Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I make the point that what we are seeing here is a political attack from the government, where the burden of the coronavirus crisis has fallen on women and young people. They have been the two groups that have been most significantly impacted by coronavirus. We know that women are losing work more. We know that young people are losing jobs more. We know the pathway back for recovery is going to be hard for them.

But, also, the government have deliberately chosen in their response package, their supposed industry support package, to hit hard the sectors where women work. They have pulled JobKeeper for the childcare sector—an area where women predominantly work. They have also chosen not to extend JobKeeper to areas like education in universities, where we know women work in large numbers. We also know that the government—with Labor's support, it might be said—is looking at cutting JobKeeper for people who were previously working low hours by working less than 20 hours a week—many of whom are underemployed and in insecure work. Women are twice as likely as men to be impacted by that cut that's looming and that may well sail through with the opposition's support. So the government has deliberately chosen to disadvantage women in the support packages and in the recovery packages. It stands to reason. I understand the government might object to that, because they find it uncomfortable for it to be pointed out to them in parliament that they are deliberately attacking women in their support and recovery packages, but that is what they are doing.

What is the answer? The answer, in this sector, in supporting women to not only make some real choices about whether they want to go to work, and how they want to incorporate work and care and family responsibilities, but also assist us to recover from the massive recession induced by coronavirus, is free child care. We need free child care in this country, and the government needs to start thinking about child care the way we think about primary schools. I acknowledge the significant work that was done by the previous Labor government to lift the educational standards and requirements on workers in child care; that was terrific work to start getting that to more closely align with what we might expect of educators in primary schools. But what we've now got to start doing is making the funding match that. We've got to have a bit of a mind shift. Not only will that help get women back into work, if they want to, and, most importantly, give women some real power to start making decisions about how they incorporate family, work and other responsibilities, but it will start providing employment that is COVID compliant, hopefully, as we come out of this recession. In other words, it is a great stimulus package and a great economic recovery package. We shouldn't just be focusing on granite benchtop grants, which no-one takes up, with this industry response that discriminates against those industries in which women work; we should be looking at expanding the education sector, the care sector and the health sector as ways of recovering from the coronavirus crisis. An investment in free child care is not only good for women and families; it will be good for our recovery and jobs as well. So I would urge the government, while it is thinking about these issues, to ensure that its recovery package does not discriminate against those industries where women work. We need to see the government step out of the 1950s and instead acknowledge that we have to support women's rights and give women power to make real decisions about returning to work and about how they incorporate family responsibilities as well.

I come back to where I started and say thank you to all the childcare workers and educators, who work under such difficult circumstances. I give a small hat-tip to the government for being dragged into giving some form of JobKeeper, but a huge recognition that the government has cut an industry that needs it. The fact that childcare workers were the first to be cut speaks volumes about this government's approach to gender and how it sees women. But we've got the opportunity to fix it and not only assist with the inequality crisis we have in this country but fix the economic crisis as well. The best way to do that is to invest to ensure that we have free child care.

See this speech in context