Page 358 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 23 February 1993
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We had better look at the record of Labor. Women, as Mr Kaine rightly said, are still earning substantially less than their male counterparts. I think the figures are that in the ACT in February 1992 the average male wage was $660, while women were still earning $461.40. Women are still not represented well at senior management level, and I think Mr Kaine covered that exceedingly well. I accept that that is also not just in the ACT but in a wider range as well. The Commonwealth Public Service has a lot to answer for still in this area.
Mr Wood: Would you like a couple more women in the Liberal Party to support you across there?
MRS CARNELL: Absolutely. Women suffer substantially more through unemployment, as the figures show. Women are still less skilled. They often work only part-time - when, of course, they can get those sorts of jobs - and they are the first to go when business is bad. The unions continue to press the last in, first out principle which many unions actually enshrine in their requirements. These principles, of course, make women suffer the most. This means that women who have had time off to have a family will often be the first to lose their jobs when times get bad. Surely this shows that the majority of women really have not progressed terribly far. We are not talking about the women who sit here in this house, women in the upper echelons of the public service or women who are in the Office of the Status of Women; we are talking about women out there looking after their kids, attempting to make ends meet and pay the mortgage. Women still are at the lower end of the income spectrum and they are still particularly vulnerable.
Labor has failed to provide access to and participation in flexible employment for women. There are hundreds of women in Canberra who do not show up in the ACT employment statistics, as we know. All of these women are suffering as a result of the inequitable employment system that, on 13 March, will be scrapped. At that stage women in Australia, women in the ACT, will be able to look at a truly flexible working environment; they will be able to look at truly being able to get out there and get jobs that actually fit in with their families and with their workplace.
We will talk about women at home for a moment. Women at home are the great group ignored by Labor. After 13 March - it is a very important day - women at home can look forward to a doubling of their family allowance. They can look forward to increases in their dependent spouse rebate, up to $300 in fact. They can look forward to more occasional care. They can look forward to superannuation that will actually respect the fact that they are women in the unpaid work force. Their husbands will be able to contribute to superannuation on their behalf while they are home and their husbands will be able to get tax deductions on the same base that they get for their own. That superannuation will be owned by those women so that they will have actual security - security to do their own thing, security for real choice. Family allowance supplement will go up by 6 per cent, and the story goes on. Women, for a change, for the first time in this country, will actually have a capacity to control their own lives, to have true choice. Choice is something that they have been denied greatly.
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