Another indicator was this week's news that there was only one woman out of seven new Living National Treasures, which incidentally included Clive Palmer! These indicators suggest that gender still gives many men more power and public recognition than women, with little evidence that they deserve their higher status.

Forty-plus years of second wave feminism have not altered power structures or values to include the extensive areas of life and work that are associated with women. Parenting for most mothers is still a disadvantage in workplaces; chief financial officers outrank their human resources peers. Are people skills really of less value than financial ones? Should child carers be paid less than car parkers? Are shorter working hours really less productive than long hours at workplaces? Whatever tasks and skills are associated with women tend to be undervalued!

Why then, is there far less feminist activism now than 40 years ago? Back then, a broad-based active feminist movement secured the repeal of formal structures and laws that excluded women. We thought that would be enough to create cultural changes, but we failed to recognise the capacity of institutions to protect those in power. The neo liberal revolution in the 80s made further social change very hard, because its emphasis on individual success in markets undermined collective action.

Over the decades a plethora of women's groups and services have emerged, doing good work but often failing to focus on making serious political changes. There are now questions on whether feminism as a term is widely understood, let alone supported. Some women claim they can't be a feminist for trivial reasons like they shave their legs. Others find difficulties in trying to have it all, having to behave like men.. For many younger women feminism is seen as a personal choice rather than a political movement. Have the politics of feminism become so diluted and distracted that it is not clear who is a feminist – or indeed what feminism is?

Some suggest we need a new term, while others want to retain and reclaim the ideas of feminism. Germaine Greer last Sunday, in a packed Opera House, reminded us that 70s feminism deliberately chose to use the term Women's Liberation because we wanted more than the rights that men had. We thought equality with men on their terms was a low level of ambition compared with a revolutionary revaluing of who did what without gender biases.

Political energy is very dispersed. A multiplicity of consultants and women's groups are working hard to get more women on corporate boards, but these try to fit round women into the square male holes. Not surprisingly, successful women tend not to make changes that may threaten their careers. Putting women into male-dominated areas makes little difference, e.g. in finance or mining. Unlike men who rise easily into the top positions in nursing and teaching, women move into supportive low roles in male areas or rise only if they play by male rules.

Being the first woman to take on a role is not necessarily progress or a feminist gain. We need to ask: has she made it easier for other women to follow? That disqualifies Thatcher and other female "pioneers" like her. They are useful in showing the possibilities, but only in a very limited way.

Has current feminism diluted our original radical aims down to almost invisibility? Have most women given up on making workplace and community changes that would benefit people of all genders? Flexible workplaces benefit most workers, as do more reasonable hours, but most men are scared to ask for them or take them up, lest they be seen as not serious about their jobs. As a result, most unpaid care and work in homes is still left to women.

So can we reset feminist priorities? Maybe it's time to ban the term 'women's issues' when we lobby governments, since that term downgrades the issues' political importance. Child care is not a women's issue, nor is sexual harassment or violence. They are part of workplace or community wellbeing; but if segregated by gender, they will always be seen as side issues.

We need criteria to distinguish feminism's political claims from more conservative views. Protective legislation that prevents women from making their own decisions about their fertility, their jobs or their access to porn is problematic. There is a difference between being pro-woman and feminist.

Supporting all women – or protecting them – is not feminist because it is basically sexist. All genders have similar capacities to make good and bad choices, which we can support or criticise. I can object to bad decisions made by the PM, despite her being a woman.

Feminism should be about real gender equity. This means redistributing power so women and men can share responsibilities as well as rights, without these being limited by gender.

No, she is the iron lady who gives no quarter and is constantly described as tough and determined. He is the softer, less macho version in some ways, the wronged man bravely going about his diminished role. I was pleased when Julia Gillard made it to the top position in the nation. It showed that a woman could move into the top job, even if it smacked of bringing in the housekeeper to clean up the mess - echoes of Kirner, Lawrence and Keneally. Unlike them, she did, marginally, win an elected term in her own right. She demonstrated a high level of skill in negotiating the crossbench support that allowed the ALP to govern.

However, she had considerable difficulties in maintaining the burst of popularity that followed her appointment. Leaks in the campaign suggested she was not the shining change agent who would rescue us from the Rudd mess.

Since then she has made various compromises to finalise a carbon tax and mining tax and other legislative items that are part of her agenda. She has, however, been unable to convince the electorate that she and the ALP are sufficiently attractive to polled voters to acquire anything near a winning percentage of party preferences.

It is this situation that has both created the problem of backbench discontent and created doubts on her leadership. On one level this is unfair because her popularity as PM has been higher than Abbott's, and it is the ALP that has been the problem. There should have been some serious soul-searching about the policy agenda that the party has adopted. However, the ALP number-crunching pundits, who wouldn't know what progressive policies looked like, blamed the unpopularity on popular objections to some of the wishy-washy compromises they had passed.

As Gillard had enthusiastically supported these policies and others that were more focused on ''working people'' than the needs of the broader community, she became the target of discontent. And in the background the jilted earlier PM could emerge again as a more credible PM in the polls and his own mind.

This is more like Punch and Judy. The battle lacks any serious dignity or point. There are no apparent policy differences between the two contenders that might provide a reason to change leaders. Instead, we see vitriolic self-interested splatter by senior ministers trying to justify their past possible errors. Gillard's careful statements are tactically wise: women cannot afford to be seen as angry or shrewish, so she leaves this to her minions.

Some would like to frame this battle in gender terms but it is hard to do so. Gillard is clearly playing the macho leader role, reassuring us, with no motherly moments, that she is battle-hardened and willing to fight Abbott. She offers us the policy status quo, a relatively conservative set of policies that focus on economic growth over social wellbeing. Rudd is betting on his advantage in the polls, where he is seen as capable of defeating Abbott. The nastiness of the attacks on Rudd will damage the party vote.

