The Albanese government wants you to believe this is its budget “for women”. It isn’t.
“Labor is backing Australian women with the most significant single-year investment in women’s equality in at least the last 40 years,” tweeted Minister for Finance and Minister for Women Katy Gallagher. “Because equality for women isn’t an add-on or a nice to have. It’s crucial for our prosperity.”
It’s true that this budget includes some significant gains for women — built on other significant gains delivered since the election. And yes, there were also some disappointments. More importantly, none of this means that the Albanese government’s budget “for women” in the truest sense won’t yet be delivered. But we’re not there yet.
Let me explain. Ahead of the budget, there was a lot of talk about “laying the foundations for future prosperity”, and I suppose my pragmatic assessment of this year’s dedicated “women’s budget” is that it lays the foundation for future women’s budgets.
Like so many other areas of this budget, the Albanese government seems to view this women’s budget as a transitional object, doing enough but not yet holistically tackling the big structural reform women need. The priority was clearly to establish Labor’s credentials as the “better economic managers” by delivering (and bigging up) a surplus while not frightening the horses on tax and revenue. And this was followed with a — wink, wink — implied promise that once this part of Labor’s rebranding exercise is complete, it’ll get to the big important things “later”.
The key question is how much later? Some, such as Danielle Wood, chief executive of the Grattan Institute and member of the Albanese government’s dedicated Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce, writing in The Saturday Paper, asked with concern: if not now, when? I’m inclined to agree.
“A bolder approach would be more in keeping with the scale of these challenges and this point in the political cycle,” Wood wrote. “Many in Labor are talking about taking bolder policies to the next election as part of a ‘two-term strategy’. But if the prime minister isn’t willing to have these conversations now, what’s the chance he will want to have them in the pressure cooker of an election campaign?”
Having said this, I give full credit to what I call “The Persisterhood”, the advocates who mounted what Patricia Karvelas described on ABC’s Insiders as “the most effective campaign she has ever seen” to deliver real change for women and those on welfare payments. I particularly pay heed to Sam Mostyn who chaired the taskforce, and its other members, including Wood.
As I previously wrote, a letter from the taskforce to Gallagher ahead of the budget laid out six initial demands in bold and direct language, essentially issuing a direct challenge to the Albanese government to prove to understandably sceptical Australian women (women whose votes were key to determining the outcome of the last election, mind you) that they meant all those nice words and big promises made in the first women’s budget statement in October.
Just to refresh your memory, in a forward signed by the prime minister, treasurer and minister for women, the Albanese government promised to make Australia “one of the most gender-equal countries in the world”.
The taskforce asks included the reinstatement of the single parenting payment, the abolition of the ParentsNext program and the childcare activity test, payment of superannuation for primary carers while they are on paid parental leave, increasing the rate of Commonwealth rent assistance to improve women’s immediate housing security, and an interim pay rise for early years educators and aged care workers in recognition of the historical undervaluation of their work.
I will add to that that women’s safety advocates have long said funding of $1 billion a year is needed if the government is to make good on its promise, a promise first made by the new Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth when she launched the national plan to end violence against women late last year, to “end violence within a generation”.
Here’s a quick scorecard: the single parenting payment has been restored, but only until a child turns 14, not the suggested age of 16, and mutual obligations remain (more on that in a minute). ParentsNext is gone. The childcare activity test stays. It’s a no to superannuation for paid parental leave. Commonwealth rent assistance has been increased by 15%, a figure welfare advocates worry isn’t enough. And aged care workers will get a pay bump but early years educators will have to wait.
As for women’s safety, there’s an additional $589.3 million over the forward estimates that builds on the $1.7 billion in the October budget — still far short of the minimum $1 billion a year that’s required.
Here’s a quick thought experiment. Changes to the petroleum resources rent tax (PRRT) will generate $7.4 billion over the next 10 years. That’s the lifespan of the new national plan to end violence against women. And we all know that these changes were near-universally met with condemnation for not going far enough — except by those in the resources sector. Funny that.
But modest additional measures to the PRRT proposed by Rod Sims, a professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University and former chair of the ACCC, would bring in three times that ($22.2 billion) over the next decade. Anyone looking for a bit of room in this budget to find that $1 billion a year for women’s safety… Bob’s your uncle! As the cliché goes, budgets are all about choices. And I defy anyone to argue that saving women’s lives is inflationary.
