Writing in Crikey the other day, Eloise Keating suggested that “if Abbott wants to woo women, he should start with wages”:
Recent figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show Australian women earned just 82.5% of the average male rate of pay across the country in 2009. On average, a female worker would have earned more in 1985 — and will be $1 million worse off over their lifetimes than their dads, brothers and partners.
That rather understates the size of the problem, because that differential refers to full time earnings, and 57% of women in work were full time, with 43% being part time or casual in 2009. As the recent House of Representatives Standing Committee Report on Equal Pay, Making It Fair, observed:
In August 2007, the average mean earning from all jobs for women was $680 per week (compared to $1022 for male employees) partly reflecting women’s greater participation in part time employment. On a comparison of full time employment earnings, women on average earned $910 per week and men earned $1131 weekly.
The point I’ve been making in my commentary and analysis of the Abbott parental leave plan is that there seems to be a perception that women in the workforce are much better off than they actually are. Otherwise it would be impossible to conclude that income replacement was ‘generous’ or ‘fair’. My argument has been that the Coalition’s approach would further entrench existing inequalities. In that context, it was interesting to note the comments from Eric Abetz on the 7.30 Report tonight. Abetz was responding to a case which starts tomorrow in Fair Work Australia seeking to revalue the work performed (very largely by women) in the community sector. Continue reading ‘Coalition shows it doesn’t care about equal pay for women’
A while back, Kevin Rudd proclaimed the history wars over. He may have been right, at least insofar as the combatants left on the field are looking decidely ghostly; witness the non-event of the launch of Keith Windschuttle’s latest tome. Yesterday’s grapeshot over the history curriculum will, likely, not be followed up by another offensive – the Coalition, and the usual suspects, will move on to criticising the government’s health announcements.
Yet the influence of the Howard-era battles remains – and its most significant legacy might be the fact that history is embedded in the national curriculum at all. This is a major shift from its folding into SOSE (Studies of Society and Environment) at P-10 levels in many states.
In an interesting piece for Crikey today, Tony Taylor looks at the reception and implementation of the history curriculum: Continue reading ‘The reception and implementation of the National History Curriculum’
Over at Gatewatching, Jason Wilson references Andrew Elder’s very good question about the Australian Women’s Weekly being a graveyard for politicians, and asks another good one – given the magazine’s truly huge readership, were Tony Abbott’s comments ill advised?
The Weekly is a colossus, that really does reach an incredibly wide sweep of Australian voters. Looking bad in it means looking bad to a lot of people. For a man who is struggling with women voters, Tony Abbott has at the very least taken a huge risk with his comments. If they really were off the cuff, and really do hurt him, he will come to regret going unprepared to an encounter with the Weekly, one of Australia’s most important political publications.
To reiterate Mr Elder’s question – one that of course many feminists asked before either of us did – why aren’t magazines like the Weekly taken more seriously, more often, by more journos, scholars and political junkies, as both public sphere institutions, and as places where politics happens?
As summer holidays end, and Parliament prepares to resume, we’ve seen two stories this last week which have had lots of normally not so engaged voters talking; Abbott’s remarks about young women’s sexuality (quickly spun away as ‘private advice’ to his daughters when their potential for embedding a negative perception of his persona became clear) and Julia Gillard’s launch of the Myschool website.
Despite my own reservations about the latter, I have no doubt whatsoever it’s been a big political plus for the Government as the election year begins in earnest. Can the same be said for Tony’s thoughts about sexuality?
According to Julia’s press release, the MySchool website is supposed to tell whether your local school is working well:
My School contains important information about each of Australia’s 10 000 schools including the number of students at the school, the number of teachers at the school and how the school is performing in national literacy and numeracy testing.
Parents and school communities are also able to compare their school’s results with neighbouring schools and up to 60 statistically similar schools.
By comparing statistically similar schools, it will be clear which schools are doing well and which schools need an extra hand. By comparing statistically similar schools, it will be clear which schools are doing well and which schools need an extra hand.