It is the ALP that needs to take the blame. The party apparatchiks have made the party leaders pawns in political number games and policy as the creation of bad focus groups. If there is too little difference between the major parties on significant moral policies such as welfare, asylum seekers and indigenous issues, the voters will focus on self-interest and personalities.

Some seriously ethical policymaking may change the polls, not leadership as such.

Eva Cox is a social commentator and convener of the Women's Equity Think Tank.

Interestingly, there is a clue in the final line in the Sunday Life article that started this interchange. It stated ‘For Melinda Tankard Reist’s part, she says “Call me whatever the hell you want, I don’t care… I believe my work is pro-woman, pro-girl. Just let me get on with it.”’

Is being pro-women the same as being a feminist? I do not see being pro-women as about equality or other particular issues. Does pro-women involve supporting uncritically the right of women to do anything they want, whether good, bad or indifferent without criticism?

Pro-woman can mean protecting women as an apparent weaker vessel. Tankard Reist’s views on porn and sexual images suggest that she sees women as needing formal protection from depictions that may result in wrong assumptions or choices. This moralism echoes her earlier anti-abortion stance (while she advised Brian Harradine) but taps into current anxieties about the status of women in an increasingly commodified world.

Her collection of public priorities are not new but reflect older puritanical views that were part of early suffrage history. Women members of the Christian Temperance Union fought for women to get the vote in the hope that they would vote to ban alcohol. However, just as social attitudes have changed over the past hundred years, I hoped we had moved on from the limited view of women’s role, as God’s police, to keep evil masculinity on the straight and narrow.

In current politics, there is a retro groundswell against the dominance of markets over ethics in the public sphere and the loss of traditional community values. This conservative push shows up in the numbers of new women in politics, pushing traditional gender roles. These are not the Maggie Thatchers or Angela Merkels; hard-headed members of political parties who play it very like men. They are younger women, playing populist politics with anti-choice views on family issues. The USA’s Tea Party attracts many of these.

While they do increase the number of women bidding for power, they undermine feminist gains by promoting traditionally differentiated gender roles. Is this really a conservative form of feminism, or retrograde steps for a new form of dependency?

Great article on conservative ‘feminist figures’ here.

Feminism, in my view at least, is about real gender equality, which means both redressing gender biases in what is seen as important and valuable, and redistributing power. This means women and men must all take on our fair shares of both responsibilities as well as rights. True equality is not making women behave like men, nor is it making us ‘behave like women,’ but is about our capacity to choose who we are without social and institutional gendered prejudices.  

It is not feminist to infantilise women by using state power for censorship and bans of particular manifestations to protect women from their ‘wrong’ choices. Portraying women as primarily victims in need of protection allows too many policy areas to be defined as ‘women’s issues’ and trivialised into deviance not mainstream problems.

Concerns about politics valuing economics over community are real. Feminist progress requires a political rethinking that values being socially connected, cooperative, and caring. We don’t need moves against tasteless porn and crappy t-shirts to address the broader gender biases in market forces, but a feminism that values equality, responsibility and addresses power imbalances. This is the area we should be debating.

What do you think? What makes a feminist?

Tony Abbott’s simplistic assumptions about progress over the past 40 years is unfortunately too often shared by others on both sides of politics. They confuse the passage of time and some relatively minor legal reforms with serious changes in the relative status and well-being of Aboriginal people. The ’70s optimism and some valuable changes to legal status and land have dissipated as little of serious value has happened recently. Nor do many of the people affected see evidence that there is still the goodwill to making what they would see as progress.

Many of those, celebrating the 40th anniversary of an unexpected successful strategy,  gathered in Canberra to address some of the continuing problems. The government should stop quoting the Rudd apology as a landmark of change, as many current policies create injustice and disrespect, ignore criticisms and lack local engagement. There is widespread concern in the NT and elsewhere that the current bills in front of the Senate, ironically named Stronger Futures, will pass despite the lack of evidence that these measures have worked or will work.

Some of those in Canberra are already negatively affected by current laws, including the extended version of income management. Barbara Shaw, a highly competent articulate woman, is one who Centrelink policy deems to be unable to manage her own income support! There are thousand of others who share the indignity of not being allowed to make their own financial decisions, even if they are completely competent.  And it costs the government about $80 per week to administer this payments system.

This is an example of what creates the anger and disrespect.  The Income Management program has been “de-racialised” by extending it to other out-groups in five areas including Bankstown and Shepparton. Again there is no valid evidence it works. The government and opposition are inseparable on indigenous issues, an unfortunate bi-partisanship because the past records of both, over the past two decades at least, are dismal.  Both have consistently failed to follow the recommendations of the very dry Productivity Commission, which tracks “gap closing progress”.

This organisation sets out clear criteria for what works, as does the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Closing the Gap Clearing House. Some of their criteria show clearly where the NT policies fall short:

What works:

• Community involvement and engagement
• Respect for language and culture
• Working together through partnerships, networks and shared leadership
• Recognising underlying social determinants
• Commitment to doing projects with, not for, indigenous people.

What doesn’t work:

• “One size fits all” approaches
• External authorities imposing change and reporting requirements
• Interventions without local indigenous community control and culturally appropriate adaptation.

Therefore, it is not surprising that the Tent Embassy mob would resent being told they were doing OK and they should stop protesting like that. There is political diversity and some Aboriginal office but it is important to look at what is happening to those who haven’t benefited to see what structural issues remain to be solved. This is not the current direction of current social inclusion policies that seek to fixing the excluded by making them fit majority models, to fit in.The 1970s were, retrospectively, a decade of serious change, the final years of postwar optimism and growing the state to make a better world.  The Western “revolutions” of the sixties pushed changes in class, race, s-xual and other relationships and beliefs that we could make the world a better place by acting collectively for the common good. For groups who saw their pasts disrespected and their futures as limited by prejudice and legal discrimination, the reforms that started in the sixties and seventies offered hope.

