A budget that blows half a trillion dollars on budget deficits, income tax cuts and business handouts, along with a dollop of infrastructure investment is a tough one to criticise for an opposition. But Anthony Albanese has zeroed in on a key weakness: its failure to support women.
The shrillness and defensiveness of Scott Morrison in response to criticisms of the budget is a signal that an opposition that has struggled to make its mark during the pandemic has found a real sore spot for a government that has few women in senior domestic portfolios.
Not that Albanese’s budget reply wasn’t heavy on the blokeyness. The Liberals might play at interventionist industry policy but Labor is the real deal. A National Rail Manufacturing Plan to build rollingstock in Australia. A $20 billion plan to upgrade the electricity grid via a bespoke power transmission infrastructure company. Apprentice employment requirements for Commonwealth projects.
Let’s do the numbers: the transport equipment manufacturing workforce is 17% women. Heavy and civil engineering employs 18% women. And in 2018, around 25% of apprenticeship commencements were female — a decline from previous years. If the government’s recovery efforts are pitched at blokey industries, Labor is every bit as much and more.
But the dramatic expansion of the childcare subsidy proposed by Albanese — removing the annual family cap, lifting the maximum subsidy rate to 90% and lifting tapering thresholds significantly higher so that all but the wealthiest families will benefit — at a cost of $6 billion over four years places Labor in clear contrast to the government.
The best the government could manage in response to the childcare announcement was to send the risible Jane Hume out to warn it would have “perverse outcomes” and that Labor hadn’t explained how it would pay for it.
Yes, you read that right, a minister in a government that is in the process of borrowing a trillion dollars to fund a decade of deficits is demanding its opponents explain how a program will be paid for.
The indifference to women in the budget emerged on Wednesday and yesterday not from Labor but within the media — prompting a cack-handed intervention by the prime minister’s office that created the unifying hashtag #crediblewomen — and from respected, and certainly credible, independent groups like the Grattan Institute, led by one of Australia’s best economists, Danielle Wood.
It was already established well ahead of the budget that the government’s tax cuts strongly favoured men over women.
The government was woefully unprepared to respond to this, and Scott Morrison, reverting to the thin-skinned, scrutiny-loathing political persona he constantly showed before the pandemic, lashed out in anger at criticisms of the budget yesterday. Asked about older workers being left behind, Morrison accused budget critics of wanting to “set young people against older people, women against men, jobs in one sector versus jobs in another sector — they are the voices of division that will undermine the future economic prosperity of all Australians”.
This is an unusual first in Australian political rhetoric — suggesting that examining and questioning why the government has prioritised some industries and jobs over others, and some demographics ahead of others, in spending a truly staggering sum of borrowed money, is divisive.
Albanese’s announcement echoed a proposal from the Grattan Institute that a significantly greater childcare subsidy form part of the government’s recovery plan, in order to remove the significant disincentive for women to work extra hours when they hit the annual cap. But it also adroitly exploits a feature of Scott Morrison’s political performance.
The prime minister has deliberately cultivated a suburban dad persona, complete with twee cubby-building photos, as a core part of his image. But it’s very blokey, an aspect reinforced by the lack of high-profile women in his domestic political team. Marise Payne and Linda Reynolds may occupy senior portfolios, but they are rarely seen by voters.
In an attempt to remedy that, Morrison has promoted the staggeringly inept Michaelia Cash to the position of deputy leader in the Senate, as Simon Birmingham replaces Mathias Cormann as Senate leader. Cash is almost as much of a scandal-magnet as Angus Taylor, and prone to remarkable misjudgment, but now joins the government leadership team.
But that’s inside the bubble, as Morrison likes to call it. Outside it, the perception Scott Morrison is only interested in male jobs and male-dominated industries have a real foundation.
Really? Labor’s women’s agenda maybe better for women than the Coalition’s just like Penrith is closer to Perth than Sydney. There’s really not that much difference. They both assume, like the many incompetent economists that appear endemic despite their university education, that women’s time to be available for the PAID workforce is like Norman Lindsay’s magic pudding….it never runs out and has no cost. If women are working longer and harder (as they do with increased women’s PAID workforce participation), how is this an improvement in wellbeing? It’s not like there are all these women just lounging around (though it would seem the Coalition thinks this is the case for single mothers).
