Politician’s Proposal of “Stork Derby”

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 174, 26 July 1938, Page 4

Politician’s Proposal of “Stork Derby”

NEW SOUTH WALES HOUSE SYDNEY, July 18. A veteran Labour member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, Mr Frank Burke, has aroused a hornets* nest by suggesting, during comments on Australia's need for population, that a prize should be given to eneonrago births in a competition spread over live or ten years. In making this suggestion, Mr Burke gave an assurance that he was serious. He had referred to a warning given by the Federal Minister of External Affairs, Mr W. AL Hughes, about stagnating population, and added that the decline in the birthrate had reached a serious stage. He urged that the Premier, Mr B. 8. Stevens, fchould communicate with the Prims Minister, Mr J. A. Lyons, in. considering the prize to be offered.

Mr J. C. Ross assumed that Mr Burke was not serious by asking the Premier to make sure that the Competition was open to members of Parliament. Mr Stevens adroitly avoided a direct answer by asking that Mr Burke's question should be put on the business paper “in view of the impor tance of the matter.* * Outside interests regarded Mr Burke’s proposal in all seriousness. One representative feminist, who happened to bo in the House when the suggestion was made, said: ‘‘lnstead of drivelling away about ‘stork derbies,* it would have been better if he had had the temerity to shout out why women do not have large families to-day. We could have told him that women to-day will not have children because they will not subject them to the life that has been theirs—a life of fear and semi-starvation. We could have told him that women will hive children when men in Parliament make the world safe for children—free from war and free from starvation.** One of Sydney's outspoken clerics said. “The proposal i 3 ridiculous. It

is bringing child-bearing down to the lowest level—something for which money is to be offered. If this is the only method of increasing our population, it will be better to leave babies out of it altogether. Fears for the future have much to do with the declining birth-rate and we have to face up to the problem. But not in terms of a ‘ stork derby.* If the Government made things easier for mothers, there would be plenty of babies.”