Michael Johnson (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1)

recognises that:

(a)

a report from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) State of World Population 2005 - the Promise of Equality: Gender Equity, Reproductive Health and Millennium Development Goals was released on 12 October and that the theme of the report is that gender equality reduces poverty, and saves and improves lives;

(b)

a major platform for achieving sustainable development is gender equality and the empowerment of women; and

(c)

gender inequities in all countries limit the economic and social participation of women in the building of healthy and dynamic nations;

(2)

encourages:

(a)

the UNFPA to continue to work towards achieving gender equality; and

(b)

the Government to continue to support the Millennium Development Goals because they have led to significant improvements in women’s health, safety and economic participation and increased their share in the benefits of strengthened economic growth; and

(3)

recognises that these improvements have been achieved through culturally and religiously appropriate activities and has resulted in a reduction in the incidence of fistula, maternal and child mortality.

The United Nations Population Fund released its State of World Population report for 2005 in October. The title of the report, Gender Equality, Reproductive Health and the Millennium Development Goals, really sums up what this report advocates and the way forward. The theme of the report is that gender equality reduces poverty, saves lives and improves lives. I put this on the Notice Paper last year following the release of the report and I am delighted to be able to speak on it in this new year.

As Thoraya Obaid, Executive Director of the UNFPA, said at the launch of this report, our world cannot make poverty history until we make gender discrimination history—they are very much linked together. This significant report looks at the progress the world has made towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals and it specifically links the achievement of these goals with gender equality.

As a government, as a parliament and as a people we must all work together. We must encourage the work of the UNFPA towards achieving gender equality. We must also continue to support the achievement of the MDGs. While not all countries have done well on the indicators, many have made genuine efforts and they should be applauded for doing so. I have an interest in this topic as Chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Population and Development and as someone who grew up in a developing country—namely, our closest neighbour: Papua New Guinea.

The eight goals established by the MDG in 2000 by the United Nations and by 191 supporting member nations were to: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality; reduce child mortality; improve maternal health; combat HIV-AIDS and other major diseases; ensure environmental sustainability; and develop a global partnership for development by the year 2015. These are high goals; they are worthy goals. As the parliament of a developed country we must play our part to ensure, as much as humanly possible, that those goals are achieved.

Gender equality and reproductive health are central and vital among these goals. Without gender equality and the right to reproductive health, the goals of universal primary education, improving maternal health, reducing childhood mortality, combating HIV-AIDS and eradicating poverty are truly impossible. As Chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Population and Development, these goals continue to be important to me.

The central theme of this report is that gender equality saves lives and has the potential to transform lives. In our part of the world perhaps we do take gender equality for granted. While there is still gender discrimination in the Australian community today, we recognise that we have come a long way. We have minimised this as much as possible both as a culture and through the laws of this parliament. There are strong protections in place through our laws, and where once perhaps our society was not receptive to gender equality, I would like to think very much that we have moved a very long way on this point.

Some Australians might question how gender equality can save lives. Maybe we cannot see it very clearly here in Australia today, as our standard of living is amongst the best in the world. General social protections and the rule of law mean that gender equality is not a life or death question here but, in the developing world, a person’s gender has an enormous bearing on the outcomes they can expect. Opportunities for schooling; access to medicines; opportunities to make the right choices in the very first place about things like marriage and reproduction, the likelihood of violence or assault in their lives or contracting disease, or even the prospects of living in poverty or not; and the protection of law—all these aspects can be subject to a person’s gender in the developing world, more so than they are in this country. One’s gender is literally a matter of life and death in much of the developing world. There is no question that poverty, gender equality, human rights, violence against women and reproductive health are inextricably linked.

In the parliament today I want to reiterate my strong personal support for the achievement of this goal and to also commend AusAID for the wonderful work that it does in our part of the world. We know that the World Bank plays a very significant role at a global level. But it must not go unnoticed that our very own AusAID, as part of an agency of the Australian government, equally plays a very strong role in the achievement of these goals. (Time expired)

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Margaret May (McPherson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion.

Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I support this motion. Jeffrey Sachs is one of the world’s foremost experts on development issues. His book The End of Poverty is a powerful case for the need for the world to tackle the scourge of poverty. It is worth quoting Mr Sachs at some length. In that book, he wrote:

Traditional societies tend to be strongly differentiated in gender roles, with women almost always getting the short end of the deal.

In settings where the total fertility rate—the average number of children per woman—is typically at least five, and often much higher, women spend most of their adult lives rearing children. Traditionally home bound, women live lives of back breaking labour on the farm, with endless walking to collect fuel wood and water.

Modern economic growth changes this dynamic. Women can avail themselves of urban based employment, leading them ultimately toward social and political empowerment.

One of the stories from The End of Poverty which has stayed with me since I read it last year is the story of the women of Bangladesh. Professor Sachs recounts the story of very long lines of women walking each day to work in the sweatshops of Dhaka, sewing garments for export to the developed world. He points out that, as poor as these working conditions are, they are an improvement on where they have come from. Again, it is useful to quote Professor Sachs. He writes:

These sweatshop jobs are the target of public protests in developed countries. Those protests have helped improve the safety and quality of working conditions. The rich world protesters should support the increased number of jobs albeit under safer working conditions by protesting trade protectionism in their own countries that keeps out garment exports from countries such as Bangladesh.

Of course, each of the Millennium Development Goals is designed to improve the lives of men and women throughout the world. Two Millennium Development Goals apply to women specifically: to eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of public education no later than 2015; and to reduce the maternal mortality rate by three-quarters between 1990 and 2015. Of course, the most high-profile Millennium Development Goals are to halve between 1990 and 2015 the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day and to halve between 1990 and 2015 the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.

The principles enunciated in the motion moved by the honourable member for Ryan are laudatory. I would, however, sound two notes of caution. The first one is that, I believe, the motion is perhaps overoptimistic. To read this motion you would perhaps think that the Millennium Development Goals have already been achieved or are well on the way to being achieved. They are not. Progress has been made, but the jury is still very much out on whether the MDGs will be achieved by 2015. It is not too late for them to be achieved but, in my view, if we continue with the current rate of progress they will not be achieved by 2015. This leads to my second criticism of the motion. The MDGs will not be achieved unless both developed and undeveloped countries lift their game. The goals will not be achieved unless developed countries increase their aid budgets.

In 1996 Australia’s rate of foreign aid was 0.32 per cent of gross national income. This was not high enough. But in 2006 it is estimated that our foreign aid will come out at 0.28 per cent of gross national income. We are now rated 13th out of 22 nations in the OECD. It is worth noting that in 1966 Australia’s foreign aid was 0.56 per cent of national income. Over the last 40 years, we have come close to halving our foreign aid as a percentage of our national income.

To achieve the Millennium Development Goals, every developed nation will need to increase its rate of foreign aid. Let me return to Professor Sachs, who is the head of the United Nations Millennium Project. Recently he has had something to say about Australia’s foreign aid level. On 23 September 2005, the Australian Financial Review reported his remarks as follows:

Along with the United States, Professor Sachs suggested ‘the Howard government is not very keen on [the millennium goals] it seems ... I find it regrettable as both governments signed on to them quite clearly.’

He went on to say that Australia is one of the few nations in the world not to have outlined a specific plan about Australia’s contribution to achieving the Millennium Development Goals and increasing our foreign aid budgets. (Time expired)

Margaret May (McPherson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The United Nations Population Fund State of World Population 2005 report is an important reference tool for all developed countries. It is a tool that lays before us the huge challenges we have in bringing about gender equality in the world—the importance of education programs directed at reproductive health in developing countries and the enormous challenge the world has in meeting the benchmarks of the Millennium Development Goals.

