Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am proud to be part of a federal Labor government that has introduced parental leave, increased the child care rebate and saved working families from the nightmare of Work Choices. These are among the policies of a government that shows understanding and respect for women—for their rights, needs and status. Achieving real equal pay in our workplace is the goal the Labor Party shares with many women around the country, in stark contrast to the Liberal Party, whose love affair with Work Choices left working women’s wages in tatters. Australian women will never forget the much-despised Work Choices, which stripped away conditions such as overtime and penalty rates, leaving working women severely short-changed. The greatest crime of that system was that if you did not cop it quietly on the chin, did not sign the individual contract, your job was at risk. Our government has put an end to all of this.

Of course, the Leader of the Opposition now wants to turn back the clock. He is determined that working women should have minimal job security, fewer penalty rates and inequitable pay rates. Thankfully, women around the nation are safe from Mr Abbott’s dangerous workforce policies, as long as he stays on the opposition benches. On our side of the House we have been working hard to undo the shackles put in place by Work Choices and to inject some much-needed fairness back into the workplace. In just 2½ years we have got rid of the Work Choices regime and rip-offs; we have introduced an annual minimum wage review; introduced the right to request flexible working arrangements; introduced new protections on the grounds of pregnancy, sex and caring responsibilities; introduced a new pay equity principle; and introduced Australia’s first Paid Parental Leave scheme, welcomed by families around the nation for the financial security it will provide.

The Leader of the Opposition has been consistently ‘dead against’ the idea of paid maternity leave. Remember not so long ago he said:

Voluntary paid maternity leave: yes; compulsory paid maternity leave: over this Government’s dead body, frankly.

He has been as against maternity leave as he was against a ‘great big new tax’ until of course he decided to do a backflip on both—a spectacular backflip, to be precise, in what can only be interpreted as a desperate bid to win back the millions of Australians he had alienated with his out-of-touch views. The Leader of the Opposition now tells us he wants to introduce a great big new tax on business, which will:

… make it easier for more women to choose the most traditional role of all.

In short, his parental scheme is about keeping as many women as possible out of the workforce and tied back to the ironing-board and the kitchen sink.

Australian women can see through these political acrobatics on the part of the opposition leader. The truth—the actual truth, that is, rather than the opposition leader’s trademark half-truths—is that he has chopped and changed on so many occasions that it is impossible to know where he will end up. His views could be laughably dismissed if he were just an ordinary citizen; but this man is the alternative Prime Minister of our nation and his views need to be placed under public scrutiny. Australian women have not fought for 40 years to have their rights dismissed. We deserve the right to choose how and when we work, to make decisions about our reproductive health and how we balance our work and family life, and to have our concerns addressed fairly in the mainstream of public debate, not by a conservative and outmoded view of women totally at odds with 21st century Australia.

I have dedicated my working life to the cause of workers’ rights and women’s rights and I know a danger to those hard-fought rights when I see one. The Leader of the Opposition has never repudiated his core beliefs about women and he had the opportunity not long ago to do so. He said:

I think it would be folly to expect that women will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons.

I think that says it all. His current small-target strategy will be no comfort when women throughout the nation understand his real agenda and his core beliefs and conclude that he is not deserving of their support.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That was a not very veiled attack on the Leader of the Opposition. The member for Throsby has a great record in her activity on behalf of women. She talked about workers’ rights and women’s rights. In her former career she ended up as the head of the ACTU, which is the highest role that you can have within the union movement—therefore, she is a woman in that place in this country at this time. Whether or not there has been an attack on an individual, the opposition leader of today, I would say to the member for Throsby that any politician who takes on the role of leader of a party has to be flexible enough to be able to listen to people and to be able to change his mind. If he has said these things in the past it does not mean that he cannot think through the issues today and go to the Australian people with the reasonable expectation of being heard.

Embryonic stem cell research was a very difficult issue for me in a previous parliament, and I was the beneficiary of people around me who were prepared to look at the issue outside the box that I had put myself into at the time. Instead of taking one tack on that very delicate issue I listened to their view of the issue, and that became my view. After educating myself, looking at the issue and listening to the arguments that were put forward from both sides, I came to a position that I did not have at the start of my consideration of the issue and I gave an address in the parliament that nobody expected me to give—and I stand by every word I said in that address. The stance I took surprised both my side of the House and the other side of the House, but it was a very important stance for me to take at that time. I am just making the point that you can change your mind. I like to think that I give leaders of my party what I hope they will give me—that is, every opportunity—if they come up with ideas that they would like to put before the Australian people.

