National Press Club debate, What Women Want
April 28, 2010
THE HON TANYA PLIBERSEK Minister for the Status of Women Vs
THE HON DR SHARMAN STONE MP, Shadow Minister for the Status of Women
What Women Want, National Press Club, Canberra, 28 April 2010
Ken Randall: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the National Press Club and today's National Australia Bank address debate. It's a rather structured debate between Tanya Plibersek and Dr Sharman Stone, both of whom have responsibility for the status of women, for the Government on Tanya's part and Dr Stone for the Coalition. What we propose is that each of them has an opening statement of 8 minutes. We'll have a question period where questions are directed specifically to one party will have three minutes to respond and the other speaker will have one minute to react to that and at the end there'll be closing statements of two minutes. We tossed upstairs after some experience in the past about what happens when you toss on this platform and Dr Stone won the toss and elected, so to speak, to send in Tanya Plibersek to bat. Here is Tanya's opening statement.
Tanya Plibersek: Thanks, very much Ken, and I want to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land we're meeting on today and pay my respect to their elders past and present. I stood here three years ago as the Shadow Minister for Women and said that Australian women aren't a homogenous group and I'm not here to make generalisations about what women want from their government. That's still true. I believe what women want from their Federal Government are practical supports that facilitate women making their own choices about how to best manage their lives, their family's lives and their work and that's what we've done as a government. When I became Minister for the Status of Women I decided to concentrate on the three priority areas of economic security, safety and women's representation and in each of these areas we've made significant progress, although of course there's still a way to go. Women are still earning less than men and saving less than men, particularly in retirement. We've substantially improved the situation for pensioners, particularly single pensioners and we know that women are much more reliant on pensions than men. Women single pensioners are better off to the tune of $100 a fortnight because of changes that we've made.
Although women's representation in the public sector has improved, in the private sector there has certainly not been enough progress. We've got a female Governor-General, we've got a female Deputy PM, female Deputy Leader of the Opposition, three out of seven of our High Court judges are women, but we still see women significantly underrepresented in private sector boards and private sector management. Women still only earn 83 cents for every dollar that men earn. During an equal pay case in 1972, Mary Gaudron who later became our first female High Court judge said we got equal pay once, twice, and we still haven't got it. Women overwhelmingly carry the responsibilities of care and household responsibility. Valuing caring is crucial to achieving parity between women and men and that's why we'll introduce paid parental leave in January next year. It will provide vital support to working women and their families during the critical early months of a child's life, allowing parents both the time and the financial support they need to concentrate on their new baby. Paid parental leave will also help women stay connected to the workforce and to their careers while they're on leave, and make returning to work easier, improving their long-term economic prospects.
Providing parents with accessible access to affordable and high-quality child care is also critical. Women won't work unless there's good-quality affordable child care available for their children and that's why the Government's investing some $13 billion over the next 4 years to help families, 800,000 families, access quality child care. That's twice as much as in the last 4 years of the previous government. That's why we've doubled the child care tax rebate and are paying it quarterly instead of more than a year after costs were incurred as it was previously. That's why we're improving national quality standards in releasing the most comprehensive vacancy data available, allowing parents more easily to find a place for their child. WorkChoices was bad for women and we're still seeing the effect of WorkChoices work its way through the system. That's why the Government's new Fair Work Act, which came fully into effect in January this year, includes practical measures to restore fairness and make it easier for women and men to make choices about how to better balance their work and family lives.
More women continue to be paid in lower paid jobs and important measures like a fairer safety net and facilitated bargaining are critical to their economic security. Multiemployer bargaining for low-paid workers will be vital to largely female workforces like child care and aged care, cleaners and others. It is vital for women, who are much more likely than men to be dependent on awards. Right to request provisions will make it easier for women and men to care for children and have been very successful in the United Kingdom, and the equal remuneration provision, which can be made for work of equal or comparable value is the most important step towards reducing the gender pay gap that we've made since the introduction of equal pay laws. These provisions look at the skills involved in doing particular jobs and allow comparisons between industries, so that jobs that have traditionally been done by women and frequently undervalued can be measured against jobs that have traditionally been done by men. The test case for community service workers will look at the value of work done by a workforce of more than 200,000 people, largely women working in areas like domestic violence, homelessness, social work and so on. And I believe that this test case will have long-term effects for other industries that are largely female-dominated industries.
The Government will also be responding shortly to three important reviews that we initiated in the women's policy area. The review of the Equal Opportunity in the Workplace Act, the House of Representatives inquiry into pay equity and the Senate inquiry into the effectiveness of the Sex Discrimination Act. The review of the Equal Opportunities Act and Workplace Agency gives us an opportunity to modernise our efforts to promote equal opportunity in the workplace. Extensive consultations told us that EOWA is a valued resource, that there's a need for it and that it should stay. Many organisations and individuals would like to see EOWA given a new mandate to look at equal opportunity for men as well as women, and I agree that we need to provide as much focus on how men balance their work and family responsibilities as we do for women, because better sharing the load benefits everyone. Some submissions urged us to consider arrangements for women working in small and medium enterprises. I'm a little concerned about increasing regulation for small and medium enterprises but I do believe that those small and medium enterprises could benefit substantially from educative opportunities that the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency can give them.
