Laurie Ferguson (Reid, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Consumer Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I certainly join the congratulations for the member for Ryan in initiating this motion. He has a track record in work, not just in rhetoric, and has taken a leadership role in these matters. However, as with the member for Prospect, I cannot be as optimistic about the future. Recently we have seen in Kenya the resignation of three ministers over corruption following an investigation into the theft of $1 billion in an IT scam on the one hand and the sad deterioration of Australia’s rate of foreign aid on the other. That combination suggests there are tremendous challenges.

People have spoken about Oceania. It is worth noting that, whilst we have certainly devoted foreign aid in that area, the problem is immense. Timor Leste at eight children per woman has the highest total fertility rate in the world, and three other nations in this region have total fertility rates of over four children per woman—Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. It is also indicated that, in our region, rates of teenage pregnancy are high. Factors which contribute to this are low levels of basic education, limited access to health clinics and family-planning services, contraceptive supplies often being restricted to married women, and young people being concerned about discrimination and privacy aspects.

On the broader front, we understand that, if you improve women’s education levels, it does offer to the economies of the world greater potential in the workforce, more safety for women during pregnancy and for their children, and improvement in people’s lifestyles. The challenges are immense. I will outline a few statistics from a feature article in the Guardian Weekly of 16 September to 22 September 2005 that relates to this issue. It noted:

According to Unesco, women comprise almost two-thirds of the world’s 800 million illiterate people.

Out of the 550 million working poor in the world, an estimated 330 million (60%) are women.

Only 71 girls to every 100 boys are enrolled in primary education and 62 at secondary level in Ethiopia.

Women in southern Asia, western Asia and north Africa hold about 20% of paying jobs in sectors outside of agriculture.

So the pressures are tremendous. It is worth noting with our aim to succeed with the Millennium Development Goals that Oceania is one of those areas where there has been a failure to meet the goal of more access to primary education for females. The document that has been spoken about today, State of world population 2005, is trenchant in its points. It says:

In 2003, donor governments spent $69 billion on development aid. That same year, global military spending totaled approximately one trillion dollars. Given this disparity, it is clear that the cost of meeting the MDGs is more a matter of political will and commitment than scarce resources. Considering what it will accomplish, the cost—$135 billion in 2006 and rising to $195 billion by 2015—is modest and feasible.

Indeed it is. Those outcomes are very clearly important to the world.

The demands are also to be accompanied by the right to freely and responsibly determine the number, timing and spacing of one’s children and to have the means to do so and the right to the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health. The clear indication unilaterally in the world is that, the more education women receive, the more control they have in regard to those issues of timing and spacing of children. It has been estimated in that same document that every year of a mother’s education corresponds to five to 10 per cent lower mortality rates in children under the age of five. Indeed, there is a clear correlation, as we are well aware, between lack of women’s education and economic deprivation in regard to child death rates.

The situation noted by the Australian Reproductive Health Alliance is that from the Cairo conference of 1994 onwards there has indeed been a greater international emphasis on reproductive rights. Milestones have been accomplished in population policy, rather than focusing on the technicalities of demographic targets and family planning to reduce fertility rates. I commend the motion. It is obviously crucial that women have more empowerment through education. In Africa, tribal and ethnic decisions, supposedly hidden by religious—(Time expired)

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