Page 364 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 23 February 1993
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as far as child-care is concerned. Those opposite might not like this, but the women of the ACT and Australia are going to get the benefit of those changes after 13 March, and I, for one, will be there applauding it. Let us see then whether these people across the way are going to be applauding those initiatives the way they say we should be applauding theirs today. Let us see whether they are going to applaud the initiatives to improve the access of women to decent services and to equal opportunity. I very much doubt that they will.
The bottom line is that the position of women has deteriorated seriously over the last three years or so and, in particular, since the beginning of the Labor Government - the Hawke-Keating Government. Those changes have affected women's access to employment and affected their right to a whole series of other things, including safety in the home. I think that those opposite should be hanging their heads in shame rather than pretending that they have all the answers in all the programs that we have heard about today. The bottom line is results, not rhetoric. It is not what you say you have done and, "Look at this program. Look at how many people I have appointed to that committee", or whatever. It is results, and there are not any results to point to.
MR BERRY (Minister for Health, Minister for Industrial Relations and Minister for Sport) (4.10): This mob opposite have no shame. The Hewson led government, Mr Humphries says, has all the answers. Here are some of them. Concerning the trade union movement: You can wind its strength back by the weakening of the trade union structures - the establishment of enterprise unions so that the trade union movement is weakened and the abolition of their rights under the Federal Industrial Relations Act. That is principally targeted at those sorts of people who are weaker in society. Women industrially have always been in a weaker position and the trade union movement has a strong record, and a long record, of protecting and developing the rights of women out there in the work force. What the Liberals are about is destroying that structure.
Mr Humphries: They were men's unions. They were men's unions in the old days.
MR BERRY: They were in the old days; but we have come out of the old days now, Mr Humphries. We are in the 1990s. The fact of the matter is that the trade union structure will be undermined by a Hewson led government - perish the thought - and that will ensure that women are less protected out there in the work force, and they are amongst the groups which require most protection. So that is one answer the Liberals have.
Let us have a look at the education system. What the Liberals intend to do, of course, is to hand over a whole heap of money to the private education system where, of course, women who are disadvantaged will have no access. Those women in the disadvantaged sectors of the community will again be attacked by the Liberals. So that is another they have. Let us go to the health - - -
Mr Humphries: Let us not. Time is up.
MR BERRY: We will get to health another day.
MADAM SPEAKER: The time for the matter of public importance has expired.
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