We've also almost completed work on our national plan to reduce violence against women, the national's women's health policy, the first in 20 years, the national women's alliances, stronger, more vocal and more able to influence government, and all of these will make a strong contribution to boosting outcomes for women. Herotus watched wrote of her, men have behaved like women and women have behaved like men. We don't men to be more like women and women to be more like men, but we want women and men to pursue what best satisfies them in life, the work opportunities that best satisfy them, the domestic and family activities that bring them satisfaction, as well. To make the contribution they can to their families, to their communities and, of course, to our economy. We believe that families and individuals can decide for themselves how best to manage that and to find the balance they need, and that the role of our Government is to support and facilitate the multitude of choices that millions of Australian men and women make. Thanks.
KR: Thank you very much Minister and we have an opening statement from Dr Sharman Stone.
Sharman Stone: I thank you, and I'd also like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of this area the Ngunnawal people and to pay my respect to their elders both past and present. So what do we women want? Well, for a start what we want is what most people do of any gender. We want good health for our families, we want good education and training, we want to be safe from violence, discrimination and harassment. We want meaningful work, whether it's paid or voluntary. We want that work to be valued. We don't want it denigrated as "women's work". We don't want people to say it's soft option, a soft skill, an easy option and we are certainly not wanting the work that most women do, for example, as child carers, aged carers, in administration support or in community and welfare services, we don't want that work to continue to be undervalued and considered as softer work in the economy. So we want fair play, fair pay, the same pay as men who do the same jobs, or do jobs of equivalent value. Quite simply, we want economic security for women and families, economic security is essential because it makes for proper housing possibilities, good education and health outcomes. It leaves us in charge of our lives with better life chances.
Now getting what we want in Australia should not be dependent on when you were born, where you were born, if you're Indigenous, if you speak English, if you came to Australia recently, if you have a disability, if you're in a rural or remote area. It shouldn't be dependent on those factors, but as you know it too often is, and that's why we have governments to put in place safety nets to bring about proper policy and resource allocation so that the bumps out there are ironed out for women and girls and they all have a better chance and a decent opportunity at a life. Because, for example, it's much tougher if you're a 17-year-old mother and the baby girl you nurse, it's very tough for her if she suffers the intellectual and physical abilities of, say, foetal alcohol syndrome.
Her chances aren't much good and she needs a lot of help and support through Government support, in particular. But in Australia today, it's very tough for a 17-year-old mother with a baby like that. Life chances are not equal for too many women and children in Australia. We need governments to get serious about getting the policy settings right and the resource allocations right to make it fair, to make the economy work too... and I'm saying that this Government hasn't done the best job, and their time is running out. The Kevin Rudd Labor Government is now in its third and final year of this term. It began by promising affordable housing, better health services, better education, another 260-odd child care centres to deal with the child care crisis a concerted attack on domestic violence, decent paid parental leave and they set out to tackle the gender pay gap. So much promised, so little delivered. There are significant areas of discrimination against women persisting in Australia despite the rhetoric and it's got worse on Labor's watch. It's totally unacceptable to me and my party that no matter what your background, your job or geography, women are still the least likely to be promoted at work. They're virtually invisible on Australia's boards and serious councils, decision-making bodies across the country. We've still got some of the biggest gender pay gaps in the developed world, 17%, and as Elizabeth Broderick over here, our Sex Discrimination Commissioner says "The reward for a lifetime of caring as a woman is too often living an old age in poverty". On average, there's a 17% gender pay gap in Australia and we were ranked 51st in gender pay equality in 2007. Under Labor we've slipped to ranked 60th last year. The gender pay gap is widening. Labor has not delivered for us. Fair Work Australia has entrenched much of the better men’s conditions and poorer women's work conditions in there pay rates and conditions, the historic differences in access to penalty rates and other lurks and perks remain in our economy, and it seems the unions are the biggest boys' clubs of all. So it's not just a matter of pay justice.
This is not just about pay justice. It's critical for the economy. It's critical that we have greater workforce participation for women to increase productivity, to help combat the ageing demographics and to maintain our growth and to make sure our children have a best and better future. The Labor call for an inquiry as we were told into gender pay equity, six months ago, the standing committee report was a good one, I think. There were 63 recommendations. We haven't seen sight or sound of them but we're told, we've just been told it's coming soon, there'll be a response. Well, we're running out of time, we need to see that response. The problem for women is escalating, it's continuing. And reflecting their stop-start and part-time work histories because of parenting or grandparenting or looking after the elderly, the sick, the disabled, early retirement and lower pay, the average superannuation payout for women is half that of men right now. It's only about $35,500 and who would be surprised in this room that 75% of aged pensioners in the single age pensioner category are women. We can't continue to tolerate this. Sure, maybe the pensions have gone up a little, but you can't enjoy a great life on a pension in Australia. You need financial independence, if you can.
