SYDNEY -- Materialism is to blame for Australia's low birth rate and not the absence of government-funded maternity leave, Community Services Minister Amanda Vanstone said Tuesday.

She said offering a bounty on babies wouldn't work because people were basically selfish, and no amount of government assistance would change that, DPA said.

"The only people that can change that is ourselves, looking at ourselves and saying 'Do we really want to have a new car every five or 10 years? Do we need that? Is that more important to us than other things in life?,'" Vanstone said.

Australia and the United States are the only two rich countries that don't have government-funded maternity schemes.

Last weekend a group of women demanding paid maternity leave burned their maternity bras on the steps of Parliament house in Melbourne.

They called on women across the country to go on a "fertility strike" until the government offers a financial reward for pregnancies.