AUSTRALIAN POLITICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 115, 1 October 1912, Page 7

AUSTRALIAN POLITICS.

THE MATERNITY BONUS.

The plan of the New South Wales Government for supplementing the Federal maternity grant was explained in some detail last week by the Hon. F. Flowers. The Commonwealth proposes to make a cash payment of £5 to the mother of each child that is born in Australia. The State Government is going to ask Parliament for authority to pay the medical and nursing fees, thus leaving the Federal grant to be used by the mother in meeting the other expenses incidental to the arrival of the little stranger. Mr. Flowers told a representative of the Sydney Daily Telegraph that he and his colleagues intended to make use of the public hospitals as far as possible and would provide maternity annexes where extra accommodation seemed to be necessary. The mothers would be free to choose their own medical attendant and nurses, the State paying the fees in accordance with a standard scale, and confinements could take place in the homes if proper conveniences and wholesome surroundings were available. But there would be an element of compulsion, since the State would insist ,that a qualified doctor and a skilled nurse should be employed in every instance. A legal responsibility would lie imposed upon the father in this respect, though there would be no obligation to use the State service if private arrangements of equal effectiveness were made. Mr. Flowers added that the initial cost of the scheme would be about £ 60,000 a year, and the expenditure would be highly profitable. Every infant that was born in New South Wales would begin life under favorable conditions, and the babies that would be saved from death would swell the State revenue by increasing the Federal capitation at once and later becoming consumers and producers. If the scheme is adopted New Zealand may have to defend its claim to possess the lowest rate of infantile mortality in the world.