Dear Susan - thanks for your support. Love Australia x

I think it would be really neat if my next annual statement from the ATO arrived with a little thank you card.  It doesn't even have to be a regular-sized card - a gift tag signed by Treasurer Scott Morrison will do. It turns out, you see, I've been carrying the nation - as have some 1.8 million of my fellow tax payers.  

We're the bracket who earn enough to support ourselves and our families without the help of government benefits but not enough to be labelled rich. You could say we're comfortable, but not without careful budgeting, regular reshuffling of financial priorities, and what I like to call retail offsets. We can indulge, for example, in a sizeable slab of vintage cheddar each week because we pick up our fruit and veg at markets. Our teenagers wash their hair with bulk shampoo from The Reject Shop (one litre for $5) so I can lather mine in expensive purple goop from the salon to keep my blonde from going brassy.  Our household budget pivots on countless of these first-world gives and takes.

Don't get me wrong. I'm acutely aware - and very appreciative - that my earning capacity and home ownership (even with a mortgage) place me among the wealthiest workers in the world. The 2015 Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report ranks Australian households third for global wealth. But it did niggle when I read recently that Australian households earning $80,000 to $180,000 — about 14 per cent of tax payers — pay the nation's lion's share of tax.  And it really pricked my sense of justice when I learned that nearly half — 48 per cent — of Australia's tax payers are not actually chipping in at all. What they fork out they get back in pensions, family tax benefits or childcare rebates. In other words, they pay no net tax. 

On average, in 2014, Australian families paid $12,935 in income tax, but received $9,515 in benefits — a net annual contribution to the public coffers of just $3,424.

I'm no economist but that seems a somewhat fruitless, and even futile, approach to taxation. The current debate about tax reform seems to be skirting around this dilemma. What's lost in the headlines and panic about whether the GST is going up or negative gearing being scrapped is an understanding that we may need to share the load a little more evenly. I'm not for a minute suggesting genuinely vulnerable low-income earners receive less help or fork out more. Nor am I balking at some level of support to offset the costs of raising children. But I am advocating that those who can afford it put in their share - or at least not be able to take out as much as they pay. 

It's also worth pointing out that, as a whole, we're not taxed as much as we might think, when compared to other economies. In 2006, Treasury reported we had the eighth lowest tax burden among 30 OECD nations. Mexicans paid the least tax (albeit not the fiscal yard stick by which we want to measure ourselves), while the Swedish tipped in the most. The upside for the Swedes is that they revel in 480 days of paid parental leave, five weeks' minimum annual leave, and free university degrees. All that and good looks! 

I'll leave it up to our politicians and bean counters to determine if our tax pie needs to be larger to support our ageing population and world-class aspirations. The ship seems to have long-sailed on affordable tertiary education for our children, so I suspect we'll need more pastry some time soon. Whatever the size of the pie, all I ask is we slice it a little more equitably than we do now.

In the meantime, I won't hold my breath for that thank you card from the treasurer. But if Scott Morrison is considering the notion, The Reject Shop has a reasonable selection for $1. He could pick up some cheap shampoo and conditioner while he's there.

Why shared parenting laws are letting down the kids of domestic violence

TWO weeks ago a slightly built Sydney teenager took on the Family Court - and won.  It didn't make headlines. It didn't even make it to a court room. There was no hearing, no judge, no lawyers. Just a young girl with a strong moral compass who had the courage to say "enough is enough."

At 14, this girl made the brave call to stand up to her abusive father and defy the parenting agreement that required her to spend nearly 50 per cent of her time with him.  For nine years, she and her two younger sisters experienced a life of fear, constant upheaval and unrelenting cruelty at the mercy of their father. For nine years they had to stand by and watch their father verbally abuse, manipulate, threaten and beat my close friend, their mother. And because their narcissistic tyrant of a father did not physically harm his children, a court-ordered family report - beyond all logic and comprehension - recommended a 50-50 care arrangement when his wife finally found the strength to divorce him. 

Tragically, two Queensland women and a six-year-old girl died two weeks ago allegedly as a result of domestic violence. Amid the many emotive debates and necessary calls for action, I would like to shine a spotlight on a corner of our legal system that lets down hundreds of Australian women each year. A justice system in which many abused women will never leave their dangerous partners while ever there's a risk the Family Court will enforce without compassion or commonsense its idealised notion of shared parenting.

