FINAL ELECTION SUMMARY

On the eve of the election, here is my personal summary of the major policies of the major parties as they impact on women. For more details of each policy, please visit the websites of the Liberal Party or the ALP.

Women’s Policies: each party has a women’s policy, in itself a welcome change from past elections.

Australian Women. Opportunities for Life, the Liberal policy, was released on October 7 and is mainly a compilation of other policies such as family payments, childcare etc. One new announcement: a commitment to conduct a Personal Safety Survey in 2006, supposedly to update the Women’s Safety Survey of 1996 which revealed for the first time the shocking incidence of domestic violence in marriages and de facto relationships. However, the surveys will not be strictly comparable since the “personal safety” survey is not the same as a “women’s safety”. It will concentrate more on crime, and will include men. We still will not have statistics that would give us a ten-year-on comparable snapshot. What a shame. The Liberal policy says nothing about the Sex Discrimination Act.

Choice and Opportunity for Women: Labor’s better deal for Women was released on July 19 and contains a comprehensive list of small po9licy promises across a range of areas (employment and economic security, protection from violence, better work and family balance and improving the status of women. A key promise is to ensure the provisions of the Sex Discrimination Act are “widely publicised and enforced”. The 1996 women’s safety survey will be repeared.

National Paid Maternity Leave Scheme

Both parties have reneged on this, leaving Australia along with the United States as the only two developed countries that do not offer working women paid leave when they have a baby. The result is that it is generally less well off women who suffer because women in high-paying jobs are usually in a better position to negotiate leave for themselves. Women in the public sector are guaranted leave. The failure of both parties to recognise this is a shame. Instead, both parties have opted for what I call…

The Baby Bribe

Both parties are offering women $3,000 to have a baby, with each offering to increase the payment in coming years. The good thing about this approach is that it is not tied to the employment status of the mother, and is thus far preferable to the discredited and anti-employed women Baby Bonus of the Howard government. Nor is it mean tested. But it falls far short of a 14 weeks paid maternity leace scheme.

Family Payments

There are clear differences in what is on offer here. The Liberal Party policy continues its approach of rewarding stay-at-home mothers with a family payment (FBTB) which is not tested on the income of the primary earner. This payment will increase by $300 if the government is returned and the income cutoff point for the secondary earner will increase, making it slightly easier for working women who leave their jobs to have a baby to qualify. However, the presumption of the policy, despite the change in rhetoric, is that mothers should stay at home and they are financially rewarded for doing so. Dual-income families continue to suffer punitive average marginal tax rates because of the low cutt off for income testing, so that mothers in employment will still pay as much as 50 cents in the dollar on their incomes. The government is offering an annual $600 payment which is largely to offset the family payments debt that as many as 1.4 million families have accumulated due to underreporting of income or Centrelink’s treatment of income changes.

Labor’s policy has the presumption that mothers will return to work (in fact, it will virtually force single mothers into employment under its Work not Welfare approach) and it will abolish the iniquitous FBTB by combing the two policies, raising the income threshold very considerably so as to “dewelfarise” these payments and avoid the high effective marginal tax rates and the debt trap. Most families will receive tax increases under this combined family payments/tax policy.

Child Care

Again there are clear differences in approach.

The Liberals haved promised a 30 per cent tax rebate on the cost of child care to all recipients of the Child Care Benefit. This will help relieve the high cost of child care (but may put pressur eon child care fees). It is an astonishing policy from the government that abolished Labor’s 30 per tax rebate in 1998.

Labor has adopted an increase in places approach but has done nothing directly to address affordability (which is disappointing, given their commitment to do so). It has offered one day a week of free education-related child care to 3 and 4 years olds which is most welcome, but which does not address the huge problem parents of 1 and 2 year olds have in finding places and affording care. Labor will also restore operational subsidies to community based centres. My favourite part of Labor’s policy is its $35 million commitment to protect homeless children. This is essentially a plan to help children living in women’s refuges: “Funding will be available to purchase school tutoring and school materials, music lessons, enable participation in arts, crafts and sporting activities or specialist health services”. These are among the most disadvantaged and traumatised kids on our society (as are their mothers) and any party that can think to help them in this way is a party with a heart. Great stuff!

Come tomorrow night, we’ll know which of the above policies are going to govern our lives for the next three years.