E&OE TRANSCRIPT
INTERVIEW
THE WOMEN’S AGENDA PODCAST
SUBJECTS: Early childhood education reforms, Working for Women, Paid Parental Leave, gender equality targets, women’s health investments, supporting older women, upcoming election.
TARLA LAMBERT, HOST: Kate Thwaites. It's lovely to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for making time.
KATE THWAITES, ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SECURITY, AGEING AND WOMEN: I'm really pleased to be joining you.
HOST: Kate, there's been a lot of announcements this year and a lot of really positive gain for women and families. But I want to start with the recent announcement around child care and enabling three days of care for every family, which is really great news. What more is needed from here to make the system truly universal though and how will an Albanese Government achieve that?
THWAITES: This is really important news and really our aim when it comes to child care in this country is to make it simple, affordable and accessible for every family. This change to the activity test, removing the activity test and providing that access for three days a week to the subsidy, it's going to make a huge difference in the lives of a number of children and families, and particularly those children and families who we know can most benefit from access to early education. Because it's really important to realise that we talk about this in a whole different range of ways, the common name is child care, what kids are getting at these services is an early education, they're getting set up in the best possible way for starting school and going on through the rest of their life. So we want the children who need it most to be accessing that and that's really what we're doing with this change, we know it will be good for women as well. That for those women who have been shut out of this type of formal care because of the activity test, they will have more chance because it's often women doing the unpaid care, right? If you can't get into the formal care, they will have more chance to access study, access training and get into work as well. That's going to be really important. Of course, one of the huge challenges we still have when it comes to childcare in this country is accessibility and that is why we're putting one billion dollars in to build more centres in areas of need. So that we have early education accessible, close to people so that families can access it in their communities. And it really builds on work we have already been doing to keep fees down for families, which is so important. And also to build up the workforce which is the other piece around accessibility. The people who work in early education are crucial to our kids getting that best start in life. They are, again, often women they have historically been underpaid, and we are paying them more to do this really important work. I'm really fortunate, my youngest is still in early education, so I get to see every day what a change that makes in his life. He comes home basically every day with a new story or something he's either learnt in terms of a fact, how he puts numbers together or in fact, just a relationship has made, something that he’s figured out with the kids around him and he does all this with the help of the early educators. I absolutely see what a huge difference it makes in his life and of course what a difference it makes in my life and my family's life.
HOST: Yeah, look I completely second that as a mum to two kids in care currently it definitely makes a big difference and I think you know that narrative has, we have seen that shift over the last 12 to 24 months, especially where previously there was this narrative of early childhood care was actually just babysitting or like a bit of a cop-out for parents that wanted to work. And I think we are more and more understanding how important it is, the educational foundation for those kids, it’s really great to see. And I think accessibility is, as you noted is a really big part of the equation. So good to see some funding going to that too. I want to talk about the activity test as well for parents and your Government's decision to scrap that as part of the new policy. I also wanted to ask you about the harmful dialogue about parents just reaping unfair benefits, or being able to play golf or go to pilates, which is an op-ed that we saw from former Liberal Minister Simon Birmingham last week, why is that line of approach just so wrong?
THWAITES: It is just so out of touch. It actually infuriates me and it's dangerous, the Liberals are pushing this line that actually this is women who are apparently just floating around, having a lovely life, off to pilates, off to lunch, and ‘oh I might just pop my child into care because I can afford it’. I mean come on, who’s living that life? No one’s living that life. Maybe a very few people are, but there are very few people. This is really as I said before, this is about kids who currently aren't accessing early education, and often they're not accessing it because their parents aren't working or they perhaps have some serious health challenges and it’s those sort of reasons that at the moment they're not meeting the activity tests. So the kids we are talking about here, the families we are talking about here are those who are going to benefit from this the most, from getting into this type of environment where they get care where they get to interact with other children, they get that best start on their educational journey. And we haven't just plucked it out of the air. This was recommended by the Productivity Commission, it was recommended by the women’s taskforce that we set up. There are a whole heap of economic reasons behind this as well. That go to, again, women who are often those unpaid carers, being able to look around them, take a breath, get some education themselves, or get a job themselves, and contribute in other ways as well. It really does concern me though just how out of touch the Liberals remain in this space, and this happens every time we talk about early education or child care in the Parliament. There are just these doozies that come forward from those on the other side. I think when we were recently debating the legislation to give early educators a pay rise, one of the Liberals, Colin Boyce, started talking about how we couldn't possibly compare the work of early educators with the work of men who are electricians or carpenters. And he also said that most women don't aspire to be CEOs. It's just this totally out of touch mentality, I kind of laugh about it, but it also genuinely worries me. We are a Government on the Labor side that is dominated by women, we are Australia's first majority female federal government. And I do think and I live this, I think it makes a difference in the conversations we have in Canberra, it makes a difference in the policies we bring forward, as you can see by us making all these changes, this emphasis on early education, such a big part of what our Government is doing and will continue to do and I do fear for what it looks like if we have Liberals in charge, who just are not having those conversations, do not have the women within their ranks to have those conversations and drive this forward.
