An open letter to:The Honourable Tony Abbott
Leader, Federal Opposition
Parliament House
CANBERRA ACT 2600
Dear Tony,
It was initially with great pleasure that I heard the news of your elevation to the leadership of the federal parliamentary Liberal Party, but the reports in today's papers (December 6) of your latest media conference have left me puzzled and worried.
This is because of your apparent about-turn on the matter of a government-paid maternity wage, from supporting a non-discriminatory wage for all new mothers, such as you advocated last year - provoking vociferous outrage from the feminists - to supporting a feminist-approved discriminatory wage for workforce mothers only, packaged under the false label of "government-paid maternity leave".
In reality, of course, the federal government could only genuinely pay "maternity leave" if the payment took the form of full compensation for employer-paid maternity leave, in which case the payments would, like any genuine leave-pay, be based on the wage-rates of individual mothers, with mothers on higher wages being paid at a higher rate than those on lower wages.
Any flat-rate government payment for, exclusively, women on maternity leave from wage-employment would simply be a discriminatory maternity subsidy for workforce mothers, whether made directly to the mothers or made to employers to offset maternity-leave payments made by them on an ordinary differential leave-pay basis.
As you would know, there is already massive discrimination in federal government funds-allocations and in the taxation system against home-mothers and in favour of workforce mothers, as a result of government conformity over the past four decades to the feminist agenda as vigorously promulgated, above all, by the Women's Electoral Lobby, backed up by the childcare industry.
The idea of a government maternity-wage for workforce mothers only is simply another feminist strategy to reward women who make feminist-approved lifestyle choices and to punish women who don't.
To her that hath shall be given, and from her that hath not shall be taken, even unto that which she hath.
Women who abandon full-time employment to look after their own children, rather than simply taking temporary leave, are caricatured by the feminists as socially irresponsible, reprehensibly self-indulgent and deserving of penalisation - in short, as being what in Sweden are called "luxury housewives" (
Time magazine, International Edition, October 28, 1974, p.22).
What I fear, as a result of your seeming
volte-face, or at least retreat into ambiguity, on the maternity-wage issue, is that there has been a successful behind-the-scenes repeat of the intrigue which resulted in the RU486 abortion drug debacle, with the crockery-fed feminists in the Liberal Party and the trough-fed feminists in the Labor Party* forming a common front to pressure both parties to conform to the feminist agenda.
If, contrary to what must be a universal assumption, you have indeed decided to back the feminists on this issue, or to back them in any other ways in their war against normal men, women and children, and normal values, it would be considerate of you to say so publicly rather than leave us all to infer the change from hints and silences.
Yours sincerely,
Colin H. Jory,
Narrabundah, ACTColin H. Jory, MA, PhD, is author of
The Campion Society and Catholic Social Militancy in Australia, 1929-1939 (Sydney: Harpham, 1986), which is available from News Weekly books for $15.00.
*
Editor's footnote: the reference to crockery-fed feminists and trough-fed feminists is an allusion to George Orwell's political fable,
Animal Farm.
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