However, times change and Aboriginal groups saw their desire for actual land rights and formal recognition of sovereignty moving further off the agenda from the early nineties onwards. So-called practical reconciliation imposed Canberra programs rarely worked, land rights became watered-down native title and recent policies in the NT, now extended, have been punitive and controlling, undermining human rights.

So a relatively minor demonstration, which was noisy and maybe scary, but with no evidence of violence, created an over-reaction and demands that anger be channelled into more acceptable lobbying. Many of the Aboriginal people I know are deeply cynical about the possibilities of advocacy for change because they see the government as only listening to those who agree with them.  The media and political over-reactions will only confirm to many participants and observers that it is increasingly hard to challenge, let alone change, either government or opposition’s bad indigenous policy and practices.

Public negative responses on all sides of politics will only be fuelled by the cynical use of the incident for political point scoring. Why a Coalition demand for an AFP inquiry into the so-called affray? This was hardly a major security breach and using it for a no-confidence motion makes no sense at all, unless Aboriginal demonstrators are to be seen as a major threat!

The decision that came down over the past few moths initially found last year that gender was a factor in the pay scales but did not at that stage state how much of a factor it was. The past few months have involved many submissions on this point that fed into the decision yesterday for rises in the awards that ranged from 18% to 41% for some 150,000 plus workers in the community services sector. This has been a classic low-pay sector that involved mainly publicly funded services for some of the most disadvantaged people. Despite the often high-skill demands and stress levels, the pay rates were often below  or similar to unskilled jobs, such as stacking shelves.

The judgement stated:

“In this decision we have concluded that for employees in the SACS industry there is not equal remuneration for men and women workers for work of equal or comparable value by comparison with workers in state and local government employment. We consider gender has been important in creating the gap between pay in the SACS industry and pay in comparable state and local government employment. And, in order to give effect to the equal remuneration provisions, the proper approach is to attempt to identify the extent to which gender has inhibited wages growth in the SACS industry and to mould a remedy which addresses that situation.”

Later they stated:

“Various studies concerning the extent of the unexplained portion of the gender wage gap were referred to. In particular, the study of Cassells and others and its finding that 60 per cent of the gender pay gap is unexplained by factors other than gender was relied on. The Joint Submission utilises ‘caring work’ as a proxy for gender considerations.”

This is the basis they used to set the rises they recommended. The rises will cover some 25 steps of skill and service length but their introduction is set to happen over an extraordinarily long time. The first tranche will not happen for nearly 12 months and the last payment is delayed until December 2020. This is even two years longer than the agreed view of the union and the Commonwealth that it should take six years.

It seems extraordinary that the remedying of basic wage injustice should take such a long time. These workers have obviously been grossly underpaid for ever, and now should they have to wait a further nearly nine years for their catch up?

The key to this long process is the source of the money. Most of these organisations are not-for-profit community organisations that depend largely on government funding. Therefore, the rises in pay must be met by increased subsidies or cutbacks in services. That has been part of the problem, as their largely female workforces have never had the gall to strike for higher pay as they knew it would damage their vulnerable clients. The commission has taken this payment factor into account and therefore they will still be exploited.

ACOSS and most of the smaller agencies were very supportive of the rises because they also know how hard the low pay is on their workers. It makes it hard to retain and attract skilled people. It therefore affects their capacities to serve their vulnerable clients well. Delaying the rises for so long will not ease current staffing problems. However, some larger agencies, who have a more corporate view, were much less supportive, even thought they “profit” from many government contracts.

Other community service sectors out there, which were not covered, will be looking to take some cases. Aged-care nurses and other staff, child-care workers and other areas of personal services and care that replace unpaid household work are equally underpaid because of the gender of most employees. Many of these are also in commercial sectors.

The business leaders mostly failed to support the claims and are up in arms about the rises. They see the possibilities of more claims by feminised occupations and industries. They need to look at why so often their feminised jobs, e.g. human resources, are paid less than their financial officers who tend to be men.

As an email from a long-term advocate for equal pay said: ”Well done all of us, ASU and govt! A down-payment on the first instalment of equal pay on the never-never! good decision rates-wise but 8 yr phasing! — must be unprecedented.”

She notes that it would not have happened without the support of the federal government and their joint submission with the union: ”The best thing from a future cases point of view is the gender related undervaluation finding, needing no comparators.”

But we still have to work on how to quantify gender undervaluation. So this is just the beginning.

The recent fuss about the health insurance subsidy didn’t really deal with the question of why government should subsidise private insurance when there is a public system. The rationale is that the use of the private  system relieves the pressure on the public system but this raises questions whether queue jumping seriously deserves a subsidy. There is little evidence that using the private sector has improved the public sector services or reduced its costs. In fact, these services may be worse as more articulate potential users buy themselves out with public support

Similarly, last week saw some very defensive responses to the inequities of the retirement income system, in particular the beneficiaries of the super tax concessions. The responses are from the industry to Bill Shorten’s belated interest in the excessive concessions going to the very well off. ASFA’s report attempts to justify top income earners collecting up to $500,000-plus in public-subsidised tax concessions to fund their retirement. In its rush to protect the “business”, ASFA absurdly claims that this concession is not really much more than the $382,000 paid as a pension to a low-income earner.

This raises the question of why they should get any public subsidy at all! They can amply afford to fund their own retirement and are most unlikely to claim the pension. It is worth mentioning that paying them a full pension would be cheaper than giving them these concessions by more than $100,000!

The Gonski Report will today trigger a debate about the appropriate levels of funding of private schools. There are arguments about giving parents and children wider choices and maybe the public system needs to become more diverse. However, there are questions about whether the funding of schools should also carry extra obligations such as enrolling all children who are eligible, fee levels and how money is spent per child.