HOST: There have also been other significant announcements for women and families over the past two and a half years of this Government, including super paid on top of Paid Parental Leave, the release of the Working for Women strategy, women's health investments, etc. What has been your proudest moment in your capacity as Assistant Minister for Women during this term?
THWAITES: Great question. I am actually going to hark back to before I was Assistant Minister for Women. I was privileged enough to be promoted to Assistant Minister about five months ago, but as I was saying, we have a Caucus, a Government, that is filled with women who contribute to policy and drive policy. And so one of the policy changes I feel most proud about and that I do think is going to have a significant impact, particularly on the lives of working women in Australia, is the reforms we've made to Paid Parental Leave and that is something that I've been passionate about for a long time. I was fortunate enough, when the Gillard Government introduced Australia's first ever government paid parental leave, I was working for Jenny Macklin who was the senior Minister at the time, who was introducing that. So I saw at that time how life-changing that introduction of Paid Parental Leave was, particularly for women in lower paid industries who at the time had no access to any sort of paid leave. They were finally being able to have a child and have some time off, they had that economic security. So that was a real game changer for its time. And of course then we've got nearly a decade of Liberal National governments and surprise, surprise, nothing really happened with the Paid Parental Leave policy. I was really proud when we came into Government we did take a fresh look at that policy. It was great for its time ten years ago, but where are we now and what needs to happen with it now. That includes changes to expand the length of Paid Parental Leave so it will be expanded to six months. It includes changing the flexibility of it so that it is much easier for both parents – I'm going to talk in terms of female and male because I think a lot of these gender dynamics come into this – generally women have been the primary caregivers. They've taken the bulk of the leave, under the old scheme men took two weeks essentially. We've made it much more flexible for men to be able to take more of the leave. And we've included a use it or lose it provision so that if men aren't taking that proportion of the leave, the family doesn't actually get to access it. And I do think that's important in terms of setting norms from a really early age about how we see caregiving in our community, and the fact that it is absolutely normal for women to go in and out of the workforce to take care of children, but also that it is absolutely normal for men to go in and out of the workforce to care for children. And then putting superannuation onto PPL is another signal, saying that same thing, this is a workplace payment, just like other workplace payments, it should be paid with superannuation, and I think if we can do some of that work from the beginning, setting up caregiving so that it is a shared responsibility, what we then say hopefully is that over the course of a woman's lifetime that has an impact on her earnings. I hope to see women retiring in a more secure position than they are now, we know at the moment that women are retiring with on average 25 percent less superannuation than men. That's what we need to fix. And I think this policy goes a long way to doing that and I am really proud of it. And I think it'd be good for Australian men as well. You know, I know that many men do want to be more involved in taking care of their own children, and a lot of it is that sort of norms that are around them and this is where government can play a big role in saying, no, no, the government thinks it's normal for you to take some time off and in fact we'll pay you to do that.
HOST: Absolutely. Because I think so many of those conditioned social structures that exist that do disadvantage women really do disadvantage men too. And it's a conversation that we need to have more freely in order to get to a point of true gender equity. If re-elected then, what are the Albanese Government’s key gender equality priorities for a second term, and how do you plan to make them a reality, particularly if leading within a minority government which is looking evermore likely.