I say this to the member for Throsby: when it comes to paid parental leave or the minimum wage, which I would like to talk about in a minute, all of these ideas are eventually tested by the Australian people. In a few months time, every man and woman out there will get a chance to make a decision on the government and on the opposition leader and the team behind the opposition leader. That is the great beauty of this nation and its government. The people of Australia at the last election made a decision, without rancour. They made a decision to change their government. One of the great treasures we have in this country is our stable government. There are people around the world who cannot get up and have this argument. They cannot get up and put forward what Ms George put forward tonight to this parliament.

I would say that my role is to let my leader give it his very best shot. If he has to change his views on some things to accord with the community and adopt views that he did not hold before, all strength to his arm if he is brave enough to change those things. We are all responsible for the things we said in the past. There are a few things that have gone out of this mouth that I would love to draw back in and throw away, because I was a different person when I came here in 1990. I was not aware of the issues. We parliamentarians get faced with issues that we have to make decisions on. Outside this profession, in the lives we came from, we would never be faced with these issues in our daily lives—issues that, as you would know, Deputy Speaker, we never thought we would have to face.

I want to say something about the minimum wage in regard to anybody, male or female. I would love to have the time, also, to talk about Menzies and the Liberal Party and how he saw the role of women as so important to his party. He set up a structure where women had equal place right through the whole structure of the party. If you introduce a minimum wage and you keep raising that minimum wage, the first people to miss out on a job are those at the bottom level. I would love to see the best brains in this country—male or female—work out a way in which we can have those with the least ability in the workforce fully participating in life through work.

Annette Ellis (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to second this motion on initiatives supporting working women. I am delighted to support a motion that outlines the important steps the government has taken to support working women. Since coming into government, the Rudd Labor government has been working tirelessly to make Australia a stronger, smarter and fairer nation. We have done this because we believe that every Australian should have the same opportunities in life and we want to see all Australians realise their goals. This, of course, includes equal rights for women.

Over the past 2½ years, the Rudd Labor government has been busy making changes so that this can one day be realised for every woman around the nation. In this short space of time, we have improved the conditions of working women by scrapping Work Choices and giving parents the right to ask their bosses for flexible working arrangements. We have also taken steps to make sure that historically female-dominated sectors are properly valued and reformed, and we have reformed the early childhood education and care sector to help Australian families meet the costs of child care. Most recently, the Rudd government is extremely proud to have delivered Australia’s first Paid Parental Leave scheme. Australia has waited too long for this reform, which will be available to parents from 1 January. Under our landmark scheme, parents will have access to 18 weeks pay at a federal minimum wage, which is currently $570 a week. The scheme will provide mothers with a choice when it comes to balancing work and family commitments. It will support Labor’s core mission: to make this nation stronger and fairer.

Given how far we have come for Australian women over the past 40 years, there is cause for optimism—particularly the Paid Parental Leave scheme, which has taken too long in coming. In addition, Fair Work Australia legislation is a major boost to working women. The principal benefit of the new legislation is that it takes away the unfair provisions of the previous Work Choices legislation that threatened the job security and work-family balance for so many working women. Under the new Fair Work system, modern awards and enterprise agreements will allow employers and working parents to make individual flexible arrangements. Individual flexibility agreements can vary the terms of a modern award or enterprise agreement, to help employees better balance their family responsibilities and help employers retain skilled staff. This is a very big plus for working women.

Looking quickly at child care, the Minister for Education, Julia Gillard, and the Minister for Early Childhood Education, Childcare and Youth, Kate Ellis, earlier this month announced 190 childcare centres that will receive special grants to upgrade their facilities. Grants of $20,000 will be provided to long day care services in disadvantaged areas—and I repeat, in disadvantaged areas—from this month to help those providers improve the quality of their childcare centres.

I have absolutely no doubt and I am really very proud to stand here with the member for Throsby and support this motion. Women’s rights are not a joke. We are not an optional extra. We deserve the right to determine how we care for our own bodies. We deserve the right to choose how and when we work. We deserve the right to live in safe and respectful relationships. I do not want to see any of that come under threat. Should there be a change of government, heaven help us, at the election, a lot of that will come under threat, as indicated by the very discussions we sometimes hear in the parliament.

