On 26 June 2007 I had the good fortune to be present at a breakfast organised by the Maurice Blackburn Cashman Women's Law Section, where Julia Gillard was a guest speaker. The speech has now been published on Gillard's website, so I thought now is a good time to discuss it without much risk of misstatements.
I must say that Gillard is quite an impressive speaker. If the Labor party had a few more pollies like her I might have considered voting for them in the next election (although they are likely to get my vote on preferences anyway). Ok, enough small talk.
At the start of her speech, Gillard reaffirmed the Labor party's promise to reform and harmonise legislation to protect outworkers in the textile industry (most of them migrant women). She gave examples, from her work as an industrial lawyers, of these vulnerable workers being cheated of entitlements such as annual leave, redundancy, long service leave, or even wages as their unscrupulous employers frequently changed their corporate identities or closed up shop without notice. Labor's promise to reform regulation of outwork is a positive step, as is the plan to "kickstart the development and promotion of the Homeworkers’ Code of Practice and the "No Sweat Shop" label."
One of the most interesting and topical parts of Gillard's speech concerned the impact of AWAs on women in the workforce. She cited recent ABS data which showed "that women working full time on AWAs take home on average $87.40 per week less than their colleagues working on collective agreements based on their rate per hour. Women working on AWAs in casual jobs earn $94 per week less than women on collective agreements."
Women on AWAs also worked longer hours. Gillard referred to a Victorian Government report released in March which revealed "that female full-timers received 5 per cent less per week on an AWA than on a collective agreement even though they worked an additional 1.3 hours per week."
When you think about it - its not that surprising. AWAs have drastically shifted the balance of power between employer and employee. It can be expected that the greater the power imbalance, the more likely it is that the employee can be compelled to accept inferior working conditions. Unfortunately women still have less power in the workplace than men - they are more likely to be found in part-time or casual jobs because of family commitments, they are more likely to be absent from the workforce for extended periods of time to have and care for children, thus reducing their employability. They are also predominantly concentrated in lower paid, lower skilled jobs such as hospitality and retail (which incidentally are the industries that use AWAs the most), making them more "replaceable" and easier to coerce. And women sometimes lack the confidence the bargain as effectively as men (wonder if it has to do with the social conditioning that we should be sweet, non-confrontational peacemakers)
In fact, in her speech, Gillard referred to a report into women in the professions conducted by the Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers, showed that more than half of respondents reported that they were "not very confident" or "not confident at all" in negotiating good remuneration and working conditions with their employer. And these are professional women, who would be expected to be more confident in bargaining that women in non-professional employment. As Gillard pointed out this is a "truly worrying result when the existing industrial laws are predicated on individuals bargaining with their employer."
Julia Gillard talked about Labor's IR policy and parental leave policies designed to make it easier for parents to balance work and family. This policy included 12 months unpaid parental leave to each parent (which may hopefully encourage more men to take up parental leave and give them the opportunity to spend more time with their children) and flexible work arrangements for families with young children. Gillard gave an excellent response to Howard's suggestion that providing parents with more flexibility would discourage employers from hiring women.
When asked about Labor’s policy by journalist Laurie Oakes, the Prime Minister claimed that it would result in employers refusing to employ women with young children.
"You run the risk, Laurie, if you put it into legislation that some employers will avoid employing women, in particular with young children" [Prime Minister John Howard, 29 April 2007]
The Prime Minister used exactly the same argument that was used back in 1979 in connection with the Maternity Leave Test Case of that year. Since that Test Case, women’s participation has increased by more than 30 per cent.
It was a knee-jerk reaction from a man living in the past who thinks women are at the margins of our workforce and employers can simply overlook their participation. A man who fails to recognise our economy’s twin needs of skilled labour and supporting those who are bringing up the next generation.
A callous response from a man who does not even try to understand the anxiety of young women torn between the need to return to work and the desire to see their child take their first steps.
She may have also added that it is a highly hypocritical reaction from a man whose government uses family or children's interests as political slogans when it is convenient, but fails to support policies that would enable parents to spend more time with their children (and with each other) while still being able to participate in the workforce.
Gillard also spoke about other matters, such as superannuation and childcare. Just click on the link above for the whole speech. It's worth a read, as I said, it was a very good speech which I wanted to share.
I am planning to do a series of posts on WorkChoices and AWAs, so if anyone's interested, please keep visiting and, as always, thanks for reading :-)
July 7th, 2007
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Law, Howard government, Industrial relations, Women, Family, Julia Gillard |
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In the previous post I commented on the government plan to "quarantine" a part of the welfare payment to parents who are considered not to be spending enough money on essentials for their kids and what the move meant in terms of using welfare as a means of control.
