Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight and over the next few days the House will be debating the repeal of ministerial responsibility for approval of RU486. I do not want to speak on the bill itself in this adjournment debate, but I do want to put on record the content of a number of discussions I have had with people from my electorate, not specifically about RU486 or even the rights and wrongs of having an abortion but on the extraordinary pressure on families that make it harder and harder each year for women to decide to have a child.

I spent much of this week phoning people in my electorate, both for and against the bill, who have contacted my office. Because I have publicly stated that I am likely to vote for the bill, I thought it was appropriate to spend most of my time talking to those who oppose my position and telling them personally of my intention to vote for the bill. My concern mostly was with those whose opposition to the bill stems from their opposition to abortion and from a profound belief that life begins at conception. For them, the Senate decision, the possible decision of this House on Thursday and my likely support for the bill are profoundly morally offensive. While likely to vote for the bill, I deeply regret the hurt and grief that will result among a group of very good people I represent in this place whose strong opposition stems from good human qualities and in many cases a profound religious faith. This faith is not limited to one religion. This is not just a Catholic issue but extends also through the Sikh, Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim communities.

While there is an abyss between us on the rights and wrongs of abortion itself, there is considerable common ground about the seriousness of the decision that a woman makes to abort a child and the need for us as a community to consider the growing pressure on women and the circumstances that they find themselves in that make it so difficult for them to proceed with a pregnancy and to choose instead the option of abortion. Even if we do not agree on making abortion illegal, we do agree that we would like to see a reduction in the number of abortions by finding ways to make child raising a real option for a greater number of women, and men for that matter.

My phone conversations this week quickly moved from the specifics of the bill itself to the character of a society that does not value the role of the mother sufficiently and a working world that does not value the role of the father or the mother—a society that year by year makes it harder for families to balance their roles as parents and workers and to commit to a second or third child, or even a first child.

In my first year in this place I have seen bill after bill that increases pressure on parents and I have seen failure to act on issues that create sometimes insurmountable barriers to families trying to balance their lives. Australians are working longer hours, the longest in the OECD. Around 35 per cent of Sydney fathers spend more time commuting than they spend with their children. In June last year the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission revealed that the hours of paid and unpaid work parents do each day causes an alarming level of exhaustion, with the majority of parents reporting feeling ‘always’ or ‘nearly always’ stressed. Child-care costs have risen five times faster than the consumer price index in the last financial year. Parents are reporting incredibly long child-care waiting lists, particularly for long day-care for children from zero to two. Almost 98,000 mothers who want to work are unable to start within four weeks because child care and family factors prevent them from doing so. Another 160,500 women who want to work or work more hours are not looking for work due to child-care and family factors. A lack of jobs with suitable conditions was the reason another 80,000 have difficulty obtaining work or more hours, leaving the ABS to note the obvious, that this ‘may reflect the need for more flexible working arrangements’.

The Howard government has presided over massive casualisation of the workforce, with one in three women working as casuals with no access to paid sick leave, annual holidays, public holidays or family leave. The new IR laws will drive more women into irregular low-paid employment. Yet, across Australia, there are only eight child-care centres open Saturday and Sunday and only two that are open 24 hours. Regular part-time work with family-friendly hours is hard to get. Around 60 per cent of women working full time would cut back to part time if part-time work were available.

Women and their partners consider these and many more matters when they make the decisions for their families—the proof of the pudding is in the eating. In the report It’s not for lack of wanting kids... from the Australian Institute of Family Studies, the figures are stark. The vast majority of people wanted more children than they expected to have and expected to have more than they actually had. There is a stark difference between the ideal, the expectation and reality. The decisions men and women make on whether to become parents for the first time or one more time is increasingly more about the harsh realities of modern family life than their dreams of family. The sooner we start getting serious about family the better.