Gary John's pragmatism belies more sinister ideologies

The idea of children as a personal indulgence undercuts the promotion of common social values and encourages self-serving individualism. Children are now a product for personal satisfaction rather than an investment in the nation's future.

Perhaps Johns should look at alternatives to current social disengagement. An education system that caters to a broader stake-holder base. Better post-school training. Job availability – perhaps something to replace the huge loss of the motor industry, the effects of which are yet to hit our economy. Great to suggest the unemployed should postpone children until they can afford them. They might be waiting a lifetime.

Some of these ideas are presented as pragmatic approaches to current issues, but there are even more sinister ideological issues at play.

Gary Johns might like to revisit the manifesto of the Eugenics Society of Victoria founded in 1936. A key activist in this society was Richard Berry, professor of Anatomy at the University of Melbourne. These views were also prominent in the work of Margaret Sangster, the founder of Planned Parenthood. Initially, 'respectable' people did not use contraception but it was seen as a means of controlling the less desirable social groups. Eventually it became promoted as a 'common good'.

The Eugenics Society of Victoria and its predecessor the Eugenics Education Society supported a number of Mental Deficiency Bills in the Victorian Parliament. These Bills were presented in 1926, 1929 and 1939 by Premier Stanley Argyle a close friend of Berry's. They aimed to institutionalise and potentially sterilise a significant proportion of the population - those seen as inefficient. Included in the group were slum dwellers, homosexuals, prostitutes, alcoholics, as well as those with small heads and with low IQs. The Aboriginal population was also seen to fall within this group.

These ideas lost momentum and became an embarrassment after their escalation in Nazi Germany and the ensuing Holocaust – and the extermination of gypsies, homosexuals, and other minorities.

The targeted social groupings might have changed, but the sentiments espoused by Johns are the same. To seriously entertain his proposal is to embark on a dangerous route.

Further sinister underpinnings are the racist and sexist attitudes in Johns only being able to provide example examples of aboriginal women to support his argument. Never mind that the fathers of many children of aboriginal women are white men. Compulsory contraception and sterilization of aboriginal women is not a solution for solving complex problems. It is a band-aid approach that is hugely insulting to human dignity. Indeed, compulsory contraception can mask more serious issues of sexual abuse in certain communities.

Further, has Johns given any thought towhat will happen to children conceived while their parents are on benefits? Compulsory abortion? Compulsory adoption? Or will they be allowed to perish in poverty until another wit, such as Jonathon Swift publishes another "Modest Proposal"?

Clara Staffa Geoghegan is a freelance writer and educator. She has also worked as a policy advisor.

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