Speech
Melbourne - 23rd May 2005
Check Against Delivery
It's always a great privilege to be standing here - among so many great Labor Party women.
Being here reminds me of what it means to be Labor.
I look around and see so many great women and so many friends. So many women here who have been so generous to me with their personal support, their advice, their friendship, their loyalty, their humour. So many women, without whom, I would not be standing here today.
That's why it's wonderful to be able to announce today that the thoughts and ideas of all these great women will soon feed into a national Labor women's survey to be undertaken by the National Labor Women's Network. The survey will investigate policy issues of concern to Labor women to inform policy development in the lead up to the 2007 National Conference.
I encourage everybody here to today to use the opportunity to put forward their ideas and get involved in the policy process.
Women of Australia are fed up. They are sick and tired of the Howard Government's deceit and trickery.
And they are sick and tired of paying the price for the Howard Government's broken promises.
When interest rates go up, when health premiums go through the roof, when medical costs blow out, when the cost of childcare spirals out of control - so often it's women who are left to try to mop up the Howard Government's mess.
So often it's women sitting at the kitchen table late at night armed with a calculator and list of expenses, desperately trying to work out where the extra money is coming from.
And it's so often women who make the sacrifices and do without in order to pay the bills.
The Howard Government is creating a national epidemic of the 'burnt chop syndrome' - forcing women all over Australia to do without in order to balance the family budget, in the same way our mothers and grandmothers always took the burnt chop at dinner.
The Howard Government have been forcing costs up through so many broken promises that Australian women are being forced to endure the economic equivalent of 'burnt chop syndrome'.
John Howard's broken promise on interest rates has already added an extra $579 a year to the cost of servicing a $300,000 mortgage.
His broken promise on the Medicare Safety Net has added $200 to health costs every year for average income families with out of pocket expenses above the new threshold.
His broken promise on private health insurance premiums has added $164 per year to average premiums for hospitals and ancillaries cover.
And his broken promise on an uncapped 30 per cent child care rebate from 1 January
2005 has added $3,000 dollars to families with two children in full time day care. The Howard Government's broken promises mean that a typical family with two children in childcare are having to find an extra $339 a month.
That's an enormous burden and it's producing a veritable
banquet of burnt chops for
Australian women.
One area where sometimes I can't help wishing there were actually morebroken promises from the Howard Government is in women's policies. But the Howard Government consistently puts forward policies that are bad for women. Unfortunately they also consistently implement them.
Nine long years of Howard Government failure means that women are still trailing men on almost every economic indicator.
From childcare, to industrial relations, to work and family policy, to health and education - the Howard Government has failed to deliver for Australian women and has failed to develop policies that support the different choices they make.
And it's no surprise to learn that it's women who will be in the firing line in the upcoming Budget.
According to various budget leaks, the Howard Government is planning to limit the number of Medicare-funded IVF treatments that a woman can have.
As well, the Howard Government wants to treat mothers who receive welfare very differently, depending on whether they are part of a couple or caring for children alone.
While the Howard Government is happy to support stay at home mothers who are part of a couple; it wants to introduce much tougher rules for single mothers.
The Howard Government wants to force single mothers to look for work, without providing the childcare they need and without any investment in their skills - forcing them into low-pay, low-skill jobs.
Australians have had enough of the Howard Government's blatant lack of regard for honouring commitments.
The next election is there for the winning.
When I travel around the country I speak to women everywhere who are fed up with the Howard Government's deceit, sick of the Howard Government's erosion of community and tired of the Howard Government's attacks on our basic education and health services.
There is an undercurrent of frustration at the wasted opportunities to build for our future successes.
Nowhere is this more evident than the Howard Government's failure to invest in skills. The Howard's neglect has created a skills crisis that is hurting Australian families, businesses and driving up interest rates.
Skills growth as a driver of productivity has dropped 75 per cent over ten years. The Howard Government's solution is an imported skills quick fix. Unlike the Howard Government, Federal Labor's priority is to train Australians first to target areas of economic need. That includes training more girls and young women in skill shortage areas like the traditional trades and science. These traditionally make-dominated areas must be given the benefit of women's talent and potential.
Community trends are not always picked up in the media or opinion polls, but there is a frustration in the community with the Howard Government.
Frustration with the arrogance and deception that is undermining faith in the ability of government to change people's lives for the better
This is the same undercurrent that Purple Sage picked up in its public discussions here in Victoria before the Kennett Government was swept from its apparently invulnerable position in 1999.
The involvement of women's groups such as the Victorian Women's Trust and the
Purple Sage picked up this sentiment long before it appeared in opinion polls.
When we engage directly with the community about the Howard Government we find a similar disenchantment with a Prime Minister who won the election saying whatever was needed to keep his job.
From interest rates, to troops in Iraq, to the Medicare Safety Net the story was the same - he said whatever he had to get over the line and then has proceeded to do the exact opposite.
This has been his approach from the day he was elected nine long years ago and Australian women are sick of it.
There is deep resentment about the Prime Minister's cynical approach to the truth. It is our job to show the Australian people that we are better than that. That we want more than just notching up another year in office for the history books, but that the reason we do what we do is to make the lives of Australian people better.
I know that every woman in this room is deeply committed
to the Labor cause. Make no mistake - the next election is there for
the winning.
Ends