 Hello and welcome to this International Women's Day webcast. We're being brought to you live through the generous support of Redback Conferencing and they have provided the facilities and the technology to us and have helped us pull this event together in less than a week and we're very grateful. My name is Georgina Dent and I'm the contributing editor of Women's Agenda. We have three fabulous women here today to discuss how the new federal laws will leave women and children worse off and I'll introduce each of them now. So we've got Dr Cassandra Goldie who is the CEO of the Australian Council of Social Services which is the peak body for the community services sector in Australia. She is a strong advocate for action to reduce poverty and inequality. Hi Georgie. Hi Cass. We've got Samantha Page down the end who is the CEO of Early Childhood Australia the peak advocacy body for children under eight, their families and early childhood professionals. And then finally next to me we've got Professor Marion Baird who is the co-director of the Women, Work and Leadership Research Group at the University of Sydney Business School. She is an expert on women and leadership on paper and to leave schemes and organizational responses to the changing gender and age demographics of the workforce. Welcome to three of you. Hello. Happy International Women's Day. I know. I know. To everybody. So look together we're going to unpack what's been going on with the proposed changes to childcare subsidies, to paper and to leave family tax benefits and a series of measures that if they come to pass we have reason to believe they will leave women and children worse off. Mostly this has revolved around the government's promise three years ago to fix childcare even though it does feel like longer than three years. I'm not alone in feeling that. But the combination of making those promises and the determination to make budget savings have combined and put us in the position we're in currently. So before we get into the substantive conversation I just wanted to say that there will be an opportunity to ask questions. So if you have any questions at this point feel free to type them in and they'll come up and at 3.15 we will get through as many as possible. The current situation is that the government has combined the Jobs for Families childcare package bill into a welfare savings bill and it includes reducing the amount of paid parental leave that's available to women and seeks further cuts to family tax benefits. This bill has passed the lower house twice and been referred to a Senate committee inquiry. You can find a link to the submissions to that inquiry on the site of this webcast. Some of the crossbench senators are talking about splitting the bills and to help us to understand that a little bit more I'd like to ask some at the page why you think these bills should be separated. Sure, so early childhood Australia and many others in the early childhood sector believe the package should never have been brought together with the welfare spending cuts and the changes to pay parental leave. Investment in early childhood education is not a welfare spend. It's an investment in education of young children and an investment in workforce participation. The economic modelling that was done by PricewaterhouseCoopers specifically on the childcare package as proposed in the legislation demonstrates that it pays for itself within three to four years. It really should not be linked to or reliant on cuts in other areas in order to pass the childcare reform legislation and it should be dealt with separately on its merits and we've been pretty clear about that from the beginning and we're very disappointed to see the childcare package in the omnibus bill. Cass Acos has expressed some concerns as well about these bills. Can you talk to me about that concern? Well really serious concern, Georgie. I mean the big picture here it's important for us to ground this discussion is that we do an analysis about the level of poverty in Australia so almost three million people are living below the poverty line in Australia despite being a very wealthy country and over 20 years of pretty strong economic growth and we have 730,000 kids living below the poverty line and one of the groups most adversely affected by not having enough are absolutely single parent households and over 80% of those households are headed by women and in those households 40% of the kids are living in poverty so we should be really, really concerned we scrutinising carefully the big discussion about where savings should be made what we should be doing with the budget of course that's how this has all been framed up the World Economic Forum said just last week the biggest risk to economic strength of a country is growing inequality so let us get this clear this is about good economics, good social outcomes as well the government has been relentlessly pursuing welfare cuts we have ACOS, this is our area of expertise we have promoted and supported a range of savings I won't go through them all now but roughly we think that we have delivered in conjunction with the government about 20 billion in savings for what might have been seen as welfare that was not well targeted something like the age pensioners you know, chlorine about the assets test this bill contains welfare cuts that we say and we know will directly hit the incomes of the lowest income families including single parents and their children and so we've had a big contest in the parliament about it you're quite right, we've at this point in time got enough cross benches to say they've looked at the detail they are not prepared to support those measures the family payment cuts, there's another one the pensioner education supplement many women are affected by that these are all measures that will particularly hit women and of course they say well you've got to do that because if you want your investment in childcare they haven't been doing that on some of the other measures and I'm happy to talk about the gender issues here the tax cut that was delivered last year for people on $80,000 and over benefits mainly, higher income men nobody had to find savings amongst higher income men in order to fund that so this is a very gendered picture as we see it as well and I think the fact that it is International Women's Day today and I think it's worth noting that in no uncertain terms that these are seen as women's issues that are being couched as welfare spends when that's not actually how they necessarily ought to be characterised Marion, another