Thank you very much Theana, my parliamentary colleagues today Margaret Guilfoyle, ladies and gentlemen, a huge delight for Janette and for me to again be present at the opening of the Federal Council, traditionally was a meeting of the Federal Women's Committee and an address from the Party Leader. I do say against the background of the first Federal Council meeting since our re-election in October of last year and it is an opportunity for us to reflect upon the great political success that we have enjoyed but in the words of the injunction that appears in front of me, it's a question of getting on with the job. We can spend a few moments just reflecting, just a few about how good it was to win so comprehensively at the last election but the Australian people are looking forward and in that typical Australian directness, it's very much a question of what have you done for me today brother or sister and that fundamentally is what must be our job and our responsibility.
I want to talk today for a few moments about the approach that the Liberal Party has always taken to the role of women in our society and not only but in particular the role that they have taken in relation to caring for families within our community. All of you are aware that we have always emphasised in the Liberal Party, the importance of individuality amongst both men and women in our society, we haven't endeavoured to impose a stereotype, we have rejected patronising quotas but we have the largest number of women in Federal Cabinet since Federation. We have increasing numbers of women now occupying safe Liberal seats as well as marginal Liberal seats. The old throw away line a few years ago, there are plenty of women candidates but they're only in marginal seats. Well let me say immediately that one of the reasons that we are still in office is that the women marginal seat holders, particularly 1998, proved the difference between victory and defeat so I would be the last person to decry the importance of a woman in a marginal seat and I am looking at a few of them here and all I'd say is that they were emblematic of our victory in 1996 and they were crucial to our survival in 1998 but I do want to take also the opportunity of making the point that we now have as well as the people such as Louise Markus who wonderfully won Greenway and Jackie Kelly who memorably won Lindsay and retained it on many occasions and of course people like Trish Draper and people like Jo Gash and Kay Elson that have taken marginal seats and turned them into safe seats, so much so that over the next year or so, along with Danna Vale, over the next year or so Peter Costello and I are going to get them to come and do fundraisers for us in our electorates. But it is important though to make the point that as well as this phenomenon of the Liberal Party finding and promoting extremely high quality female candidates in marginal seats, we have also seen women pre-selected in safe Liberal Party seats and of course consistent in the Senate, though I must take this opportunity of publicly at this Council meeting of thanking Sue Knowles for her 21 years of service to the Liberal Party as a Senator from Western Australia.
Of course it's not only at a Parliamentary level that we have seen through sheer talent and policies of equal opportunity, women emerge but we now have the largest number of women since Federation heading Government departments at a Federal level and this occurred after the last election, entirely on merit, the number of people who were appointed, the women who were appointed. So I say those things at the outset to try and paint a picture that because we are a party of individuals, we don't believe in quotas, there's nothing more patronising, than to say to somebody: "Well, we are going to give you this position because you are woman, because you come from a particular part of Australia or because you have a particular ethnic background." What we are trying to do is to create a society where talent has its own reward and of course the foundation of being able to succeed in the kind of society that Australia has, of course, is a level of economic independence and of all the many things that have happened to women over the last 40 or 50 years is that they have achieved a greater degree of economic independence and economic self sufficiency. In many cases they have achieved it with their husbands and their families, in many other cases they've achieved it despite relationships and we have seen progressively, a change in our society where the economic independence of women has progressed steadily. I am very proud of the fact that for example the unemployment rate amongst women in Australia is now 5.3% compared with a rate of 7.6% when the former Government left office.
But despite all of the changes that have occurred in relation to the economic independence of women, it remains the fact and this is not said apologetically, it is said very objectively and admiringly that the principle role of caring for people in our society is still carried by women and that is likely to be the case for many years into the future, that is not to say that greater caring responsibilities should not be assumed by men. Once again that is something that must evolve, it is not something that a Government can mandate. It's not something that can be proscribed by a set of rules and one of the things that I have constantly aspired since being Prime Minister is my belief that the Government should not dictate the family stereotypes.