The previous speaker made a point about how we can possibly change some things that we might have said at times. I really have a bit of scepticism about that, particularly given that some of the things we hear of we hear consistently. We hear the same sorts of comments about a lot of these issues from the opposition in a consistent fashion. The women that I represent in this place do not want to hear that. They want to know that we are moving forward with programs that are going to support women, and in that way support working families, individuals, whoever out there is needing that support.

I am particularly pleased to note in passing—and I think it should be noted—that we have a very high number of women now in this place, though not acceptably high enough, who can argue these causes. We do not do it alone. Some of the male members of the House are very good at supporting us as well. But, as I say, I am pleased to support this motion. I thank the member for Throsby for bringing it forward, and anything we can do to ensure the future advancement of issues that affect women and their families we should stand right behind and support.

Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If further evidence were required that this government is more committed to spin than substance, more committed to talking than doing, then this is it. It is pretty incredible that this government would claim, as it has done, to be the friend of working women. By even the most generous analysis, this government has failed to deliver on its promises to Australian women and their families.

Let us start with child care. We were told that there was a crisis facing working families and that hundreds of new childcare facilities were required. The Rudd government promised to address what it called the ‘critical shortfall’ in the availability of childcare places. This was supposed to be the government solution to the double drop-off. After promising to build an additional 260 childcare centres, this government has done a triple backflip with pike and announced that it will build only 38. This has ended up as just another item on the long list of Rudd’s broken promises and failures in policy. Only three childcare centres have been constructed in three years. At this rate, on average of one a year, we have another 35 years to go.

The Howard-Costello government’s achievements in helping working women are closely tied to its strong record on promoting economic growth, reducing unemployment and keeping interest rates low. Under the coalition more than two million jobs were created. During the coalition’s term the female unemployment rate fell from its high of 8.2 per cent in December 1996 to 4.7 per cent in November 2007, almost half what it had been previously. In absolute terms this meant that the number of women employed in the economy increased by more than 630,000. This was a remarkable achievement.

Job creation is a highly effective way of improving economic conditions for both men and women. More women in work mean more opportunities to accumulate skills and experience, more wealth for families and a high level of social and economic inclusion. Central to employment participation is a flexible workplace relations system. This government has turned back the clock—not just BH, before Howard, but BH, before Hawke and Keating. This government has gone so far as to wind back reforms championed by Hawke and Keating, returning us to an antiquated system of union dominated bargaining arrangements.

This sort of motion is typical of Labor’s propensity to rewrite history to suit its own ideological requirements. Labor would have us believe that the millions of jobs created during the coalition’s term never happened and that Labor’s new workplace relations laws will be good for employment and good for women in the workforce. That is simply not the case, and continually moving motions like this one in support of the government’s own policies will not make it true, no matter how much they try and spin it.

So what has brought about this latest attack of hubris and arrogance, writ large in this motion? Why, it is the self-congratulation of the Labor Party, who have—with the support of the coalition—brought in a paid parental leave scheme. But is this the best policy? No. Tony Abbott announced a more comprehensive paid parental leave scheme that would better meet the financial needs of Australian families. The coalition’s policy will provide a payment of $14,138 per week for 26 weeks, with full superannuation, compared to Labor’s policy of $9,780 for 18 weeks and no superannuation. Our policy provides maximum social benefits, whereas Labor’s scheme falls short of delivering real outcomes. The coalition is the only party with the vision, history of achievement and experience required to look after the needs of women in Australia. Labor’s pattern of failure is a pattern that Australian women can do without.

In the time that remains to me I just note that the Rudd government is continuing to undermine the efforts of working women to support a family and to support their children in other ways. Under the Rudd government, the cost of living is growing. Inflation is beginning to sneak back into the economy and is now 2.9 per cent. For an economy that is emerging from a downturn, this is a remarkable figure. The government has tried to use quick political fixes such as GroceryWatch and Fuelwatch, both of which have been unmitigated policy failures. Meanwhile, the price of petrol, electricity, groceries, housing and medical services continues to rise. This government has failed the Australian people. It has failed Australian women.

Ramsey Rowen (the Deputy Speaker):

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.