Already and this is the Daily This is the Daily OS. Oh, now it makes sense. Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Wednesday, the nineteenth of March. I'm Billy, I'm zara. Last week TDA exclusively reported that Coalition Senator Matt Canavan is proposing a policy to offer couples a low interest loan of one hundred thousand dollars once they have a child. Now, this loan would only apply to families buying their first home, and it would be wiped
completely if they have three children. While Canavan has put forward the idea, the Coalition hasn't formally adopted this policy, but it has kickstarted a fascinating conversation about Australia's declining birth rate. So today we are here to explain why a declining birth rate is an issue, and we will break down Canavan's idea to So.
All right, so Billy, there's a lot there. It's a big idea and it certainly generated a lot of interest among our audience. But I do just want to start with the person, I guess at the center of this story, Senator Matt Canavan. If listeners aren't familiar, what do we need to know about him.
So, Matt Canavan has been a Queensland Senator since twenty thirteen, so he's from the state of Queensland, but he is
a federal Senator in the Federal Parliament. Now in the Senate, Canavan is part of the National Party, which is led by David Little Proud and federally, the National Party has a formal alliance with the Liberal Party which is led by Peter Dunton, and they have this formal alliance to form a government together if they win enough seats together at an election, and that is what we call the coalition.
So whenever we're referring to the coalition, we're referring to the National Party and the Liberal Party.
Good Civics education, great civicxegutiy. One minute in, I've learned everything I need to know.
In terms of where Canavan stands within the coalition. He was a minister under Turnbull's government under Malcolm Turnbull when he was Prime Minister. He was Resources Minister then. But now as the Liberal Party is led by Peter Dudden, Mat Canavan doesn't currently hold any shadow ministry position, so that would probably suggest to us that if the coalition does get into government, at the next election, which as we've said many times, is due by the seventeenth of May.
If the Coalition does win, he probably won't be a minister again, just based on the fact that he's not a shadow minister at the moment. Now. That could partly have something to do with the fact that he often speaks out against the coalition's official position on multiple policy areas. So, for example, one area that he feels quite passionate about is climate change.
Which is why it's so interesting that he was the Resources Minister under Mountain Turmpule, who is famously quite a strong character when it comes to climate Matt Canavan sitting on the opper end of the spectrum, ye too, Termbull.
Yeah, So, for example, he suggested that Australia should withdraw from the Paris Agreement, which is not an official stance of the Coalition or of the National Party or of the Liberal Party. So he's kind of considered often like a rogue backbencher. I feel like that's the term that is often used to describe him in the media, but he does hold weight. He is a Queensland Senator.
Yeah, And just to give everyone a visual if you still don't know who we're talking about. Anytime you turn on the news and there is a member of Parliament who has a TV on behind him with a message, that's Mat Canavan. That has become his kind of signature thing when it comes to media interviews. Okay, so, Billy, let's turn out to this policy idea that mac Canavan
has put forward. I'm keen to understand the context in which his policy of trying to incentivize people to have children, the context of where that policy really comes from.
Yeah. So Australia's birth rate has been falling for a number of decades, and when I was looking into this with tda's political journalist Harry Seculitch last week, I was fascinated to learn just how much it has dropped. So if we go back to the nineteen fifties, a long, long time ago, the birth rate was three point five babies per woman, So for every woman in Australia, on average, she was producing three point five children. Now, in two thousand and eight, the birth rate had dropped to two
point zero two, about two children per woman. In twenty twenty three, which is the most recent data we have, it was down to one point five children per woman. So it's been dropping significantly for decades, and the fact that the current birth rate is one point five children per woman means that we're not meeting the replacement rate, which would be two children. So if we just take a very average family and say that's two parents, the
replacement rate would then be two children. But at moment on average, we are not meeting that, and just purely in terms of economic forecasts, that is considered an issue.
Yeah, I am keen to unpack this idea of it being an issue because we know that there is so much that goes into the decision of having children not having children. Of course, then infertility is a conversation alongside everything else. But you said, just on purely economic terms that a falling birth rate has implications. What are those implications, like, why is it such an issue for the economy.