The role of the Government and we've given expression to this with our policies particularly through the Family Tax Benefits, the role of the Government is to create a climate where individual families can make their own choices. It's instructive to remind ourselves on this score again that the largest single work-family combination of parents caring for children is what I call the "one-and-a-halves," where you have a full-time bread winner, normally, but not always the male, you have a part-time bread winner being the mother. They comprise something I think in the order of 27 to 28 per cent of couples with dependent children, you have something in the order of still 22 or 23 per cent where there is one bread winner only with the other parent at home full time and you have something in the order of 17 per cent where both parents are full time in the workforce and it's important particularly in the environment of Canberra where you have an above average incidence of two parents in the full-time workforce to remember that the nature of our society is more typically what I have I think called on a previous occasion when I addressed this gathering and I still think the metaphor is accurate, it's the police officer and the part-time sales assistant. That is far more likely to be a typical family arrangement, particularly after children have gone to school, than any other formation.
Now you may wonder putting 27 and 22 or 23 together and 17 together, where are the rest? Well, of course, the rest are indeed, sadly, people where neither parent works or where they're sole parents and it's quite an astonishing statistic and that is why so much in the Budget was directed towards that particular group and I want to say something about the Welfare to the Work measures in the Budget because they were in no way designed to save money. In fact they will cost the Government a lot more over the next three or four years than if we had left things exactly as they were. They were designed overwhelmingly to encourage and to facilitate greater workforce participation after the child, being the youngest child being cared for by a sole parent or in some very low income parents, by the unemployed parent after that child reached the age of six, they were designed to facilitate that parent's return to the workforce. Now overwhelmingly sole parents are women, not all of them but I think, and Kay will correct me, but I think it's still in the order of 70-odd per cent or thereabouts, are women and the reasons why we believe that a policy of encouraging their participation in the workforce on a part-time basis after their youngest child reaches the age of six, by definition therefore has started to go to school, is not to save money, it's also not totally to increase workforce participation, that is part of it. But it is also to recognise that from an individual's point of view, it's something that in more cases than not, can be beneficial. Many women who are sole parents have gone through very bruising marriage or relationship breakdowns. Their self esteem is often low and it's important to recognise from their own point of view, the socialising benefits of returning to the workforce in circumstances where they feel they can look after their children, do justice to them and also develop some friendships and some social connections of their own is tremendously important.
So I want in these remarks, if I say nothing else, to give a dimension to that policy, beyond the dimension of just workforce participation, important though that is, I also believe very strongly that it is a policy which is designed to recognise that the great bulk of people who have become sole parents and I haven't met many sole parents in my life who are sole parents by design. It's one of the great myths of Australian society that people are sole parents by design, in fact, all the evidence is the opposite, the great bulk of them are people who, in the old language, and perhaps sometimes the old language is more suitable because it describes the facts, are deserted mothers. And those people deserve to have a framework from society which enables them not only to make a contribution, but also to, in many cases, recover their sense of dignity and self worth.
We've often said that we don't want to dictate behaviour. We don't seek to pass judgements on particular family formations and we certainly don't. But that doesn't diminish the fact that we should always be ready to state the ideal, recognising that if the ideal can't be achieved then we've got to help people who haven't been able to achieve the ideal. And there is no doubt in my mind that the opportunity of growing up in a household where you have both the male role model of the father and the female role model of the mother in more cases than not must produce more stable, happy children. But because it does, we must never tire in our efforts to help those who do not have the privilege of growing up in that environment.
And that reference to children who don't grow up in that kind of environment leads me onto two other very important areas of reform that bear upon the caring for families and affect the caring roles of both men and women. The first of those is the quite significant, and I think under-reported changes that the Government proposes to the Family Law Act through the creation of Family Relationship Centres. When these are up and running, they will represent the biggest change to the family law system in this country since 1975, with the introduction of the current Family Law Act. What they are designed to do above all else, is to provide a mechanism when families break up in the nature of a shock absorber for the inevitable bitterness and acrimony that so often arises and is played out to the detriment of the division of caring responsibilities for the children of the marriage or the relationship. In many cases, when a break occurs, people make sensible arrangements. They make sensible arrangements about the custody and access to children, they make sensible arrangements about the financial support for the children. But in many cases, they don't and they are fairly quickly sucked into extremely acrimonious and very, very expensive legal proceedings. It's a long time since I practiced law in Sydney, and when I did quite a few years ago, I did do some family law work, or matrimonial causes, as it used to be called, and it was very expensive. Even in the most easy and felicitous of circumstances and of course over the past 30 years that process has accelerated.