welfare measure that I don't think should be defined as welfare but it is, is paid parental leave so currently the bill allows women to claim up to 18 weeks of leave at the minimum pay as well as any employer funded entitlements that they get this as you know has been offensively labelled as double dipping even though it was actually part of the rationale for the introduction of a minimum wage scheme in the first place what would be the impact of these proposed changes to paid parental leave on women? Yes, well look, first of all let me start by saying one of the big issues is this problem about calling it a welfare payment as you've observed because the current parental leave scheme is really designed around two primary objectives and one is to increase women's participation in the paid workforce and as Cass has said these sort of issues about participation, productivity and economic growth are always examined by think tanks, big corporates around the world and they all say to increase Australia's GDP, to increase our productivity we need to increase the number of women in the paid workforce so on the one hand we've got that policy objective and then on the other hand we've got this omnibus bill lumping areas that will really affect both women's ability to participate but also increase inequality so what I do want to say here is that I think it's an incredible shame and a terrible indictment on policy development in Australia that we now have pieces of legislation that had been carefully thought out in the past lumped together in this one bill and seem to be really having to fight each other so that's probably why we all need to separate them again and say the issues are very clear these are three separate areas that all need careful attention in a policy sense we need to link them but we don't need to trade one off against the other that's really important so back to what would happen so if the paid parental leave changes go through women would lose just the headline any woman who works for hospital or teachers at the moment or works in the public services of the various states and the federal government will lose somewhere up from $9,400 they'll just lose that straight out because that will be cut from their parental leave payment that they currently receive from the government if you work in the private sector and for example say your company offered 10 weeks paid parental leave to supplement the minimum payment through the government scheme those employees will lose $6,700 to $7,000 straight up so these are enormous cuts we're talking about a lot of money that not just women have factored into the planning for having children but so have their whole households and so if we think about the implications of that first of all there's a cut to their income when they have a new member of the family so obviously there's already pressure in the household if there's a cut to income people then, and we know from the research that the biggest motivating factor to return to work is actually loss of income people will be forced back into the workforce earlier with younger children which puts immediate pressure back on the childcare system so it's a really ludicrous situation we're now in and the paid parental leave bill was not developed out of thin air it's had decades of preparation we have evaluated it the Productivity Commission has worked on it we have had Senate inquiries into it we know it's working well so to now unravel it and unpack it is a really sorry state of affairs and I'm just shocked that Australia has got to that point and that on International Women's Day 2017 we still have to argue the case for what around the world are actually seen as legitimate public policies I mean Marion, Georgie you may not know this but actually Marion and I worked very closely together back at the point of the very early design and thinking that was being done around the fact but at that point Australia had virtually no statutory paid we had no statutory paid parental leave scheme whatsoever and I was working at the Human Rights Commission with Liz Broderick, the Sex Discrimination Commissioner at the time and this was very carefully designed when it was delivered by the government at the time it was always seen as being a first stage it was always seen as a first minimum step in the right direction and when the former Prime Minister Tony Abbott was promoting the so-called role goal scheme we said his framing of it was right he said it is a workplace entitlement we should be trying to secure six months income replacement the debate was how you financed it and in the early design of it there was always an expectation that once the first stage was implemented that there would be the evaluation test to see what was the reaction from employers how it was delivering on expected outcomes both benefits for babies and for parents and then we would have a further look not about how to claw it back but actually how to finance getting us to where we really want to be because it's a very modest scheme it's a very low level of paid parental leave in Australia compared to other countries and it does beg a belief to me that that impact on babies is completely missing it's missing from the evaluation it's missing from the legislation it's certainly missing from the rationale for changing the scheme there's just no recognition that World Health Organisation recommendations have been incontrovertible for a long time that babies should have 26 weeks at home with their parents and look, if they come into childcare younger then that will do our very best to give them the best possible start but ideally they stay at home with their parents for 26 weeks and that's what we should be aiming for that is a genuine real option for families and parents without asking people to impoverish themselves or sell their house to fund it that's right we knew that there were women who were being forced back to work within weeks because there was absolutely no income guarantee if they took time at home with their baby, new baby and I think the point that you have all raised is that you could be forgiven if you flip through the newspapers over the last two years you could be forgiven for thinking that there has been no research in this area that we are not equipped to manage these issues but the reality is all countries have been managing women working and having children for a number of years and Australia is, in OECD terms, we really are lagging I think America is the only country that's behind us in terms of our parental leave payments and it is quite extraordinary