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Keywords: Renting

  • AUSTRALIA

    Black hole budget will penalise the poor

    • Brian Toohey
    • 07 May 2013
    9 Comments

    Labor is struggling with a $12 billion write down in anticipated revenue for 2012-13 after Treasury bungled the forecasts. It could cut back on government assistance to those who can fend for themselves. But it has chosen to penalise the poor, with those on the parenting payment being switched to the lower Newstart. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Shaky surpluses and dirty nappies

    • Jen Vuk
    • 09 May 2012
    4 Comments

    You could you call it coincidence that the week I'm asked to write on budgets, ours blows out. I call it life. Such is the cyclic nature of our 1.5-incomes-and-two-kids lives that just when we think our savings are safe, a new enrolment fee is due, the kids' jeans are suddenly a size too small and I've run out of nappies.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Swan slights jobless

    • Paul O'Callaghan
    • 08 May 2012
    11 Comments

    When budgets are tight, governments seek savings by moving people from an expensive payment to cheaper payment categories. By moving a larger number of single parents from parenting payment to the cheaper Newstart allowance the Government will effectively remove $686 million out of the hands of low income families.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Parenting habits of Mormons and Catholics

    • Brian Doyle
    • 18 January 2012
    9 Comments

    In Mormon families, the first kid has to be a bishop or scout leader, and the second through fifth are trained fpr football. In the Catholic system, a family produces a priest or nun, a cop, a teacher, and a solider, after which the rest of the kids can be whatever they want, even Lutherans in some cases.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    When my kids believed in Santa and God

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 22 December 2011
    5 Comments

    My daughter, at seven, imagines a Barbie doll that does not exist, one that has 'a very cool gun and real lipstick'. My son, at five, asks for 'a Jeep, a hot air balloon and real false teeth'. These preserved Christmas lists record my children's growth more accurately than their physical measurements.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Shocking scenes from a teen pregnancy

    • Madeleine Hamilton
    • 16 December 2011
    23 Comments

    When she had her first baby at 18, her neighbour asked if she was trying to make a buck from the baby bonus. Given the liberalisation of abortion laws, pregnant teens are accused of deliberately ruining their lives or ripping off the public purse if they choose to continue their pregnancies.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Bilingual parenting

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 16 February 2011
    4 Comments

    When I first moved to Greece, my language skills were reduced to those of a three-year-old. The pain of this was exacerbated when six months after our arrival, my six and eight-year-old sons started speaking to each other in Greek.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Shopping as communion

    • Sarah Kanowski
    • 15 November 2010
    6 Comments

    Buying and selling has shaped history. Alongside goods, new ideas and practices get exchanged, leading to the creation of remarkable civilisations. My young daughter and I recently caught a bus into the city to do some shopping. A mundane errand was transformed into something magical.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Iceland's ash cloud of the apocalypse

    • Brian Matthews
    • 19 May 2010
    9 Comments

    If Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano erruption was disruptive, its cousin Katla may have worse in store. Volcanoes, emanating a kind of preternatural, primal, patience, are landlords whose unchanging message is: you are renting; you haven't bought.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    It takes more than money to raise a child

    • Sarah Kanowski
    • 16 March 2010
    21 Comments

    The Professor of Work and Organisational Studies at Sydney University says Abbott's plan would 'catapult Australia from having no scheme at all to probably being the best scheme in the world'. So why am I, a passionate believer in paid parental leave, not rejoicing?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Abbott blinded by Howard's brutal immigration principle

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 25 January 2010
    17 Comments

    Tony Abbott has declared John Howard's statement, 'We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come', to be 'self-evidently and robustly true'. The Australian people deserve a better basis for policy than an appeal to self-interest.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Big broods and helicopter parenting

    • Sarah Kanowski
    • 08 October 2009
    5 Comments

    Big families are no longer fashionable, but they had their benefits. Vastly outnumbered, there's no chance for adults to practice the kind of helicopter parenting common to my own generation, where we hover over our one or two, soothing and solving.

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