Few women can break through the glass ceilings to get into policy-making decisions under Labor. Only 7% of the top five positions in the top 500 ASX listed companies are held by women. Numbers on boards are just as bad and the number of women appointed by Labor to Government boards and councils is tragically low. It's disgracefully still too low. Until we have properly valued the unpaid work of women and grandmothers and accept the role of parenting and caring as just as legitimate and honourable for men as women, we're going to see women continuing to do two-thirds of the work in the home, the domestic work, the caring work, and women will continue to be labelled as less career committed and a greater risk to employ and this will affect their life chances and the economy. Because when you go and ask for those working hour flexibilities, parental leave, unpaid family leave, part-time or casual work, work at home, what does the boss or the recruiter say, or think? They think, this woman is not a careerist, she's not serious. She's not going to be the first here and the last to leave each day from work, and so women find themselves again and again not being given a fair go in the workplace and their pay reflects that and their careers reflect that and so they end up a little superannuation and a life with little independence in old age. This has to be dealt with in a way where we look at our legislation, we look at how companies report their pay conditions or pay equalities, how many people are on boards or senior management. Not all of this takes money. It's about a Government's commitment and changing the rules. We haven't seen that happen with this Government and of course we need good quality affordable child care places. Labor's just scrapped those 260 new child care centres. We might get half a dozen if we're lucky. We have a childcare crisis coming through. For a party that talked about social inclusion, workers' rights, the party for working families, the spin was all there. The outcome has been very sad, very sad for women when we've just about run out of time.
KR: Thank you both very much. We have our usual period of questions now. We'll do it all sitting in these positions and the first one is from a bloke... the only one on the list today.
James Massola, Canberra Times: Look, as the only male journo here I think I'd stick to the philosophical questions. In her book 'Female Chauvinist Pigs' the author argues that far from I guess younger women by appropriating male raunch culture far from liberating themselves are turning back the gains made by the feminist movement in the '60s and '70s, I was wondering what you both thought about that?
TP: Thanks, James. I'm actually quite worried about the raunch culture phenomenon. Not really because of the argument that it's bad for feminism, but because I think it's bad for the individual young women involved. I think there's a lot happening in youth culture that just completely passes adults by and it involves things like people filming sexual assaults on mobile phones and passing it around, people taking pornographic pictures of one another on mobile phones and passing it around. I think that young women and young men are making decisions at the moment that have very bad long-term consequences and the fact that those decisions are made in such a public way on the Internet or circulated via mobile phone means that they last forever, and one of the ways that we're working to combat that - there are a number of ways - but one of the ways is by ... we've committed $9.1 million over the last 4 years to respectful relationship programs being rolled out in schools, and community groups and sporting facilities. I announced recently we're getting Jay Walter Thompson to do a public campaign about respectful announcements and a lot of that will happen on the Internet, which is where young people live. I'll tell you one story about the respectful relationship stuff. I did something with the AFL in Melbourne a few months ago and I asked one of their big strapping young fellows what did you learn doing the respectful relationship course, and he said probably the most important thing I learnt is that if I wouldn't want something like this to happen to my mum or my sister or my girlfriend, then I shouldn't do it or say it about another women, and I think that really... I don't know, you'd think very simple and basic message is just so important for young men to understand about their relationships with women and if we can start with this generation of young people and teach them how to give respect to one another and how to expect good-quality relationships then I actually have a lot of hope for the future.
SS: If I pick up the point that you finally made, are we in fact turning our back on the gains of the feminist movement back in the '70s? And I was a proud member of that feminist movement, let me say. We thought we could have it all. We wanted equal opportunity in the workplace, we wanted men to participate in parenting, we wanted respect and I think on paper if you like we gained much of that. 40 years ago we got equal pay as you know. We also have anti-discrimination laws in Australia. Of course we do. We now have 90% of men apparently when asked saying they believe they should share equally in parenting. The problem is the workplace has not changed. We don't have that flexibility in the workplace, those opportunities. We've only just got a very cheapskate and ordinary paid parental leave option put up by January for introduced in January. The amount you're paid, the minimum wage, will mean working women already on a salary way above the minimum wage won't be able to pay their mortgages and take that option at just the minimum wage and there's no super attached to it. A tiny step forward if you like, but no real gain at all for working families who want to remain attached to the workforce. I think in Australia we've got to get serious about our cultural response to motherhood, to parenting. We've got to value it, we've got to value the voluntary work that people do. We've got to realise that it is not the case that you can undervalue and underpay women in certain professions like welfare and caring sectors and have them still there in their senior years in that career working as hard as they did. Women become dissatisfied and disgruntled and when they discover the bloke across the desk is being paid substantially more with the same qualifications and skill, she didn't know it because of his secrecy and confidentiality agreement attached to his salary, all of that means women lose respect for their workplace, and I'm concerned that we haven't got changes occurring fast enough. Those changes are occurring elsewhere in other developed countries. We've got to learn from the UK, who's now said you can't uphold in law confidentiality agreements to do with pay. We've got disclosure of pay, we've got even Portugal saying you've got to show for one month a year, what all your pay rates are male and female across your workplace and, of course, our Coalition Liberal National Party paid parental leave scheme will offer six months of leave on your salary or the minimum wage, whichever is the greatest and we will also offer superannuation. So there's good news ahead, but at the moment it's still very, very tough for women. We haven't been able to make good on what we hoped would be the great new gains back in the 1970s.
