E&OE...........................................................................................................................
Thank you very much, Joan, for those very kind and gracious words
of introduction. To Penny, to Judi Moylan, to Chris McDiven, to all
of the others, members and delegates and ladies and gentlemen.
Last year I had the opportunity when I was in Washington of going
onto the floor of the American Senate. And I was struck immediately
by two comparisons with the Parliaments of Australia.
The first was - and I make no criticism of this, let me say - the
first was that the average age of the American Senate was infinitely
higher than the average age of either the Australian Senate or the
Australian House of Representatives.
And the second observation that really hit me was the, I have to say,
pitifully few number of women Senators in the American Senate. And
it brought home to me far more dramatically than any kind of statistical
comparison that you might care to make just how well Australia compares
and, indeed, how well Australia leads the way in the representation
of women in the parliaments of democratic nations. In fact, as a result
of the last Federal election we are now twice the world average so
far as parliamentary representation for women in democratic parliaments.
This is no modern day aberration because one of the least remarked
features of Australia's democratic development is that we did
essentially lead or help lead the rest of the world in giving the
vote to women and giving women preferment and advancement in public
political positions.
And it is also the case with our own party, the Liberal Party of Australia.
Women played a very important role from the very beginning in the
formation and the development of the Liberal Party of Australia. And
I'm immensely proud of the fact that we have chalked up so many
firsts.
We have an unparalleled level of female representation in the Federal
Parliament as a result of the last election. We didn't indulge
ourselves with streamers and kissing and hugging and dancing on the
floor of our national conference. Rather, we simply went about the
process of pre-selecting women of talent and ability and getting them
elected to the Federal Parliament. And nowhere is that, of course,
more apparent than here in the State of Queensland because the female
representation in the House of Representatives from the State of Queensland
is, I believe, a record for any State of Australia in Federal politics
from either side. And that occurred in the last election.
And we have the spectacle at the present moment, apparently, of the
male heavies of the Australian Labor Party trying to intimidate a
woman, Anne Scott, out of securing pre-selection for the Labor Party
for the seat of Oxley.
But, ladies and gentlemen, there are lots of things that I want to
say something about today. But the most important message I have for
all of you is that the Liberal Party is, firstly, immensely proud
of what it has achieved in the area of women's representation
and the advancement of women, not only within our party but also within
the community.
But we are not in the business of resting on what has been achieved.
As I said in the speech I gave on International Women's Day last
Sunday, listing the achievements of the Menzies Government and other
Liberal governments in introducing benefits and changes of direct
help to women. And it is a very long list and it is a list that goes
a lot further than we are often given credit for. And it includes,
for example, the signature of the international convention that led
to the creation of the very office of the Commissioner for Sex Discrimination
to which Penny referred to in her introductory remarks.
It was a Liberal government that established the first national childcare
office. It was a Liberal government that lifted what now seems to
be the quite laughable ban on married women continuing in the Federal
Public Service. It was a Liberal government that introduced child
endowment. It was a Liberal government that first recognised the rights
of married pensioners so far as the tax system was concerned. It was
a Liberal government that introduced many of the provisions for private
health insurance that is so important for women. And the list goes
on.
It is a list which is about building practical measures and practical
areas of achievement for Australian women. But, of course, it is not
sufficient to rest on what has been achieved. And nor should listing
those achievements be seen as some declaration of complacency because
there is still a long way to go. There is still a long way to go to
recognise the full participation of women within our community.
We are a party that treasures and values choice. We do not believe
in the patronising use of quotas. We do not believe in advancing certain
categories of women or, indeed, certain categories of men. We do not
define women's preferment by whether or not the woman in question
has a particular attitude on a specified range of subjects. Our view
is that all women within the Australian community, whatever their
views on politics or life, have a right to a quality of opportunity
and have a right to free choice. And that is embedded in the policies
that we have adopted in so many areas.
The world into which women are now born is, of course, radically different
from what it used to be. The most astonishing and profound social
change that has occurred in my own lifetime has, of course, been the
change in the role in the status of women within our modern community,
within the Australian community and within western society. And I
specify western society because sadly enough, the role and the status
and the position and the treatment of women in other societies is
often quite appalling. And one of the things that we ought to remember
at a conference such as this is that the women of many third world
countries are denied even the basic rights of physical protection
and sustenance that we take for granted.
The world has changed enormously. And I try to think of it in my own
personal terms of thinking of the world into which the three women
that have had the greatest influence on my life - my mother, my wife
and my daughter - of the differences of the world into which the three
of the were born.
My mother belonged to that Australian generation, a great, heroic
generation, that lived through two world wars and a great depression.