to consider that we have what was proposed as the starting point is now being wound back that's right and again it seems that there is very little understanding and I might be mistaken here but on the part of the decision makers they seem to be blind to these consequences Cass, you have touched on this we might add to that that the decision makers in this bill are all men well that's a shared theme from all of us shouldn't we have escaped anybody that the senior minister is responsible for the design of all of these measures are all men yes, we need to take note of that and that also feeds into the question that I was going to ask you Cass about what you touched on but it is across the board these changes to family tax benefits to the childcare system to parental leave they do seem to be having a disproportionate impact on women so there does seem to be a sort of gender blindness in a sense can you talk about how you see that how these proposed changes so look just earlier today I was at an event being hosted by the Australian Financial Review and of course over there there are very significant powerful voices continuing to prosecute the we need to get cut to the company tax rate now if you get into the sophisticated economic analysis for the cost that will be to the budget there is a serious question over the value for the return there is nowhere near the debate going on about that in contrast to seriously good investment in the areas that we are talking about and Marion has alluded to that the economic analysis that has been done about the GDP lift to really supporting women's work for participation without trading off the well-being of children and families and so we have got this perception and it is a reality that on the one hand governments and they are being led by male leaders at this time who are persistently prosecuting the notion that you just need to lower taxes thank you very much we'll take a tax cut if we're on high incomes mostly men and this cuts the company tax rate but in these areas it is again like sorry women you've really got to step up trade off do the hard work give up something in order to get something now none of us ever wanted to be in that position that is not the way to do good policy but I really think it is important for us to call this to say this is what we are seeing and I don't think it is escaping the people in the community who see this very uneven approach and if there is one thing that we don't talk enough about in terms of the wellbeing of community how do we build resilient societies we've got a concern about some of the debates going on in Australian society creating enough capacity for people to spend time with people they love spend time with their care really is important and that is not to be just soft hearted that is a human need and at the same time for us to get a balance in terms of the investment in these areas we are talking about early childhood education and care and the early years for children whether you are talking to a social policy expert or an economic expert or frankly the Gonski panel they all said this has to be a top priority for Australia because we really are lagging behind we shouldn't accept the fact that by the time children get to primary school we are going to always have the highest higher level of children hitting primary school with the level of disadvantage that we are currently seeing we can really change that but we've got to get these policies right we are probably all showing our age how many times were we told 2015, 10 years ago you have to have the evidence there just isn't the evidence about what works or what policy would be effective in these areas we've got so much evidence now it's coming out of our ears we must not consider legitimate or the policies aren't connecting to the research I mean the research into the value of investing in early learning is completely you cannot argue against it it's the strongest research I've ever seen and yet it doesn't seem to be influencing policy in the way you would expect it to influence policy it does seem to be an ideological debate as much as it is a debate about evidence and if I have one more minister in the suit in his fifties tell me what has to happen to get women back to work as a mother, as a single parent as someone who is heading up an organisation that's been advocating for women's workforce participation for 75 years I think we have a really informed opinion about that and we could be providing a lot of good advice on how to construct the package how to make paid parental leave work better how to address inequality and improve outcomes for young children but we're just not being listened I feel frustrated that we're not being listened I share that frustration and I think that the across the board because I listen to what each of you say and I think about this in the context of women in businesses as well and I think there's so much compelling evidence that a more diverse leadership group creates more profit and that's just one aspect that's not the reason why we should have more diverse leadership in terms of their businesses you would think would be compelled by that sort of by the financial imperative but they're not and it takes me it brings me to the point that I don't think the solutions are beyond us but it does seem that the intent to implement those solutions is beyond us Sam can I ask you to elaborate a little bit on your on the opposition to the childcare bill as it stands children and why is that not acceptable sure, so overall we do support the direction that the bill is taking childcare subsidies so anybody who's had anything to do with the delivery of early childhood education care or using children services would know that the current system is something of a basket case with multiple subsidies that nobody despite how familiar you might be with the system can actually calculate with any accuracy what one family might be eligible for is far too complicated and so the new the bill that's put in the parliament at the moment takes that very complex system, streamlines payments into a single subsidy and then applies a work activity test and a means test at the same time which will see the subsidy a lot more generous for low and middle income working families a bit less generous for very high income families but we are talking over 300,000 per annum in household income and most families in fact we estimate that 3 out of 4 families that are using childcare will be better off under the new system the caveats on it are that the emphasis is very much on workforce