How Women have fared under the Howard Government

Finally – six months after the due date – the Howard Government has realised that it can no longer stall, and has belatedly released the revised campaign against domestic violence. 

The delay cost lost opportunities for community education over the Christmas-holiday period, as well as $1.6 million in cancellation fees. 

The Government’s changes to the campaign mean that $20 million instead of the budgeted $15 million will now be spent. 

I doubt that the addition of the booklet to be sent to every household will be money well spent – it is reminiscent of the Government’s pathetic anti-terrorist fridge magnet campaign – but the television segments, if thoughtfully placed, may well have a useful impact on community thinking. 

Unfortunately the Government has chosen to replace the educative and preventative focus of the original ‘No Respect, No Relationship’ campaign with a crisis management approach, and there are concerns that recent well-publicised cases which resulted in no convictions may mean that women continue to be deterred from reporting crimes of violence. 

The original campaign had a segment called ‘Coaching Boys into Men’ which could have been used by sports coaches, clubs and schools to encourage responsible behaviour by teams. 

 

And the original campaign had a wider targeting approach to include specific issues and specific communities, for example young indigenous communities. 

So the delay caused by the direct intervention of Ministers uncomfortable, for example, with a concept that verbal abuse is a form of violence, or with the concept that only male perpetrators were depicted in the advertisements, has meant not only a high monetary cost, but lost opportunities and human costs.

And does anyone else find it ironic that a big objection to the original campaign against domestic violence was that the television segments referred people to a website for further information?  

And yet in answering questions on why there was no Women’s Budget document this year, as there has been for the past ten or so years, the Minister for Family and Community Services, Senator Patterson, said

“I made a conscious decision not to release a women’s Budget statement.  Instead I used a more modern, user-friendly post-Budget publication outlining the Australian Government’s achievements for women.  These changes will ensure that the Government communicates with women in a more up-to-date and accessible way.”

Strange that she considered a web-site less suitable for a young, technologically aware, target group!

The Budget of course has alerted women and families – who have suddenly been discovered by this uncaring Government – that this is election year. 

But despite the smoke and mirrors, and the attempts to patch up some of the worst effects of nine years of punitive economic policies, women and families do not fare well in this Budget.

The much vaunted tax cuts – a major feature of the Budget – will not apply to most women, and women without dependent children will be especially badly off as a result of this year’s Budget measures. 

Total average women’s earnings amount to $30,540 – far short of the $52,000 needed for a tax cut.  The number of women who work part time has increased from 42.5 per cent of all female workers in March 1996 to 45.7 per cent in April 2004[1]. 

But even those women who work full time are unlikely to benefit:  women’s full time average earnings for February 2004 were only $44,200.

Women are strongly represented in the occupations that pay extra tax while getting no tax relief themselves – hairdressers, cleaners, shop assistants, receptionists, hospitality workers, enrolled nurses and social workers.[2] 

These are the people who will shoulder the burden of the Government’s assistance to those who are better off than themselves.

Since the advent of the Howard Government, the gap between men’s and women’s wages has widened substantially. 

In February 1996, the excess of male over female earnings, for total earnings, in current dollars, was $229.10 but this has blown out to $312  (for November 2003)[3].

Senator Patterson has claimed that under the Howard government, women’s wages have risen three times more than they did under Labor. 

This is not correct. 

Over the period February 1983 to February 1996, female full-time adult total earnings have risen by $315.20, or an annual average increase of 5.9 per cent.

Over the period February 1996 to November 2003, female full-time adult total earnings have risen by $250.90, or an annual average increase of 4.6 per cent.

Work and Family issues still appear to be beyond the comprehension of this Government. 

Having systematically run down Labor’s child care programs over its years in office, and reducing access to and availability of child care, ‘additional child care places’ have been grandly announced in this year’s Budget. 

However it turns out that these additional places are restricted to Outside School Hours Care and to Family Day Care places.

These are needed, of course, but there is also a high need for quality community centre-based care which the Government chooses consistently to ignore.

Nothing has been done in this Budget for the families of the estimated 46,300 children who want access to centre-based long day care.[4]  

We understand that even the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs pressed Cabinet for funding to address the unmet demand in long day care, but got nothing.

This Government is so out of touch with Australian families, their lifestyles and their needs – and the needs of their children – that some members can get highly stressed about segments of Play School showing different types of happy families, and yet they don’t express any concern whatsoever for families struggling for access to quality care for their children. 

Is the Government concerned that at present, of the 4383 childcare centres subject to national childcare accreditation, only about 3705 are fully accredited?[5]

Women’s community organisations also appear to have fared badly under this Budget.  

By channelling grants to national women’s organisations through National Secretariats, and by no longer providing disaggregated data for expenditure under this program in the Budget papers, the Government manages to be less than transparent about its latest cuts. 

It appears that the forward estimate for the whole of the Women’s Development Programme for 2005-06 is only $500,000—that is $1million less than budgeted for in 2004-05.  We have not been told which organizations will miss out on funding in this year or in future years.

The Howard Government has been the highest taxing government in Australia’s history,[6] and yet most families and singles – and disproportionately women – will miss out on any tax relief from this Budget. 

True to form, the Howard Government has sought to advantage the already well-off at the expense of the less well-off and the needy.

Labor under the leadership of Mark Latham has pledged to cut government waste – one example of this being the Government’s expenditure of more than $100 million on taxpayer-funded political advertising, and another being its wasteful cancellation of the television time for the anti-domestic violence campaign last December.   

Labor will reorder this government’s priorities[7] to invest in our families and communities.  Labor has pledged to invest in education and health as major priorities, to restore services, and to provide a ladder of opportunity for all Australians.