I commend the member for Ryan for bringing forward this important motion. The motion highlights once again the plight of the poor, and in particular the plight of women. The report points out that the considerable and largely preventible burden of poor reproductive health falls most heavily on the poorest women and their families. It goes on to say:

The ability to make free and informed choices in reproductive life, including those involving childbearing, underpins self-determination in all other areas of women’s lives. Because these issues affect women so profoundly, reproductive health cannot—

and should not—

be separated from the wider goal of gender equality.

Gender equality is a human right—a right we have fought for and on occasions still fight for in our own country. But many women around the world have no rights. Investing in gender equality and the education of women and girls pays enormous dividends in social and economic progress. There is strong evidence that gender equality has a lasting impact on future generations. Gender discrimination squanders human capital by making inefficient use of individual abilities, thus limiting the contribution of women to build strong and vibrant communities.

Education is the key to poverty reduction. It is a powerful tool that should be used to overcome discrimination and gender inequality. Young women and girls should have the right, and be encouraged, to undertake some form of schooling. The report indicates that the gender gap in education has left nearly twice as many women as men illiterate.

Education increases the ability of women to earn a living—to make an economic contribution to their communities, to assist with the support of their families. Knowledge is power. Armed with knowledge, women can take control of their own destinies. Educated girls are more likely to delay marriage and child-bearing. They tend to have fewer children. There are multiple benefits from the education of young women—better health outcomes and skills that improve their economic prospects, which in turn reduce poverty. They are very strong reasons to educate young women.

Without education, the human rights of young women and girls around the globe will continue to be abused. Young girls—and I mean very young girls, girls who should be enjoying their childhood—are married against their will. In some cultures, violence against women and girls is tolerated, rapists are exonerated and women are denied equal rights within the family or within the community.

One of the most telling statistics is the lack of women in decision-making roles around the world. Women are highly underrepresented in national parliaments where the decisions are made. In other words, women in developing countries in particular do not have a voice at the table. In fact, only 14 countries around the world have reached the United Nations benchmark of having 30 per cent of parliamentarians being women. We need to support bodies like UNFPA in their work to empower women. We need to be active around the globe in giving women the opportunities to undertake education programs and encouraging them to take leadership roles in their communities. Investing in women, in their education, will pay enormous dividends in social and economic growth and poverty reduction. Kofi Annan has said:

The continuing marginalization of women in decision-making has been both a cause and effect of slow progress in many areas of development.

The Millennium Development Goals provide a road map for the future and I would encourage the Howard government to continue its support of these goals. Investing in and empowering young people through the benchmarks set by the MDGs, particularly in the areas of gender equality and reproductive health, will free impoverished families and countries from poverty. Most reproductive health problems are preventible through proven interventions, achieved through culturally and religiously appropriate activities, which have resulted in a reduction in the incidence of fistula and in maternal and child mortality.

In closing today, I encourage all members of this House to take note of the report and spend some time reading it. It is important to know and understand what is happening in the world around us. We are a very rich country; we can and should support our aid programs and continue to do so in the future. The Millennium Project Task Force on Education and Gender Equality has stated:

Development policies and actions that fail to take gender inequality into account or that fail to enable women to be actors in those policies and actions will have limited effectiveness and serious costs to societies.

(Time expired)

Bob McMullan (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I support the motion moved by the member for Ryan and congratulate him on moving it. I also thank the member for Reid for changing the speaking order so that I could participate in this debate.

It is well established that gender equality is very important in development assistance debates for two reasons: one, which is clearly obvious, is that gender equality is a fundamental right; another is that there is clear evidence that gender equality is essential for successful economic and social development. Within the Millennium Development Goals, there are specific gender equality goals, which in themselves are very important, but underlying them is the reality that fundamental to the achievement of almost all the Millennium Development Goals is the issue of gender equality; it is fundamental to the achievement of all the others.

I want to refer particularly—and it picks up part of what is properly reflected in the member for Ryan’s motion—to the importance of population and reproductive health issues to gender equality. Without dealing with the issues of assistance for enhancing the population and reproductive health of women in developing countries, there is no prospect of gender equality being achieved, whatever the laws in countries might be. Even in countries that do not discriminate explicitly, if they cannot provide effective assistance in population and reproductive health issues there will be gross and continuing inequalities, which will undermine economic development efforts.