participation it's really dropped what we used to call the dual pillar of child development so we used to talk about early childhood education and care as achieving two goals one is about child development one is about workforce participation and this package seems to be too weighted towards workforce participation and that means that it's reduced access to childcare subsidies for families that aren't meeting a much more demanding activity test than currently applies to the childcare rebate so under the new system both parents have to be working or studying or volunteering there are a few different definitions of activity but both parents need to be meeting it and they need to be meeting it all of the time and so what we're concerned about is the families that are in insecure work casual work, contract work in between jobs for given time and what that will mean for children's participation if they're in and out of services if they're dropping in and out of eligibility for subsidy the other thing we're concerned about is the safety net so there is a minimum amount of 12 hours a week for families under 65,000 in household income so that is low income families a minimum of 12 hours a week 12 hours a week just isn't enough it's not enough to provide two days a week of a quality early learning program so it really needs to increase at least 15 hours which is the preschool equivalent we'd like to see it higher, 18 hours would be even better and then the other area of safety that we're concerned about is the children in rural or remote areas and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children so we know that there are big barriers to access and participation in rural or remote areas and the way those services have been funded in the past is through a block grant funding model and moving them on to a mainstream subsidy system is problematic and we need the government to address that in this package and come up with a better strategy for ensuring rural or remote services are available and then Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children we know are twice as likely to start school vulnerable on more than one developmental domain and they very rarely catch up from that and so as a consequence they're less likely to do well at school to enjoy school to get the benefit out of schools that the other children enjoy and to go on and complete school and go on to tertiary or trade qualification training so we've I think that's been long identified that getting a better early education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children is a national priority, needs to be a national priority we need a higher safety net in terms of number of hours for Aboriginal children because a lot of them are in mainstream services so a higher number of hours but also security and sustainability for the Aboriginal services that are operating around the country which are used by a lot of Aboriginal families and so these are aspects of the bill that can be changed so the bill can be amended, we've proposed some amendments we've worked with the government and those amendments it's not we're not blocking the legislation but there are some important amendments that are needed to make it fair and this could and could still because it hasn't been legislated yet so there's still time and that's why we're here this could be reworked to deliver on the best expertise right across the country and globally around early learning for children which is a huge benefit to be gained by children accessing a minimum of two days per week this is 2017 that is well understood we see of course high income families who will of course be having their children at the right age going into early learning opportunities because they know it's great for early learning developmental needs and so this idea that the only way you can access it the government support to do that is if you are in workforce participation arrangements completely cuts out that guarantee that's what we should be working to in a country like Australia this is absolutely doable but the government you're saying Sam has a single focus it seems on well if you're going to be allowed to put your kids into early learning opportunities you've got to pay for it by going to work well it's also it's out of touch with the reality of people's lives it's not like you can put your name down on the casual roster at Coles get the call and say oh I'll just sort out childcare I'll just find a childcare spot and put my child in for the day in a place where they've never been before with educators they've never met before that's just not reality that's not how it works and we have one informer in USA women in the workforce are in casual or part-time work arrangements they need to have childcare in place already before they are able to go and put their name down for more shifts or to take up the extra work that they might be looking for it's just the wrong way around to see it as an incentive that if you get more work then you'll get more childcare subsidy that just to me that's wrong it's not real world it's not in touch with people's lives what we know is that the majority of single mother households mother is working what we know is most women feel under-employed when they're in casual and part-time arrangements there's no need to incentivise work women want to work but you've got to make it possible and to make it possible children need to go somewhere that's feeling secure it's regular they know the educators they know the other children they're settled and work can happen instead of this idea that we're going to take it away from you when you lose a shift or when you're on a part-time contract now I know there are some I don't want to over-simplify it there are some clauses in the legislation that will allow for people on casual and contract work but I don't think it's enough it would be so much easier if we could say two days a week for children and then if you're working you can have more days I also just want to be clear that we're not here saying all children should go two days a week from the time maybe that's not the argument at all the argument is that if children are going to attend early learning they should get at least two days so that they have regular participation it's still an option for families it's not a compulsion and we're not advocating five days a week do you know what I mean it's two days a week that we know children can cope with and they'll benefit from and that can be a regular level of participation I mean in terms of my understanding of the research is that that's