By Lucinda Garbutt-Young in Canberra

Parents need more government investment in child care and flexible work arrangements instead of a baby bonus to combat falling fertility rates, experts say. 

Suggestions of a revamped 2004-esque bonus have been made by independent MP Bob Katter in response to a Treasury report released on Monday, which showed more people will die than be born in Australia in 40 years’ time.

But data from The Parenthood shows no amount of offset would make up for the financial cost of raising a child, which amounts to about $17,800 a year for one, or at least $36,500 for multiple.

Instead of giving parents subsidies, the advocacy organisation’s chief executive, Georgie Dent, will use a National Press Club speech to call on the federal government to fund childcare centres directly, opening more places and making the cost cheaper for parents.

Conditions would be attached to the money, requiring free controls, proper educator wages and transparency.

The budget needed for raising a family has risen by 134 per cent in the time since the baby bonus began, while household income has gone up by 103 per cent, Ms Dent will say on Wednesday, according to excerpts of her speech.

“Meanwhile, the care work itself has not shrunk by a single hour. Babies still wake at night. Meals still need making. Somebody still has to be at the school gate,” the excerpts read.

More than half of fathers are not taking leave after the birth of their children, even if they want to, because their family is not able to afford it once the mother stops working to care for a baby.

“My husband Nick and I had become parents to exactly the same baby. Yet the world seemed to think we had signed up for entirely different jobs,” according to Ms Dent.

“Mums lose income. Dads lose time. Both lose choice.”

The speech will come just days after Treasury’s three-yearly Intergenerational Report forecast Australia will record more deaths than births by 2066.

Mr Katter’s solution was a payout of $75,000 per new child – a significant leap from the $3000 offered more than two decades ago.

That bonus created a slight spike in births, though it was most effective in convincing people to have their third or fourth child.

“We know that people usually want to have more children (once they start having them),” e61 Institute research manager Pelin Akyol said.

Two decades on, a one-off financial incentive was unlikely to convince a new generation to begin having babies in the first instance.

“It may increase births for some women over a period, but it is not going to have a long-term effect,” Dr Akyol said.

“If we spend more on a baby bonus, we will spend less on something else, so the opportunity cost is important.”

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