Interview

When All’s Not WEL

Interview with Peter Lewis

Suzanne Hammond explains how the federal government's decision to cut off funding to the Womens' Electoral Lobby wil impact on all women.

	Suzanne & Friend

How will the Federal Government's decision to de-fund WEL impact on the organisation?

It will have a fairly serious impact, in that we have a national office at the moment and the de-funding will mean that the national office will have to close. It just can't operate.

WEL is, of course, a community organisation and relies on the voluntary work of its members, so that the funding that we've had is important for the national office. Now taking that away means that the national office closes and we lose that national voice.

How will that affect the actual activities that WEL carries out? What won't be occurring any more?

The coordination role is quite an important role . Because Canberra is where most of the national issues are fought out, having an there and having someone coordinate the different approaches from the States and to be there to actually lobby politicians, which is what the Women's Electoral Lobby is about. That severely curtails our role in pressuring any sort of Government or Opposition politicians.

What have been the big wins for WEL in the last few years? What has it done to justify the funding?

I think we have been a source of critical analysis to all sorts of policies that both the Government and Opposition have produced. WEL has made a lot of submissions into public inquiries, with comments on things like the GST; like the funding of child care; and instituting the industrial relations changes that are proposed at the moment. So, we have been involved in putting women's voices into the public policy debate.

The Federal Government says that one of its reasons for targeting to your organisations is that it wants to hear more representative voices of women. How do you respond to that, particularly in light of the choice of the bodies they are funding?

I think it's unfortunate that the Government policy seems to be one that leads to division amongst women's groups, particularly in singling out certain groups that may not be as critical and may favour the government line more than the other organisations. Whilst certainly there is a role for different organisations, the way that the funding grant has managed to cause some sort of division within the women's groups. Certainly a main feature of political life is "divide and rule" and it would appear to me that this is one way of dividing the women's groups and feminist groups.

The outgoing head of the Office for the Status of Women, Pru Goward, recently criticised WEL on the grounds that it was set up as an organisation to increase women's representation in parliament and in her mind it had ceased fulfilling that role and instead had become more a political organisation. What's your response to those sort of criticisms?

I of course wasn't around when they first set up WEL. But I think to say that it's only there to put women into parliament is probably an incorrect view of WEL and its operation today. I think that WEL certainly sees itself as playing some sort of role of being a grass roots movement which has some sort of analysis base. Certainly to begin with one of the ideas was to have women enter parliament, but organisations change and their directions change, and while that may be one issue that WEL assumes, there are all sorts of other ways that WEL operates as well. So to say that - you know, to measure them on Pru Goward's standard of "it has failed to put women into parliament", I think she misunderstands the organisation.

How representative is WEL?

WEL is representative of quite a significant section of the Australian community. There are older members; there are younger members in the young WEL organisation. Members come from all sorts of different walks of life. When I attend meetings there are elderly women;migrant women; business women. There are union officials; some union members. There are teachers. There are people from the legal profession. And there are also women who work in factories. So, it's a fairly representative organisation. We certainly have membership from migrant women as well. So it's a fairly representative organisation of Australian women.

Would you say that the organisation as it stands is under threat because of these funding cuts?

I think that certainly the organisational ability is under threat, and their ability to be able to access politicians in Canberra would be under threat because of this de-funding.

How does that impact on the lives of normal women?

Well, I think because WEL has provided a voice of not only opposition, but of support of particular policies on behalf of Australian women, that by taking that voice away, it's just another example of silencing. And this government seems to be quite good at it. Silencing opposition and de-funding organisations that don't take their particular line.

There is one other area I wanted to look at with you, which is a recent book, "Labor Without Class",that had some fairly tough criticisms of the women's lobby - particularly in the last days of Keating years and particularly related to universal child care. How did your organisation respond to those criticisms?

The organisation, I don't think, had much of a response to that position taken by Michael Thompson because basically while we don't agree with him, his views are.basically irrelevant. Personally I can't understand his arguments on child care. I can't work out what his perception is of workers and the workforce, or of women in our society - the only way people can imporve their social and economic position and achieve equality in the society is by working. Now, to say to workers "You can't work because you must stay home and look after your children, that child care shouldn't be available to the middle classes - I think is a strange picture of the workforce in general.

I don't have children myself, but when I think about my background, my mother was a factory worker. Now, she had to look after four children. If she had child care available to her, it would have made our lives much easier. So, for him to argue that child care is middle class welfare is a very strange argument.

What about the issue of non-means testing? Where is the justification there?

I think that if we are looking for some sort of notion of social and economic equality in society. Child care must be cheap and accessible.The universal provision of child care is important. After all children, whilst they are their parents' responsibility, they are the responsibility of the whole of society, rather than just one parent or two parents. So I think it's a bit like the health care or education issues. These sorts of things are for the betterment of society and to create greater equality, rather than to say, well all right, certain people pay and others don't.

WEL will be giving evidence at the Senate hearing into the "Second Wave" proposals next week. What message will you be taking?

The message that WEL will be putting forward is that the "Second Wave" will disadvantage women workers. We've argued that the Workplace Relations Act has done so in practice from 1996. We can see that the position of women in the workforce has gone backwards. They've lost rights; they've lost wages. We'll also argue that that's not just something limited particularly to women. Certainly it's specific to every low paid occupation - be they men or women.

The new round of industrial relations legislation takes away further rights. In particular it takes away rights from casual workers, a large proportion of which are women. We also have concerns about greater use of individual agreements and the fact that they won't be open to as much public scrutiny. We are concerned about collective agreements being undermined by individual contracts, and this will have a significant effect on the battle for equal pay that women have fought over the last 30 years. That allowing workers who are doing comparable work to have varying rates of pay - it's always the women who will be paid at the lesser amount. We are also concerned about the proposals to limit right of entry of unions to workplaces. Yet, in the past unions have played an important role in uncovering exploitation - particularly of outworkers. That now to say that a union has to be invited by a member, certainly will mean that certain workplaces won't have any sort of policing or maintaining of standards, particularly the occupational health and safety problems.

We are also concerned at cutting back the role of the Commission. The Commission has played an important role, in particular in flowing through equal pay and maintaining what was a reasonable relativity - not a reasonable but a better relativity than a lot of other international experiences, and by removing that role of the Commission in passing and having a strong award system, will be detrimental for women workers.

Suzanne Hammond is the Women's Electoral Lobby's industrial relations spokesperson and a lecturer in indusrtial relations at UNSW.

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  Issue 36 contents

»	Timorese Appeal to Democrats to Dump Reith’s Wave
»	Opera House Keeps New Years in the Family
»	Stressed Out: The Incredibly Shrinking Lunch Break
»	Kennett Fall a Warning to Carr
»	Combet Steps Up To The Plate
»	Thirty Hours at the Wheel - Then Sacked for Complaining
»	Reith’s Plan for Universities Exposed
»	Hockey Sticks With the Banks
»	Push to Downgrade Industrial Tribunals
»	Peace Stalks the Gong as Matters Bows Out
»	Rock the Republic - It’s Time

»	Guest Report
»	Sport
»	Trades Hall
»	Piers Watch

»	Vizard Critics Peddling Lies
»	Republic Soapbox
»	Barbies and Kens Eye High Office
»	Guilty! I Agree with Howard
»	Egan Speaks - Des Moore's No Friend of Mine!

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