These are three of the many debates that should implicitly or explicitly question what services and payments government should fund and provide. We need to discuss that whether the public sphere is just a safety net for those who can’t afford to buy services in the open market. Or should taxpayer funds provide quality universal services accessible to all, with those who choose to purchase alternatives paying for these themselves?

Once upon a time, there were few public services, but from the late 19th century, the government moved on education and health services as part of the industrialisation and democratisation of society. The post-war welfare state recognised the dangers of disaffected unemployed people and recognition of rights to decent living was also necessary for democracies to survive.

The benefits of universal quality services is that we all share the entitlements. This communality is part of our sense of who we are. If some choose to opt out, it should be because they want a different option, not because the quality is not good enough. If public services become residual services, the default option, they tend to deteriorate. The aphorism, that services to the poor become poor services, still applies as it is the more privileged users that tend to complain if they are badly served.

We seem to have moved over the past 30 or more years, from seeing public health and education services are for all of us, to seeing them as somewhat inferior services that those who can afford better can opt out of and then want some of their tax back. This approach also feeds into constant demands for tax cuts with the odd contradictory demand for better services. Too many still want good government services, just in case, but do not take the responsibility of paying for them.

I actually would support more universal payments and services, were there also higher taxes, as more people both contributing to and sharing the public pot create a more civil society. The current debates seem to reflect the self-interest of the better off: avoiding taxes, rather than contributing to fairness.

The issue of Tankard Reist’s religious beliefs and whether they are acknowledged is not the real issue here. It is a surrogate argument about who can call themselves a feminist. Tankard Reist’s critics are mostly opposed to her claims to be a new-style feminist. They it hard to frame such an argument — so they look for other hooks to hang her on, such as suspect affiliations.

Interesting, the final line in the article that started this interchange stated, "For Tankard Reist’s part, she says she’s not interested in labels — she just wants people to engage with the substance of what she has to say. ‘Call me whatever the hell you want, I don’t care," she says. "I believe my work is pro-woman, pro-girl. Just let me get on with it.’"

Why therefore has she taken this action? Since the blog in question isn’t heavily trafficked, Reist’s lawyer’s letter may be part of a strategy to gain publicity rather than suppress comment. Threatening legal action against a blogger who has strong free speech views is likely to attract wider media attention to the blog posting and its subject. As Tankard Reist is herself a blogger, writer, speaker and so on, media coverage is very desirable to raise her profile further.

I’m not inclined to use people’s religious affiliations as a basis for judgement but there is an argument for publicising religious beliefs. While adherents of each religion may have many different ways of using their faith, their stated beliefs can connect up dots to create a wider picture. As far as Tankard Reist’s public views are concerned, it may allow critics to try to identify underlying sources. It may be that her beliefs do mean that her views fail to meet what I would see as basic feminist criteria

Tankard Reist’s views on porn and sexual images suggest that she sees women as needing protection from depictions that may result in wrong assumptions or choices. She taps into anxieties about the status of women in an increasingly commodified world. Her earlier political involvement was anti-abortion and presumably anti-contraception, and her role while working for Brian Harradine ties in with this approach.

Her collection of public priorities can be seen to reflect some puritanical views that are part of feminist history. Women members of the Christian Temperance Union fought for women to get the vote in the hope that women would vote to ban alcohol. However, politics has changed over the past hundred years — and I hoped we had overcome the particularly limited view that the role of women, as God’s police, was to keep evil masculinity on the straight and narrow.

The new prominence of Melinda Tankard Reist forms part of a current retro groundswell which derives from current anxieties about the dominance of markets over ethics in the public sphere and the loss of what are seen as community values. This is in evidence in the numbers of women in politics who are pushing conservative social views. These are not Maggie Thatchers or Angela Merkels, hard-headed members of political parties who play it very like men. Rather they are younger, populist women with conservative, anti-choice views on family issues. The Tea Party in the US seems to attract many of these. They do increase the number of women bidding for power; but can also undermine feminist gains by promoting traditionally differentiated gender roles. Is this the feminism we want to encourage?

Feminism, in my view at least, should not use the power of institutions, including the state, to protect women from the right to make up their own minds. Equality must both redress gender biases and redistribute power so we all take on our share of responsibilities as well as rights. Setting up women as needing protection from male-driven sins means denying the role of Eve as the tempting source of knowledge. As an unbeliever, I quote these archetypes to illustrate my objections to some forms of so-called conservative feminism. It is not feminist to infantilise women by removing our right to make the wrong choices.

We need to recognise that all genders have similar capacities to make good and bad choices and need similar conditions in which to make them. While I am no fan of sexploitation, of objectifying and commodifying human beings, I do not see tactics of censorship and banning of particular manifestations as useful. Emphasising women as victims also contributes to gender-based biases in political thinking.

We need to address the current policy machismo in the priorities of our political parties, which emerges as encouraging individual self-interest as against social sharing. Good societies require political culture changes to encourage us all to be socially connected, more cooperative, ethical and caring. This is my feminist push. Campaigns against tasteless porn and crappy T-shirts may seek to protect women, but they fail to address the broader gender biases of market forces. This is the argument we should be having — not nit-picking about perceived religious ties.

“New Employment Minister Bill Shorten has slapped down an unprecedented push by business, welfare groups and the union movement for a boost to the Newstart ‘dole’ allowance as part of root-and-branch reform of the welfare system.

“Mr Shorten said the dole, worth $243 a week, acted as a safety net and was deliberately set at a level that encouraged people to take up paid work.”

If the government thinks penury is an incentive, it fails to understand the difficulties facing the 600,000-plus people dependent on this payment. According to Shorten:

“Participation in the workforce is a priority the Gillard government is passionate about. Work is at the core of our beliefs.”

