Just picture it. Joe Hockey is delivering his second Budget. Everyone is crying for his blood and if it goes badly, he’s out they whisper. And then he says it: ‘And $100 million to implement our compulsory contraception programme for welfare recipients. We cannot have dole-bludgers having babies.’

For the next two weeks, ABC24 and Sky play idiot, fascist-sounding ministers on a loop muttering of ‘diaphragms’ and ‘vaginal rings’. A Monty Python nightmare for ministers and the undeserving poor alike? The culmination of a dream for the former Keating minster – and IPA convert – Gary Johns, actually.

In the second-last Australian for 2014, Mr Johns wrote an op-ed titled ‘No Contraception, No Dole’ which looked like wicked sub-editors sexing up a headline. But no, he means it.

‘If a person’s sole source of income is the taxpayer, the person, as a condition of benefit, must have contraception. No contraception, no benefit,’ Johns says. Mr Johns won’t stop the hordes of homosexuals and venal virgins on benefits, but at least the breeders will be kept at bay.

It’s true as the old song goes that ‘The rich get poorer and the poor get…children.’ And nobody can doubt that adding more mouths to families already struggling is not exactly a recipe for high financial success and security. But Johns’ assertion that: ‘It is better to avoid having children until such time as parents can afford them’ is not quite such a simple self-evident truth as he imagines. And despite the attempts by some left-wingers to paint this as a conservative fantasy, there is absolutely nothing worthwhile in such an idea for the centre-right.

Put yourself in brand spanking new Social Services minister Scott Morrison’s shoes. Could he really go to a famously and devoutly Catholic prime minister and say ‘Let’s make everyone take the pill’? Or then watch him stumble as TV interviewers ask if he’s changed his mind on giving women RU486 now he’s mandating rubbers for poverty-stricken blokes?

Let’s assume that some people on benefits are possibly Catholic (or another faith that doesn’t support contraception) and you enter that horrible murky swamp known as the ‘religious freedoms’ debate. In the same way we shouldn’t force Sikhs to have a haircut, you can’t stop Catholics having babies. Come to think of it, you can’t stop anyone having babies in a society that respects fundamental liberties.

Of course, savings must be made and babies are always a big source of deficit pain. And we’re happy to hand out baby bonuses and school-kids bonuses. For God’s sake, we’re constantly on the verge of legislating Taylor Swift concert bonuses for parents who can’t afford their teenagers’ exorbitant tastes. There is also some lavish paid parental leave scheme in the pipeline for working women I hear, that is…er…a motherhood promise of Tony Abbott. If we really want to pummel the baby-welfare deficit it’s possibly best to stop spending money on babies who don’t really need the cash (nor do their relatively well-off mothers).

Then there’s the cost of contraception: best stick to keeping whatever money we have left in the federal coffers, rather than splurging it on contraceptives for promiscuous dole-bludgers. It’s not like the sexual health industry needs the stimulus (for want of a better word).

Now the most problematic bit of this otherwise glittering social reform suggestion is how we catch blokes as well as women in the honey trap. A female dole-bludger spawning a dole-baby is easy to catch – one trip to the doctor and bye-bye $400 fortnightly payment. But what of the men, those horrifying hunks who never know how many broken hearts and fatherless tots they leave behind?

Perhaps we can put DNA samples on every male welfare recipient and constantly double check it with hospital-born babes. Home births might admittedly constitute a crack in the system but we’ll let it slide, and simply dock their payments. But it would still be a problem for deep heads. We wouldn’t want anyone to accuse this landmark reform of sexism would we?

Johns – forever stepping on a minefield – also brings up the fact that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women seem to have more children. ‘It undoubtedly will affect Aboriginal and Islander people in great proportions,’ he says of his plan. It’s but one of many cures prescribed for the ailments of the Indigenous welfare crisis but really highlighting these women and putting them in a different category doesn’t exactly make him seem saintly. It looks like he’s targeting them as benefit villainesses. Those who supported the Northern Territory Intervention know that banning alcohol was hard enough. Banning babies will be a tad harder. And oh wait, do I hear the words ‘new stolen generation’ in the wind? We need serious discussion about childcare and safety in Indigenous communities, not a birth ban.

And then – and I hate to shock the fornicators out there – Mr Johns must consider the fact that, sometimes, contraception doesn’t do the job. Yes, holes in condoms do occur. And even on the pill, women do have a 0.1% chance of getting pregnant. How many of that 0.1% in the world have an Australian pension I don’t know but the risk exists. We shouldn’t be so willing to spend a lot of money on a programme that doesn’t always work. Is government contraception the pink batts (well, something to cover your pink something) of welfare reform?

There are people in the world who shouldn’t have children. They exist in the upper-middle class, the working class and any other class you can dream up. But punishing people for popping one out is a bit One Child policy for most of us, a bit Chinese communist tyranny. We’re not the sort of country that peeps into the bedroom; never mind kicking poor wee babies to the kerb. A serious look at middle class welfare and sorting out our cluttered benefits system might answer our worries. Gary Johns can steam about those meddling kids and their dammed dole-bludging mums in private. With consenting adults if there are any.