Senator Matthew Canavan has never shied away from his Catholic faith, but the new Nationals leader says he is not in the business of salvation – and he warns anyone from thinking the state should be. Source: The Catholic Leader.
“I agree with CS Lewis, that the state’s there to help people have ordinary happiness,” he said.
“I can’t save your soul, but I can make this life be a little bit happier, particularly for families, a little more care free.”
Not many Australians were having carefree Sunday afternoons lately, the Queensland senator said.
“They’d be worried about their bills, worried about fuel supplies now, worried about interest rates going up potentially this week, there’s a lot of anxiety in life and I’d just like to give people their carefree Sunday afternoons back again,” he said.
Mr Canavan emerged from the Nationals party room as leader last week, tearing up the record books as the first Nationals leader to hold a seat in the upper house in its 106 years.
He said he felt energised by the outcome but said it was “not about becoming leader”, instead about “doing something as leader”.
One of Mr Canavan’s top priorities is more Australian babies.
The most up to date ABS data put the fertility rate at 1.48 babies, which falls short of the prized replacement rate of 2.1 babies.
Mr Canavan chalks the decline up to a proportionate decrease in Australia’s assistance to families.
He said when the Howard government left office in 2007, the birth rate was near replacement levels, but has declined since.
“But what has also declined that’s less commented about is that the amount of family assistance provided in the budget has fallen as a proportion of our economy,” he said.
“With less assistance going to families, we’ve ended up with fewer babies.”
He said part of the solution was alleviating some of the pressures on the childcare system but he was also interested in casting the net wide for other solutions that could provide “more choice to parents”.
Boosting childcare “still doesn’t necessarily provide the kind of life that a new mother often wants and father wants – they want to spend more time with their newborn baby,” he said.
FULL STORY
New Nationals leader wants Australians to have more babies and carefree Sunday afternoons (By Joe Higgins, The Catholic Leader)
