Page 362 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 23 February 1993
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I am afraid that we need to go beyond the question of what we are saying - of what rhetoric we put forward about the position of women - to what we are actually doing about women and what we are actually doing to ensure that women in this community can look forward to an advancement of their position in all terms to the position in which women, even 10 years ago, might have found themselves. In particular, we need to look at whether women in the society of the late 1990s and early twenty-first century can expect to be employed just as those in earlier periods might have been. The fact of life is, of course, that women have suffered very much in this recession that we had to have. Women are today bearing the brunt of that recession in many ways. The electors of the ACT, as well as of Australia as a whole, will be making that very clear to the present Government in a few weeks' time.
Madam Speaker, I want to respond to a few points that some of the earlier speakers referred to, before I go on to talk about unemployment and the way that has affected women in this community. Ms Follett was very glib in rattling off all the initiatives that her Government has taken in respect of women. She indicated what boards she has now placed women upon and what bodies are now established to coordinate and consult with in respect of the fate of women in this Territory and all the programs that have now been announced. I go back to the fundamental question which has to be asked of any government program; the bottom line is: Does it work? Does it have an impact on the position of women?
The Chief Minister has said that she has all these programs in place to improve the position of women in the ACT work force. What is the position of women in the ACT work force? In June 1989 there were 3,700 unemployed women in the ACT. These are, of course, only official figures. In December 1991 that figure had risen to 5,700 women. I do not have any more recent figures but I believe that that figure has risen yet again since then. If women can expect today to encounter a greater likelihood of being unemployed than two years ago or three years ago, in what way or what ways has the Chief Minister's program on employment of women worked at all? Clearly, it has failed.
The figures for women across the country are not particularly attractive. As late as the early part of 1990 there were some 160,000-odd women looking for full-time work in the Australian work force. That figure shot up to almost double that, to about 280,000, at the beginning of this year. That almost doubling of the number of women looking for full-time work is an indictment of the process whereby we articulate the myth that we are concerned to provide equal opportunities to women in this society. Women are not being treated equally here. Women are suffering a far greater rate of decline in their position than are men in this community, and that is as true in the ACT as it is anywhere else in Australia. So what do the Chief Minister's programs have to show as far as the employment of women is concerned? The answer is absolutely nothing.
The Chief Minister said, "How dare you raise your heads on this issue, because you are going to abolish the Office of the Status of Women". I might point out that it was the Federal Labor Government that emasculated the Women's Bureau in the Department of Employment, Education and Training not more than a year ago. In a critical area where women's employment was being targeted as an issue of concern, that was an indication of that Government's concern about the level of employment among women in this country.
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