Yeah, and again I want to really emphasize that we're just talking about economic pros and cons We're not talking about, you know, why women are often having less children than they were fifty years ago. So in terms of this declining birth rate and the reason why economically it is considered an issue, it's basically because it means that we have an aging population at the same time as we
have a shrinking working population. So that puts lot of economic pressure on governments because it means that we have less people being able to work and pay taxes, which is the main way that governments get money. And at the same time as that, we have more people requiring assistance from the government when it comes to health services and the pension, which obviously costs money.
And that's because, of course, people are now living longer because we have medical interventions. There's so much that goes into the fact that for a number of different things, and of course it's great news for those we love, but people are living longer and do require government services as an older.
Population exactly, and it means that there is now a lot of pressure on younger generations to care for older generations now. At the same time, I don't want to just keep having caveats, but I do also just want to mention that at the same time that this conversation is happening, there's also a conversation about overpopulation and the issues with that. But I think just for this podcast, I don't want to get into the debate between those two things, and I think we just stick to the
declining birth rate. But I do just want to mention that there are all of these different conversations around this topic, that it's really dense and complex, but an important thing to talk about.
Okay, So you've said the scene there we have an aging population at the same time as fewer babies are being born and therefore fewer people going on to help with that aging population. So that is the one economic issue that we're focusing on today, and certainly the context in which Senator Matt Canavan has proposed this new idea.
Canavan spoke directly to tda's journalist Harry. As you mentioned earlier, I walked past him on the phone saying Hi, Matt, and I was wondering whether that was who he was speaking to. It turns out was Harry is sick today. So we've jumped on to explain the story. But really he has done so much of the heavy lifting here. What did Matt Canavan tell Harry?
Okay, So, in his chat with Harry, Canavan explained this propose policy, or this big idea that he has, which is to give first time parents a one hundred thousand dollar government loan, and this would only apply to families buying their first home. So it's kind of attempting to solve two issues. One is the affordability of homes in Australia and the second is the declining birth rate and
trying to incentivize families to have more children. Now, this one hundred thousand dollar government loan, the idea that Matt Canavan put forward is that the loan would decrease by thirty percent after a second child and then would be wiped all together after a third child. So essentially what that means is that families would basically receive one hundred thousand dollars to spend on a home if you have three kids, because you wouldn't need to pay back the loan if you have three kids.
When we saw this come across our desks on a Friday afternoon, it was certainly one of the more unique policy propositions that I've seen. But I do want to just highlight again, as you say said at the top, that this isn't the coalition's formal policy position, is it No?
Okay, it's just an idea that is being put forward by Canavan. We do know that he has raised the policy in the National's party room and he told Harry that he does have the support of some MPs and senators. Harry asked if he could know who those party members were, and Matt Canavan said no. Canavan also did admit that the issue wouldn't be high on the agenda at the upcoming federal election, so he's clearly saying this isn't a top,
top priority of the coalition. But he said that if the Coalition did win government, it would be an idea that he would advocate for. And he kept saying it. He wasn't necessarily wedded to this exact policy, but what he feels really strongly about is that we should be having a bigger conversation about the declining birth rate in Australia. And so he said, perhaps not this exact one, but we need to be having this conversation now.
Yeah, Australia isn't unique in the situation that finds itself. Certainly. I know, I've read a lot about Japan's aging population, for example. I was interested to know that there is actually a precedent for this policy elsewhere in the world.
Yeah, So this whole policy proposal that Matt Canavan is putting forward, he said he was inspired by a similar scheme that has happened in Hungary. Now when I learned about this, it genuinely blew my mind. Let me take you through the steps of it. So in twenty nineteen, the Hungarian government introduced a loan scheme to encourage more women to have children. So I'm going to go through
each of the phases of this loan scheme. So phase one, if you are a woman who got married in Hungary and twenty nineteen, you would receive the equivalent of about forty three thousand Aussie dollars in a loan, and that could be spent on anything. So this wasn't specifically two homes. And again that's just if you get married. That's got nothing to do with children yet. But then phase two, if you have a child, so your first child, you then didn't need to pay off the loan for three years.
The next step the next child. If you have a second child, then one third of the loan would be white. And then a third child would mean that the loan was completely white.
But then there's more.
There's still more, Okay. The fourth one is the one that blew my mind. If you had four children in Hungry, it would mean that you would pay no income tax for the rest of your life.
Well, my Hungarian mother with four children would be listening to this with great interest. That's crazy, isn't that crazy?
