Hockey's Misogynist Budget

May 16, 2014
Anne Summers

"Get thee to a workplace" was essentially the message to women from Treasurer Joe Hockey in the budget.

"Staying at home should be a parent's choice but there are limits on how much support the taxpayer can give," Mr Hockey said as he announced a raft of measures to effectively force women out of the home and into employment.

I have long advocated women being able to enjoy the economic independence and self-esteem that comes with being in the workforce, especially the full-time workforce, but the lengths to which this government was prepared to go to get women into employment were surprising.

Slashing family tax benefits and putting a work test on the paid parental leave scheme were the sort of things you'd expect from a champion of women's employment such as Julia Gillard (remember how much trouble she got into for her efforts to nudge single parents into employment) rather than the stogie-smoking blue ties of a conservative government.

This is the side of politics that had made the stay-at-home mother an ideological cornerstone, that introduced the dependent spouse rebate and the baby bonus.

Now they are the ones who are abolishing these inducements to be a stay-at-home mum.

Just how effective the measures will be remains to be seen. After all, the evidence is irrefutable that what stops mothers working are a lack of affordable childcare and the punitive effective tax rates that apply when family benefits are withdrawn as income is earned.

So if you wanted women back at work, you would not be cutting $230 million from childcare subsidies as Mr Hockey did on Tuesday.

Women are also discouraged by lack of equal pay (why bother if you are earning less than the bloke sitting beside you!) and by a culture in way too many workplaces that is discouraging, often hostile and sometimes downright misogynist.

If you want to encourage women into the economy, it would make sense to acknowledge and address the pay gap as well as some of these less tangible obstacles to women being able to enjoy employment parity with men.

Instead, the government has now announced yet another set of consultations into the gender reporting requirements of the Workplace Gender Equality Act legislated by the Labor government and administered by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA).

Employment Minister Eric Abetz had to retreat earlier this year from his blitzkrieg against the legislation. He wanted to abolish WGEA – something the National Commission of Audit has also recommended – and now he seems determined to consult it to death. A government that really wanted women to work would be enthusiastic about a law that required organisations to report on how many women they employed, what levels they worked at and how much they were paid.

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