Danna Vale (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the representative whip from the Labor Party for their indulgence in letting me speak on this. I was not listed to speak. I have not read the report, but, from listening to the discussions and the erudite and intelligent response by the members for Hasluck, Pearce and Throsby, I was stirred to make a contribution on this. The historic low pay of women goes back to the early days of Australia. We could probably look at all of the industrialised world and see that women in the very early days were used as factory fodder.

It is interesting to note that eight of the 11 people in this room—and I know that we are to be joined by two male colleagues—are women. So we have the workforce participation victory. We are here participating in the workforce. But equal pay seems to be a huge stumbling block. I look forward to reading this report and particularly the recommendations. I note the goodwill and cooperation with which members of both sides of the House have worked towards this report and the enthusiasm with which it has been received by both sides.

I would like to reflect on the lament by the member for Pearce that, even after all this time, women do not receive pay equal to that of men. There is a disparity in pay of 17 per cent to 32 per cent—that is absolutely huge. To think we are here in 2009—it is really disgraceful. No matter how much we talk about equality, there is no equality unless we have economic equality. Everything else is all pie in the sky; it is all pretend. It seems to me that the work that women have done is seriously undervalued because a lot of people do not realise the exact contribution women make. We have spoken about the disparity within the legal profession, and I can understand that. Female lawyers are paid 32 per cent less than male lawyers. But how do we explain the non-paid contribution to our society and our community for which women never get any recognition—the care of the disabled, the care of the aged and the job of being a housewife and contributing to your own family unit, which we all accept is the foundation of nationhood?

Let’s go back a little bit further. I want to talk about the enculturation of society, because women do that. With respect to our male colleagues here today, men do not contribute to enculturation; women do. I want to give you an example. Once upon a time, just as many men from a certain country came to Australia as men from northern Europe. As we all know, from the time when the British decided that Botany Bay would make a nice penal colony, men from northern Europe settled in Australia. At the time of the gold rush, men from another culture came here. But there is no evidence of their culture because those men did not bring their women with them.

I am sure you know who those men were. Those men were the Chinese. We see evidence of their occupation here in Australia in the great gold rush towns of Beechworth, Ballarat, Bendigo, Bathurst and Hill End. But they did not actually leave any evidence of their culture from that time, because they did not bring their women with them. Many Chinese went back with their gold, many died here, and many who remained here married Irish girls who came out in the famine ships. Their children might have looked a little bit Chinese but they did not speak Chinese and they did not eat with chopsticks, because they took on the culture of their mother; they spoke either Gaelic or English and they ate potatoes and Irish stew. Sometimes we forget the contribution that women make to nationhood. It is not measured, because we all take it for granted.

We can look even further back in our history to when the Normans invaded England. The Normans were a very interesting race. The fathers, the males, were called Normans but they were actually Vikings—they were Norsemen, and that is where the name ‘Norman’ came from. They settled in that part of northern France. But they married French women, and their children spoke French. When the Norman conquerors, under William the Conqueror, invaded England, for the next several hundred years, especially up to the Plantagenet reign, the main elite language, the language of court, was French. We even get the word ‘parliament’, where we are here today, from ‘parlay’. It is a French word. So I think we underestimate the importance of mothers and the mother tongue.

But there is another period in our history for which women have never been recognised, which concerns me greatly. Not only do women enculture their societies but they provide the foundation of nationhood. And that is exactly what happened here in Australia, especially after the First World War. Do you know, we lost 65,000 men. We really did lose the flower of a generation in that war. We all understand the legend of ANZAC, the way that particular cohort forged the values of our nation. But back home, without those 65,000 men, without the fathers, the brothers and the new husbands, it was the women who were left with the children, without any government support—actually, with no support at all. They buckled down and rolled their sleeves up, just like women have after all wars, and created the foundation of this nation. There is a book to be written, Member for Hasluck, because it was the women after the First World War, after so many of our young men had died, who forged this nation into the great nation that it is.

Then, of course, they were involved in the world’s worst depression. However in the world did those women cope? When I say that, I remember my grandmother, Nellie Beazley, from 106 Rodgers Street, Carrington. She was a war widow and my mother was a war orphan after the First World War. I often wonder: how did nanna cope? There was no government support in those days. There was maybe two-and-six that came through from the government because she was a war widow. But how did the women of that generation cope? And then, after the Depression, these were the women who sent their sons off to another war. My goodness, what stout-hearted women they must have been.

I look at this history and think of the value, the contribution, that these women have made to the nation that we are today—the finest democracy in the whole world. The very least we can do is pay them equal pay. And the very least we can do is recognise that fine, gold-clad contribution they have made. If we do not, if our generation of women do not look back and do that and we do not honour them by paying women today what they are worth, where will this country be in the future? Democracy is about equality. It is about equity. It is about fairness. This report is beautifully named—Making it fair. That is what we should be doing. I look forward to reading the report. Thank you, Member for Hasluck. Thank you for chairing the committee. I really do look forward to those recommendations.

I was a little bit concerned to hear that governments are not leading by example either. The federal government is, however, leading by example. I think we women here, who have the same job as our male colleagues, are all being paid on the same basis as the men. But if there are governments or local councils that are not paying the right amount of money, I say a pox on all of them, because they have a duty to lead by example. We cannot tell private enterprise what it is supposed to do unless the government leads the way. So I do look forward to the recommendations, Member for Hasluck, and I do thank you and your committee for your hard work.

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