That sounds good when you say it quickly and appeals to the puritan core of prejudices the government often uses to justify such policies. What if the jobs are not there? Can we justify paying so little that even big business is backing a rise in payments? How can the government ignore its own statistics, which show that moving of the dole is not just a matter of will and commitment by the recipients?

Get a job may sound like a good slogan but tell that to the 334,884 long-term recipients of Newstart or the rest of the 540,527 on the lousy payment. Imagine spending more than 12 months on such a payment and being told it’s your fault, despite evidence that says those out of work for so long are increasingly unlikely to get a job. Only 300 long-time recipients went off the payment from the previous month — and probably went onto other payments.

Another interesting statistic (all from DEEWR’s own figures) is that only about half of the recipients of Newstart are officially looking for work. Others may be volunteering, incapacitated (57,000), or doing a course rather than applying for jobs they cannot get. The people in these situations also have to cover their costs on this inadequate income.

The recipients now include those with “lesser levels” of  disabilities as the DSP criteria tightens, which make it hard to find work. Others may be over 40 and seen as too old for many jobs (47% of male long-term recipients) or have other barriers not acceptable to employers. Many are sole parents transferred from parenting payments and pushed into finding jobs that fit around childcare. Most live in areas with high unemployment and few jobs.

That is part of the problem. The November 2011 ANZ job vacancies total was 181,461 advertisements and has been around that level for some months. The advertisements count usually mirrors the DEEWR job vacancies listings and both totals suggest there are far fewer jobs than the numbers of those officially seeking work on government payments. Many people also move from jobs to new jobs and are more likely to be successful than those out of work.

The other major factor is that most employers want qualifications and recent experiences and most of the long-term recipients of Newstart can’t offer these. The evidence is clear that the problem is on the demand side: there are not enough employers wanting the existing job seekers on Newstart. Punishing the supply side, the recipients of this appallingly low payment, is therefore neither fair nor effective.

There is more to life and Labor policies than just getting a job. This example of paternalism from the new minister is a further loss of commonsense, let alone compassion.

Capacity to find the odd available paid work requires confidence and costs money to pay for clothes, fares, etc. They should raise the level of Newstart instead of income management, which costs about $80 per week in the NT and is about to be extended. As there is no evidence it works, the program just wastes money that could be used to really help recipients.

Complexity of equal pay

Equal pay is complex because the gender gap is pervasive and affects broad categories of employees in very varied jobs. Sometimes, it is the result of undervaluing the actual type of job – for example, one that mimics home-based unpaid care – but others are underpaid because they are in industries where the most jobs are feminised. This is the case put in the current Australian Services Union (ASU) claims, which has allowed a significant change in the ways the gap is determined by Fair Work Australia. In their initial finding in 2011, they looked at the range of jobs covered by the Social and Community Services (SACS) award and declared that community services pay rates were affected as such by gender biases.

The traditional approach of finding that an employer or particular wage rate showed the gender bias in particular jobs is not appropriate for resolving the overarching bias that affects all award-based pay rates in a sector as diverse as this one. Wider analysis has shown how the problem is industry based, rather than job based. All jobs in feminised industries tend to be lower paid than similar ones in male-dominated industries. Therefore, most of the 14% of men in this industry share the low pay rates of the women. Unfortunately, the reverse doesn’t happen in masculinised industries. Gender gaps are highest in industries such as finance and mining. So, the remedy in this case is not job by job comparators, but comparing particular industry groups.

The community sector is comprised mainly of not-for-profit private employers, but many of the jobs in the community sector are also offered in the public services. These public servants are paid much more than community sector counterparts because the pay rates lack gender biases and are equated with other similar public service jobs. This means feminised jobs in the public service areas such as health, welfare and education are paid more than similar private sector jobs offering an industry comparator.

The current judgment has used the difference between the two wage rates as a way to estimate the gender proportion of the differences. This strategy was originally part of a Queensland equal pay decision and was extended to the federal system. It is particularly appropriate to use it in the community sector because this industry’s funding base makes it vulnerable to institutionalised structural discrimination.

The wage gap and “being a woman”

The FWA judgment covers the sector’s diverse multitude of occupations and qualifications by raising the levels of pay by approximately 60% – the estimated gender gap loss. The calculation was based on a 2011 Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency (EOWA) report, which says: “The gender pay gap is caused by a variety of factors including the undervaluation of women’s work, women’s access to training and inflexible work practices which limits their employment prospects. However, a recent report by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM) found that the main contributing factor to the wage gap was simply ‘being a woman’, and this accounted for 60% of the difference between women and men’s earnings.”

It is this approach that has enraged more conservative employers, because the model could be used for claims from workers in other undervalued industries. Two other similar sectors are child care and aged care, being largely community based and feminised. The two are often in tandem as many of the services reflect what would have been home-based services. These sectors, however, are also often commercialised but dependent on public subsidies. Therefore, workers in these areas have little or no bargaining power at the enterprise level.

Lack of bargaining power “ignored”

This factor is ignored by many of the objectors, as illustrated in the dissenting report of Fair Work Commissioner Justice Graeme Watson: “To selectively extract an entire industry from the enterprise bargaining legislative framework is a change of mammoth proportions … The precedent it creates for many other industries who cannot afford to pay significantly above the award and are female dominated highlights the need for great caution. It is not an overstatement to suggest that the future status of enterprise bargaining in this and other industries with similar attributes is at stake.”

He goes on to say: “Of course women carers should get equal pay to men doing the same job, and the same as other women doing the same job as well – as long as their employers have the money. That’s the way enterprise bargaining works: the capacity of the employer to pay is taken into account.”

However, the judge fails to acknowledge that enterprise bargaining does not work well for women when the enterprise has very limited control over its budget. A circuit breaker is needed to ensure that governments will increase subsidies for staff pay. The present judgement was delayed by FWA to allow negotiations with the major funders. The Commonwealth has agreed to carry its share and there are indications that most states will contribute.