And she was a dedicated person who believed absolutely and committedly
in the importance of family life and the importance of playing your
part in a community.
My wife was born into a different era. I shall, of course, not specify
precisely which era, but a different era, a more modern contemporary
era in which many attitudes had changed. Not out of disrespect for
the attitudes of earlier years but just simply because the world does
change. And the opportunities for women of my wife's generation
were very different and they were greater and infinitely different
from those of my mother's generation.
And then again my daughter was born into a still later generation.
And I've often remarked that when I commenced at the Sydney University
Law School in 1957 there were, out of a class of about 120, there
were fewer than 20 women. When my daughter started 35 years later
in an economics/law degree at Sydney University the majority of that
first year were women. And that represents a dramatic illustration
and, might I say, a dramatic demonstration of the legacy of the Menzies
Government. Because it was the Menzies Government, in response to
the Report of the Murray Committee in the 1950s, that really laid
the foundation for the great post World War II expansion of higher
education in Australia. And when you hear our political opponents
waxing lyrical about the contribution that they have made to higher
education, we ought to remember that.
The world has changed. It has changed forever and it will go on changing.
And whenever I talk to my daughter about her future, the contemplation
of the changes that lie ahead of her, of course, are very much in
her own mind.
There are certain things, of course, that never change. People never
lose their desire to have a sense of personal and physical security.
And one of the things of which I am very proud that I have been able
to do in the time that I have been Prime Minister is to bring to the
people of Australia, particularly to the women of Australia, a greater
sense of physical security because of the uniform prohibition on semi-automatic
weapons.
Violence and the threat of violence is something that is abhorrent
to all of us, absolutely. And there's nothing in my view that
unites women's groups in Australia right across the spectrum,
whether they are very conservative or rather radical, than an abhorrence
of violence and physical violence, physical violence of any kind.
And the measures that my Government has taken to reduce the incidence
of domestic violence and to deliver that very simplistic but, nonetheless,
profound measure, that real men don't hit women' is
something that I'm very proud of also. Because violence against
women and children is absolutely unacceptable in a civilised society.
It is something that ought to be campaigned against. It ought to be
exposed. It ought to be treated in a sensitive fashion. It should
remain as it is, a crime. But there should be an approach to it that
allows men who see themselves as having a problem to seek proper counselling
and proper assistance. But there are different ways in which we can,
as a community, demonstrate our determination to achieve equality.
In the months ahead we'll be releasing a new taxation plan for
all of the Australian people. And that taxation plan will be scrutinised
just as closely by the women of Australia as it will be by the men,
and so it should, not only for those women, of course, a majority
now, by far, who are in the paid workforce, but also those who are
not in the paid workforce.
And can I endorse very strongly what Joan Sheldon had to say about
respecting the choices that women make in relation to the caring of
their dependent children. It is not the role of a government to dictate
a stereotype. It is not the role of a government to say that you should
or shouldn't be in the workforce, that both parents should or
shouldn't be in the workforce when children are young. That is
for parents to decide.
It is not my role as Prime Minister to say what is right or wrong
in relation to that. It is my role as Prime Minister to respect and
to support the choices which women make and men make, and to provide
a taxation system and a welfare system that facilitates and promotes
those choices.
There was a time some years ago when women who had young children
and who entered the workforce were criticised in some way, not always
openly but, perhaps, indirectly, for neglecting the interests of their
children by entering the workforce.
Now those days are, by and large, behind us. But we don't now
want to replace those outdated attitudes with a new and equally unacceptable
attitude from some other sections of the community who seek to almost
sneer at and treat as second class citizens those women who elect
or, indeed, those men who elect to be full-time carers for their children
at home.
Either choice is equally honourable. Either choice should be equally
supported. Both choices should be fully respected and that is the
attitude that I have always brought to these matters and that is the
attitude that has permeated the changes that we made after the last
election through the family tax initiative that delivered an additional
$1 billion into the hands of parents through the tax system who were
caring for young children.
And since the last election we have done a number of very important
things for women. Importantly, we have continued to increase the resources
that have been made available for childcare. There will be 83,000
additional childcare places made available under my Government over
the next four years. We are now spending more than $1 billion a year
in childcare assistance and that has been a real increase in each
of the two years that we have been in government.
In the area of superannuation we have dramatically expanded the opportunities
and made fairer the treatment of women. We have not only introduced
the retirement savings accounts - these are superannuation accounts
that literally follow workers from one job to another or, indeed,
in and out of the workforce. And they are ideal for the chosen life
patterns of many women within our community whose experience is often
full-time work, when a child arrives, a period of being out of the
workforce entirely, then followed by part-time work, then followed
by a return to full-time work.
