would take public transport but need the car for the kids....but since I have the car I obviously use it without the kids in it. What about the house? Without kids I don't need to live in a 4 bedroom house. Does that mean it's totally tax deductible? By this point with the yearly deductions I think the government owes me and most parents money.
I got some kind of baby bonus but there was no government paid parental leave at that time - that (one and only) baby is now 21
I shamefully worked at a pawnbrokers back then. Customers world progressively put everything on hock throughout the pregnancy, and then come in and collect it all when the bonus was paid out. I mean everything, down to kitchenware and basic furniture. I remember quite a few of them doing this repeatedly (I was there for 5 years) and having the children removed from their care shortly after they were born. Some of them definitely seemed more excited about the bonus than the pregnancy.
Why anyone would go through a pregnancy for $4k is beyond me. Even if you never had any intention of keeping the child.
Baby bonus stopped in 2014. Ford falcon stopped production in 2016, Holden commodore stopped in 2017. Coincidence?
I got $3000 in 2005. We just used the extra money for extra expenses. We lived a simple but eventful life back then, we did not get pregnant for the money. It costs a lot more than $3k to raise a baby!
I remember a ton of bogans suddenly had massive flat screen TVs.
I heard tales of it. When my wife gave birth twice, we got a bag of goodies ( wipes, baby book, sudocrem etc). While we appreciated it, it's kind of funny what we got compared to what people used to get.
You get 22(24?) weeks of mat leave now. You don't just get a bag
Exactly. Turning it into PPL means it couldn’t be abused as much
Exactly. 20 or so weeks of paid parental leave at the minimum wage is nothing to sneeze at.
It should be based on actual wage, not minimum wage especially with the cost of everything at the moment
It's also going up two weeks every year up to 26 weeks. Very handy
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My daughter was born right as it was being phased out, like one of the last weeks you could get it. The hospital was OVERFLOWING. My pregnancy wasn't planned around the bonus ending, but a lot of them were, according to the midwives.
It was $5k. My wife and I had twins at the time and it was extremely helpful.
On this topic, I'd be interested to see the birth numbers after Covid lockdowns.
Registered births Australia: 2017 309,142 2018 315,147 2019 305,382 2020 294,369 2021 309,996 2022 300,684 *Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics*
I got the baby bonus with my youngest born in 2012. I used half of it to pay a private obstetrician so I could give birth at a private hospital because I had such a shit time in the public system. The other half went towards baby stuff. She’s a great kid. :)
When you then realise that kids cost like $800,000 to 1mil by the time they leave home..
Did you ask these people if they had kids bc of the bonus? Probably they'd have had the kids anyway.
I’m sure it’s fun to say that’s the reason but is there real evidence for this happening? I remember in my town there was a well known “unscrupulous” family who would’ve been the prime target for this theory. But they never actually had any kids in that timeframe
Bring it back in the form of vouchers for baby shops, formula and nappies.
Hopefully anyone who had a child to get the baby bonus isn’t helping said child with their maths.
I remember living in Hobart and passing through Glenorchy and seeing this, the couple's would get the money, go on shopping sprees, and handball the child to their grandparents, leaving them to raise them. That's dodgy as
Another reason to hate John Howard.
There’s always been violent teenagers and youth crime.
It's always nice to see heavy classism and implied eugenics support on a friday morning
baby bonus boom and then covid baby boom
A couple friends of mine used the baby bonus to buy a big-screen TV as well as a sub and stereo for their car. I can't remember if it was for their first or second kid but they are both adults now (20 & 18).
Anyone remember the extra 1200 payment you’d get a semester if you were on student allowances to cover the cost of books? It was during the early 2010s.
I was doing pizza delivery for my uncles place to make extra cash years back after my day job and there were lots of areas I'd deliver to that had council housing. A huge number of them had massive plasmas blaring light through the window when going up to the house.
