So the Prime Minister thinks women who stay at home to look after children are holding the economy back. Imagine the uproar if a male Prime Minister had said that. Helen Clark told the Parliament that if all the women who stay home went to work, the economy could be 5% bigger.

Children weren’t mentioned. The Government believes women are just sitting at home doing nothing and going shopping when they get bored. And the women who do work apparently aren’t working hard enough. The Prime Minister wants them to get out a few hours earlier in the morning and work out a few more hours at night, because otherwise they will have too much spare time.

Helen Clark also told Parliament the worst offenders are women aged 25-34. They have committed the cardinal sin of staying home more than the perfect ideal women of Sweden, a country New Zealand is meant to be like because the Prime Minister goes skiing there. The fact that women aged 24-35 are the mothers of young babies doesn’t seem to matter.

So the government wants young mothers of young babies to get full time work and put their babies in to full time care to lift our economic performance.

Helen knows the great thing about getting these mothers into work is that it counts double for the economy. Where a mother’s work at home didn’t count at all, if she goes to work her wages count for the economy and so do the wages and costs of whoever looks after the child. It’s like telling everybody to eat out every night instead of cooking their own tea – washing the dishes at the restaurant grows the economy but washing the dishes at home doesn’t. So here’s another policy to grow the economy - make everyone go to an expensive restaurant every night.

Some families already do put their children into full time care from a young age.

I go in and out of early childhood centres all over the country because I’m the Opposition Spokesman for education. I am allowed to give an opinion on looking after children because I once spent a year at home as a house husband. I just can’t get comfortable with 6 month old babies spending 10 hours a day in a centre looked after by a teacher. It’s like the feeling I get when I see pictures of men kissing – it’s just not right. Some people decide they have to do it, but it shouldn’t be government policy.

Labour’s views about childcare are quite extreme. They believe the best thing for a child is to get in to early and intensive childcare. I’m not joking – it’s official Government policy that children do better if they are in child care early and often with a qualified teacher, as long as its not privately owned. Apparently the research shows only government owned centres do the job properly. So we are headed down the road to school for two year olds.

I have read hundreds of pages of official documents about the government’s policy on early childhood and parents don’t get a mention. Sometime I wonder why they let us take our kids home to our unlicensed premises to be looked after by unqualified parents.

So at least Helen’s idea that mothers are holding the economy back is consistent with Labour’s policy that parents hold children back. The government believes it can do the job much better than fuddy duddy parents who get married, make up their own minds about who looks after the children and call themselves a family.