The very idea of making this kind of information public is of course controversial. If it is to be done, however, you’d hope that it’s done in a rigorous way, so that schools are indeed compared against appropriate benchmarks.
Continue reading ‘Myschool demography FAIL’
The government has released modelling showing the effects of the CPRS on household incomes, demonstrating that many low income earners will, on average, be better off financially.
Predictably, this disclosure has added fuel to the fire of complaints from the right about its evils.
In the circles Tony Abbott moves in, redistribution is a dirty word.
That, of course, ignores the fact that everything governments do in tax, benefits, and allowances of whatever kind is redistributive. That includes all the Howard era tax/welfare transfers. It’s not as though Labor has some sort of evil socialist agenda and Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard are socialist wolves in sheep’s clothing, much as some might like to entertain such fantasies.
It’s no doubt right to say, as Andrew Norton does, that Abbott’s shift in the Coalition’s position to opposition to the CPRS (matched with vague promises of costless emissions savings) exposes the detail of the ETS to more debate. That may not be a bad thing, though it would also be a good thing if its ineffectiveness in achieving its ostensible aims were the focus of the debate. That’s not likely to be the case in the headline election year debate, as Abbott’s move switches attention to hip pockets.
However, anyone who followed the design of the CPRS from the start would be well aware that the government had already anticipated this line of attack. Continue reading ‘“Great new tax on everything”’
One of the points I’ve made over and over again, before, during and after the 2007 election was that the electorate had tired of the noise level; the ranting and raving and constant theatrics of the Howard government. In voting for Kevin Rudd, people were voting, among other things, for someone who appeared safe, reassuring and confident; someone who wouldn’t constantly be in their faces with culture wars, wars and the politics of fear. Now Tony Abbott is taking us back to the future, and not just through the resurrection of the Madame Tussaud gallery of Howard front benchers. All the masculinist rhetoric we’re currently hearing (including that of “Abbott’s army”) is precisely what most people don’t want from their pollies at this point in time.
On Lateline tonight, Liberal frontbencher and new Immigration shadow minister Scott Morrison, claimed, in defending Barnaby Joyce’s mad ravings, that folks didn’t want “clones and drones”.
Let’s make a number of further points about this claim, and Joyce’s effusions. Continue reading ‘“Clones and drones” versus Sturm und Drang politics’
Dr. Cat’s post on women and Tony Abbott is a must-read. She really nails one of the problems I’ve had with the general coverage about Abbott’s “women problem”. So go and read it now. I’ll wait.
I’m not going to repeat anything she’s written because it’s unnecessary, rather I want to talk about another thing I’ve noticed through all the exciting #spillage of the last week, and that’s the role of women in the events themselves. We’re really starting to see the effects of decades of pushing to get women accepted into all areas of public life, while at the same time we’re still seeing the effects of keeping them marginalised for so long.
This week, after Penny Wong negotiated a deal with the Liberal party on the ETS, we’ve had Sophie Mirabella’s exit from the front bench alongside Tony Abbott, triggering a mass walkout of further Liberal frontbenchers. We’ve had “loyal girl” Julie Bishop, who has managed to survive three leadership spills and keep her job. We’ve had the brave and principled senators Judith Troeth and Sue Boyce, who walked the walk when other Liberal Senators toed the party line. While all this unfolded, Kevin Rudd was overseas, leaving Julia Gillard to run the country, while the new opposition leader promises to stop flirting with her. And over in NSW, the ALP caucus voted to make Kristina Keneally their first female premier.
Continue reading ‘The Women’
A truly bizarre editorial decision from Ben Naparstek, who occupies the chair at The Monthly, has resulted in the publication of a review of Jacqueline Kent’s biography of Julia Gillard by Christine Wallace, who is writing a rival biography of the Deputy Prime Minister for Allen & Unwin.
Wallace, in her review, describes the Kent book, The Making of Julia Gillard, as a “political quickie”. I’ve read it, and that’s fair comment, though Kent does cast a fair bit of light on aspects of Gillard’s rise through Labor ranks which are not well known, such as the effects of her long term rivalry with Lindsay Tanner and Kim Carr.