The real driver, is not women’s wellbeing, nor even families, it’s just that when women with children (& a lot do) enter the PAID workforce, both her paid income and what she spends on commercial childcare is COUNTED in GDP figures. And both Labor and Coalition desire ‘growth’ and productivity and have their policies designed backwards to achieve fake improvements in flawed metrics rather than achieve real outcomes. Of-course relying on longer work hours (paid and unpaid) and harder work by women to achieve ‘magic pudding’ growth is great if you are a bloke….I’m smiling, but my daughter‘s and granddaughter’s futures aren’t so good.
Like the Coalition, Labor’s retirement policies are also anti-women by disproportionally subsidising men through the superannuation taxation breaks and simultaneously ‘taxing’ women more through the means testing of the aged pension. Are both major parties groupings totally blind to the increasing poverty and homelessness of older women, most of whom have contributed greatly to the wealth of the nation through child rearing and the human capital invested therein? I assume they just don’t get it.
And then there is both major parties’ investment in infrastructure. Again, Labor might be slightly better, but still the priority on digging holes, pouring concrete and buying war machines over better hospitals, aged and youngster care, education and the environment clearly shows they care little about human capital formation and utilisation not the ‘care economy’.
Additional:
China would need to be included and it would be usefull strike up agreements or even treaties on disease prevention cooperation with all countries in the region. Much more useful that all of these silly “free” trade agreements.
China may have been a little less than strightforward during the intial outbreak of Sars-Cov2, but they have shared all of their experience with the rest of the world and that has saved a lot of lives.
I don’t agree with Xi Jinping very often (and I’m sure he couldn’t care less about what I think,) but his advice on looking forward rather than backward on the Sars-Cov2 issues is looking on far more fertile ground than that that lays behind us.
Additional Additional:
For God’s sake don’t put Michaelia Cash in charge of our CDC&P.
I thought the thrust of most articles these days is the lack of more women in charge 🙂
She’d be such a MicFailure.
Beautifully put.
Now if only there some way of having enough people understand that.
That’s such a strange comment Mark. Giving women the option of working by providing free or nearly free child care is a godsend for women. It doesn’t insist on them working, just makes it economically viable.
Your other points about superannuation being better for men is actually a corollary of the fact that women take time out of the workforce to look after children, and your mention that women are ‘taxed’ more through means testing of the aged pension is just a little bit bullsh#t. I wonder how you came up with that?
Generally Labor is too close to the LNP, but on women’s policies they are leagues apart.
Sorry, can’t agree with you here. A very strange perspective.
Thanks for the reply Dog. Fair enough thoughts. I have no problem with publicly funded childcare. I try to be cautious of a couple of blokes (there’s an assumption!) saying what women ‘ought to’, but here goes. You mentioned ‘economically viable’. But this means one thing to some and is ‘incentive’ for others. So maybe not ‘insisting’, but there is an element of coercion whichever way you look at it.
Further, women, and mothers in particular, are not unanimous in their views. I assume they are diverse in the views and wishes as us in the minority gender, men. Nevertheless, I would suggest however that a large percentage, perhaps more than 50%, want to spend more time caring for their children particularly infants and resent having to do the housework, cook the meals, organise the household, arrange childcare and get a job that pays money during this time I think research bears this out. I’m of the view that the community ought to pay a generous maternity leave for at least 12 months; despite a few Amazonian types, mothers need to recover from pregnancy, the all to frequent obstetric violence at birth, and then feeding the infant (which according to informed expert health advice involves exclusive breastfeeding for at least 6 months, then mixed breastmilk and family foods for 12 months and beyond). As an aside, I would also suggest you look at publications calling for the counting of human milk production in GDP….yet another failure of that metric.
I’m aware of US research that indicates that infants of working poor (generally of colour) mothers do better in childcare than at home with mum, and that that research has been disingenuously used to argue that infants in Australia do better when in childcare. I just don’t believe it’s true for Australia.
Regarding superannuation.what you say is also true, mothers having less super because of time out for child raising, or elder care. And that is precisely the reason the real Labor government of Curtin deliberately rejected a contributory age income scheme….because people’s contribution can be much more than through earning a paid salary (shame on Hawke, Keating & Ryan, despite their intentions being good).
