Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight I would like, somewhat belatedly, to acknowledge International Women’s Day, which occurred on 8 March 2008, as you would be aware. The celebrations this year, I believe, were somewhat muted. I would like to talk about a couple of reasons as to why I believe that was the case. This year was in fact the 80th anniversary of the first rally in Australia on International Women’s Day, but I do not know that there is still a lot to celebrate. Eighty years ago, amongst a number of other issues, women were protesting about the lack of equal pay for equal work. I think there is now an ongoing realisation—and this was well expanded by Elizabeth Broderick, the Sex Discrimination Commissioner from the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission—that this is absolutely a battle that has not been won. There are many other subtle battles that also have not been won. Some of the very worst forms of discrimination, as we all know, have gone. Women can now be financially independent. They can work after marriage and they do have choices. The results of earlier discrimination continue to be with us. For instance, women who, until even the very late sixties, had to leave work when they married are retiring now with very little superannuation and very little in the way of resources to back them up other than the age pension. So some results of that discrimination are still here and I think there are some very serious changes that need to be made.

I encourage young women to get active and, if need be, to get angry about the lack of assistance out there with many of the issues that continue to be a problem for women. The only really good recognition of International Women’s Day that I saw was an article by Stephen Lunn in the Australian. He made the point that young women today often do not want to be identified as feminists. We have a proud tradition of feminism, but a group of people have succeeded in turning ‘feminism’ into a negative term. What young women need to understand is that, just because they have a job and they can get promotions these days, this does not translate to all women in the workforce. There is still not equal pay for equal work. For example, on average, women earn 17 per cent less than men doing the same jobs. We have a few high-profile exceptions to the rule. There are women premiers, we have a woman as Deputy Prime Minister and there are women governors. Despite the fact that women can now get to those positions, they are still the exception, not the norm. If you look at the figures, you see that across the board we are still in a very poor situation. Australia has, in fact, fallen to number 30 in the world in the number of women representatives in the parliament. By any stretch of the imagination, we are not up with many of the developing countries.

In the top 200 companies in Australia, only 12 per cent of executive positions are held by women. On average, women get less pay for the same job. That even applies at the top executive level. Only three per cent of Australia’s CEOs in the top 200 companies are women. Of the top earners in the top 200 companies, only seven per cent are women. Senior women managers across the board in those top 200 companies—CEOs, CFOs, operating officers, et cetera—receive between half and two-thirds of the wages that their male counterparts get for the same job. We certainly have some structural problems that need to be fixed. I do not think these will be fixed until we can analyse them carefully.

Some of the structural problems go back to the fact that women often choose to work part time. They may have gaps in their employment while they have children. We need to look very sensibly and carefully at maternity leave and at the current superannuation system. I have some serious concerns about any proposals for maternity leave to be paid for by private enterprise. That is not going to happen in the real world. The real world is going to say that, if there is an extra cost in employing young women, they are less likely to employ young women. We can say what we like about whether or not that is discrimination, but employing young women is not going to happen.

We need to get away from the idea of paid or unpaid maternity leave and talk more about parental leave, to bring men into the conversation in a genuine way, to discuss flexible work arrangements that work for families not against families. It should not be seen as the woman’s business to organise how the work schedule fits around the family. I admit I have been somewhat disappointed, given the rhetoric that preceded this discussion, of the role model established by the current Prime Minister. He has been referred to by the media and certainly by some departmental people as ‘Kevin 24/7’, indicating that this man works around the clock. This might look very good to the taxpayer who feels they are getting value for money from the Prime Minister, but it involves large numbers of departmental staff working the same hours. It involves people not having weekends with their families. It involves people coming to work before the sun is up and not getting home until midnight. This is not the example which a modern Prime Minister should be setting in the current climate, to assist in the development of the view that it is families who should take responsibility for the work-family balance, not just the wives of the families. So I very much encourage women to get angry, to get active and to get involved—young women in particular.

I would also like to talk about what I see as some of the deeper structural problems going on with the current government. In response to a question today, Senator Evans made what was meant to be a disparaging remark about the coalition. He spoke about the ‘gentlemen’ of the former government. He was not talking about male ministers; he was talking about the previous government. There were some excellent female ministers in our government. That comment was not just a slip of the tongue; it was a subconscious slip that says it all about the behaviour and attitudes towards women.

I would like to expand on that a bit by referring to the current cuts that are being proposed by this government. If you look at the people who were kept in suspense for five days, the other groups being targeted, in the main, involved women. The majority of aged pensioners are women. The majority of carers are women. The majority of Centrelink and child support agency customers are women. Yet these are the groups that have been targeted by the razor gang of the Labor Party. More and more examples are coming out, one after the other. One that came out today which Senator Nick Sherry spoke on was the scrapping of any funding for a telephone hotline for a group called Bonnie Babes, which provides grief counselling to women who have had a miscarriage or a stillborn child. Senator Sherry dismissively suggested that these people could be looked after by Lifeline. Lifeline is an excellent organisation, but guess who trains the counsellors that Lifeline uses in this area? It is Bonnie Babes. Guess who Lifeline refers their specialist grief cases to? It is Bonnie Babes. This is yet another example of the still very serious and endemic structural problems in the treatment of women, and I urge this government to look at its attitude towards women and work to ensure that women are not just soft targets that any cuts can be directed at.