Page 3335 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 21 October 2014
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However, family law does already allow for the distribution of superannuation between couples if the couple separates or divorces. This does not really address the long-term concerns regarding women’s income and superannuation capacity but it may be something worth doing. This is part of the Prime Minister’s plan for a paid parental leave scheme which, although it has been much maligned by political forces, has women’s ability to earn unbroken income and maintain a career at its heart.
Women live longer but are less well off overall in retirement. I think we have a responsibility as an egalitarian society to adjust the structure of the workforce over time to recognise the innate difference between men and women and the very many more tasks which women often squeeze into one lifetime. When women have children they are working full time on our future as a city and as a nation. When they work also in paid employment, they are working also on our present as well as looking after their own financial security into the future. However, that requires women to be working at around 150 per cent at least for a period of time. We do need policies which basically favour women’s financial independence over the long term, because we all benefit from that.
Prevention of poverty in old age is far better than the piecemeal patch job governments try to do via various benefits retrospectively once we have a problem to deal with. I find the debate over the paid parental leave scheme somewhat ridiculous when short-sighted men and women choose to talk down a scheme which would quite significantly change the structural problems women have in staying connected to the workforce, assist families to maintain and pay down mortgages, promote breastfeeding—which is no easy task—and keep women strong while they are having their children.
We will all benefit from the children and from having fewer women poor in their older years as a result. But too many political players are choosing to attack the policy for its supposed generosity. I will tell you what is generous. It is mums who get up all night to feed and raise the next generation, not the politicians whose wives did it all and who are now scoffing at Abbott’s plan to make a proper change for women’s career and income benefits.
I was pleased to have the chance to drop in and see the Office for Women across at the Theo Notaras centre yesterday and to speak to Veronica and her team about the very hard work they are doing in the wash-up after the closure of the women’s information referral centre. I commend the work and their commitment to women, and in particular what they are doing to get those more vulnerable more connected with the workforce. They are case managing through the return-to-work grants the education and practical needs women have to re-enter the workforce after a period of absence. I really commend the government on this particular area of investment into women in our community.
Bec and her ever-vivacious volunteer assistant Kaye over at the Office for Women work tirelessly to see women fulfil their work aspirations. One person they are assisting to get back into work is a mum with seven kids and I think 11 years out of paid employment. Women such as this have many skills and have certainly been working. One could never claim that a mum of seven does not work.
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