Introduced under the Howard Government in 2006, the shared parenting laws were designed to hand a better deal to divorced dads who were fed up with paying to raise their children but only having access to them every second weekend. I'm divorced with two children and remarried to a man who also has two kids. I thoroughly endorse the concept of both parents having equal and every opportunity to be physically and emotionally involved in their children's lives. I wholeheartedly advocate for more mutually agreeable, flexible arrangements to supersede rigid orders that see dads collecting their kids at 9am every second Saturday from a McDonald's car park and returning them by 5pm the following day. And at the risk of being lambasted, shame on women who laud these prescriptive arrangements over decent blokes who are trying to do the right thing. But as with every well-intended piece of legislation, there are unintended consequences.

For a range of reasons - geography, logistics, employment, finances, emotional and physical health - it's not always possible for children of divorce to spend equal time with both parents. I believe most fair and reasonable separated parents comprehend this.  The problem is fairness is scarce when emotions run high and wounds from broken marriages are still raw.

But what most Australians would fail to fathom is how a man with an AVO against him and witness accounts detailing a long history of horrendous torment against his wife, would be able to convince the Family Court he should have equal care of his three daughters, at the time aged 12, 10 and 7. But he did. Even more alarming is that according to men's rights group Fathers4Equality only 15 per cent of fathers have been able to secure shared parenting arrangements since the laws came into effect. How my friend's former husband is among that minority beggars belief. 

As for many women in her situation, my friend lacked hard proof. Her former husband was smart enough not to wallop her in the face. She's an international flight attendant - a black-eye or other visible wound would have prompted too many questions. Instead, he punched her in the head so her brunette hair could hide the bruising. Like most domestic violence situations, the episodes were explosive and unpredictable. He threw hot coffee in her face, smashed things regularly and trashed her verbally and maliciously at the slightest interruption to his warped take on life. He once dragged her viciously by the hair to point out a tiny smudge on a wall she'd just painted. She was locked out of the house for an entire night and he would threaten regularly that if she ever left, he would ensure she lost the house and the kids. He even cooked up a scheme to jeopardise her job, threatening to phone the airline she worked for to tell them she mumbled in her sleep about blowing up planes. And nearly all of this torment and violence played out in front of their three young girls, who were forced by their enraged father at one point to tell their mother they didn't want to live with her. 

What's most difficult for women in these situations to prove is the unrelenting cruelty: emotional isolation; blackmail; forced sex; vile verbal abuse, fear of triggering the next violent episode; upended tables when dinner isn't up to scratch; threats that if they leave they will lose everything, including the kids. 

Further complicating and hampering my friend's case when it finally made it to court was the fact she still lived under the same roof as her abuser. At the time, myself and a circle of close friends she had begun to confide in told her she was mad. We implored her to get the hell out. It would only harm her case, we said. Sadly, in the end, we were right. The judge ruling on the final financial settlement said my friend's plight couldn't have been that bad or else she wouldn't have stayed. 

But it's easy for those of us living on the outside of these hellish relationships to offer seemingly sage advice. My friend stayed because she feared if she left and pursued divorce, the Family Court would invoke the shared parenting laws, leaving her even more helpless to shield her children from their father's abuse.  Ultimately, her worst fears were realised when the family report recommended the 50-50 care split.  She could have pursued in court a different parenting order but she knew her daughters were too afraid to speak out, especially when they knew both parents would review any family report, and the report would likely gazump her case. Defeated emotionally and financially, she reluctantly agreed to the current arrangement, which essentially requires her daughters to spend nearly 50 per cent of their time with an abusive dad. 

Which brings us back to our brave teen who has decided she won't abide by this arrangement any more. Last month, when my friend was preparing for an international shift, her eldest daughter declared she would no longer be forced to live a significant part of her life with her father. Having experienced his abusive tendencies shifting towards her, she mustered wisdom and social intelligence beyond her years and arranged for a trusted male friend to attend a meeting between her and her dad. She intended to let her father know that when her mother travelled for work she would now be staying at her uncle's instead. Confronted and wrong-footed by a situation he couldn't totally control, her father was a no-show. He huffed and puffed and threatened to call the police to report his daughter a runaway, but she was unmoved. And remains steadfastly so.

There is much more to be said and written about my friend's situation and the failings of the system. Court-appointed child psychologists who either wouldn't or couldn't ask direct questions; magistrates and pastors who allowed themselves to be conned by a mentally unstable, unemployed man who promoted himself as the ultimate stay-home dad; barristers who treated the case like pass-the-parcel and failed to read or act on carefully and lawfully prepared affidavits; and police who couldn't act without more proof.