The federal cabinet approved the plan, also including a provision to cut welfare payments of parents whose children don't attend or play truant from school. It plans to cross-check Centrelink records and school attendance records to identify children who have not been attending school. Presumably such checks will need to be carried out on regular basis for the plan to work and the government hinted that the job would be outsourced to the private sector.
Naturally, ensuring that children attend school is of great importance. But, again, the proposal is about coercing and punishing people who are economically and socially vulnerable, rather than introducing reforms aimed at providing appropriate services and counselling to both parents and students to encourage school attendance. Without focus on affecting social change, the plan is likely detrimental consequences. Consider a student who is discouraged by having to turn up to school in second hand daggy clothes, with second hand books and with no lunch money. Consider the student who stops attending school because he has trouble understanding school material and has no one at home to lend any help. Consider a student with behavioural problems that his parents are unable to adequately cope with. Or even consider a student who feels schooling is pointless because his parents are too stupid or too apathetic to encourage education.
Is this student going to be assisted by his parents having even less money for clothes or books? Is the student likely to be encouraged to attend school or to perform better by being singled out as a delinquent by the government's welfare laws? Are the parents likely to be any more encouraging towards their child because they are singled out as bad parents?
While a punitive or coercive approach may be justified when all other approaches have been tried and failed - the government has not attempted to encourage school attendance or appropriate spending on essentials for children by putting in place positive programs, education or counselling. During the last eleven years the government has done nothing to remedy any of these social ills. It has gone from doing nothing to absolute control and coercion.
There can only be one conclusion - the government's plan is not about bettering the lot of neglected children. It is about control. It is about punishment. It is about treating all welfare recipients as meriting suspicion and being incapable of reforming without coercion. It is about equating poverty with social criminality. The plan is reminiscent of the Elizabethan (as in Elizabeth I) poor laws - the "deserving poor" get our help, anyone defined as "undeserving poor" is put in a pillory or whipped through the streets (or in our more modern version get their payments cut and get labeled as delinquents).
July 5th, 2007
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Australian politics, Howard government, Health and Welfare, Family, Education, Social control |
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I have deferred writing about the Howard government action on child abuse in indigenous communities as I am still in two minds about it. However, one aspect of the plan involves quarantining a portion of welfare payments received by indigenous families to be spent on essentials for children. While the concept of ensuring that children are adequately provided for is attractive in principle, I have wondered about the extent to which this provision will be used to monitor, control and intrude into the family life of welfare recipients and exactly how far the government would be willing to take that intrusion.
Well, if recent reports are true - very far indeed. In fact, the government is reportedly planning on extending that provision nation-wide. Plans reportedly discussed in Cabinet would see laws allowing government to "quarantine" 40% of a family's welfare payment if parents fail to spend the money on essentials like food and rent.
There can be little doubt that parents have a duty to adequately look after their children. But does that mean that a government should be able to dictate how they spend their money? How would the government know whether the parents are failing to spend money on food and rent? How can it know without significant intrusion into their private lives? If the government is to regulate the amount of money spent on food, should it not also regulate what sort of food is purchased? When you think about, feeding your kids only hamburgers and chips is probably worse for them than missing a meal. Should the government make sure that kids have their three serves of veges every day? Should it force parents to spend more money on buying healthy food and less on soft drinks? Should there perhaps be a government inspector assigned to supervise every welfare recipient's trip to the local supermarket?
Yes, I'm being a tad facetious, but the plan is, in essence, to use welfare payments as a means of very close social supervision and control. The persons singled out for this treatment are one of the most vulnerable groups within society. There is of course no logical reason why only welfare recipients should be required to properly look after their children. They are targeted by this plan because the government can most easily control them through controlling their income (for now, that's not to say other groups aren't to follow).
As with the intervention in indigenous communities, the plan is one of coercion. The subjects of this coercion are singled out because they are less economically or socially secure secure. If the government was interested in long-term reforms to foster responsible parenting, it may have focused its attention on parenting, nutrition or budget-management education and counseling for families who are struggling to properly care for the children. It may have preferred to give families in difficulty tools to turn their situation around rather than controlling and directing their expenditure. It may have even (gasp) looked at whether the welfare payments are adequate for giving the children the appropriate opportunities and care.
Of course, use of welfare for social control is not new. But the extraordinary level of intrusion and micromanagement is. It suggests that control rather than meaningful reform is the aim.
July 3rd, 2007
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Australian politics, Howard government, Health and Welfare, Family, Social control |
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Yesterday I wrote about the prejudiced approach of the Howard government to the question of access to assisted reproduction technology, adoption and parental recognition for same-sex couples. I'd like to look at a slightly different aspect of the debate - the use of child rights or best interests of the child rhetoric to justify one's own prejudice and hatred.
Following the release of the Law Reform Commission report, a spokeswoman for the Australian Family Association said that the report "pays lip service to the needs of children" and stated that "We hope that the State Government puts it in the bin. There's virtually nothing in the report that seriously addresses the rights of the child."