where you actually get the richest return on the investment in early learning which is why having that sort of framework for children in that category it's a compelling case for doing that that's right, particularly in those critical two years before school if children can get it should be three or four days in those two years before school you can actually equalize opportunity you can actually overcome the vulnerability that those children might walk in the door with before they transition to school so that's really significant but also for younger children they're often coming from vulnerable families and having two days a week of stability in a quality program with good relationships with educators can also be a very beneficial experience and it stabilizes families that are vulnerable are often in insecure housing, insecure work they've got a lot of things to do just to get through the week so providing that support to them it's not particularly expensive and I think that we'll see the lift in workforce participation that's predicted we will, we'll see more people working more hours as a result of the subsidy reform but there's no need to cut loose those vulnerable families we can afford to support them too Marion I wanted to talk to you now about the because another issue that comes up a lot with casual work the casualized workforce in particular is pay equity it tends to be lower paid jobs when it's a casual the basis on which you're working I'm interested to know from you how do you think the recent penalty rates decision will impact women, what does the likely impact there Yes well the penalty rates decision is another example unfortunately of a policy that will have a more negative effect on women because that's where women tend to work so women cluster into what we call feminized industries and two of those are hospitality and retail so that's the first issue we know there are more women in those sectors 55 to 56 57% the second issue is that because of the childcare pressures women often opt for weekend work when their partners or other family members can do childcare so now we're seeing a double hit in a sense on these women they're working on social hours and they're missing out on family time and the time use research does show that weekend work is detrimental to people's social relations Sunday work particularly and the work on Sundays and the family time or community time you lose is never recaptured if you work on a Sunday and that makes sense to all of us what happens on a Sunday doesn't happen on a Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday or Saturday so there is a penalty for those women already working those days so to cut the penalty rate will affect women now penalty rates were originally introduced for two reasons one they were a deterrent to companies to open on the days that the community felt were days for the family and community so Saturday and Sunday and then more later Sunday and secondly they were to provide some compensation to people who worked on those days for the fact that they were missing out on regular family and social time so what this decision is really also saying that those women or anyone who works on those days is no longer missing out on that family time which I find a bit paradoxical because if we're arguing that we've moved to a 24 seven society and so people don't go to church on Sundays now but they use it to go and eat out together or shop together isn't that community time too but we're saying that the people who work those days shouldn't be compensated for the time they spend at work so it will have an impact it will have an impact on women who are already in low paid jobs these are often women who have downgraded their jobs because they need the more flexible hours and because they need the care on the weekend so I am I am really disappointed to see that decision and I think we will see women having to do one of two things either decide not to work on the Sunday or actually have to increase their hours in order to meet their financial commitments and of course you know we know that we've got a gender pay gap Australia move we haven't sorted that have we no we do 18% and it's actually gone up a little bit it's hovering around there it goes up and down a bit but it certainly isn't decreasing that's right and then in the bigger context again about you know what's going on in terms of who is the sort of distribution or the share of the benefits of growth of economic activity the public is absolutely right to be seeing the fact that we've got this low growth in wages generally that we've got this down when pressure on low paid work that's right we're highly casualised and profit margins are huge that's it and again you know sort of a line which is what we need to do as a country is cut taxes so the outcome of this cannot be that we see low paid workers in Australia taking home less that cannot be the outcome and each of us have talked about the importance of the right kind of flexibility let us focus on the machinery that we need to get the right kind of flexibility the reciprocity between employers and you know people participating in the workforce and I come back to your point Sam about the barriers to greater flexibility part of employers frustration is some of this chaos around childcare arrangements being able to take up shifts quickly all the rest of it but it would be extraordinary for us to see that the next most significant reform in the wages area is a further cut to the incomes of low paid people in Australia Sam, two things I'm sure you may have seen Fairfax Media published a piece today which is the case of a woman who is qualified as a childcare educator but she's actually working as a cleaner at a childcare centre and she's earning more as a cleaner than she was as an educator this is alarming at the best of times but it's also particularly relevant today because a lot of childcare educators are walking off the job in about 13 minutes at 3.20 I understand because they are taking home such a little wage can you talk about that Sam? Yes more power to those who are walking off today and thank you to the parents who are supporting them in doing that we've had a lot of positive commentary from parents who do understand how important the work of early childhood education is and the fact that early childhood educators are qualified at 3 or a diploma or a teaching qualification and yet they're paid very poorly in comparison to others in the teaching world and the education world and in fact in comparison to fitter and machinists they understand