Sue Dunlevy, Daily Telegraph: Since the Rudd Government came to power, the pay gap between men and women has grown from 16% to 17.5%. It now stands at a massive $229 a week. So far the Rudd Government has only offered one policy to deal with this, that's to have equal pay cases under its new Fair Work Act. We know that doesn't work. The child care industry did it. Two years after they won their equal pay case, the same metal workers that they were comparing themselves to were getting paid $9 an hour more than the child care workers. We need to do more than that. Isn't it time that we did require companies to reveal the differences that they pay men and women? Will either side of politics give a commitment to deliver on that idea?
SS: Sue, I agree with you 100%. We have this cone of silence pulled down over particularly middle and senior wages and conditions in Australia and that perpetuates a problem where a woman can be in a role, even a job share with a male and discover by accident or not at all that she's been substantially underpaid in that job of same value, or indeed the identical job. It's not good enough and the test case that has just started which will attempt to look at measuring jobs of equal value set principles for that measurement are particularly important for Australia and we look forward to the outcome of this first case that was launched about a month ago. But we've got to do a lot more and we've got to, for example, the ASX which has just prided itself on requiring an announcement of their numbers of senior management on boards, I would like to see them show their senior pay rates for management. For CEOs and CFOs, chief financial officers the pay differential can be up to 50% between men and women. That is just not on. Other countries, we need to look at best practice elsewhere. They're requiring these disclosures. It's a naming and shaming situation and I think women have got to be smarter and harder about bargaining and not be risk adverse fearful that they be rejected because they may want that paternity leave and flexible workplace in the future. There's cultural changes that have to go on and women have to get tougher and stronger about their rights and be more articulate about our rights, as well.
TP: I think it's curious that Sharman's so in favour of disclosure of pay and conditions now, because my recollection was that WorkChoices made it a criminal offence to talk about what you earnt outside to other people and to other people in your workplace. That's a very big change in Coalition policy if that's what you're announcing today. The other thing I want to mention is the equal remuneration provisions have simply not had nearly enough time for us to test whether they're going to be effective, Sue. I think they're going to be very important because they allow us to compare work of equal value in a way that hasn't actually happened in the past. Most of the WorkChoices changes have only been active since January this year and what we're still seeing the effect of is the massive gap in gender wage s that came about under AWAs. Under AWAs there was a 26% gender pay gap and yes, the effect of that is still obvious in our economy. Unfortunately, it takes a little while to turn around the entrenched inequalities that grew up under WorkChoices legislation and in workplaces where it was a criminal offence to talk to other people about what you were earning.
Thank you. The next question's from Susanna Dunkerley.
Susanna Dunkerley from Australian Associated Press.
Minister you mentioned a report, the House of Rep's Inquiry into pay equity. One of the inquiries
findings was that the lack of access to affordable childcare was one of the contributing factors to this pay gap. Given that the Government has recently released some reports showing that there is no lack of access to childcare, when do you think that we will see this affect the pay gap, and by how much?
And Dr Stone, you did say that there is a childcare crisis. Will the Opposition commit to going through with the childcare centres that the Government won't be?
KR: With re… regard that as two separate sections of questions. Yeah, All right. Okay
[Laughter] Minister?
TP: Gee, they're strict with the rules. It's like the British Prime Ministerial debates up here [laughs].
KR: Not quite that bad yet.
TP: Not quite that strict.
[Laughter]
TP: Access to childcare is one very important aspect of whether women take up work opportunities where they exist. We've recently got information that about 91 per cent of centres have vacancies. But of course, vacancies are one issue, quality is another. We've introduced a National Quality Framework because even if there are vacancies, parents won't leave their children in centres where they're not confident of the level of care that they're getting.
We've - as I said, we'll see about $13 billion spent over the next four years, and we've tried to make childcare not just better quality, but more affordable through the increase in the childcare tax rebate from 30 per cent to 50 per cent and paying that quarterly instead of more than year after the expenses were incurred.
But there are other factors, as well. Flexibility in the workplace is a factor. Having childcare means that you have to be there at six o'clock at night to pick your kids up. There's no ifs and buts about that. That means that your employer has to understand if you're a father or a mother that there are times when you just have to leave. And introducing the right to request and the flexibility provisions in the Fair Work Act, support the caring responsibilities of
parents.
I think th… your fundamental question is when will the greater availability, and I'd add, affordability and quality of childcare flow through to decreases in the gender pay gap? And I think it's very difficult to say the date that we will reach gender wage parity in Australia, because it's not just about childcare.