Finally, here’s the thing I’m irrationally shitty about. When announcing the changes to the single parenting payment, in both a Twitter thread in which Albanese reminded everyone of his log cabin story growing up with a single mother, and in a press release, the Albanese government was at great pains to emphasise — like really make a very fine point of it — that mutual obligation would remain.
And that to my mind is a giant dog-whistle to those who believe that women, especially mothers, are a bunch of dole-bludging welfare queens who would sit around eating bonbons and living the high life — as if anyone could on these meagre payments — if they weren’t incentivised to find work.
It’s that attitude that got us into this mess in the first place. When Julia Gillard made the fateful final changes to the single parenting payment a decade ago, reducing the age of eligibility to when a child turned eight from 16 for all parents, she said: “We actually believe it’s very, very important for kids in single-parent families to see that their parent — very often a woman — is a person who has a job and goes to work.”
But here’s the thing. Those changes did not do what they said on the tin. New research from Kristen Sobeck and Bob Breunig of the Australian National University Crawford School of Public Policy found that most remained on income support and on lower incomes.
There are significant barriers to this cohort finding jobs, namely disability and domestic violence: “If domestic violence underlies welfare dependence among single mothers (and it likely does),” the report says, “it doesn’t take rocket science to appreciate the difficulty of getting those mothers into work.”
Sobeck told me: “Mutual obligations or not, they’re going to rely on these payments because the barriers are so great.”
Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for former Liberal senator Amanda Stoker to come along and prove exactly who this dog-whistle was intended for. In an opinion piece for Sky News, Stoker shamefully referred to the single parenting payment as “sit down money”.
Why on earth is the Albanese government going out of its way to pander to those who sling outdated, lazy dole-bludger slurs at women fleeing violence?
Put simply, it’s bad policy because it’s political, not evidence-based. The same could be said of the decision to keep the childcare activity test. And that is precisely the kind of thing we were assured the new Office for Women with its evidence-based “gender-responsive budgeting” would not be doing.
All that said, this isn’t the end of the road. I refer you back to that grand commitment in Labor’s first women’s budget to make Australia “one of the most gender-equal countries in the world”. And I’ll just add that I have every confidence “The Persisterhood” — and the women of Australia who proved so powerful at the last election — will hold them to it. I am encouraged by the overall direction of travel.
its a disgrace the inference women turning into senior respected workers are turfed into indentured slavery – via these parasite jobs provider/ training orgs come aged care / disability provider too get 3 million per “non profit ( “charity”) capitial assets per annum- whilst women as “client” being coersed as ” “trainee”get 3 bucks a day “extra” to be used as fodder for these profteering non productive enterprises – when fact women ( older workers being told they are invalid after 45 – so how to get a job … well with 20years of qualifications and experience and after providing the country with educated children – well we dont need to attend these mutual obligations as they are a ripoff full of cost and detrimental to our collective bottom line and a disgrace and abuse creating victims
Whenever I see headlines about “women’s stuff”, it invariably means women who’ve procreated, that is, mothers. Conflating women with mothers is frustrating to the many women who are not mothers.
So it was good to see some non-mother-specific issues being covered, such as the growing number of homeless women, many of whom are actually mothers, surprise surprise. So much for the cliche` about “who will take care of you when you’re old if you don’t have children”.
Cheers Anthea. Times have changed! I think the issues of old age and who will care for us has changed over the years.
The value of life over the value of money and what a life brings to the table seems more about money than quality of life, love and respect.
Homeless women seems to be something to be aware of like homeless men. Something to think about to make us feel we care about humanity. Something that sounds good – in Albo’s words – “that’s a good thing”.
But the unsaid ‘bad’ thing continues to occur in reality. Plenty of examples of that truth out there.
Free will and choice is often used to negate the downfall of an individual in a group over systematic neglect. The system failure is brought back to human error, ignoring free will and choice and intention. The bad things are never said. Systems fail because the design is poor. The design is poor because, well…too much work and accountability involved!
I think us older women are meant to work it out for ourselves… about how not to become homeless, just like the men, kids or not.
That’s the bad thing said!
Not just mothers but lowly paid women in traditionally lowly paid jobs. There is NEVER anything in it for single women in well paying jobs! Despite us propping up everyone else’s lifestyle choices…. Maybe I SHOULD push for those stage 3 tax cuts….. 😉
Single women in well paying jobs should be just fine! Proping up others? I was a mother at 37 for the first time. I never thought like you. Yuk!
You obviously attended the Tony Abbott school of sociology….. lifestyle choices indeed.
You forgot to mention the equality of opportunity our taxes are supposed to provide.
