Single parents defended by LNP MP Ewen Jones after Cory Bernardi speech on nuclear families

Updated

A Queensland backbencher has defended single parents after Cory Bernardi gave a party room speech about the importance of nuclear families.

Senator Bernardi recently wrote a book railing against non-traditional families and accusing some women of using abortion as "an abhorrent form of birth control".

His speech has been described as "lengthy" and was followed by another from backbencher Ewen Jones speaking out in support of single and same-sex parents.

Senator Bernardi says he was simply praising an opinion piece by a cabinet minister and says it is remarkable if that is considered controversial.

In his speech Mr Jones told colleagues people become single parents for various reasons and what is important is the love and care children receive.

In an interview with the ABC after the meeting, Mr Jones said he knows what it is like to be a single parent.

"I was a single parent for just over 12 months. It was, in the scheme of things, it was the blink of an eye, but I do know what it's like to be doing the washing at 3:00 in the morning and making sure that your daughters' uniforms are ironed ready for school," he said.

"When I was a single parent my daughters were in pre-school and grade two; they are now 21 and 19 and they are productive members of society.

"I just think it was wrong to go out there and say [what Senator Bernardi said].

"It's absolutism that upsets me in these things, that to be a normal person you have to have a father and a mother and [live] in a normal household and you must live in the suburbia and those sorts of things," he said.

Consequences of family breakdown

Senator Bernardi says his speech referred to an opinion piece by Families Minister Kevin Andrews which discussed the consequences of family breakdown.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott told the party room the Government needed to be as supportive as possible of people regardless of their circumstances.

In his book, Senator Bernardi also suggested criminality among boys and promiscuity among girls is linked to being brought up in single-parent families.

"Given the increasing number of non-traditional families, there is a temptation to equate all family structures as being equal or relative," he writes.

"Why then the levels of criminality among boys and promiscuity among girls who are brought up in single-parent families, more often than not headed by a single mother?

"What is missing in the push for human cloning, in-vitro fertilisation and surrogacy, for example, is the understanding that children come into families as gifts, not commodities.

"It is perfectly reasonable and rational therefore for the state, if it is to have a role in social policy and the affairs of marriage, to reinforce and entrench those aspects of traditional marriage that work, not undermine them and promote alternatives which have led to social chaos.

"Competent social policy should be drafted by those who understand the primacy of natural law and who are able to see patterns in society."

Topics: liberals, political-parties, government-and-politics, federal-government, family-and-children, community-and-society, australia, qld

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