It's about work flexibility. It's about valuing the work that women and men have done traditionally more fairly. And it's about men taking up more of the domestic responsibilities at home, because the disrupted working patterns that women have been very likely to experience because of their caring responsibilities does make it harder to earn the same as male colleagues who've been on the - you know, on the smooth track at work for their whole careers.
KR: Dr Stone?
SS: Childcare, when I had my three children quite a few years ago - I now have eight grandchildren – I hoped that the childcare crisis I experienced all those years ago wouldn't be the same for my daughters and daughter-in-law with their children, and you know, it's the same.
It's extraordinarily difficult. It's hard to find - especially for babies and small toddlers - good
quality, affordable and accessible, close to you, flexible childcare. And of course it's a very key part in a woman deciding to return to work after her child is born. Sh… can she find that good quality childcare? I was stunned, as I think a lot of Australian families were, when we had Minister Ellis the other day announced, there's no problem. We have - and it was just repeated just now by Tanya - 91 per cent vacancies across childcare centres in Australia. Well, I have weekly begging contacts from, particularly rural and regional childcare centres
because that's where I'm based, but I know it's the same for places like inner Sydney, inner met…
inner capital city areas. Women begging and saying I've been on a waiting list two years. I've got my name down four or five centres. I want to go back to work. I can't because I can't get good, accessible, affordable childcare. My mother doesn't live near me, what am I going to do?
And I think to suggest that this quarterly set of statistics actually equated to genuinely parents
across Australia being able to step into a childcare place was just nonsense. It was a cruel thing to say. And of course, later in the press release, Minister Ellis did mention, oh yes, there are some cases we understand where there are problems, and we'll keep a watching brief. We need more than a watching brief.
The other point, of course, is that we've seen the National Quality Standards for childcare and early childhood education introduced. This was an important step, but along with those new quality standards are significant cost impacts for childcare and early childhood education provision. But there is no government response to date about how those cost impacts are going to be dealt with, and we have Queensland - the state of Queensland – already telling us that the cost impacts for them are such they're looking at about 8000 fewer places in childcare, in particular for babies. So, we do have a childcare crisis continuing and we certainly are concerned at the number of grandmothers who leave their work to go and try and help out. That affects their own economic, financial independence in older age, and it's not fair and it's not right.
So, what will the Coalition do? We will certainly not pretend that the job's right. We'll do more than have a watching brief. We will look very comprehensively at the range of childcare available
across Australia and the type. It's so hard for holiday and after-school hour care seekers. We can't get care for a lot of kids at school. We also know that for a lot of parents they want in home care. We're looking at how that might be achieved in a regulated and proper way. So, let's just not pretend there's not a problem.
KR:
The next question's from Kirsty Needham.
Kirsty Needham, The Sydney Morning Herald. Only around eight per cent of company directors in Australia are women. Should the Government be legislating for gender quotas on company boards, as countries such as France doing?
KR: Are you directing this to…
KN: To Sharman, first perhaps.
KR: Okay.
SS: Kirsty, yes, the numbers of women on boards in Australia is disgraceful, I think, because women on boards can help make policy. And women on boards, and in senior management, we know from independent international and local research, make a difference - a positive difference in companies in terms of their output and in terms of their value to
their shareholders. So, how are we going to make a difference? I strongly believe that we need to make sure that the ASX in its new decisions to have the numbers on boards transparently reported against me… benchmarks that should be extended into the public sector. I'd like to think it was extended too across all those companies with more than 100 employees
who currently are required to report their gender equality measures to the Equal Opportunity and Workplace Act legislation. There's a lot of things we can do in disclosure.
But I think we need to talk out loud too with the business sector itself, and I was very pleased to see a group of men and several women who are calling themselves champions in this area so that they're going to mentor women now. They recently formed a couple of weeks ago, you might've seen reference to this group. They're not going to continue sit by and say the status quo is okay. We've also got to make sure that our young women aspire to senior management and leadership and so they have every opportunity for mentoring, professional development. If they take time out with their families that they're not then delegated to the slow stream and given work that doesn't lead to best career prospects. So, a lot of work we need to do and I think we've
got to look at international best practice. Do we need quotas? I would go first step and say we need to have benchmarks which companies themselves choose, and that these benchmarks should be well understood by shareholders, or owners of businesses; understood by the employees themselves.
Those benchmarks should be reported against, measured. And then if that doesn't achieve
anything, then let's look at what we need to do next.
KR: Minister?
TP: I'm not yet convinced that this is an area that needs legislation but I think it is really important that the Australian Stock Exchange and the Australian Institute of Company Directors, who have both looked at how their own members are doing and been disappointed, and have set in train actions to change the representation of women on boards, they absolutely need to make those measures work because I think if those measures don't work there'll be a very strong expectation from the Australian community that further action is taken.