As for the increased tax, the argument is similar. Women in general have lower superannuation ‘savings’ than men. On retirement they draw down on those savings, and either don’t qualify for the aged pension or the pension is reduced. The reduced pension effectively taxes their super. Far more men, bastards like me, have so much super (thanks to tax breaks) they never are near qualifying for the aged pension, and therefore never see their aged pension reduced. I’d suggest you read some of the publications of that leading Australian feminist economist, Julie Smith on effective marginal tax rates; or even read her book ‘Taxing Popularity’ on tax policy history in Australia. I think it’s the only book on tax that is actually readable by average spuds like me.
‘Leagues apart’, maybe so. But a league is just 3nm (say 5km), so maybe I was wrong with Penrith, so maybe Katoomba or Bathurst (sorry I’m a sailor).
Economists incompetent despite their university education? It seems more likely to be *because of* it. (Disclaimer: I am currently a uni postgrad student, although not in economics)
I thought Albo’s reply speech exhibited some real vision and leadership. But the devil is in the detail. If Labor can find a way to authentically assure coal and gas workers that their jobs are going to disappear (as quickly as can be reasonably managed), and that specific equivalent jobs and opportunities will replace those jobs commensurate with the demise of fossil fuels, it will have cracked the nut. That and shoving a sock in Joel Fitzgibbon.
Then there’s Rupert and the destruction of intelligent life forms on the Anglo/Murdoch planet that don’t conform to the mining and energy agenda set out by Gina&Co.
Australia is a first world embarrassment.
The job numbers and costs are very small. Just transfer them over to hard core land care jobs – where bulldozers, chainsaws and water bombers are still needed – pay them the same – and offer zero redundancy packages – cause everyone gets a new high payng job. That should shut the CFMMEU, AWU et al up. Though they will still find some way to whine that they aren’t getting a massive redundancy payout and instead have to keep working until they are 67 like the rest of us.
Putting Michaelia Cash in charge of anything is like leaving a kamikaze pilot in control. It shows true desperation.
Yet somehow I feel sure that she would be the organiser of the kamikaze pilot reunion dinners.
Ha,ha. Yeah, MC the “Stuka Siren” , only accepting her namesake
for prepaid tickets, cheques not accepted.
It’s stunning that our federal parliament is so unrepresentative of the broader society – less liberal, less secular and with attitudes toward gender that belong to 40 or 50 years ago. Morrison himself seems 10 years older than his age.
Some truly progressive, modern and small ‘l’ liberal women are coming into parliament, but usually as independents, while many of the best women Labor MPs seem corralled by the party’s blokey union-dominated factions.
Why can’t this change? Why can’t we have a parliament that truly reflects a progressive, urban society??
WHY? Because change would require an electorate sufficiently intelligent to refrain from voting against their own best interests.
PJK often quoted his mentor, the Jack ‘the Big Fella’ Lang – “always put your money on self interest because you know it is trying!” but that was preMurdoch who, like Belial, “can make the foul seem fair…with words clothed in reason’s garb/ counselled ignoble ease, and peaceful sloth”.
“A budget that blows half a trillion dollars on budget deficits, income tax cuts and business handouts, along with a dollop of infrastructure investment is a tough one to criticise for an opposition.” – Are you serious? A budget that shafts social housing, aged care, university students, the ABC and everyone on the planet (through lack of climate action) and sets up a decade of service cuts, all in favour of tax handouts to the rich, and you think it’s a tough budget to criticise?
Glad that someone else noticed that there is plenty of scope to critique this reeking mess.
Unfortunately, that would require an Opposition which was not equally complicit and wedded to the past economic fallacies, ie did not vote to bring forward tax cuts for the rich and social cuts for everyone else.
Maybe BK was being a touch ironic in his opening para.
Frydenberg’s budget is the usual grab-bag of ill-formed ideas and half thought out propositions, heavily skewed by a brain-dead ideology that he barely knows he is in thrall to.
I doubt there are more than a handful of LNP members of parliament, or backers, who could put forward an even slightly coherent statement of what it it they believe in and how it leads to the betterment of society. It is why they so regularly put up such contradictory policy – we’re all for freedom, it we want to constantly monitor you, watch you, record every movement, phone call, internet search, and we want you to have almost total freedom, but don’t do any harmless drugs and for god sake don’t be queer and want to marry.
The ideology of the right is an intellectual desert, dry of any coherent ideas or narrative, and the followers are similarly afflicted.
It seems quite clear to be they believe in money and power and the more of it the betterer!