Page 3837 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 8 November 1994
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The Chief Minister in her statement said:
Ministers agreed to commission research to develop and produce a framework for ensuring that government programs, services and activities are gender inclusive.
Again, that is something that we would totally support. It should not be just to commission research. How about a little bit of implementation of that research? It is a very important point. Of course, there was no detail in what the Chief Minister said. There is always very little detail. Not one word was uttered about how the ACT might be involved in this research, but I am sure that the Chief Minister would want to be involved in such an important piece of research. We did not hear any real details from the Chief Minister on how this would happen; who would commission it; who would do it; what we expect the results to be. Again, I am sure that she will be very keen to tell the Assembly about those issues.
It is obviously very important in the International Year of the Family, as the Chief Minister said, that all women - women in families, working women, women as part of working families and women who choose to stay at home with their families - are actually looked after. Unfortunately, we hear very little about women who choose to stay at home and look after their children. We also hear very little about women who, for whatever reason, choose to take part-time work. Unfortunately, although there have been lots of words sprouted about how we are supporting job sharing in the marketplace and how that will not upset women's career paths or women's career structures, what we actually see out there in the work force is that women who do not choose to work full time, for whatever reason, are having their career structures or their career paths badly inhibited. That is something that must be addressed by all parliaments in this country.
Another issue that needs to be addressed, and something that the Chief Minister spoke about, is the issue of workplace based child-care. Again, that is something that the Chief Minister is very good at talking about; but she is not very good at actually doing anything about it. Recently I was sent a brochure, and was spoken to, by a group called Child Care Solutions. This group advocates employer sponsored child-care and has enabled private long-day care centres in the ACT to work together to make their child-care services easily accessible and available to employers and the community. Unfortunately, as usual, the red tape which this Government refuses to remove and the restrictive regulations that are in place have prevented many employers from providing workplace child-care for their employees. I think every woman will tell you that the lack of child-care facilities in the workplace is one of the main reasons why women are prevented from getting to the top of their professions, whether it be politics, the public service or the private sector. It is those issues that must be addressed.
If we are to encourage more women into the political arena, particularly women with younger children, the issue of child-care and the issue of sitting times - something that this Assembly has not addressed, except, possibly, Mr Cornwell, in respect of Tuesday night sittings - need to be addressed as a matter of urgency. Again, that is something that the
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