Women’s groups have welcomed the decision as it will offer a model for a substantial – if slow – decrease to wage inequity as a result of gender bias.

The level of cover the story received in the media suggests a range of unhealthy views throughout the various power players!! It raises issues of whether this issue be resolved fairly.

An assumption that higher numbers of on-shore processing of refugee/asylum seekers would make any contributions to public disturbances is an absurd and alarmist claim.

I have a dual basis for commenting on this issue. I am a sociologist with a particular interest in issues of social cohesion and put social capital as social glue onto the public agenda in Australia in my 1995 ABC Boyer Lectures on a Truly Civil Society, and I am an ex refugee.

I was able to migrate to Australia in 1948 because Arthur Caldwell and the Chifley Government ignored public opinion polls that clearly stated that Jewish displaced people were not welcome, as we would undermine Australian life. They offered political leadership and courage that is singularly lacking today.

The rhetoric has changed but residual public fears of some strangers are still there to be tapped. Instead of clearly racialised prejudice, the campaigns against those arriving by boat use terms like 'queue jumpers' and 'illegals' to feed the fears of the public.

The politics of both major parties are adding in a law-and-order focus on 'people smugglers' to earlier implication of alien terror and threat. This takes the focus off the actual asylum seeker and onto images of rejecting greed and money rather than desperate people.

The result has created divides in the community, as some groups keep the focus on compassion and rights while others play on greed, order and vague undefined prejudice and fears.

This toxic change of direction in the briefing the Opposition leader designed is to show the 'dangers' of his rejection of the Malaysian option. Riots in the street are ridiculous as we have over 150,000 thousands of new migrants who arrive each year. Why would a few thousand more create social disturbances?

Even if the government let out the thousands in detention and doubled their numbers, the communities would hardly notice them unless the government and opposition cynically continue to foment anti-asylum seeker feelings for political advantages.

It already costs us too much to detain people. It is economically irrational to spend $123,000 per asylum seeker each year in detention centres where we damage the physical and mental health of many who we later accept.

The Australian reports: 'The government's advice is that people-smugglers celebrated the High Court decision and are actively recruiting customers. It also suggests that a regime limited exclusively to onshore processing could lead to about 600 boat people arriving in Australian waters every month, and within a year the detention network would be overwhelmed. Asylum-seekers would inevitably end up in the community, and would most likely be treated as second-class citizens, triggering the possibility of Australia experiencing European-style disharmony.'

I agree with refugee advocate David Manne, who said last night there was no evidence to substantiate the claims in the advice to the government.

"They . . . are unsubstantiated and irresponsible claims which are only likely to demonise people and to fuel hostility in betrayal of this rich history in this country of helping people and welcoming people in humanitarian need," Mr Manne told ABC's Lateline.

There are many views on what is causing popular unrest and riots in the UK and elsewhere in Europe but no one claims it is the many more asylum seekers they have.

There are difficult economic conditions and social tension's being exploited by minority right wing parties is adding to nationalism and other forms of prejudice. However, in no other country are both the Government and the Opposition exacerbating the fears by running policies that imply non existent threats to social cohesion.

The solutions to the boat arrival's lie in providing alternative ways of processing those who are seeking a safe place to stay, where they can work and live normally. This strategy should however NOT involve swapping some types of arrivals for others as this reduces people to impersonal pawns in a bigger political game. It also ignores evidence that desperate people do not make rational business decisions, they will continue to risk death or rejection to pursue outside difficult possibilities.

Were the Australian government to work on a regional processing system that created real queues for those wanting to settle here, and doubled its numbers of refugee settlers, it would undermine the 'market' for boat passages.

Our public servant's could plan diverse solutions and not implement crude political prejudices for the poll advantages. For instance, by setting up Malaysia and Indonesia based immigration queues, we may fill other areas of labour needs.

How many asylum seekers and potential refugees also have skills as potential aged care workers and miners? The extra immigrants can create the benefits we gained from the many post-war arrivals that many did not want, including me!

This question is back on the political agenda as unions rev up their campaign to ensure that the government uses some of their mining tax take to raise the superannuation guarantee to 12%. And the bastards are using the low rate of female lump sums as an argument for this change!

Most people fail to understand the way that the government supports the 9% contributions to superannuation. The reason that they need to use the mining tax to fund a higher levy is that the government offers very generous tax concessions to high income earners who contribute to super. The total concessions currently costs about $26 billion in income tax foregone, about the same as the age pension, and the bulk goes to those in the top two income brackets whose contributions are concessionally taxed at 15%.

Currently those paying into super who are below the tax threshold of around $16,000 per annum are being overtaxed at 15% and those in the 15% tax bracket get no benefit. So raising their contributions to 12% will do nothing or very little to benefit them and may also eat into needed pay rises. They may get a new rebate that will leaves them about square but this will take little of the $8 billion it will cost to implement raising the levy to 12%. Most of the income foregone will again go in public subsidies for those in the top two tax brackets.

Imagine how much more income could be offered to the women who will retire with little or no serious savings, if that money was available for another type of payment. The ABS data shows that working age women have about half the retirement savings that men have. Obviously hours worked and time in the workforce is a big factor, but these often relate to the care of others. This raises the question of what is the public obligation to contribute to an adequate retirement income for those who have less time in paid work.

We have a pension system that does provide a basic income, and offers a frugal standard of living for those who have a paid off home or are in public housing. Others will battle if they are dependent on the pension alone. I would suggest the most equitable and efficient solution to the potential poverty of women (and others) with limited retirement income would be some supplementary pension payments. These could be appropriately targeted to those in need and wouldn’t waste public money subsidising high income earners’ tax avoidance strategies.