from the article that ran on the weekend it is really time that we recognised just how significant children's development is in the early years how much brain development happens in the first three years, how critical it is that we're giving children the best possible start before they transition to school to learn the critical skills they need to engage in education and they're not learning your ABC they're actually learning about getting along with others following each other's direction, cooperating collaborating, negotiating being able to manage your own emotions these are the critical skills that children in that year or two before school need so early childhood educators are doing very important work and it is time that we recognise that and it's really just an accident of history that this work has been devalued in comparison to work that is say in the manufacturing arena or other industries and it's time we fixed it it requires a one-off significant adjustment to fix it and I'm not underestimating what a significant adjustment we have 150,000 educators in Australia it's a big adjustment but we are hoping there is a gender parity case before the Fair Work Commission and we fingers and toes crossed that that comes to a good conclusion I suppose one of the difficulties is that we've seen the cost of childcare and the amount of money that parents but also the government are spending on subsidies has increased exponentially but none of that has gone to an increase in the pay of the educators some of it has so some of the price increases are about wage but that increases to the minimum wage and flow on through the awards so usually about half of the percentage increase in childcare fees every year is related to wage increases but it's minimum wage increases it's not it's not a structural adjustment of what we're talking about in terms of lifting wage rates to a better, more equitable level I just wanted to remind people that are listening that we will be taking questions soon so if you've got any feel free to send those through Cass on that subject of the pay gap what can what do you think we can do to move let's get the list out shall we for him so I think this the issue of the valuation of work is really one of the big outstanding agendas for all of us I absolutely hear what Sam says I think the term sort of accident might be a little bit kind today about what kind of time that work value and I think in the if we draw a little on some of what we've seen for example in the US where people in the community have watched people doing certain kinds of work who are getting paid extraordinary levels of money the kind of executive bonus that happen you would know George yourself and Marion you know that we have a gender pay gap that's pretty offensive at that level you know when we look at the gap in terms of who gets the bonuses at the high end and you know and there is something that's deeply cultural in this which just needs to be consistently called out one of the most important things is full transparency now it's not popular to talk about that but I tell you what you know having been in the rooms where a young say in the legal profession I've seen it happen where we were interviewing them and the female said oh this is you know and she turned around to her male colleague and he was getting thousands more than her on the first round of pay negotiations for absolutely no reason whatsoever and she didn't know that until that moment and often in this it gets talked about oh women here is a deficit of women of course you know oh we're just not tough enough we just don't negotiate hard enough you know what are we trying to value here what kind of behaviours do we want to value what I think and we talk about as a feminised characteristic I certainly don't want this to be seen as it's only women that behave in a particular way only men that behave in another way but in terms of behaviours what we typically see in a feminised way is some factoring in a circumstance I've been in workplaces in caring industries where women will factor in if I push for more I can see the consequence of this will be a lack of services why don't we actually value that and at the same time say there's a culture from the top that says we are committed to ensuring often more male dominated may I say the high up you get decision making and employers it's more men to say we're not having that we're not going to take that we're going to value the fact that you are doing this but we're going to ensure that there is full equity so in some countries we are up to date on some of this we have corporations and enterprise that fully publish all of what everybody is getting paid and wow that has a pretty stunning effect it's not the only thing I think but I think that's certainly something I think is well and truly overdue it is interesting because Australia does have a leading program in terms of reporting so what companies do actually provide to the workplace gender equality agency is world class what's interesting is that I think on the latest figures it's less than a quarter of those organisations who are forced to report on their pay have actually done an audit themselves so I mean they've got all that information there they're required to report and they do report not only a quarter or less act on it and it is interesting because if I have interviewed a number of and queued us to them there's a couple of male CEOs and managing partners of law firms who have come out and said I didn't think the pay gap existed I thought why on earth would we pay men any more than we pay women and they did Henry Davis York is one law firm that did it and the pay gap was about 20% and so they said about changing it the CEO of Channel 10 did the same thing the only way it's changed is if you actually look into your data assess the problem and then you change it but there doesn't seem to be that's not happening nearly enough now we have got a question here from Emily and she says sole mother poverty seems to be largely ignored by mainstream feminism at a time when feminist activism is increasing when it comes to women's economic security issues such as the gender pay gap dominate discussion we're guilty of that however this is one small part of the equation for sole mothers how can we encourage more debate and action around sole mother poverty and women and class more broadly I think it's a great question I mean I've certainly thought a lot about this personally having been in an environment where we're very strongly looking at sort of gender policy issues and then