Somewhere Peter Costello is smirking.

The former treasurer loves to talk about his role in encouraging Australians to have more children.

His exhortation that people should have one for mum, one for dad and one for the country was one of his most quoted lines and certainly livened up a dreary budget afternoon press conference.

It was the Coalition government that introduced the baby bonus as an alternative to paid maternity leave. The Labor Government maintained the cash payment but it is now means tested.

Once paid maternity leave is introduced in 2011 the baby bonus will be scrapped for working women, although those not in the workforce will still receive it.

The question of whether the bonus encourages people to have children is a much-debated point.

I begin this column as someone who has been accused of being a ”shameful” person, ”a nasty piece of work”, an ”ungrateful, unkind maggot”, because I recently wrote about refugee policy in a column that was described as ”bollocks”, ”biased”, ”poorly researched”, ”sensationalist drivel”, ”crap”, ”rubbish”, ”unworthy tabloid rubbish” and ”playing the race card”.

These insults are useful. They are irrational, immature, febrile. They are also consistent with a slightly more subtle orthodoxy that argues that anyone who supports the detention of asylum seekers on Christmas Island is not merely on the wrong side of a moral and legal argument, but is of cruel and deficient character.