Until the system starts to investigate thoroughly claims and threats of family violence and advocates for the protection of women and children, many women in my friend's situation will choose to take their chances with a fist than risk a court ruling that hands their children over to abusers. Perhaps our hope lies in the impacted children, who will eventually grow up and maybe, just maybe, be courageous enough to take a stand.

Women hold up half the sky...

I did warn last month that November is hideously hectic.  So busy, I've had zero time to blog for several weeks. And now it's December and Christmas is upon us...

The rare slivers of downtime I have managed to steal - usually between 10.55 and 11 at night - have been spent with a ratty-looking paperback being passed around a group of gals from my church.

It's Half the Sky, a meticulously researched and thoughtfully compiled global call-to-action to educate and empower girls. It's not a soapbox and it doesn't preach.  Rather, husband-and-wife New York Times journalists Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn lay down the facts on the undeniable economic, social and health benefits of valuing girls and giving them a hand up.

They share account after account of women in impoverished nations overcoming sexual imprisonment, life-threatening physical neglect and sheer powerlessness through education and practical economic development. At the risk of cutting across Christmas cheer and getting a little strident, I'd like to share one such account, to remind those of us who live genuinely free here in Australia that there is still much to do elsewhere in the world. While Aussie women may bump their heads on glass ceilings in the workplace, we're not deprived of education, choices, rights and voices simply for being born with a uterus.

Such was the case for Goretti, an uneducated 35-year-old mother of six in rural Burundi in central Africa. Robbed of all personal freedom by an over-bearing husband, she was forbidden to leave their clay hut without him. Even though she was forced to haul heavy grocery bags home from the market, she had never handled anything more than the equivalent of 10 cents, such was the control her husband maintained.

Her life was dramatically transformed when she encountered the American aid organisation, CARE. The organisation forms village associations of about 20 women, who band together to improve their quality of life. Goretti boldly attended her first CARE meeting after encouragement from older female relatives who had seen first-hand the benefits of the female networks. Each woman brings the equivalent of 10 cents (the most, like Goretti, many can lay their hands on), which is pooled and loaned to members, who must invest it in a money-making enterprise and repay the loan with interest. Goretti invested her small loan in a bag of fertiliser, which helped produce a bumper crop of spuds.

Before too long, Goretti was making and selling banana beer, and contributing way more to the household than her abusive husband. The irony was that her husband previously blew about 30 per cent of the family income on similar beer at the local bar. But when he saw how much Goretti's independence and business improved their family's living situation, he not only allowed her to carry on with her enterprise and learn to read and write, but resisted the urge to plunder her stock! In the end he conceded it was "better to have a partner, than a servant."

Wisely, the authors are cautionary with their optimism  - and Boretti's story is not without challenges. Her success is built on the provision of beer, a source of discontent in hers and other African villages, and her existence is still heavily dependent on successful crops. But there is no question that equal access to opportunity has radically renewed her life and that of her family.

Goretti is one of millions of women living in cultures in Africa, the Middle East and Asia that will continue to wrestle with poverty, disease and violence while ever women are regarded as unequal and incapable. 

If you have time over the holidays, get your hands on Half the Sky.  It will stir in you a hunger for justice - and that's just the sort of thing we should be thinking about at Christmas.

November is December on steroids

With less than a week left of October, I’m putting it out there: I hate November. It has become the new December, where life’s usual frenzied pace is dialled up a whole new notch to helter skelter on steroids.

November is the month where weariness from nearly a year’s worth of the day job collides head on with the kids’ malaise over school, a flurry of school break-up concerts and award ceremonies and a disturbing increasing in the number of work-related Christmas parties because everybody thinks December is too busy!

What concerns me is that I don’t think our family has much of a margin to go any faster. We’re already living at break-neck speed. Last week, hubby and I had to arrange a drive-by near the kids’ high school so he could spring me $40 because I didn’t have time to divert to an ATM. We literally slowed as we drove past each other and did a “boyz-in-the-hood” type exchange out our windows. All that was missing was my hoodie and doof-doof.

Mothers seem to feel this early onset of the silly season more than fathers. Perhaps because we’re at the coalface of the school notes about classroom parties and end-of-year drama performances, while also negotiating with the various family off-shoots about whose turn it is to host Christmas and – as in the case of our blended-family – who will have the kids and when. The co-ordination needs its own gant chart and spreadsheet.  Heck, it needs its own project office!