The government and union commitment to raising the levy deliberately exploits women’s needs. They both fail to mention that the Henry review actually recommended against bringing in this increase. Henry stated that raising the threshold would further decrease equity because:

• the extra contributions would effectively limit already low income and reduce living standards as rises would be traded against the levy;
• the current taxation concessions were grossly unfair to low income earners and should be replaced by taxing contributions at one’s marginal tax rates.

The ABS data show the intransigence of gaps between male and female contributions but does not show how the tax concessions assist the rich to save more. The government and finance industry argue about the benefits of the levy and the super funds’ role in the GFC. They never mention the rich use of the personal superannuation funds to avoid tax. These average $1 million in holdings versus the 15% of men and 7% who have more than $40,000 in their funds. Super is a rich man’s rort and the unions should stop using women’s plight as a cover for more money into super funds!

And it won’t reduce our pension bill either. Nearly five million people have only what their employer contributes, and official calculations show that few will save enough funds not to draw the pension. There is also an industry out there which helps organise ways of arranging money so many well off retirees pay no income tax, draw high super payments and still get the pension concessions.

Restructuring the public concessions that go to the rich would leave plenty of money for those whom we should subsidise. Too much of what we spend on super is a tax rort.

But this suggested change to child-care subsidies raises some interesting questions about the purpose of this type of government funding, as well as possibly exposing children to lesser levels of care.

It may also encourage powerful women to exploit many less powerful ones.

Parental needs first

When women’s groups argue for nanny subsidies for those who can’t find formal care, the focus is for parental needs – there is no mention of the benefits of such care for either children or the home-based worker.

The two clearly different political questions are often confused in the public subsidies on offer for a range of children’s care services.

Governments set standards so these can meet children’s needs for social, emotional, physical, intellectual, and educational development as well as ensuring parents can afford the costs of services.

Some of these are also organised so they allow parental time for paid work, studies or other approved activities.

For around a century it has been recognised that children from a relatively early age benefit from group interaction and designed activities.

The movement brought about the development of kindergartens and preschools which offered learning experiences which complemented home-based care.

Crèche and child care services dating from the same time also assisted women who had to work, for instance as servants, but since has developed as a mix of development and care, as more and more mothers moved into paid work.

The first federal child care funding Act in 1972 was designed to fund 70% of the salaries of a qualified teacher to improve the quality of care services.

As children’s services developed in that decade, early subsidies were paid directly to providers, with a later addition of fee subsidies to ensure lower income mothers could afford quality services for their children.

However, by 1996, the market influence that had begun in the 1980s had moved funding entirely to the current model of subsidising parents costs.

Subsidies system

The maximum subsidy possible is now around $150 per week for the child care rebate, if you spend twice this on approved care.

The child care benefit subsidy increases to a maximum of $189 per week if your family income is under $39,785, tapering off at $138,000 per annum in approved care.

If you are ineligible for this subsidy, but use a registered carer such as relative or nanny, you receive $31.60 per week.

Low income recipients will get some of both the rebate and benefit, but most higher income earners will get only the rebate.

As most fees for full-time care range from $350 $600 plus per week, parents can have a significant gap to cover.

These categories make a clear distinction between using services that meet approved standards, while carer registration just requires a tax file number and some identification.

Tax deductibility generally will only help high income earners – and then only if the rebate cap is lifted.

For most lower income earners, the current subsidies exceed the amount parents would receive if child care is a tax deduction at their marginal tax rate.

Regulated care

While there are arguments that costs may be too high for some second income earners, and there is a need to look at fee rebates for regulated care.

This should not include home-based services as these offer no quality assessment or regulation.

The argument may be that it is parental choice. This view underpins the government’s own funding model which assumes falsely that parental choices will both influence the quality and supply of care to the benefit of the consumers.

As there is no serious choice for most parents, the market doesn’t work. However, the model suggests that the funding is just a subsidy for fees rather than designed as a contribution to quality care as a public good.

The logic therefore can be that parents choosing to have their children cared for in their own homes should have access to similar subsidies as those using outside services.

This assumption ignores the other quality and educational aspects of care that are implicit in the funding and regulation.

Costs are influenced by regulated qualification and ratio requirements, as well as standards of care and programs.

At present, national standards are being set for staffing ratios and qualifications and this may lead to higher fees.

So the pressure is to raise subsidies to make sure people can afford the mandated quality of care. Therefore quality of care should be discussed as a justification for subsidies.

Legal standards for nannies

The current nanny subsidy is a token of around $5 per day but its existence – and the pressure to increase it – raise a series of significant questions.

There are no current legal standards for nannies.

Many employed in this area are young people, maybe students, and often part of the cash economy.

However, if the pleas of high-income women are taken seriously, the nannies to be subsidised would need to be full-time – thus also allowing mother corporate high flyers to work the ridiculous hours demanded at that level.

There are questions of the standards of care, as what may satisfy parents and mirror their own views does not guarantee quality for children.

Qualifications

New childcare rules set a Certificate 3 as the minimum qualification for all carers, which covers only basic care needs and activities.

If the parents want someone who could also respond to developmental needs and program some appropriate activities, they would need at least a Certificate 4 or even a Diploma, and these are in high demand.

Hiring a competent person to care for your child(ren) at home requires a considerable investment of time and money.

Assuming that people will pay according to awards and stick to legal working conditions, a 40 hour child care worker on say $25 per hour would cost $1,000 per week.

As most parents want some flexibility, this pay rate would probably increase as the worker stayed for more hours on some days and will have no time off even for meals. If the rate was casual it would include sick pay and holiday pay.

They would need to cover insurance, workers compensation and other on costs and take out tax. There is a need to have a backup when the worker is ill or on holidays.

Cash temptation

The temptation is not to do it formally, as many are probably cash jobs now. The supply will be limited as young people move on so this model won’t work necessarily work for the long day care that would allow senior executive women to stay at work in ways that match their male peers.

As home-based workers are not generally recorded in any significant way or specifically regulated, we have little idea of how many private carers there are.

