Baby & Bath
Anyone expecting John Howard’s industrial relations version of Sherman’s March to include the recently awarded parental leave provision are Pollyannas with the brains of Polly-parrots. Such leave flies in the face of everything Howard is attempting to do with his IR changes as well as defying his long-standing and well-evidenced antipathy to women in the workforce. Mommies stay home and take care of babies, and Daddies go to work every day to make money in John Howard’s world. He will punish any who defy that convention, and has been carefully structuring the pensions schemes to ensure such stability, even well before the coalition started in with the “one for mom, one for dad, and one for Australia” population proposal. Inflation may not be a worry right now, but that doesn’t mean a sea change coming, one that may mean longer hours and harder efforts to make ends meet.