Anyone who has read the LRC report will see that the needs and interests of the child are given careful consideration. The AFA statements suggest that they have either not read the report or, which is more likely, are pursuing an agenda which has nothing to do with interests of the child. There is a disturbing practice among right-wing and religious groups to rely on the "right of the child" to justify their bigotry. Anything they don't like - be it homosexuality, childcare or working mothers, they claim it to be against the rights of the child.
Because what is and what is not in the interests of the child is never defined, there is a great deal of flexibility in when this claim can be used. There is a reason why the definition is always absent. Defining what is in the "interests of the child" would immediately reveal the underlying prejudices and enable critique of the definition. It would have to be justified, rather than merely bandied around whenever these "concerned" adults need to conceal or explain away their hatred.
Lets take a look at the AFA and ask whether their rejection of the prospect of same-sex couples or singles adopting/accessing IVF stems from the interests of the child. If it does, there should be no underlying prejudices, there should be no hatred, there should just be concern for the welfare of the children and the basis for that concern should have some foundation based on evidence or objective facts.
The fact that the AFA has misstated the contents of the report is not an encouraging start. But lets look at this organisation's principles and history.
The AFA was formed in 1980 as an off-shoot of the National Civic Council by its then president B.A. Santamaria. Santamaria was a staunch catholic and supported such "admirable" political leaders as Franco and Mussolini. He was so strongly an anti-liberal traditionalist that he broke with the Catholic church because it was too liberal for his liking (he was later reconciled with the church by none other than George Pell, who was apparently conservative enough). By the way, John Howard is reported to have had strong admiration for Santamaria.
Lets take a look at the NCC, which AFA is an affiliate of. Anyone with a strong stomach can head over to their publication website - www.newsweekly.com.au, where they will be treated to interesting articles about how contraception will give you cancer; an account of a "scientific" study which concluded that "married gays" have a 24 year shorter life span, based on overwhelming evidence of reading about 30 obituaries in a newspaper; they will be told about the ground-breaking campaigns of anti-abortion groups and will be pleased to know that climate change is a dangerous myth. Enough said.
If anyone thinks that the AFA fell far from the tree - a visit to their website (www.family.org.au) and a quick search of the internet will tell you exactly what their ideology is and what standpoints their "rights of the child" rhetoric is designed to disguise. Their homepage if filled with calls for censorship, highly "objective" articles about abortion with titles such as "we kill babies", celebrations of Howard government legislating against recognition of foreign same-sex unions under non-positional titles such as "Marriage - We won!" and warnings that "Australia is dying", presumably designed to encourage women to pop out more babies.
The top four links on their link page are Australian Christian Lobby, Endeavor Forum, Festival of Light and Focus on the Family Australia (all of them "Christian-right" organisations.)
If that is not enough, there is an excellent collection of quotes from various publications of the AFA, which very neatly illustrate its views on same-sex relationships, discrimination and, just as interestingly, child abuse. While AFA apparently does not believe that a loving same sex family is in best interests of the child, it is on record as supporting corporal punishment of children and opposing government measures to prevent child abuse! Beating kids is ok, if its done in a traditional heterosexual family.
Anyone who does not yet feel nauseous after reading these statements, consider the following few passages from an article by Bill Muehlenberg of the AFA (http://www.family.org.au/Journals/2003/challenge.htm):
"Even in purely nonreligious terms, homosexuality represents a misuse of the sexual faculty and, in the words of one…educator, of 'human construction.' It is a pathetic little second-rate substitute for reality, a pitiable flight from life. As such it deserves fairness, compassion, understanding, and, when possible, treatment. But it deserves no encouragement, no glamorization, no rationalization, no fake status as a minority martyrdom…"
"…we are "defining deviancy downwards". Deviancy has reached such huge proportions that in order to deal with the problem, we have changed the way we think about normality and abnormality. What used to be regarded as deviant behaviour is now reclassified as normal, and what we used to call normal behaviour we now call abnormal. Thus the only abnormality now is to be "homophobic". Indeed, the pressure by the gay lobby to redefine deviancy resulted in the 1973 decision of the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from the listing in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Mental Disorders (DSM-1)"
"Also, it needs to be stressed than whenever you grant special rights to homosexuals you have to take rights away from other people. If gays are granted special rights to force homeowners to rent to them, those homeowners will have lost certain rights - the right to conscientiously choose who one wishes to rent to, for example. If a homosexual is granted the right to teach sex education in schools, the parent of the child in that school loses the right to have a say in the moral calibre of the teacher.
Admittedly, morality and law is not based on numbers, but how is it fair that one and a half percent of the population should be granted special rights at the expense of the other 98.5 per cent? Why should Australia's four and a half million families be forced to concede rights to Australia's 250,000 homosexuals?"