Meanwhile, most of the men I know are browsing circa 1970 magazines to see which style of facial hair they’ll be sprouting for Movember. While I applaud the fact proceeds go towards research for prostate cancer and depression – and I’ll be sponsoring friends and family this year – I can’t help but think husbands, fathers, brothers and sons are the only ones with sufficient time and headspace to consider fundraising at this time of year.

Perhaps I’ll start my own charity, Moanvember, and ask people to donate to send worn-out working mothers on a month-long holiday to a tropical paradise.  You can all sponsor my under-arm growth because, heavens knows, there’s no time to take care of that right now!

If only Aldi carried Shapes...

Each week, like so many of us, I toss a burgeoning bundle of catalogues into the recycling bin, all except one – from the good people at Aldi. I love the Aldi catalogue, namely because – and perhaps a tad embarrassingly – it’s one of the most serendipitous experiences of my week.

Where else do you find cycling duds, complete with “ergonomically formed” arse padding, in the same realm as solar-powered welding masks, baby cos lettuce, and assorted supplies for scrap-booking (a craze that has long overstayed its welcome)?

I confess I don’t frequent Aldi as much as my joy over their catalogue may lead you to think. Grocery shopping is a task I relish as much as scrubbing the loo. It’s generally relegated to the eleventh hour of the weekend, with less than an hour to spare before closing time. And, as much as I do like some Aldi products (their Australian olive oil, tinned tuna slices and creamy raspberry yoghurt, to name a few) they don’t carry all of the household faves, among them Arnott’s Shapes. At any given time you can open my pantry to find no less than half a dozen varieties of these assorted “baked-not-fried” snacks, because no two of our children like the same flavour. Not only do I think our brood single-handedly keeps the cogs turning at the Shapes factory, I marvel at the ingenuity of Arnott’s to keep coming up with umpteen new variations of the flavour, BBQ. But I digress…

The fact that Aldi doesn’t carry everything on our shopping list means it becomes a supplementary supplier when we can find the time. But that doesn’t deplete my enjoyment of flicking through their assorted weekly wares, which, much to my delight, regularly include random and amusing-sounding German foods in honour of the supermarket chain’s origins. Take pfeffernüsse (pronounced, I think, Fef-fer-nooser), delicious little gingerbread biscuits, or lachs-schinken, which, from the picture, looks a bit like pastrami, but could for all I know be slices of smoked eel.

Perhaps there’s a lesson there for other retailers in the lead-up to Christmas, as more and more face liquidation in the face of online competition. Surprise and delight us with your catalogues, and throw in the odd Spritzgebäck for good measure!

Managing up

Life is full of stakeholders.  Family, friends, bosses, colleagues, neighbours, your energy company, the manager of your kids' netball team. Some are more important than others. My husband, our children, our parents - they're key stakeholders. The bloke who drives the 210 bus rates reasonably low.  Unless of course he's running late; then he's top of my list for every minute he's delayed. 

Like it or not, all of these stakeholders have to be managed. Management may be as simple as telling hubby you'll be home in 20, so get the water boiling for the pasta. Or it might be paying the overdue electricity bill, lest hubby be boiling the pasta on the gas cook-top by candle light. At work, it might be delegating a task to one of your reports (managing down), getting together with a peer to discuss a shared issue (managing across), or letting your boss know her deadline is way out of the park and that if she wants you to meet it, she better bring in the Army Reserve (managing up).

Right now, my brothers and I are managing up on the home front. We've hit that sobering intersection in life when my 85-year-old father requires what's officially known as "residential aged care". Sadly, my 83-year-old mother's unending devotion and dedication to my physically immobile father is no longer sufficient to keep him safe and well.

He's currently in respite care in a relatively nice facility, where the Department of Health and Ageing will allow him to stay, courtesy of Veterans' Affairs, for 18 more days before the nursing home starts charging its usual four-star-hotel equivalent of a daily rate.  For my mother, whose generation endured rationing during the war and wears economisation as a badge of honour, the idea of handing over hard-earned savings and superannuation for Dad's daily upkeep is nothing short of appalling. I don't think it's the money itself, I think it's the concept of depleting a life's work of accumulated wealth - going backwards, if you like.

Of course, my brothers and I see it differently. Thus we're managing up, trying to persuade Mum to consider the sale of the family home, or at least a reverse mortgage on it in the short-term, as an investment in hers and Dad's quality of life.  At this stage, I think it would be easier to convince my boss to bring in the Army Reserve.  I'll let you know how it goes.