more recently being in the Australian Council of Social Service where there's a very strong focus on particularly for people on low income and that the experience of you know in any sort of you know how you identify your lived experience can be very different depending on your economic circumstances and I don't think we should just say well it's up to wealthier women to carry the charge for lower income women but I do think you know collectively for us to some people say oh well we know what we've forgotten to do is continue to talk about class now whether that's the term you want to use or you know something else economic circumstances I absolutely think it's crucial that we ground our discussions in what I might call some of the brand brother circumstances of families because one of the issues is that of course in every day in the lived experience you will choose to be where you can depending on what you're dealing with and if you are on very very low incomes and I've given you the very clear picture about the level of poverty and how that particularly affects single parents and overwhelmingly that is about women and their children you will be making a decision today to work on finding more employment which is absolutely what women are trying to do rather than being involved in what might be seen as a loftier debates about number of women on boards and so collectively we need to be going where does our collective voice need to be at any given time and I certainly think this is you know an example of where we've absolutely wanted to call it out across the board to see the connection between the two but can't assume for example that if you fix gender equality on boards we're going to be dealing with the issues of women who do not have genuinely do not have five dollars at the end of a week to enable their child to go and do a bit of sport and you know we've had this relentless push from government it was a labour that started it during Julia Gillard's prime ministership where they cut you know single parents payments and as a result we saw we've done the analysis we've seen an increase in the child poverty rate as a result of that measure that was done on the labour government you know they increase the age pension but they cut the income so I think I think it's a good debate for us to continue to have about the public perception of being a single parent you know I think that there is a less tolerance to this notion that we've had a politician recently have a crack right it's just appalling it's absolutely appalling it's just graceful and of course more power to the single parents that have absolutely mobilised to be speaking up particularly low page in low economic circumstances and being proud of the really important they do it's one of the personally I can't stand the term jobless families because I can tell you if you're in a family and you've got kids you're working very very hard to make ends meet and look after your kids at the same time but I think also it is such a big I think Bob Hawke did us no favours back in the 80s when he declared no child to live in poverty because it's like we haven't been able to talk about child poverty since then so parent poverty is very tied up with child poverty and the fact that we're not doing enough about that and we're not talking about it and I don't necessarily think it's the job of feminism there's a movement to do that but I do think as a society what kind of society do we live in that we don't care that children are missing out and missing out every day and missing out every weekend because we're not prepared to address the horrific rates of child poverty that we have in this country and we need to talk about it so the other problem I think is that family payments became mired in a debate about middle class welfare for a while so the assumption was that all family payments were there for middle class welfare and indeed I know ACOS and Early Childhood Australia supported early rounds of cuts to family tax benefit for that reason they were poorly targeted they were going to families that didn't need them but we've done that hard work there are no middle class welfare payments these days and the cuts that we're talking about now are cutting much deeper to low income families and it's time we all got concerned about that I think not just the feminists or the women but everybody in the 30th anniversary year though of the famous commitment from Prime Minister Hawke he delivered it's not the story that gets told but with the policies and it was about family payments he reduced the level of child poverty by a full 30% as a result of that and so that's the story we need to be reminding ourselves that these are structured because of this persistent push again to see family payments as middle class welfare you know ironic well not ironically but I think during the coalition era John Howard also did have an understanding of where the family payment system the architecture of it was very important in the way it interacted with wages so this idea that it's to say okay the wage fixing arrangement has gotten Australia the minimum wage case is about the right level of payment of wage for a single person now there are those that advocate we should have the right level of wage to ensure that a single person can look after a partner and two children we don't think that's the right move but this is what family payments was meant to do was to provide the right kind of retargeting from tax revenues to ensure that there was enough income in a family if you had one person working you know at the right time that calibration of the right level of income and family payments is therefore extremely important in terms of protecting from child poverty and it's woefully inadequate now Marion do you think feminism is failing single mothers look I'm glad you came back to that really Georgie because I've been thinking about that a lot look feminism now I don't think it has but feminism has so many other issues it's also dealing with at the same time and within feminism and feminist groups there are groups who have particular interest on single mothers or on a policy but I so I wouldn't say that we have forgotten that but I do think it's something to remember and I constantly sort of have to rethink this myself that a lot of our policies are really shaped around still a norm of a couple with two children in a household and when that's the beginning of your policy development then it's not very long before you see that people who don't fit that pattern fall out of the debate fall out of the parameters