"discrimination is both desirable and healthy. In the same way that society "discriminates" against 8-year-olds by not granting them licenses to drive, so society "discriminates" against those who choose to remain outside of the institutions of marriage and the natural family."
And my favourite one is:
"And we need to remember that all homosexuals deserve to be treated with respect, love and compassion, even though society has a legitimate right to dislike and censure homosexual behaviour and activity. Society, for example, can rightly disapprove of alcoholism, while seeking to help individual alcoholics. So too, society has a right to deem homosexual behaviour as unhealthy, a threat to the family, and not in the best interests of society, while ensuring that individual homosexuals are not vilified or roughly treated."
What does the above mass of disgusting quotes illustrate? That the AFAs position has absolutely nothing to do with children's interests. It has to do with hatred, it has to do with prejudice, it has to do with medieval, conservative religion-inspired attitudes. The claim of children's rights to mask this bigotry cheapens and devalues these rights, it makes them nothing more than a smokescreen for hatred. It is rank hypocrisy for an organisation which supports beating children and opposes laws to protect children from abuse to use children's rights in such a way. The rights and needs of children are more important than that, as are the rights of people who love a person of the same sex.
Thanks for reading. Now I need to go and scrub my monitor.
June 10th, 2007
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Human rights, Religion, Gays and Lesbians, Family |
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On 7 June 2007 the Victorian Law Reform Commission released the final report into Assisted Reproductive Technology and Adoption.
Among other recommendations, the LRC recommended that same-sex couples not be discriminated against in access to assisted reproduction (such as IVF) and adoption and recognition of parenthood. As the law presently stands only women who are "medically infertile" may access IVF, a child can have only one mother and one father, and only heterosexual families may adopt.
The Bracks government indicated that it would consider the recommendations and make a decision about legislative changes by the end of the year. For all its other flaws, the Bracks government has had a fairly good record on gay and lesbian rights. The Howard government is another matter.
Howard government reaction
The staunchly Catholic Tony Abbott immediately indicated his opposition to the proposals, stating "if possible children should have a mother and a father, not just two mothers or two fathers. I'm not attracted to the Victorian Law Reform Commission's view."
He called the LRC recommendations "a sort of misguided political correctness" and stated "I don't, as a general rule, think that gay couples should be adopting."
Howard, having just defended Catholic church interference in politics, added a few comments of his own:
"Children should have a mother and a father … it gives children the best opportunity in life …"
"I'm not saying gay and lesbian people don't display enormous affection towards children. I think there are certain benchmarks in our society that should be respected and adhered to and practised and that's one of them."
He also called for a uniform approach to fertility treatment and adoption across the country (ie lets all do it my way) and ruled out the possibility of Medicare coverage of IVF treatment for women who were not medically infertile (social engineering is so much easier if you control the purse-strings).
The circle of prejudice
The Howard government approach is an example of self-perpetuating prejudice. That prejudice becomes apparent if one looks at the statements made by Howard and Abbott and simply asks "why".
Why is it that "children should have a mother and a father, not just two mothers or two fathers"? (note the use of the words "not just", suggesting that two mothers or two fathers is an inferior arrangement).
Why is it that having a mother and a father "gives children the best opportunity in life"? Is there any evidence that children from same-sex families do worse in life that children from heterosexual families?
Why is it that a heterosexual family is on of the "certain benchmarks in our society that should be respected and adhered to and practiced"? Who sets those benchmark? Who decides which benchmarks should be respected and adhered to? Who decides whether a traditional heterosexual family is one of those benchmarks?
The concept of the traditional family, its "benchmarks" and the respect demanded for those benchmarks have their roots in prejudice. Prejudice against gays and lesbians, whose sexuality was traditionally condemned as criminal or perverted or both), prejudice against single parents, prejudice against families that did not fit into the religiously-defined traditional family. The nuclear family was defined by the exclusion of those families that were the victims of the prejudice.
The bigotry of the past is then used to perpetuate the prejudices of the present. The Howard government statements display this circular reasoning:
why shouldn't gays and lesbians have children? -> because children should have a mother and a father -> why? -> because it is one of the benchmarks that should be respected/adhered to -> who established it as one of the benchmarks? -> people who thought that gays and lesbians shouldn't have children.
All the government is doing is using the prejudice of the past (which it agrees with) to justify and disguise its prejudice in the present. It is not about rejection of "misguided political correctness", it is about embracing discrimination, inequality and hatred. It is about rejecting equal rights for people on the basis that the person they love is of the same sex. "This is how we've always done it" is not a good enough excuse to justify attitudes that have no place in the modern society.
June 9th, 2007
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Human rights, Howard government, Health and Welfare, Gays and Lesbians, Family |
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