Volume 2   Number 4

Email: waa@womensactionalliance.com.au

Website: www.womensactionalliance.com.au

September 2006

 

 

 

 

“CARE FOR KIDS”

LABOR’S EARLY

CHILDHOOD BLUEPRINT

At the end of July the Leader of the Opposition Kim Beazley delivered Labor’s Early Childhood Blueprint “Care for Kids” 

 

After acknowledging parenting as “the most important job there is” and as “nation building around the kitchen table” he summarised Labor’s Blueprint as “better quality, less expensive childcare with fewer shortages and more support for children at home.”

 

We turned with particular interest to the section on support for children at home. There Mr Beazley said “the work a woman does in the home with her children is easily as important, as demanding, as satisfying and as valuable as the work anyone in Australia does in an office or on a factory floor.” So it was a bit disappointing to find that this section comprised only two pages out of the total of eleven.

 

The major components were more support for breastfeeding and playgroups – both valuable. Breastfeeding rates in Australia are well under world average - at least in part due to mothers returning to paid work in greater numbers and earlier than in the past.

 

 It also included a commitment to  allow mothers (he called them ‘employees’ – no-one seems to want to say the word ‘mother’ anymore) to request two years unpaid maternity leave plus a right to return to work part time or with flexible hours. Employers would be able to refuse the request on reasonable grounds. 

WAA wrote to Mr Beazley in

VIEW  FROM  QLD ……...

response. We congratulated him on his commitment to breastfeeding and playgroups and to providing part time work with flexible hours. But we also said “... we wonder what factors made you shrink from biting the bullet and promising two years compulsory unpaid maternity leave where requested. That would have been a policy”.

 

Many women would still elect to undertake the major part of the caring role when their children are very young if they felt confident that their professional work roles would not be seriously compromised by periods spent out of the paid workforce undertaking caring roles.

 

Other WAA policies that we recommended to his attention were

1. Freezing of the HECS debt of women who are out of paid work caring for young children.

2.Greater availability of affordable retraining for those who have left their paid positions for a number of years.

3. The cost of subscriptions to professional journals to be tax deductible for those who are involved in the full time care of preschool and primary aged children

4.  The ABS Time Use Survey to be performed every five years - to provide up to date accurate data on the extent and value of mother work to better inform policy formation.

Over the past month, the political scene in Queensland has been dominated by the state election, held on Saturday 9^th September. Premier Peter Beattie and the ALP have been given an overwhelming mandate for a record fourth term in government, holding fifty-nine of the eighty-nine seats in the Queensland Parliament. It seems that the win was on the basis of a publicly-perceived lack of real alternative.

 

Despite a third term in which the ALP government went from one crisis to another in vital areas of health, water supply, power distribution, child safety and infrastructure, the Opposition National and Liberal Coalition failed to present a viable alternative government. A strong Opposition is healthy for democracy. Without an upper house in this state, it cannot be good government when one party holds such a large majority. The Opposition must do some soul-searching and formulate coherent policies for the good of all Queenslanders.

 

With five new Labor women joining the new Queensland Parliament, female representation is now over one-third of the House. Anna Bligh remains as Deputy Premier, Treasurer and now Minister for Infrastructure, overseeing infrastructure delivery including the water grid, urban management and planning. Six of the seventeen Cabinet Ministers are women. Linda Lavarche, Attorney General and Minister for Justice is the new Minister for Women. Her predecessor in the women’s portfolio, Desley Boyle, is now the Minister for Child Safety. Rosemary Menkins is the Shadow Minister for Women

 

Queenslanders can only hope that ministers in the newly-elected Parliament demonstrate strong management to ensure that the crises that have dogged the Government in recent years become stories of the past.

 

Cavell Caldwell

Queensland President