ANU researcher suggests link between baby bonus and fat kids

Child Care and Maternity Leave should not be Government expenditure items in the first place.

A better way to spend Government money is to spend it on what they should be spending it on, like roads, and suchlike.

With a baby due in August, I am in favour of keeping the increase (of course). However, objectively, I think tax deductible child care and better paid maternity leave is a better way to spend government money to boost the population.

This idea of people deliberately delaying the birth of their children is ridiculous. How can you delay the birth of a child? The only way is to delay an elective caesar or induction, in which case you are letting nature take its course. The researcher says that some births were delayed up to 2 weeks. I fully intend to delay my upcoming birth by 2 weeks past the due date before I book in for a caesar. Of course, if the baby has other ideas and comes earlier there’s no way you can delay it even for $5000.

Of course some people might book their induction/caesar for 1/7 instead of 30/6, but I doubt this has serious long term health complications for the child.

So, didn’t put it to its intended use of paying off small-cost baby-related items?

Get out there and obey your government instead of making common-sense decisions!

We put our baby bonus off the mortgage on our home.

I would favour a tax break incentive, as this would also provide ongoing financial assistance to the costs of raising a child.
As it is, the baby bonus my wife and I received recently became the initial dollop of cash in our childs trust fund.

S4anta said :

As for Maggie meaties, there is nothing more fun tham watching the punters behave like drunken pack of zebras of a jumping castle.

Pffft! You miss it man, can’t kid a kidder. One travelly walking distance and two absenths back again balancing a plate of snags and a twelve pack. Ahhh the good old days 😉

Love the new format.

Shovelling money at people for excercising their right to a lifestyle choice. weird!

Got a new bub due soon and looking forward to dumping a big chunk on the mortgage.

F*ck bonuses – let couples with kids income split if one parent stays at home. It’s stupid that I pay more tax than a family with two earners and the same gross household income. Even letting me claim my wife’s tax-free threshold would make a difference.

The fun has evaporated, yes…

I also have no idea what “grey background on a post” means, or why once in the mod queue for posting links for vetting the thread becomes locked.
Baby bonuses were meant as some kind of poulation boost incentive, but probably have some kind of economic inflation effect too…

I support the tax deduction ideas, though.
Let Maelinar finance his gold-plated crackpipe using his own money (freed up through tax break) instead of public funds.

Change is good. I am sure the ‘Overlords’ as they are now called will slowly knock together a product that will turn out to a rip snorter. Thye have gotten this far, I am sure there is a method to their methadone induced madness.

The new format is definitely inferior to the previous one. It’s less usable, and seems to have lost it’s sense of fun. Bring back the old format!

Meh, just look where the fast food is located for definition of where overweight people live, also same location as the socially economically depressed

I reckon the baby bonus is a stupid idea anyway (although we have received it). Better would be a (much) larger tax deduction for children. That way, the better educated (and typically higher paid) people are more incented to have children than bogans. Also, handing out welfare to all and sundry does nothing for the self reliance of humans.

Mælinar said :

I’m currently talking with the wife about upgrading our car…

You might have to aim for twins then. But then you’d need a bigger car.

Better aim for triplets. But then you’d need an even bigger car.

Better aim for quadruplets. But then you’d need a *really big car.

…. chicken and egg.

I cant get Guinness in Holt anymore, as I dont live there matey! Its all yours. As for Maggie meaties, there is nothing more fun tham watching the punters behave like drunken pack of zebras of a jumping castle, its belco tradition, next to the Mungo clubs Friday Night Trivia.

Life is all about incentives.

The Government offers people an incentive, and some people seek to maximise said incentive.

Interesting the way the researcher talks about ‘overcooking’ and ‘undercooking’ babies.

And here I was thinking to myself this morning ‘I’ll lay off S4anta for a while, cause he wants to steal my Guinness and go to maggies meaties’.

I don’t have a problem with my new TV (child 1) and my new boat (child 2). I’m currently talking with the wife about upgrading our car…

The Govt seemed to get stuckinto a bunch of longitudinal studies, which just shows the lack of foresight the last Minister for Health had. Cutting research because of lack of short term results (which means Minister can dance like a monkey on a wagon in Paris, particulary in Medicine and Health is what I would term, freaking ridiculous.

Premature eh. I have done fairly ok. I was born a few months prem. The only thing was that my lungs never fully developed, so passive smoking used to affect me really bad. I was sick for 3 days after Foreshore last year from all the smoke around. Still in a way it’s a good incentive not to smoke knowing that you will most likely be dead in 2 months.
I was having research done on me every 4 years so they could follow me through my life. But the Howard government cut the funding quite a while ago. So that all stopped.

Funny, I was just reading this story on ABC.

Two comments. First – I agree, people spending their baby bonus on rubbish are idiots. Second – I’m not sure that I would even entertain the possibility of deliberately putting off the birth of our child for financial gain. The concept sickens me.