So if you think like of your income and how it gets taxed every month or whenever your pay cycle is in Hungry, if you had four children, that means that you would never have to pay that income tax.
I'm so interested to know if it worked, Like, if the idea was to bring up the birthrate, did it work? Did it do that?
This is where it kind of gets murky, and Harry and I were looking at this and trying to figure out what the analysis says. Essentially, the birth rate in Hungary has been rising for over a decade.
So before this league came into effects.
Exactly, even before this policy came into effects, the birth rate was rising, and since his policy came into effect, it has continued to rise, but not by a considerable amount. There hasn't been this huge jump that you can look at twenty nineteen and say, at that moment there has been a drastic change in the birth rate, but it has increased since twenty nineteen. So again, there hasn't been a lot of analysis that we could find, but there has been an increase.
Yeah, so interesting, and maybe you know, in the years to come, we'll be able to see a clearer picture of what that looks like over there. I do want to come back to Australia now because one of the things that I'm reminded of when we have this conversation about Matt Canavan's policy is that this isn't new conversation. Australia has been having this same conversation across the political aisle for decades.
Yeah. Do you remember that quote, one for mum, one for dad, and one for the country. Yeah.
I remember that quote because we made it our caption saying one for one for dad and one for Matt Canavan.
One of our best captions for all. That is a famous quote though, One for mom, one for dad, and one for the country. It was said in two thousand and four by the former Liberal Treasurer of Peter Costello, who at the time was trying to encourage families to have more children, and he said that quote as he was introducing a program to give parents three thousand dollars for each new child born, the baby bonus, the baby bonus.
So that was a massive conversation then, and clearly it hasn't gone away in the twenty years since that was announced. The other big time, I mean recently. The other big time that this has come up is last year ahead of the budget, when Labor Treasurer Jim Chalmers told nine newspapers that quote it would be better if birth rates were higher. He did quite a lot of slack when he said that you know a lot of people saying
that that comment ignores the reason why. I know, for a lot of women it's not a choice to have less babies, but for those families where they are choosing to have less babies, it's because of the cost of living crisis. He did say in that that there are a whole range of reasons people's preferences are changing, and he acknowledged that it is expensive to raise kids. But again that comment saying that it's an issue that there is a declining birth rate did reignite that conversation.
I mean speaking of Jim Chalmers is the current treasurer. He's handing down the budget next week. Can we expect anything from Labor on this. Have they responded to Matt Canavan's proposal?
Great question. They haven't announced anything specifically about the declining birth rates. But I guess you would say everything that they've done in the childcare space is to make it easier for families to have more children. So they haven't specifically said that this is attached to the declining birth rate, but they've definitely announced policies to make it it easier
for families. Now, Harry did speak to Labour's Minister for Women, Katie Gallaher, about Matt Canavan's specific policy proposal, and she told TDA I'm not entirely surprised that Canavan is linking financial incentives to a woman's reproduction of children, and she said the key to reversing declining birth rates is to support people and their choices. And she said, this is a specific quote. I don't think imposing these kinds of nineteen fifties views about the role of women and their
reproductive capacity is the right way to go. So she's saying she's not in favor of this policy at all.
Yeah, So certainly no strong science there from the government that they would ever support anything like that. We did also ask our audience on Instagram what they thought about the proposal. Sixty six percent of respondents rejected the ideas so that they wouldn't support something like that, the rest obviously confirming that they would so by no means an
overwhelming rejection. And we had all sorts of responses coming in as to why people either or reject the idea, but certainly one that got the conversation started.
I would always say, that's a pretty good reception to a policy. You've got one in three people saying that they would feel encouraged to have more children if this policy came into effect. Yeah, that's pretty high. One in three.
Yeah, and especially given that our audience is young and likely the target of that policy.
Yeah, that's all I got for you. That's our exclusive, a TDA exclusive, Go Harry. We're so sorry that he's sick today and wasn't here to explain it himself, but it's just been the most fascinating chat in the TDA office. It generated such an interesting conversation with the audience as well, and we will keep those exclusives coming. Thank you so much, Zara, thanks for listening to me yap, and thank you Old also listening to me Yap. We'll be back again this
afternoon with your evening headlines. But until then, have a great day.
My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Aarunda bunge lung Kalkutin from Gadigol Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadigol people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torrestrate island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.