Yes I am being a bit tongue in cheek folks HOWEVER just pointing out that everyone looks to the budget to say oh what about meeeeeeeeeeeee, what’s in it for meeeeeeeeeeeee and literally there is never anything in it for the single and childless (by choice) and yes having children IS a lifestyle choice! Its not the 1950s anymore you know! I’m all for equity but I’m also for people having personal accountability for their choices, particularly the intelligent and educated!
Prima facie teenagers are way way way mire expensive to raise, support, educate and love than kids upto 14 -in fact reality is mum is supports her kids into their 20’s… wake up Australia
(sic)more ; mum is free resource not a “not for profit” nor a “jobs agency” .. and when the kids are 20 something then she is left broke , blamed and blindly assumed to be needy and unemployable when in fact sexist ageism and ignorance are the reasons we have industries using health, education and aged carers as profit making tools
Mutual obligation has Howard’s filthy face all over it and should be canned forthwith as a blight on everyone’s dignity and a waste of time and money. Shame on the heads of all who support it.
Yep and Gillard via the Media and the very poor widest media told us the lie women stop being main support to their kids when they turned 8; the libs ran with the lie whilst they gave free ‘social security’ money to Qantas, Norman etc… where is the outrage on that point? No nothing. Gillard also failed to pass gay marriage which was in her power… nup… It is all so glib out there
well yes to use his oft used phrase “you pay peanuts you get monkeys”….BUT now the duopoly supermarkets charge 8 bucks a kilo for decent tasting bananas…. Can’t sustain on less than half a bunch o bananas
So how are Women meant to hold labour to account? What are we meant to do to hold anyone to account? Power holders do what they want, there are no real mechanisms of redress for single mothers at any point.
I married, had 3 children, cared for them, separated when the last was 13, took the kids with me, never recieved child support, worked non stop to keep a rental over our heads and am still doing the same at 59, while the kids are now, 22, 19, 19.
I’m trying to be the bank of mum, like the Gvt and banks suggest, so my kids can save a deposit and hopefully buy a home together.
I contacted a bank this week to find out our buying power. When they found out I had little savings due to being the bank of mum, eventhough it costs me in excess of $1500 a week to provide, shelter, food, petrol, transport, electricity, phone, etc., with no debts, the phone call tapered off into disinterest from their side.
If I buy with them; using my income to help pay the loan, it matters not. They are not eligible for first home buyer or any other useless perks if I help them, because i owned a house once upon a time. Buying a new home on their own, for the New Home Grant is not possible because they would be paying too much for a new house and wouldn’t be able to show they could service the loan on their own.
So being a women of 59, who fled domestic violence at 50 with 3 teenagers, and lost everything financial and not financial, like friends family and community supports, is worth nothing to a bank. Eventhough I have independently and financially cared for them and worked non stop.
For our little family to own a house together; which will also help me not be a homeless women in a few years, to create some equity for all of us, to create some stable sense of not just being subject to life forces more powerful than us; because we are just the plebs who lost our wealth and status and now provide income for other home owners and jobs for other departments to help us; to whom and how do I hold others to account to make our lives better?
Hopefully between the 4 of you you could save enough for a deposit! And get them to start paying more rent to help cover costs and demonstrate additional income. Aren’t they working?
I worked through Covid, the oldest was unable to get a job throughout Covid, he has multiple physical issues that would have made his exposing to Covid stupid. Instead of drawing on the tax payers money I supported his homestay with my own work. He did a number of stupid courses at the beginning of Covid for youth allowance, which were cancelled due to Covid. The anxiety it provoked was so bad for him, I just worked and provided like a good mother would until this world was more palatable. He’s been working full time for 6 months now and has saved a good amount thanks to mum bank. The others finished high school 2022. One of those is working casual trying hard to get a better job. The other is trying to get a job.
Anyways dilettanbeth, hope all is great and perfect for you. That is exactly what we are trying to do. Get a deposit. But a deposit doesn’t guarantee a loan. Circumstance does. 10 more years before we reach that goal with rent/expenses etc. Did you even read all I said? Perfect worlds are rare for plebs.
No-ones world is perfect and I don’t want to seem less than compassionate but there is also accountability for youngsters to be contributors to a household. Sometimes parents are their own worst enemies because they want to do the best for their children.
Ugly fail by Labor here. Cant vote LNP and cant vote Labor anymore. Dillemma.
Well, you’re in Australia with many minor parties and preferential voting.