I think Liz Broderick's 10 Champions of Change is a terrific initiative. The organisations that have been successful in promoting women into executive roles and putting women onto boards have been the ones with CEOs that care about this. They haven't hived it off to the human resources department in an organisation. They've had leadership from the very top and the people that Liz is working with have done that in their own organisations very successfully.
I think it's very important that government does set the tone, and if you look at an organisation like Defence that has traditionally had pretty poor representation of women in senior levels, the fact that 62 per cent of their new board appointments are women I think sends a very good and strong message. And if you look at the work that some of my ministerial colleagues have done, Tony Burke kept getting these shortlists sent up for positions on boards and there would be four names out of four would be men. And he'd say, surely there is a competent woman that you can recommend for the Yabby Advisory Board(*). And the department would say no, sorry minister, no, there's no-one appropriate; much as John Howard said there was no appropriate woman for be Governor General when he appointed the last Governor General.
But they'd say, no, there's no appropriate woman. And he finally asked, how can you - I mean, so
many women are farmers, why aren't you sending up the name of women farmers for these boards. He said - and they said to him, well, previous experience on a government board is a prerequisite for working on a government board.
[Laughter]
So we've been looking at all of the gender issues but also geographical representation on government boards. We don't want everyone who lives in Canberra being eligible for government boards and nobody who lives beyond Queanbeyan being considered. And we're seeing the results of that flow through in our own area.
KR: Thank you. The next question is from Nicola Berkovic.
Nicola Berkovic, The Australiannewspaper: This question is for Dr Stone. Labor has had a better record than the Liberal Party in promoting women up through the ranks into senior positions. Are you proud of the Liberal Party's record on this front, and do you think that it could do more? And perhaps for the minister, how long do you think it might be before we see a female prime minister?
[Laughter]
KR: Well, let's deal with the questions separately so that we get the timings right.
The first one was directed to you.
SS: Thank you. Well, actually, I presume, Nicola, you're talking about women in parliament, are you? Yep. We have a woman deputy as well as Labor, of course. We had the - John Howard appointed the biggest number of women to Cabinet that there had ever been when he was the prime minister. The first women in Cabinet were Liberals.
I think the women in the Liberal Party have not done extraordinarily well but they've done better
than women in Labor.
And I have to say that we don't have affirmative action where you get extra votes in pre-selection for being female, but our numbers in parliament are not substantially different.
So I really think our problem is not just whether which party we belong to, it's the business of why don't we have 50-odd per cent of senators and members of the House of Representatives women?
Why don't we have more diversity across the board in terms of Indigenous, non-Anglo background members as well? I can't - we've had one or two members and senators with a disability but they've been very, very thin on the ground. So there's a whole lot of issues with representation in Australia. And I think it's rather extraordinary too that we were one of the first countries to give vote to women in a universal franchise but one of the countries which took longest to have any women in fact elected to federal parliament.
So we're - in our culture we have embedded a real hesitancy about women stepping forward or the choosing of women, and it's up to all of us women in the room to do something substantially about that. But I'm proud of Liberals' record and we just have to, across the board, look forward to the day when there's half of us there of the female persuasion.
KR: Minister, you have a response?
TP: Well, I agree with Sharman that we should be looking forward to the day when half the parliament is women because the more diverse the parliament, the better the decisions we get.
I think it's a bit rich to say that we've got more or less the same record. I think we're on about 36 per cent representation and you're on about 25 per cent, and that hasn't changed since 1996, except that Tony Abbott dropped women from the Cabinet when he became Leader. In terms of the first woman prime minister, we've had one. We have Julia Gillard every time Kevin
Rudd goes overseas. [Laughter]
And the first time that happened when the – when Julia was Acting Prime Minister, it actually… it
was a little thrill, I think, for any woman who watches politics closely, to have the prime minister
of the day be a woman. I'm certain that it will happen in my lifetime and I wasn't certain 10 years ago that it would happen in my lifetime. I'm certain now that it will. And I hope perhaps in my political lifetime even.
[Laughter]
KR: The Minister has actually dealt with the second question as well. Do you have a response to that?
SS: When might there be a woman prime minister?
KR: Mmm.
SS: I think there's no doubt within the next decade we'll have a woman prime minister.
KR: That's pretty clear-cut. [Laughter] Next question is from Amanda Hart.
Amanda Hart, Ten News:
This question to the minister. The scrapping of 260 childcare places was just one of four broken
promises over the past week or so. The reports that Labor MPs are thinking that the dumping of such policies are causing panic, what's your response to that and can we expect any more dumping of policies, so to speak, before the election? And, to Dr Stone, perhaps - you say the child care industry is still in crisis and many parents are still struggling to find places. You say Labor is doing nothing more than a watching brief, but the measures that you outline sound very similar to Labor's anyway. Why would voters vote for the Coalition as opposed to Labor on that one?
KR: Once again, let's treat them separately. Would you like to answer the first?