In his defence, Naparstek points to a similar review by Michelle Grattan.
However, Michelle Grattan has not written a book which is in direct commercial competition with one she is reviewing.
Naparstek also claims Wallace is best qualified to review Kent’s book – by virtue of being the author of a rival biography of Gillard. Bizarre.
There’s a fair bit of obfuscation in Naparstek’s defence of his editorial decision. Continue reading ‘Ben Naparstek, The Monthly and the Julia Gillard “biography wars”’
Not to be outdone by The Australian, Quadrant has launched its own series on the left. This time with non-leftists writing it… And writing about the Australian’s articles. Jason Soon, for instance, along the way to arguing that social justice is a “category mistake” and the basis of “the left’s form of creationism”, takes a swipe at LP as “postmodernist”. News to me. The mis-en-abyme of Quadrant’s deconstruction of putative lefties writing for a right wing op/ed page strikes me as much more properly po/mo. Or maybe it’s a piece of pure Dada-ist modernist absurdism.
It’s hard to conclude otherwise when the now compulsory comparisons of Julia Gillard et al with the North Korean regime are wheeled out once more, coupled with crazed elisions of a bunch of rather mild social democrats with Stalin and Mao, and paeans to the millions of dead, etc, etc. There’s a certain irony in one of the contributors accusing critics of writing conspiracy theory. Not to mention the argument, if that’s the word for it, that concern with narratives is evidence of postmodernism (evil!) sitting uneasily next to attacks on social democrats for not having a narrative. Anyone remember when the teaching of narrative history was supposed to be a touchstone of John Howard era approved political correctness? Contradiction piled on contradiction…
There’s lots more. Should you not wish to read all of the series, Gary Sauer-Thompson has devoted some time to analysing the introductory piece by Mervyn Bendle. Bendle contributes another article, damning Julia Gillard among others, complete with another clever pun in the title. I thought that was the sort of Derridean wordplay he despised. But anyway…
Related LP posts: Here, here and here.
Elsewhere: Catallaxy.
Update: Skepticlawyer.
On Saturday, I penned some thoughts on the series in The Australian on the Australian left, riffing off the first article by Tim Soutphommasane.
Among other things, I queried the practice of addressing a discourse about left politics to the presumed centres of power, describing those who do that sort of thing as “court philosophers”. I also suggested that labourism might be a better place to look for an explanation of how the left has shaped Australian society and politics than social democracy.
Guy Rundle has taken up the torch, reviewing the full series of articles in today’s Crikey, and going where none of the “left thinkers” dared to tread – propounding an “idea of what the left’s basic principles are or should be, and what sort of positive programme, rather than reactive policy, they should propose.”
Read his piece (reproduced with permission) over the fold. Continue reading ‘The Australian’s series on the left’
Julia Gillard has criticised the decision of the Fair Pay Commission to award no increase in the federal minimum wage. She accurately notes that the decision will have an impact on other workers as well, because the safety net is the floor which underpins bargaining.
However, Gillard and Kevin Rudd might themselves bear some of the responsibility for this decision, which will – rightly – be a political problem for the Labor government. The Commission was heavily criticised by Labor in opposition, and next year it’s due to be abolished, its functions rolled into the AIRC’s replacement – Fair Work Australia. If the criticisms made of the process and of the narrow economic orthodoxy of its chair, Professor Ian Harper, have merit, it surely should have been open to the ALP to hand back the wage setting powers to the AIRC earlier. The ’softly, softly’ approach to IR reform is full of contradictions, one of which will unfortunately now impact on those least able to afford to shrug their shoulders at the political game. It isn’t a good look for a Labor government.
Elsewhere: Via Andos in comments on another thread, a link to a useful interview on ABC Radio with ACOSS. The point is made that research from the OECD (and from other sources, I might add) debunks the notion that there is a strong correlation between small rises in minimum wages and unemployment.
