Subjects: Women in Parliament; Role of Wom
E&OE...............................................................................................
Thank you very much Deirdre, to you Dennis, to Senator Jocelyn Newman,
the Minister for Families and Community Services and also the Minister
assisting me in relation to the Status of Women, my other parliamentary
colleagues and fellow Liberals, and ladies and gentlemen.
This is fourth opportunity I have had as Prime Minister to address
a gathering such as this and in a sense as you might expect it is a
little bit different each year, because as each year goes by there is
a proper questioning of the relationship between a section of the government,
or a section of a political party devoted exclusively to issues of concern
to women. And also the steady progress which is being made in providing
full equality of opportunity for women within our party and within society.
The antecedants of the Liberal Party, were not quite as far sighted
as Dame Elizabeth Couchman and Sir Robert Menzies when they struck that
deal of which Dennis spoke so effectively. And one of the givens about
the Liberal Party since its formation and certainly not least of all
here in the state of Victoria, has been the role of women within the
party.
And that role has inevitably changed as the role of women within our
community has changed and one of the things that the Government has
sought to do in the four years it has been in office has been to attack
in a practical way areas of continuing discrimination against women
within our community, but increasingly to recognise that the right solutions
for the community as a whole are the solutions that women generally
want.
I could go through a long list of statistics of percentage improvements.
I could remind you for example that 35% of all small business operators
in Australia in the present time are women a significant change
on what the position would have been twenty years ago. I could remind
you that in 1996 we saw the biggest single flood of new women members
into Federal Parliament that we've seen as a result of the 1996
election. And increasingly, as Dennis has pointed out, what he now
quite rightly doesn't call safe seats but seats that occasionally
record higher Liberal votes than others. Just there are women increasingly
occupying those sorts of seats in Victoria, so it is the case in the
Federal Parliament.
And if I may say so that one of the distinguishing characteristics
of the women members of the Coalition in both the Senate and the House
of Representatives are their remarkable campaign skills. And any person
who critically examined the 1998 election campaign would have to conclude
that one of the reasons why the Coalition was returned with a comfortable
majority were the remarkable campaign skills of many of our female members
in many of our marginal seats.
But today's conference, and indeed the conference over the weekend,
the convention itself, will focus very heavily on social policy. Social
policy of course is of equal concern to men and women. The notion
that in same way, social policy is predominantly the concern of women
is as wrong and as outdated as the notion that economic and business
policy is predominantly the concern of men. Just as male politicians
should have the same level of empathy with social challenges and social
issues as female politicians, so it is within our community that men
should carry an equal burden of the social responsibilities and family
responsibilities that are carried by women.
The notion that parents have unequal levels of responsibility in relation
to the raising of children and their responsibility for their upbringing
is of course a now greatly discredited proposition. And the growing
belief in modern society that children need adequate role models, both
male and female if they are to enjoy the full benefit of their family
upbringing [inaudible] widely share.
Our society is a society which gives to all much greater choice than
was the case twenty or thirty years ago. The debate about what is the
right role for women in relation to the caring of their children and
whether it should be caring by one or other parent at home for a period
of time, or through care or some other child care arrangement. That
debate has now moved and I think very refreshingly from arguments as
to who is right or what is the right arrangement to a robust recognition,
but what we ought to be doing is providing as many parents as possible
with the option of making the decision that they think best suits their
particular family circumstances. Balancing work and family responsibilities
is very much the preoccupation of parents in the twenty first century.
Of course the aspiration of women to maintain careers, the aspiration
of women to not only maintain careers for the satisfaction that they
give, but also for the social interaction that they entail is widely
understood and is part and parcel of our modern life. But equally as
we enter the early years of the twenty first century, there is a recognition
that the quality of the upbringing provided by parents to their children
still remains far and away the most formative influence on the development
of young lives. And all of our preoccupation as politicians, as members
of a political party, all of preoccupation with strong economies, with
balancing the budget, with reforming the taxation system, with delivering
greater international competitiveness to the Australian economy, all
of those pale into relative insignificance compared with the quality
of life that we create for our young and the opportunities that they
give to them. And the responsibility of parenthood on both men and women
remains the most important responsibility that most of us experience
during our lives.
We are very much a party of choice. We are a party that does not try
and dictate stereotypes. We are a party that doesn't believe in
quotas. We are a party that believes that people should aspire to achieve
to the full according to their aspirations, according to their abilities
and to their contribution and their performance. And the contribution
that women have made to successive Coalition governments and the number
of firsts that have been recorded by women on our side of politics is
well understood, not only in the Liberal Party but in the broader political
community. I want to pay tribute to the women of the Coalition Government
elected in March of 1996, they have played major roles in shaping the
direction of many areas of policy. And I particularly want to thank
Jocelyn Newman for the work that she has done. She has a very important
and much broadened policy responsibility as a result of the 1998 election.
And the focus of this weekend's convention on social policy is
in so small measure due to the way in which she has been able to shape
the direction of that social policy. The way in which she has been
able to bring an objective judgement and to set a good balance between
encouraging the individual and community sector contributions to the
development of social policy underpinned by the proper role of government
within our community.
You've heard me speak very often and I'll speak again during
this weekend, particularly when I address the Convention on Sunday morning,
about the importance of the social coalition within our society. Of
the fact that we appear, I think, at the beginning of this century to
have achieved a better balance in relation to the respective roles of
the Government and the rest of the community than we have had for thirty
of forty years. We no longer believe that every solution can be provided
by the government. We equally have rejected the rather naive notion
that if you had an unrestrained market approach to everything, that
through some kind of miracle of trickle down economics every problem
would be solved. What you need is an appropriate recognition that the
government has a limited but strategic role in our community. That
we need a coalition of the government providing the social security
safety net, that government acting as a facilitator but drawing together
to contributions of the welfare sector, of business and of individuals.
And much of the work that Jocelyn has done has been contributing in
that area and giving effect to those kind of policy directions.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am delighted to have the opportunity, again,
of opening this conference. Of thanking all of the women of the Liberal
Party over the years for their contribution, of recording the scale
of that contribution and to remark that perhaps the end goal of all
of our efforts will be as each year goes by the continuing questioning
of the issue of whether or not you need to have a separate dedicated
segment of a convention such as this dealing with women's affairs.
I suspect for many years to come we will, but I regard it as a wholly
healthy thing that that question might be asked because it is an indication
that as the years go by greater equality of opportunity is being achieved,
more barriers are being removed and greater recognition is being afforded
to the capacity and the willingness of women to contribute across all
sections of society and to play an equal partnership role with men in
the development of the Australian community.
I thank all of you for your attendance. I wish the conference well,
and I look forward to seeing a lot of all of you over the next two to
three days. Thank you.