And these Family Relationship Centres, and 65 of them will be established. And they won't be run by the Government. They will be run by organisations that have a career commitment to helping people whose relationships have broken down. We will follow the model of the Job Network. We will invite tenders from organisations that now provide these services, such as, for example, Anglicare or Centacare or the Wesley Mission. Not limiting them of course to organisations with a religious background, but overwhelmingly they are the organisations that are most active in this field and we will fund them. And they will provide not only a service when a relationship breaks down, but they will also provide services where a relationship is in danger of breaking down. And because of the very strong financial support that we're going to give them, I believe that they will make a very significant change to the operation of the family law system in Australia. We're going to change the law to make it mandatory for people to as it were, go through the process of dealing with the Relationship Centre before they begin to litigate. And that will, I believe, take out of the equation all but the most irreconcilable of differences about financial and caring arrangements for children.
The other very sensitive area of course is that of the Child Support Agency. All of my colleagues who are here today will say to me again and again and I'll agree with them that the most difficult cases we have in our electorate offices are often bound up with child custody. I have a regular visit to my local electorate office in Gladesville and the most difficult cases, the ones where the people keep coming back and no matter what you say or what you do, you can't satisfy them. And I understand that because the hurt and the feeling of grievance is very deep. And they're strongly entrenched views of both sides of the debate. Many men feel the present system is loaded against them. Many women understandably feel that people have walked out on their responsibilities and their former husbands and father of their children neither care about their children or provide any money to support them.
The truth of course is somewhere in the middle and I've very indebted to Kay Patterson and Professor Parkinson of Sydney University who have done a wonderful job in preparing along with a lot of colleagues, arising out of the Committee that was chaired by Kay Hull some 18 months ago. They've done a wonderful job of putting together this report and proposals for change. I am greatly encouraged at the response that I have had. I never thought it would possible in an area as difficult as this to get a response that was half likely to you know, be positive. But it does look as though we may be able to find our way through, and a way through that is fair to both custodial and non-custodial parents. But above all, represents a further commitment to ensuring that the welfare of the children is more important than the self interest and sense of retribution of the part of either of the parents. And I do want to congratulate Kay and her group, her reference group that have worked so very hard.
Can I just bring my remarks together by returning to what I said at the outset and that is that the Liberal Party has always been a party which has always stressed individual choice. We don't seek to tell people how to organise their families. We are nonetheless not reluctant to extol the importance of a united two-parent family in our society where the role models of both men and women are available to young children. But we do recognise that although that is the ideal, many people through no fault of their own don't have it. And our responses and our assistance to those who don't have it should be non-judgemental, should be understanding and should also recognise that particularly women who suffer bruising marriage or relationship break-ups require understanding that involves not only financial dimensions, but also an understanding that the development of pathways back to social relationships and other friendships and work is a very important socialiser of us all; is a very, very important consideration.
I think in crafting the policies that were announced by Peter in the Budget in the area of Welfare to Work were not only addressing the issue of workforce participation. We are an ageing society and we do over a period of time need to develop policies that retain as many people as possible in the workforce, encourage them to work longer, help them to re-enter the workforce after they feel their family responsibilities allow that to occur, and in the case, particularly of sole parents, to provide them with both the incentive and the assistance to do so. And in that light, both those policies should be seen not as in any way punitive, but rather as recognising the benefits to individuals and society of greater workforce participation by that group.
Theana, could I conclude by thanking the women of the Liberal Party who from the very time our Party was founded have played on absolutely crucial role, have reminded us of the importance of choice, have reminded us of the importance of caring, not only for our own families, but for the broader family of the Australian community. I congratulate you and I thank all of my colleagues and on this occasion particularly, my female colleagues for the tremendous contribution that they have made to our electoral success and the reformist policies of the Government over the last nine and a quarter years. Thank you.
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