Could a possibility be that the lack of local candidates may result in applications for temporary work visas to import nannies for the Philippines, like they do in Hong Kong and the Gulf States?

Rather than expanding this type of payment, Government should make it clear that its primary objective is ensuring children access quality care when their parents are otherwise engaged.

Working with the community

The OID report reiterates the Commission’s analysis that the things that work have “community involvement in program design and decision-making” — a “bottom-up” rather than “top-down” approach.

The Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) process and, unfortunately, the following changes and current proposals for further change show how government fails to follow that recommendation.

The dismal lack of progress of most indicators suggests this could be a reason why many programs fail.

Income management failings

In the same week, the Australian Law Reform Commission Discussion Paper on Family Violence was released with questions on the value of current income management policy direction.

It adds to the many reports and surveys that question whether there is any serious evidence base for the benefits of a compulsory income management program.

The many reports from the Yu review and the majority of submissions to the Senate review of the legislation failed the policy.

But the government ignored the critiques and recommendations, claiming the benefits are recognised, particularly by women in the Northern Territory.

What do participants think?

Women’s Experience of Income Management in the Northern Territory reported the views of those involved in the program.

A survey of more than 180 women raises serious questions about the benefits of a compulsory program under which the majority don’t feel safer. Nor has it changed what they buy, despite claims from the government minister Jenny Macklinto the contrary.

They also report feeling shame and being disrespected, and most see no merit in their involvement.

The report was produced by the Equality Rights Alliance, a Canberra-based funded alliance of women’s groups.

It was deliberately limited to giving the women in Alice Springs and Darwin a voice on how it felt to be part of a program that controlled half their income, but did not evaluate any other aspects of the effectiveness of the program.

Expanding on failure

This type of feedback is particularly valuable because of the continued debates about the limited and disputed “evidence” of the effectiveness of the program.

Its origins, as part of the Howard government’s NT Emergency Response, is no longer limited to residents of 73 communities.

It initially covered all income recipients, including age, veteran, disability support pensioners and carers without no capacity for exemptions but the New Income Management legislation, passed last year, is achieves the feat of being both wider and more limited.

It is operating only in the Northern Territory but potentially covers any benefit recipients who qualify on type and time on the payment on a non-racial basis, anywhere in Australia.

The new version exempts the more socially acceptable pension and carer recipients, who can stay on voluntarily. A version of Income Management will be extended to five new sites including Bankstown, Logan and Shepparton in July 2012, presumably as pilots for further expansion.

These changes mean a major shift is occurring in our welfare payment system almost by stealth, so quarantining half the welfare payment may become the norm for all beneficiaries.

Where’s the evidence?

The changes occurred despite there being no serious evidence that it has so far demonstrated any measurable benefits for its recipients and their communities.

The often quoted studies done by the government were very limited and criticised by many including the AIHW as indicative at best.

Only one NT group has fully supported the government position on the retention of compulsory income management, the NPY women’s group.

The views of these women and some others have often been quoted by Minister Macklin and others. It is their reliance this group and others from personal communications that highlight the importance of the ERA’s project of voicing the views of a reasonable sample of women in the NT.

The expansion of the program already under way required some wider evidence of how people felt. The ERA chose to ask women as the program would affect many, particularly low income sole and partnered parents.

Negative views

The study reports widespread negative feelings about income management from many of its recipients, suggests the possibility that the program cold be at risk of damaging some of the more vulnerable recipients.

This anxiety also emerges in the ALRC’s work. The mix of qualitative and quantitative responses to focus groups, open interviews and questionnaires indicated that many women found the processes of using a Basics Card very distressing, and damaging to their self-esteem. Most talked about wanting to go back to being paid in cash rather than the Basics Card.

They wanted flexibility in where and how they paid for goods and services, greater transparency of what they are paying for, and feeling that they are in control of their finances.

They also talked about the indignity of assumptions that they couldn’t manage their own money or look after their children.

Some women talked about feeling that they lose skills in managing their own money after being on income management, as they lose awareness of when payments are due and how to save up for regular bills.

Their answers to the multiple-choice survey show their level of concern. 77% chose “I feel people aren’t as nice to me when they see that I use Basics Card”. 72% said “I do not feel safer since I got Basics Card”. 85% chose “I do not feel respected when I talk to Centrelink”, 79% answered “I do not like using the Basics Card and want to stop using it now.”

The 20% who answered “I am happy with the Basics Card and want to keep using it as it is now” were mainly pensioners who are now exempt from compulsory inclusion.

Evidence before expansion

These participants are not statistically representative of the overall NT population, a point raised by the minister to devalue the study.

Yet the results are particularly useful because the numbers are much higher that any of the surveys quoted by the government, which also did not ask people how they felt using the card.

The results are useful indicators of the possible effects in Bankstown or Shepparton, the new areas chosen for the program. I also received some additional data from a small survey in Yuendumu, suggesting similar results would come from the more remote communities.

Why does Indigenous policy fail?

The broader question remains unanswered – why do Indigenous programs not achieve their goals? The limited statistics that are available, including the OID report, do not indicate any particular improvements in violence levels, health, school attendance and household budgeting and purchasing.

In fact some violence and child abuse figures are worse. The failures suggest that more attention should be paid to findings such those of the Productivity Commission and AIHW.

It is therefore concerning to note that the Commonwealth still is promoting policies and programs, designed in Canberra and often not evaluated for possible damage.

Political pressures means that “proof” on whether a policy or program works become highly contested.

The stated intentions of the income management program, both as part of the NT Emergency Response and the more recent revised version were clearly aimed at better family functioning but the data and responses above suggest that it is failing to achieve these ends and may even cause damage.

There is very limited evidence in any official survey of recipients’ views on program delivery.

This Productivity Commission report is an important contribution to the debate we should have on whether the program should be continued.