My ovaries are nearly at extinction point. But I’m open to bribes

October 7, 2026 — 5:00am

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You may have heard that Australia’s birth rate has hit a new low of 1.48. That’s almost one and a half babies per woman, when we need just over two to stop our population from going backwards.

I’ve tried valiantly to do my bit by having two children, a daughter and a son, in 2023 and 2025. Naturally, my primary motivation in doing so was to make a future treasurer’s job easier by bolstering the tax-paying workforce. Of course, this still isn’t enough. To quote Peter Costello’s famous slogan, I’ve had “one for your husband and one for your wife” but not “one for the country.” Yet.

It’ll probably never happen because I’m broke, exhausted and my ovaries are almost at extinction point. Not to mention the fact that my partner has informed me that he’ll be ducking out for the proverbial pack of cigarettes if I even so much as start talking about baby number three.

All this aside, is there a universe in which the government might be able to bribe me, and others like me, into further expanding our families? Everyone has a price. What’s mine? And, with deficits forecast until 2066, can Australia even afford it?

As a country we’ve long been overly generous to those investing in housing stock. What about those of us investing in the foundational bricks and mortar of a stock of Aussie babies?

A couple of weeks ago, following the publication of the latest Intergenerational Report, there was a short-lived flurry of discussion........

© The Sydney Morning Herald