Now, what we need with that kind of situation is an itinerant superannuation
package that follows you and that you don't lose the benefits
of it when you are temporarily out of the workforce.
We've also introduced an arrangement whereby it is possible to
obtain for the partner to the marriage who's continuing to work
when children are young, an opportunity to obtain what is, in effect,
a double taxation deduction in relation to the spouse who is at home.
And then last Sunday I announced, ten years after the former Labor
government had been told to do it, ten years after the former Labor
government had been told to do it, I announced that my Government
had begun the policy reform process that would lead to the inclusion
of superannuation as an item of marital property to be adjudicated
upon in the event of a dissolution of a marriage.
Now, that has been a long-outstanding area of grievance and concern
to many women in Australia. We all hope that marriages, when entered
into, will last forever but unfortunately not all of them do and we
need to have fair, balanced, sensible rules providing for the disposition
of property, particularly for that generation of women whose experience
in the work forces is not as great and extensive and as full as that
of younger women within our community. And that policy announcement
will be very warmly welcomed by women in their middle years, many
of whom have been denied the opportunity of building up any kind of
separate assets and have been people who, often in the past, have
been very unfairly treated on the dissolution of their marriages.
Now, it is never possible in these areas to satisfy everybody. And
every time we have a debate in our Party Room or in our party about
contentious things such as the Child Support Agency, I am reminded
of just how infinitely difficult it is in these situations to satisfy
everybody. But if you try and apply the principle of justice and equity
and fairness you have to recognise the inclusion of superannuation
is enormously important.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have derived an enormous amount of advice
and support and understanding from the women members of the Federal
Parliamentary party. We had a very valuable and stimulating dinner
the other night in which I was able to get just about all of my female
colleagues together and to get their ideas on policy. It wasn't
a night spent just talking, may I say, it was not a night spent at
all talking about women's issues, it was a night spent talking
about issues that affect all of us as Australians. Issues that affect
the Australian community, their health, their employment opportunities,
the future job prospects of our children and the future development
of our children.
When we held the Constitutional Convention I remarked upon the astonishing
differences between the make-up of that Convention and the make-up
of the conventions that had put together the Constitution in 1901.
And the biggest single difference, of course, was that there were
no women at all present in the conventions of 1901. And on this occasion
something in the order of 35 to 40 per cent of the delegates both
appointed and elected to the Convention were women. And that is yet
another symbol and another piece of reality as well of the change
that has come over our society.
I don't set any particular target for the number of women in
Federal Parliament. What I do set is a target of removing remaining
barriers against their full participation. That is the only liberal
goal that you can set on something like this. We treat people on merit
and on quality. We don't prefer them on the basis of their gender.
We simply prefer them on the basis of their commitment and on the
basis of their ability. And I have no doubt that with that approach
the number of women will continue to grow.
I look into this audience and I think of the contribution being made
by Judi Moylan, the first-ever woman appointed to the position exclusively
of Minister for the Status of Women. I see Margaret Reid, the first
ever woman to be President of the Australian Senate. And I look around
at the tremendous contribution that so many of you have made to the
development of policy within the Liberal Party and to the development
of all that we stand for.
This is the first occasion of our great National Convention of 1998.
Joan, you are the first Treasurer anywhere in Australia. You are the
Deputy Premier of Queensland. You're a colleague for whom I have
great respect and affection and you are a colleague who will have
my total support in the political campaigns that lie ahead of you
and your colleague, Rob Borbidge, over the coming months.
The Coalition holds at present unprecedented levels of power and authority
throughout Australia, not only at a federal level but in five of the
six States. We therefore have an unrivalled opportunity to leave our
imprint, to mould and change Australian society for the better. And
part of that will be the aspiration that in the future our successors
will be able to say that the Liberals of the mid to late 1990s changed
Australian society to give full equality of opportunity and full ranges
of choices to Australian women.
Women have come, rightly, a long way over the last ten or twenty years.
There is still a distance to be travelled but it is a journey that
we will undertake together. It is a journey based upon proper respect
and understanding of the things that we all have in common but, equally,
the unique different contributions of men and women to a caring, understanding
and compassionate society.
Can I thank the women of the Liberal Party for what you have done
to deliver Federal Government to me and to my colleagues. Can I continue
to encourage you to give us your ideas, your thoughts, your criticisms
where necessary, your visions for the future. And above all, let us
all work as hard as we can to continue realising our great Liberal
goals that we all share in common.
I have great pleasure in declaring this conference open. Thank you.
[Ends]