In election campaigns of an earlier time politicians competed to be the most family-friendly. Family values were seen as central in Western Civilisation. They were handsomely praised and scantily honoured in election promises.
Australians generally saw population growth as central to economic prosperity and to national security, and child bearing as the natural and privileged engine of growth. They also regarded the nuclear family as the natural and privileged place in which to bear and raise children. To be family-friendly combined generally accepted social and economic values.
Today's politicians still claim to be family-friendly, but the social and economic context has changed greatly. Once if you asked people to define the family, they would describe a husband, wife and their own children. Now they might refer to a range of relationships including single parents, children from previous couplings, same-sex parents and children born through artificial insemination.
Both the priority of the nuclear family and the social value of child bearing are also questioned. Many people see population growth as a problem rather than a benefit, and most would regard child bearing as a matter of individual choice, and not as a social responsibility.
The economic context has also changed. The major political parties share the assumption that economic growth is driven by competitive individuals, as far as possible unrestricted by government regulation. People's value is measured by their contribution to economic activity.
Because this conventional wisdom puts little value on social groups, altruism or unpaid work, it also devalues families. It sees workers as costs, and lowers costs by unsocial shift work, making full time jobs casual, and structuring conditions in ways that give little consideration to family and other social commitments.
Governments which subscribe to conventional economic wisdom collude in these arrangements by limiting the power of unions, privileging private profit over public benefit, and neutering regulatory bodies. In their family policies they befriend families with wealth and families in which both parents work in full time jobs and contribute to the economy.
"A more categorical statement of the standards of civilised tradition and a more measured condemnation of Australian practice can hardly be imagined."
Families without wealth, with a single parent, with non-working parents, unemployed parents, parents seeking asylum, mentally ill parents or a parent in prison struggle to feed and to find accommodation for their children. Government policies divide families into winners and losers: those who have are given more, and from those who do not have, even what they have is taken away.
These changes make political claims to be family-friendly purely rhetorical. Family values do not shape government policies. In many cases, indeed, governments act not to nurture families and to protect the traditions of western civilisation but to devastate families and to trample on inherited traditions.
One example will suffice: that of Thileepan and Karthika Gnaneswaran. Thileepan was recently deported to Sri Lanka, and promptly imprisoned, after his appeal for protection from persecution was rejected by Australia. Karthika and her young daughter are left in Australia. As she was found to be a refugee because she faced persecution in Sri Lanka, she cannot return there. As a result the family will most likely be permanently separated.
A United Nations representative described the action as violating 'the basic right of family unity, as well as the fundamental principle of the best interests of the child'. A more categorical statement of the standards of civilised tradition and a more measured condemnation of Australian practice can hardly be imagined.
Disregard for the interests of families has also been evident in the refusal to allow mothers and children on Nauru to come to Australia for medical care, out of fear courts may later refuse their removal. It has been evident, too, in penal policy where in adult and children's courts increasing numbers of parents and children are remanded in custody. In the case of adults the accused person can be separated from their family for more than a year before the case is heard.
As a result, already fragile family relationships are destroyed by separation, and partners and children lose the support of the breadwinner in the family. The welfare of the family is subordinated to anxiety about security. In the case of children, separation from family and friends has been shown to scar their future life.
Australia also has a strict policy of deporting non-citizens found guilty of crimes that could attract a prison sentence. New Zealand authorities have justifiably regarded this treatment of its citizens as abhorrent. Apart from the cruelty of sending people back to nations they left as children and whose language they no longer know, it can break stable family relationships and penalise innocent partners and children.
Some years ago an Australian prime minister apologised to the stolen generations for the policy of smashing families by taking away their children, and for its disastrous consequences for children and families. Why would we want to revisit this experiment, we might ask, and try it out on other people?
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.