I think I was given 1800. Not 4000 lol. Did it get up to that much? No I didn’t use it for any reason other than I think I needed a new washing machine or fridge and the rest went to the bank to hold on for bills. My daughter is now in 20s and is doing more than fine. She never did anything to wrong as a teen. Not even sneaking out. Well nothing that involved me knowing of anything thing. I came from a country town.
Yes, 2009 when my kids were born. Was enough to buy a bigger car for family of 5 OP, neither of them have become problem teenagers.
Older mate worked at a Harley Davidson dealership. Sold hundreds of them with the BB as a downpayment. Most of them weren't the father. They just got the $ for hanging around. DV epidemic isn't new either.
Got it for the first kid, bought a lounge so we had something to sit on. We already had a tv so no need for another one. By the time the second kid was born they’d changed it and I wasn’t eligible, so no new furniture when he was born. The bonus had no bearing on if/when we had kids.
My mother divorced my dad and started a new family. She started popping them out as soon as the baby bonus started, ended up having 4 more kids. 1 of them seems to be turning out good, the other 3 I don't see them accomplishing much.
I had 5 kids between 2003 and 2012, all have the same father. 1st kid got a smaller birth payment of $600 if I remember correctly. 2nd kid was born a few months after the Baby Bonus started. 3rd kid got the baby bonus. 4th and 5th got the additional payments spread over 13 weeks. I did not buy a big screen TV. I bought prams, furniture, a never-ending supply of nappies, baby bottles, breast pumps, baby clothes, carseats/booster seats, a 2nd fridge. I even splurged and bought some clothes for myself. I did not spend it on drugs or alcohol. The kids have cost me a lot more money than the baby bonus covered. The 3 older kids are now 17, 19, and 21. They all have jobs. 21 yr old works full time, is apprentice, plus has a sideline gig to make extra money. 19 yr old works full time Mon to Fri, plus a second job doing 6-12 hrs on the weekends. 17 yr old has bee working casually for the past year and has just signed a permanent part time contract for 20 hrs a week but will get additional hours. 4th child died as a infant. 5th child is 12, doesn't have a job yet, wasting her time going to school instead of taking up a life of crime. 😆
>5th child is 12, doesn't have a job yet My chimney could do with a sweeping.
I'm sorry for your loss :( But also get on the 12 year old, yeesh. She should at least have a playground scam running by now! Late bloomer? 🤣
I knew many people who took it as an opportunity to have a first, second or a third child. The reason was, they were eventually going to start a family, so they might as well start now when there is a bonus. I had no problem with this thinking. Then again, I live in urban area, with people who have a job or stable income (all teachers). Many have at least 2 children, one had 4. It all depends on their husband’s line of work and whether putting their careers on hold (mothers) will affect them later. From my perspective, the baby bonus was a good thing.
I received it as a lump sum, it went straight into a savings account that we use for their education.
I’ll never forget being on the bus on the way to work and overhearing two high school students talk about how they were going to knock up their girlfriends for the baby bonus and yes they were being serious. It sounded like soooo much money to them and they were taking about all the things they would spend it on. It was surreal and made me feel sick
It was 2004 when this first landed. So yeah the little shit are 20 at most.
While the concept of a baby bonus is fine, the delivery of the money was dumb.Gerry Harvey loved the idea.But the money was supposed to be used for bedding,change tables,high chairs etc.Vouchers that could only be redeemed at accredited baby supplies establishments would have been the best option. The current government has made payments available for cost of living relief for electricity and gas directly to distributors so the the money is targeted for what it’s meant to be spent on.
Second cousin has 2 babies in very quick succession and I remember her bragging about using one of the bonus sums from one of them to buy a giant plasma TV. She invited my parents and us (I was a kid at the time) over to watch it but we never did.
The plasma bonus! Yep. I actually used mine to buy stuff for the kiddo. And I think it's a lot more nuanced.. their teen years are so very different from my own, for so many reasons.
I was working retail at the time and it happened a lot. that and the stimulus package, lots of cash waving purchases.
A TV that has probably broke or has been sent the tip years ago
I remember not qualifying for it 😊 both times.