I am very concerned that the latest edition of Population Action InternationalI think it is the latest edition; it is certainly the latest edition that I can find—rates Australia’s performance in this area at only grade C. Not surprisingly, there are classifications A, B and C and, in one case, A minus. There is also a grade D, so I suppose we should be grateful that we have not been included in that category. But I am concerned, having checked on the website, that as of today that categorisation still remains. I think Australia needs to lift its effort in this area.

I want to qualify that. One aspect of this area of policy in which Australia is lifting its effort, and where I greatly welcome it, is in dealing with the issue of HIV-AIDS. In my view, Australia was a little slow in recognising the importance of HIV-AIDS as both a development issue and an equity issue and its importance to Australia because of its growing prevalence in the region. In recent years Australia has lifted its contribution to the struggle against HIV-AIDS, particularly in our area—and I welcome that—but, in the broader issues of women’s population and reproductive health, Australia lags well behind. On the last assessment, we contributed less in dollar terms—not proportionally—than New Zealand.

It is unequivocal that there are enormous issues facing women in developing countries around the world: 99 per cent of pregnancy related deaths still take place in developing countries; more than 200 million women still have an unmet need for effective contraceptive methods and the need continues to grow; and the gap between demand and donor support for contraceptives, condoms for HIV-AIDS prevention and other reproductive health supplies is growing. In just those three indicators of the north-south gap, we see the crying human need for enhanced effort in this area and I think Australia needs to lift its performance. If we are genuine in our commitment to the elimination of poverty and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, we need to lift our efforts and broaden the focus of our overseas aid as it relates to gender equity and reproductive health. Once again, I congratulate the member for Ryan on his initiative in bringing this matter forward and I am pleased to join the debate and to support the motion that he has moved.

Judi Moylan (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Ryan, who chairs the Parliamentary Group on Population and Development, for bringing this motion to the House and for providing me with an opportunity to speak on the matters contained therein. The UN State of World Population 2005: The Promise of Equality: Gender Equity, Reproductive Health and the Millennium Development Goals again reminds the world that there is a long way to go before we can put to rest gender apartheid. The report highlights that, worldwide, almost double the number of women remain illiterate compared to men; that there is a direct correlation between the education of girls and women and the mortality rate of children under five years of age; and that there is abundant evidence that nations who do not value and include women in decision making and economic activity suffer socially and economically. There is no doubt that gender equality can directly improve the economic prospects of women and their families and can contribute to the overall economic prosperity of their country. Women must be given a chance.

I was pleased to see a snippet of the program on SBS last night that highlighted the very positive work that has been taking place in Pakistan and the improvement in women’s reproductive health, child mortality rates and economic wellbeing. Moves to empower women through access to information about reproductive health and microcredit facilities to assist them to contribute to their communities and their families show extremely positive results. The training of local women to attend to the health and economic needs of their communities in Pakistan is paying handsome dividends. Stepping up these programs will be the key to meeting the Millennium Development Goals, which aim to halve extreme poverty by 2015. It is a bold and ambitious goal, yet there are excellent examples that demonstrate the benefit of the commitment of many individuals and, indeed, organisations. It is a great demonstration that miracles can happen if enough people are committed to the cause.

I recently heard on the radio about another group that was started by retired businesspeople committed to meeting the millennium goals by providing microcredit facilities to women in underdeveloped countries. There seem to be a number of these. I remember the first contact I had—I think it was in relation to Bangladesh—when I attended the UN conference for women in Beijing in 1995. This, along with greater access to information regarding reproductive health, shows great potential. At the core of improving the quality of life for women and their families is the willingness of governments to include women in the decision-making processes. The difficulties faced by women in developing countries in having a real voice in government policy making are still acute. These difficulties were heard by our IPU delegation to Geneva last October, where discussion was had on the progress in meeting the CEDAW goals developed during the United Nations conference for women in Beijing in 1995. Hearing women speak at this conference, it is clear that they still struggle for a voice in public life.

