Every mother loves her baby, every baby is valued and Mr Rudd should value all babies equally. We should not live in Australia where Mr Rudd thinks that some babies are more valuable than others. It’s very, very important that Mr Rudd understand that every mother loves her baby and this should be an Australia where all babies are equal.
— Brendan Nelson, single-handedly raising the level of political discourse in Australia
(Blogging this in absolute surprise that the clip wasn’t already available on YouTube! Had to find and upload it myself. Lazyweb, where are you?)
9 Comments
Raising the level of political discourse?
I think that’s a rather unhealthy statement.
I’d rather not see the “baby bonus” as anything at all to do with the “value of the baby”. That’s disgusting on a rather obvious level.
The “baby bonus” is in fact assistance for people having a baby. I (despite no longer being eligable for it) don’t see any moral objection to changing that to “assistance for people who need it and are having a baby”.
However I did see an article somewhere that mentioned that the levels of infant neglect had gone up since the baby bonus. While that’s no proof of causality perhaps offering a fist full of dollars to people to have babies doesn’t necessarily attract the best candidates…..
Perhaps the money should be be restricted so it can only be spent in areas having to do with raising a child.
Please turn your sarcasm radar back on.
Doh, now I feel stupid.
The trouble with the web is that it’s not exactly rare to stumble across people who would say such things seriously.
Don’t feel too stupid, I was feeling somewhat surprised by Jeff’s blog also. At least you prevented me from looking stupid as I was about to write something similar… oh, wait. I just negated that.
I suspect my sarcasm detector is somewhat broken today also. Or maybe it’s just plain hard to detect sarcasm in text.
Wow, I seriously thought the quote was preposterous and ridiculous enough that I didn’t need to add further clarification or obvious sarcasm.
except ugly babies. there should always be an exception for ugly babies, they don’t deserve a baby bonus.
In actual fact the baby bonus was created to encourage people to have children in order to try and counteract our aging population.
What was the quote: “Have one for mum, one for dad and one for the treasurer”.
Or something like that.
I much prefer the linux posts to be honest.
Nice strawman. Nobody is saying the babies aren’t equal. What they’re saying is that the PARENTS are not equal. Parents who jointly earn $200K are LESS in need of a few grand for raising a kid than a family on a joint income of $60K. What’s so hard to understand about that?
Oh, and I know your original post was in sarcasm, but gee I wish the Federal Libs would get their act together, but not as much as I wish the NSW Libs would, because debate and discussion works a whole lot better when you have a coherent opposing position.
@Dave: My world is bigger than “Linux” and the topics I cover in my blog reflect that.