and the policy doesn't work for them so I do think it's a good reminder so thank you to the person who asked the question that we do have to think about the different ways in which households families are formed and how do we need to protect and enable them to contribute to the community that we all want to live in because the inequalities are what leads to divisions we want to make sure that we don't live in an economy we live in a society and we have to make that society work and we have to protect those who need that protection vulnerable children parents particularly women because they are mostly the ones taking the responsibility who don't have the income and of course there's that whole shift in the whole policy debate not just in Australia but everywhere it's not about this than I do but it's that rhetoric now that you have to work in order to be entitled to some payment from the government as well and women who are single mothers looking after children asking them to work as well in cities where it's so expensive to live and to travel I think becomes an almost impossible hurdle for them and the policies we just have to somehow we have to really be conscious of the online policies that are able to address those problems I mean I think you know we're obviously for all the right reasons importantly talking about women today on International Women's Day and women's perspective on all of this I don't think anybody sitting here is the message is are we just what meant to get out of the way not at all I think the very serious concern we all bring today is that we've got male decision makers following the expert advice in areas which we know particularly affect women and children and it is I've been so struck by some of the reactions where you have a leader the Canadian Prime Minister literally just putting that being prepared to name I am a feminist too and in getting contrast I am trying to remember the last time we had the Prime Minister give a wide ranging speech on gender equality in Australia and frame that up as one of his priorities well at this time I am talking about the current Prime Minister and to really speak to that agenda it is not about political correctness you know this is a term that gets used to try and shut down very important changes that we have yet to deliver on and gender equality is one of them I think back to your point Georgie too is we've lost the scrutiny of how we are tracking and whether we are making a difference so we used to have reports in the budget cycle that looked at what are the impacts we did that's right and we've called for the gender whip no that's been dropped we don't have the data being published up in recent weeks which is very interesting because it's like this International Women's Day there seems to be much more focus attention on some of the data that's been released lately that does suggest that we are not tracking in a progressive upwards direction that we are actually losing ground on some of this issue no we are losing definitely look we've got one other question we've just got a few more minutes but Vesna has asked what do you think it is about Swedish and German societies viewing equality compared to Australia I'll start that one I think Sweden more than Germany so let's talk about Sweden their gender equality ethos goes back a long way I think one of the important things in Sweden is that they have a much stronger notion of what they call the social settlement or a social contract and one of the parties in that is employers we haven't had a chance to talk about them much today in Sweden the employers the state the unions or labour talk about these issues of gender equality it's part of the national conversation and it's just part of the policy making process in Australia we've gone down these separate routes historically the concept of institutional legacy and the pathways you're on it's very hard to change that I agree once you're on one when we see particular things happening like we see at the moment to come back to where we began about the omnibus spill we know that if that's introduced we are setting Australia on another direction that will be in time even harder to pull back from so it's really important to address that now but you know it's imbued now in Swedish society men and women participate men and women have policies that enable them to take time off from work and to look after children they institute policies that say if the men don't use the leave then they lose it and the family loses extra leave as well so it's just a framing it's not just, I mean it's fundamentally a different way of framing policy and to say that men and women are both citizens both have the right to work and both have the right to care and to facilitate that it's not a policy unfortunately you did mention Sam I think it's a really good point we've lost the notion that we develop policy on the basis of evidence and it's really moved to some ideological basis but that ideology is not about gender equity or equality through society it's some other and I'm not even sure of the right terminology now some market ideology or neoliberal ideology I'm not even convinced it's that it's some mistaken ideology about perhaps a business driven motive that doesn't necessarily make sense as you've said Cass very much individual responsibility well that is the big shift that is the enormous shift that's happened that the responsibilities on each individual not a community to respond to these problems about early education we'll get some people saying children should be the individual responsibility of the parent that had them and not seen as a social investment that's something that I don't think was such a strong sentiment a decade ago what we don't tend to do is track the sentiment I actually think that we shouldn't underestimate the significant real shifts that have happened in social expectation and social norms as you know there are many men who are wanting to have much more flexible arrangements to genuinely of course want to spend more time with the children if there are two parents as a couple there's a compact that's what we want to do and then increasingly again the system around has not changed and it becomes impossible and then we hear these stories of in the end I gave up and we have to end thank you so much Marion and Cass and Sam for taking part and thank you everyone who logged on and participated we hope that you found the discussion illuminating and I'm hopeful that we can keep up the resistance so perhaps prevent this omnibus in its current form thank you very much