TP: Well, I guess you're talking about the decision to delay the pursuit of the carbon pollution reduction scheme. It's a very difficult decision for us to make because we believe that putting a price on carbon is the cheapest, most effective way of reducing carbon pollution. We did believe that and we do believe that. Unfortunately we've taken this policy, detailed legislation to the Senate now twice. We've had it knocked back twice in the Senate. There is no sign - in fact, Tony Abbott is worse on climate change than John Howard was, so there is no hope that we will convince Liberals in the Senate to back this policy. And unfortunately the Greens have decided
they won't support a carbon pollution reduction scheme either. Without the support of either the Liberal Party or the minor parties, we don't have a snowflakes hope in hell of getting this policy through the Senate. Unfortunately that is the reality. We also see that negotiations internationally are slower than we would like. We saw that in Copenhagen.
It doesn't change our belief that this is the best way of implementing a reduction in carbon pollution. It's just a realisation that we can't get this legislation through the Senate and that we're going to need to do a lot more work with, let's hope in the future, a friendlier Senate to get the legislation through. On the child care issue, as I've said, more than 1000 centres have opened in the last four or five years; 91 per cent of centres have some vacancies, a number of centres have been built and they'll provide much needed extra child care. But the whole childcare
landscape changed after the fall-over of ABC. The massive expansion using debt, that meant that
ABC parents were facing no child care for their kids, were facing centres closing almost overnight.
The government needing to step in to save that changed the landscape quite substantially.
SS: Amanda, we were told by the Minister Kate Ellis a few days ago that the quarterly - the first time the quarter statistics on childcare vacancies were published that revealed that there wasn't a problem with numbers of childcare places for parents in Australia. No problem she said, we'll keep a watching brief. Well, I repeat there is a problem for too many parents. It's inhibiting women return to work. It's also making it difficult for women to have full-time work if they want it. They can only get part-time carer hours for example.
For a lot of families the cost of $100 or so a day, even with the rebates, make them think again about whether they can afford for the child to be in care and for the mother to go back to work.
There's a whole range of problems associated right now with the childcare sector. And I have to say that it is cynical and pretty disappointing to use the mildest of expressions to hear that the ABC collapse is being used as the excuse or reason for not building these 200 plus new childcare centres. The ABC centres have been re-established very substantial with a lot of Federal Government lending. Scores of millions of dollars have been put into the new consortia that's to run these new ABC centres. They themselves are no reason for us to pretend that
in particular in rural and regional areas and in inner-metro and some outer-metro areas there's not real problems with childcare. I add in after-school care and holiday care is also a serious problem for a lot of parents.
Some people relate that problem to our obesity epidemic and kids failure to thrive at school
because they're not under adequate quality care after the school hours finish.
So let me say that our coalition government will not simply say, Amanda we'll have watching brief. We won't deny that there's a problem at all. We won't hide behind ABCs collapse. We will
comprehensively look at where in Australia the problems are. We'll look at the relationship between early childhood education and childcare because they are often in the same facility.
We are amazed that the Labor Government talked about universal access to early childhood education but didn't do anything at all about looking at the costs of childcare, the volunteering - I should say early child education, the volunteering associated with it, and then they walked away from that issue too.
If I was a parent out there I would be saying come on in coalition because you are concerned, you have identified the problem and you're going to do something substantial about it.
KR: And for those who may not - in our broadcast audience, you may not be familiar with this area of policy, we're not talking about our esteemed broadcaster but a company called ABC Learning which collapsed last year. [Laughter] Our next question's from Misha Schubert.
Misha Schubert, The Age: Sharman Stone, can I ask you firstly how does the coalition justify proposing subsidies for nannies when what we know of them anecdotally that they are largely used by people on higher than average incomes, and wouldn't that money be better spent helping lower income women? The ones you're saying that you're - who need a lot more assistance, who might need bigger subsidies to fund their childcare arrangements.
And to Tanya Plibersek, understanding the arguments about the collapse of ABC Learning and
the broader situation with some vacancies in some centres around the country, that doesn't help the many women who are in pockets where there is a drastic shortage, particularly for babies and young toddlers. What do you say to those women who cannot find a place and cannot return to the workforce right now?
KR: We'll give you each two minutes for this since time is catching up with us.
SS: For start we haven't said we're going to subsidise nannies in a bold statement like that. What we've said it is extraordinary for the Labor Government to have a philosophical hatred and claims that it's elitist for woman to want in-home care, particularly for younger children. If you're paying $100 a day, which you do at the Parliament House childcare centre, if you've got a couple of small children you can do your sums pretty quickly and see that a lower-cost option for families is, in fact, often in-home care. Talk to you friends Misha and you'll find a very substantial proportion of them are in the black market, in the black economy, paying cash to nannies in their homes to provide this care. We don't think it's right, knowing about the number of nannies working in the community for cash, without the protection of regulation, proper salaries,
superannuation and so on, and in turn the employers without the proper protection of regulated and accredited childcarers. We don't think that that's a good way necessarily to leave the situation. So we're looking very carefully at all the options that parents want for childcare,
and particularly childcare that the government supports for potential subsidy. That's what we're on about. Other countries have au pair systems, have nannies, why are we so - or particularly the Labor Party, so hell-bent in equating nannies to some old nineteenth century elitist notion, it's just out of mode, of out time, and they've got to do better.
