Photo from smh.com.au

Ok, if you go to this site, you’ll find some interesting information about what’s happening.

http://www.dpmc.gov.au/women/

In particular, you’ll be told

Refer to this page regularly for updates.

Which is interesting because when I started clicking on the side bars at the bottom of many of them I found:

Last updated 21st June, 2012.

Still, there were some which had been updated more recently, like “Priorities” and “News”.

Take for example the section on “News”. This consisted of the following list of links.

2014

• Timeframe to lodge a submission on the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 reporting requirements – 7 August
• Australia’s Ministerial Statement at the 58th United Nations Commission on the Status of Women – 24 June
• Workplace gender reporting public consultation – 19 June
• Dr Ian Watt, Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet has ongoing commitment to the Male Champions of Change Initiative – 24 March
• Women’s self-reliance will grow under PPL – 29 January

The first I thought about reproducing in full. But it ran to over a hundred and thirty words. In case you don’t have the thirty seconds required to click on the link in full and read it, let me just tell you that it’s basically about “streamlining” gender reporting requirements. And extending the date for submissions.

The second is a report to the United Nations, while the third is redundant because it merely tells us the original closing date for the submissions that the first link was telling us had been extended.

The fourth tells us that Dr Ian Watt has ongoing commitment to the Champions of Change, but the link takes you straight to the page on The Australian Human Rights Commission website about Male Champions of Change. (It’s good to know that there are men out there who are helping out the ladies get on with the new-fangled equality idea.) Apart from Dr Watt’s ongoing commitment, I don’t see anything new on the actual website to indicate any sort of initiative from the Minister for Women.

Now, I know that some of you will feel that this isn’t much for nearly a year in government. But it’s not all that they’ve done. The final link is the big ticket item. The PPL! Now this is a really big thing, because it’s all about having babies, and as we all know that’s the most important thing to a woman. A Paid Parental Leave Scheme – what more could a woman want? Ok, there are a few who don’t actually have babies, but that’s probably because of we don’t have any sort of parental leave scheme. Well, only the one that Labor introduced, so it’s clearly too expensive and not worth mentioning.

If you click on that link, it’ll take you to a piece written by Minister Assisting the Minister for Women, Michaela Cash, who you may remember for her wonderful speech about the “sisterhood” stabbing Julia Gillard in the back. It doesn’t give much detail, but it does tell you that they think their idea for the PPL is an excellent idea.
Senator Cash concludes:

“The new scheme will have immediate and longer-term child and maternal health and wellbeing benefits as well as longer-term benefits for families, employers and the broader economy.

Any other option would just place Australia behind the rest of the developed world.”

Excellent. “Immediate and longer term… benefits”. Exactly when is it starting again? Because surely every day, we’re slipping further “behind the rest of the developed world”.

Ah, with Tony Abbott as Minister For Women, you certainly don’t need a Minister Against Women. Not even for balance.