Update: Matt C notes in comments that the FPC’s own modelling of its previous decisions shows only a minimal effect on unemployment of a decision not to increase the rate.
Elsewhere: Rob Corr.
Update: New post.
Crikey’s editorial today (reproduced over the fold with permission) picked up on the political significance of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard’s critical remarks about the conduct of News Limited papers in publishing the concocted email at the centre of the Utegate affair (and its subsequent implosion from an opposition point of view). While Media Watch did a top notch job of examining the ethical issues arising from this publication, Rudd and Gillard haven’t suddenly put on hats as media critics in some academic sense. Crikey correctly observes that it’s a recognition that the “power of the press” to shape political outcomes has become a paper tiger, though that should have been obvious from the complete lack of any discernible electoral impact of campaigns such as that of The Australian in favour of Howard in 2007, and of the Courier-Mail against Anna Bligh in this year’s Queensland election. Nor would Rudd and Gillard’s comments have been spontaneous musings – when such coordinated and complimentary comments are made, you can be 100% certain that a particular political strategy has been decided upon.
There might be a residual sense in the minds of some media players that political coverage plays a “Fourth Estate” role. But the reality is that the excesses of the media now extend to brazen partisanship and a desire to be active political players. That this desire should be completely out of alignment with public opinion should come as no news to News. And it’s right and appropriate that there be accountability for its pathologies when they’re particularly prominent. If you live by the sword, and all that…
In other news: John Hartigan responds, and takes a swipe at new media for good measure.
Continue reading ‘Rudd and Gillard attack News Limited, Hartigan punches back’
The comedy keeps coming from Christian Kerr:
WE not only have the “Education Revolution”. In good Stalinist style, we have the “Building the Education Revolution” plan. We also have a band of doubters and dissidents the authorities have decreed to be counter-revolutionaries.
And in true Stalinist style, these counter-revolutionaries must not just be punished for their thought crimes, but ruthlessly suppressed. Martin Amis used his chilling study of Stalin, Koba the Dread, to talk about the “typhoon of unreason” the tyrant unleased upon his nation.
Is this a new incarnation of Godwin’s law that I wasn’t previously aware of? Or is it just that Julia Gillard has interred 10 millions in death camps and let another 20 million starve to death while my back was turned? Thank heavens Hillary Bray is shining a light into this totalitarian abyss.
Apparently all that stands between us and being worked to death in a labour camp is the unstinting cry of freedom ringing from the Canberra press gallery:
All of Gillard’s huff and puff yesterday simply showed a typhoon of unreason building.
If she lets it grow Gillard will be swept away with the winds.
Whose career do you suppose is going to the gulag sooner? Hillary’s or Julia’s?
The Liberals’ two hour strategy
In discussing Joe Hockey’s latest musings on the need for tens of billions of dollars of spending cuts yesterday, I wondered whether the Libs had conceded the next election, and were trying to position themselves for the one after. I also speculated that it might just be random, and that to imagine that the opposition had a coherent political strategy might be to impose a bit too much form on chaos.
There’s an interesting piece by Alister Drysdale in Business Spectator this morning, which rips into the Liberals:
I don’t know Drysdale’s work, but it’s interesting to see this sort of critique in a publication targeted at a business/finance readership. The alienation between business and their natural political allies is one of the most interesting and least analysed stories of the Rudd incumbency.
It’s also ironic to see John Howard ’stirring from his sick bed’ to denounce Labor in opposition for, well, opposing. (Not that I think the great debate Dennis Shanahan and his mates claim is occurring on Kevin Rudd’s latest red rag to the bulls is pre-occupying public attention).
For all the claims from the Libs and their media mates that Rudd and co are pre-occupied by the media cycle, it’s clear that Labor has successfully laid down a narrative and shaped public opinion. Drysdale’s argument is that the Liberals are narcissistically obsessed with popping up on Sky News and tweeting to political tragics, and have eschewed all the things oppositions should do in favour of playing to the press gallery’s short attention span. He’s right.
No wonder the polls never perceptibly budge.