Labor gets tough on Australian parents

By GREG ANSLEY AUSTRALIA CORRESPONDENT

CANBERRA - Australians face growing political instruction on how to behave as the nation gears up for an election in which family and social values are already shaping up as an issue.

The most recent is Labor's plan to force the parents of wayward children into good-parenting classes - by court order if necessary - to keep delinquents off the streets, in school, and on their best behaviour.

"Good parenting and responsibility is not an optional extra in life," Labor Leader Mark Latham said yesterday.

"It's necessary for a good society, and they're going to have court orders and parenting education, training, pressure, as well as support for parents to do the right thing."

On the other side, Prime Minister John Howard has also been talking up values and attacking public schools for failing to adequately instil them in their students.

Last week he threw a bomb into an already heated education debate by declaring that parents were shifting their children from public to private schools because state schools were "too politically correct and too values-neutral".

Values and the family will be important in an election that will be fought between a prime minister well ahead in the personal popularity polls and aiming to become Australia's second longest-serving leader, and a brash young rival driving hard on core Labor strengths but with a conservative bent.

Latham's mettle will be tested tomorrow when the federal Labor conference begins at Sydney's Darling Harbour.

Latham will need to emerge from the conference with an effective compromise on divisive issues to fight Howard in such key areas as health, education, welfare, the family, national security and refugees.

Some steps already have been taken, Labor softening its hard line on asylum seekers, education initiatives, and the compulsory option of part-time work for women returning from maternity leave.

But the conference still has significant ground to cover in large areas of asylum seeker policy and national security, especially the Government's decision to join the US missile shield programme.

Nationwide concern over a perceived erosion of values and rates of youth crime and school truancy have given Latham an early chance to stake out new territory with his advocacy of parental responsibility enshrined in West Australian law.

Based on a British law that has reportedly reduced crime by 50 per cent among children whose parents have undertaken court-ordered training, the WA legislation first urges parents to sign voluntary contracts requiring them to take more responsibility and impose greater discipline on delinquent offspring.

If the voluntary system failed, a court could order parents to undertake parenting classes and ensure their children's attendance at school under parental responsibility orders.

Latham said a Labor Government would back similar laws in other states.