I was 25 when my niece was born. Five years later, I had a baby of my own. This was the mid-1990s. There was no universal maternity leave in Australia. My niece’s mother, my sister, urged me to get a government job because they “were good for parents”.

Now that niece is 32, and she and her husband have a baby daughter of their own. She’s just gone back to full-time work in the financial services industry. She has strong views on public policy that could help arrest the decline in Australia’s fertility rate. A baby bonus is not among them. Reasonably priced, quality child care is. Along with housing security. “What about schools?” she asks. “Fine to move a child when it’s by choice, but who wants to be forced to do so by a landlord?”