THWAITES: We have got a lot still to do. So our Working for Women, which is our strategy for women's economic equality. We set that as a 10 year strategy because we recognise we're not just going to do away with centuries of the patriarchy overnight and suddenly make everything magically equal. We need to put in sustained work to make sure that we're making women's lives better and I do really want to emphasise that we do this because it's better for them but it's better for our community and our country as a whole. We can unlock more economic potential, we can unlock greater productivity in our economy by supporting women. So this is a broader story. It's about absolutely making women's lives more equal and better but it is something that benefits all of us. We know that we have made some progress, recent data showed us that the gender pay gap is now at its lowest level, but there is still a gender pay gap and one of the things that I was really pleased to do during the last session of Parliament, we had this year was to introduce new legislation that will mean that big companies, so those with more than 500 employees, will now have to set gender equity targets. So they'll have to set and work towards things like the gender makeup of their board, the gender makeup of their workforce and the types of flexible working policies they have in place to really drive that next piece of equity in the workforce. This is world leading legislation. It hasn't happened anywhere else as far as we can tell. And I'm really excited about again seeing that come into practice and working with business and companies, who I know so many businesses and organisations do see this as good for them and good for their future. So it's something where I think our Government can really work with those organisations. And we want to continue our work in women's health, we have put a big focus on what my colleague, the Assistant Minister for Health Ged Kearney, who's been driving a lot of this work, calls ending medical misogyny. And that's the case where for too long, women’s health needs have really been ignored or dismissed, women have experiences of going from doctor to doctor and just being misunderstood and misdiagnosed. We have opened up endometriosis and pelvic pain clinics around the country. We've changed funding for medical consults around some of these issues, so that women have longer to see a doctor and Ged really has been driving a lot of work in this area. We've just had a big enquiry through the Senate, led by my colleague Senator Marielle Smith, which has really looked at menopause and the impacts of menopause on women. And so there's work for us to do in the health system there and work around how we support women in the workplace with menopause as well, which probably brings me to one piece I'm keen to really focus on if we're re-elected. I'm both the Assistant Minister for Women and the Assistant Minister for Ageing, and the Assistant Minister for Social Security.
HOST: Quite an intersection.
THWAITES: It is exactly. And so I particularly think about older women, those who will have had working lives that won't have benefited from a lot of these changes I've been discussing with you like Paid Parental Leave, like increases to the wages of women in highly feminised industries like early education and aged care. And those are women who are coming to a later period of their working life, who do say that they can feel unseen, they can feel discriminated against in the workplace. They may be dealing with impacts of menopause in the workplace. They may also, in the housing crisis we're experiencing at the moment, be in a precarious position when it comes to housing. So I want to make sure we're also continuing to support those women who really have been often in many cases, the carers, the people building communities for most of their life and making sure they're supported to have a good later period of their life as well.
HOST: So in the lead up to the election, I mean women voters were crucial to what the result was last time around. Do you think that they're going to be as key this time around? And does it does it baffle you a little bit where the approval ratings are at the moment?
THWAITES: Look, I don't spend a lot of time looking at approval ratings, I spend a lot of time doing my job, and that includes talking to women. And I know that times are tough for women at the moment, just like they are tough for many in our community and the cost of living crisis is very real and our Government is very aware of that. And I think often it is women who are at the forefront of trying to deal with that because they are the people who are dealing with household budgets, who are looking at what child care costs are, who are looking at health costs. And so, when I think about the work our Government has done and will do, we have done all of that work of supporting people with cost of living with the idea of how we're supporting women front of mind. And as I said before, I'm really worried, I do not think that would be the approach under Peter Dutton and the Liberals. So the tax cuts that we brought in this year overwhelmingly benefit women because the previous tax cuts that the Liberals designed were designed for higher earners, and who earns more – men. So we do look at these policies from the perspective of how we supporting women whereas time and time again what we see from the Liberals is they are the ones bringing forward this debates. And I do think early education is a great example of where they just are really out of touch with the reality of not just modern women's lives but modern families’ lives, where two parents are working, where both parents are trying to juggle work and care, and that will be different for different families but that is pretty much the reality across our country now. As a Government we make our decisions with that reality in mind. We don't sit back and think or make comments about people going to pilates and trying to just access free care and we don't say that women don't want to be CEOs because yeah, some women don't want to be CEOs, just like some men don't want to be CEOs, but the reality is we should have systems set up that allow for women to be CEOs, just like they allow men to be CEOs. So yes, I think absolutely women are going to be crucial in this election. I absolutely understand many women particularly at this time of year when we're in the lead after Christmas and women are juggling not just all their usual things, but all the things that they do for family and friends to bring that bit of extra joy, are feeling strung out, burnt out, as a Government we are continually trying to think about how do we support women. How do we do things like put in place in a universal child care system that benefits our young children, benefits women. How are we supporting women through their working lives? How are we supporting them into retirement and at an old age? That is the forefront of work we keep doing and I want to keep doing that for another term. And I think, of course Australian women will be crucial to us having the chance to do that.
HOST: Kate Thwaites, thanks so much for joining us today.