KR: Minister.
TP: Look, Bronwyn Bishop argued - when you were last in government Sharman, that nannies should be subsidised, it didn't happen under a Howard Government, I'd be surprised if it happens under a Tony Abbott government should one ever eventuate. You can have in-home care in your home, it's called in-home care, it's provided through family day care and it.
And the issue about nannies is that – we believe sincerely that there is a great deal of support
that families need to provide childcare for their children, but that the people who need the support most, the ones who are struggling the most, are the ones on the lowest incomes. They are not the ones who can afford nannies at home. Misha, what I'd say to people who are looking for vacancies, they need to call the Child Care Hotline and look on the childcare website for where the vacancies are in their area. I'm sure that there are still areas where people will find it difficult to find a childcare place, whether you need to build a 30 place or 60 place childcare centre and whether it can be sustainable in those areas of shortage is a different matter.
Sharman was talking about how there are no vacancies in inner-city areas and my electorate has
probably been one of the hardest places for many years to find childcare because the land costs are so high. It's very difficult to build a childcare centre in an inner-city area.
But I was just thinking as Sharman was talking that there are now - on my way to work there are three posters up, three sort of, signs up on various fences and so on, suggesting that people call a particular number for local childcare. So that's only an anecdotal indication to me, but certainly I never used to see advertising for places in my electorate.
KR: Thank you both very much, we've run out of time for questions but as I said at the beginning we have brief closing statements from both speakers and in the same order as they began, so the first one is from the Minister Tanya Plibersek.
TP: Thanks very much Ken. I think it's terrific that the National Press Club has put this debate on because it's an incredibly important area of government policy.
I think the unfortunate thing that we've been asked to believe today from Sharman Stone is that history began two years ago, and that all of the issues that women face today in Australia are problems that started two years ago. She spoke about the difference in retirement incomes, in superannuation, women retiring with half the super of men, women have been collecting
that super for 30 or 40 years in the workplace. If they are retiring with half the super of men this is a problem that has beset us for many years. Because for many years our workplace policies have been inadequate when it comes to women saving for their retirement.
The gender pay gap is also apparently the responsibility of recent legislation when we know that AWAs are responsible for a 26 per cent gender pay gap for Australian women.
The childcare is another issue that we focussed on today and we're asked to believe that the Liberal Party policy of allowing unrestrained growth of for-profit childcare providers like ABC with no checks and balances on their debt funded expansion, has nothing to do with the state of current childcare in Australia.
We have, I think achieved an enormous amount in just two and a half years in government. The
workplace changes that we have delivered through FairWork legislation will contribute over time to a shrinking of the gender pay gap between men and women.
We will spend twice as much over the next four years on childcare as was spent in the last four years of the Howard Government. We've increased Child Care Tax Rebate to 50 per cent from 30 per cent. We're paying it more regularly. We're giving parents the information they need to find childcare.
We're giving them support to afford it and we're helping improve the quality so they can be
confident of where they're leaving the children. I know that there is still a great way to go before
men and women in Australia can claim to be truly equal, but we are on the right path to reaching that equality.
KR: Thank you. Closing statement from Dr Stone.
SS: Thank you. And I'm also so pleased that an issue of this importance is on the national agenda. It too often is put aside as something that's not relevant to all, but it is. Let me say that of course we have a legacy of – in Australia, gender inequality. Our Indigenous Australians, particularly our Indigenous women and children have not recently come to their circumstances which have some of the most abused and impoverished of any Indigenous community across the developed world.
I don't suggest for a second that Labour could have suddenly brought to an end old age poverty for women. But what I am disappointed about is that they haven't done any work to advance the cause of women across the board. The gender pay gap has got worse in the last two
years, and we were given those statistics. The business of numbers of women in management and on boards has not improved or grown. We had so much work done early in the piece with
lots of summits, reports, enquiries, they sit on shelves. Twelves months later we don't see the
particular national plan for domestic violence out in front of us to look at. It was to be with us 12 months ago. Eighteen months ago we were told that there'd be a women's health policy.
Now, we of course have seen the appalling response to midwives in Australia, is that the way women's health policy might go with women in professionsrelated to health studies being given an even harder time? If that's the case, then perhaps it's good that we haven't seen that women's health policy, it was promised 18 months ago. We were told that this is the party of social inclusion, of workers rights and so on, but on all the indicators that should have moved towards a betterment and better outcomes for women, we have seen either a standing still or a going backwards. And as a woman in Australia I think we're running out of time.
We've just started this next century and I feel too often that we have not prepared the way for our children and grand children the way we should have, particularly as this government is now about to finish its term. It's simply run out of time.
KR: Thank you both.
It's been a very civil and informative hour. I thank you both for that, and give you these membership.
(*) - Indicates unknown spelling or phonetic spelling.
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