I note that only 14 countries around the world have reached the United Nations benchmark of 30 per cent of parliamentarians being women. The sad fact is that on the African continent, although there are many more women elected to parliament, the difficulties in them having their voices heard and being more than a token presence are immense—this was highlighted, as I said, by this conference and by the voices of women from that continent. To squander the wealth of experience and wisdom of women in politics and administration denies nations the use of the best talent and the broadest representation at the highest level. We all need to recommit to eliminating gender discrimination in all its forms and to make violence towards women a thing of the past. I applaud the work of AusAID to improve gender equality through health and education programs and the government for funding the work. I understand that Australia will have invested more than $750 million in the Asia-Pacific region alone over 2005-06. I wholeheartedly support this motion and acknowledge the work of the former parliamentary secretary, the member for Dunkley—who is at the table—for his direct involvement in this work. (Time expired)

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

Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to be making a contribution to this debate on the motion moved by the member for Ryan which recognises the importance of the UN Population Fund’s report titled State of the world population 2005: the promise of equality, gender equity, reproductive health and millennium development goals that was released last October. This motion is well worth debating, but from the outset we should avoid getting too sentimental about solving global poverty with a wristband or expecting the ills of Africa—be it HIV-AIDS or hunger—to simply be solved through increasing the pressure of the global aid water fountain. It is pleasing to see the Prime Minister commit to a doubling of Australia’s foreign aid by 2010. This announcement came with some important qualifiers—firstly, that recipients demonstrate a commitment to improved governance and, secondly, that they do more to weed out corruption.

Australia is a proud and realistic contributor to the fight against global poverty. We have doubled our support for the UN Population Fund to $4 million, and we are investing $600 million in the decade to 2010 to fight HIV-AIDS. We should all have as a goal, as this motion does, gender equality and the work of the Millennium Development Goals. The Australian government has consistently advocated this. At the Millennium Summit in 2000, Australia unanimously adopted the Millennium Declaration, which includes eight goals that address the challenges faced by developing countries up to 2015. We do as a nation have a proud record of helping those in need, both in the region around us and more widely throughout the global village, and I am sure this will continue well into the future.

An important aspect of this motion is the need to confront gender inequity. The UN, when launching this report, used the term ‘gender apartheid’. I personally think this is a gross misuse of the language and of the reality of the situation. Of particular interest is the report’s focus on what it calls ‘sustainable development though gender equality’. We can look at our own political situation here in the Australian parliament, and the significant steps forward in political representation taken by women in this place. We have come a long way. Just over 10 years ago, in the Australian parliament, women made up 9.5 per cent of the numbers in both houses. Now that figure is about 25 per cent. On my side of politics I am proud to say that this has occurred without the imposition of offensive and absurd quotas. To use some Australian rules football parlance, it is the Labor Party who looks to give women an easy free kick, whereas it is the Liberal Party who rewards a ‘hard ball get’.

If we were to get serious about gender equality, or the ‘gender apartheid’ that the United Nations mischievously speaks of, we would get serious about some of the harder issues of entrenched inequality that run against women in some parts of the world today. For instance, we would not have women being stoned to death in Nigeria for committing adultery. We would not have Northern Territory judges defending Aboriginal elders who admit to having sex with a 15-year-old girl who had been supposedly promised to him at birth. This is child abuse, not customary law. We would not have union leaders claiming, ‘It’s a sad day when Labor selects a bit of petticoat over a union boss’—an experience that Joan Kirner famously recounts.

But back to the essence of this motion being debated. We need to confront the unfashionable reality that Africa and the Third World’s ills will not be solved by simply talking about Africa’s debt and not its politics. Whilst falsehoods often hurt, the truth usually hurts more. This is particularly so in the debate on this very important motion. So the fight is not just in platitudes about empowerment and sustainable development; it is about righting the entrenched wrongs that exist in today’s societies, as uncomfortable and unpalatable as some of these are.

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.