A tale of two conservatisms

China is our major trading partner, and the statistics from that country are also sobering. The one-child policy, compulsory abortion and the selective abortion of female babies has resulted in the closing of 13,000 primary schools in one year. It is estimated that 30 million men will not be able to find wives because of gendercide, the culling of pre-born females. China has benefited from the demographic dividend of a large workforce, but that dividend is running out and we will see the same pattern as in Japan and Europe, more old people and fewer workers.

It is impossible to separate marriage, children and abortion from the overall economic situation. A renewal of family life with marriage and children is central not only to our culture but our economic situation. I am critical of Prime Minister Tony Abbott's Paid Parental Leave where "women of calibre" like a CEO or banker can get $75,000 but a teacher or nurse gets far less, and a full-time homemaker, the kind of mother who has more than the average 1.7 children has had major cuts to the baby bonus which was an excellent non-discriminatory payment instituted by former Treasurer, Peter Costello and which had an immediate effect of increasing the birth rate.

Another factor which separates social conservatives and fiscal conservatives is the issue of personal moral responsibility. Social conservatives believe there is wrong-doing, the old-fashioned idea of "sin". Fiscal conservatives tend to be libertarian and imagine that with the right economic policies, low taxation and a free market, all will be well. I watched a recent TV news item about petrol thieves - the drivers who fill up their tanks and drive off without paying. The hapless service station owner gets little support from the police who claim the can do nothing about this kind of theft. If such lack of morals becomes a majority behaviour, either the service station owner will go broke and we will be paying his dole, or prices of petrol will rise for all of us. This is one example of how personal morality - or the lack of it - impacts on our economics.

All political parties agree that poverty is undesirable but they overlook the evidence that a lifestyle that reflects personal responsibility, conservative sexual attitudes and marriage reduce substantially the chances that an individual or family will live in poverty. Health agencies incessantly publicize that smoking causes ill health and premature death, but never mention how stable marriages result in better health outcomes and longer life expectancy.

Individual virtue is essential for national prosperity - free markets alone cannot do it, indeed how could we have low taxation and small government if the majority of families were dysfunctional? When there is breakdown of family life, the government, i.e. the taxpayer, has to pay to fix the pieces.

Star Parker, one of my favourite writers, is an African-American syndicated columnist. She writes that freedom is more than removal of external barriers of oppression and limitation. It demands individuals personally adopting principles of truth and virtue so that they may govern their own lives and live successfully with others: "The loss of this perspective has cost black Americans economic progress, and now the whole nation flounders as more Americans of all backgrounds turn to government and political power for answers rather than freedom and personal virtue and responsibility."

Thankfully Australian families are not yet in such dire straits as black American families where 70% of children are born out of wedlock, but we could be headed that way. In The Australian (12/11/13) it was reported that the Australian Council of Social Services and the UN Children's Fund would prod Tony Abbott to "tackle growing child poverty" and that half of these children are in sole-parent families. "Sole parent" is a misnomer - there is another parent out there who is not facing up to his or her responsibilities.

There are some hopeful signs - Tony Abbott together with Noel Pearson and Alison Anderson who represent sections of our indigenous population, have stressed the importance of personal responsibility, education and the work ethic in improving the plight of Aborigines. The same message applies to white families. Professor Judith Sloan, one of Australia's best-known economists and not a known pro-lifer, in an article in The Australian, 26-27/10/13, acknowledges the impact of demography and the ageing of populations on a country's economics. Australia has a younger populations than Europe or Japan, but we won't for much longer if our high abortion rates persist. Economists like Sloan need to make the connection between good economics and good family lives.