8 research outputs found
Reimagining national leadership (Swinburne Leadership Dialogues)
No full textWhy are independents and minor parties on the rise? Is this a good thing? What does this say about the sort of national political leadership Australians want? Or does it say more about what we don't want? What do Australians want of national political leaders? How can we get the leadership the country needs? Speakers include Judith Troeth (Liberal member of the Australian Senate from 1993 - 2011, representing the state of Victoria), Maxine McKew (former Labor MP for Bennelong from 2007-2010; author and Honorary Fellow of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne), Rob Oakeshott (independent member for Lyne in the House of Representatives from 2008–2013), and Paul Strangio (Associate Professor of Politics at Monash University; commentator on Australian politics). Recorded 31 July 2014
Reimagining national leadership
No full textA panel of experts discuss political leadership
Panel:
Judith Troeth, former Liberal Senator for Victoria
Rob Oakeshott, former independent member for Lyne
Maxine McKew, former Labor MP for Bennelong
Paul Strangio, Associate Professor of Politics at Monash University
This event was part of the Swinburne Leadership Dialogues series.
Why are independents and minor parties on the rise? Is this a good thing? What does this say about the sort of national political leadership Australians want? Or does it say more about what we don\u27t want? What do Australians want of national political leaders? How can we get the leadership the country needs?
Related links
Listen to the podcast (Full version - 80 minutes)
Radio National Big Ideas program (edited version - 50 minutes
Modernising the parliamentary Liberal Party by adopting the organisational wing’s quota system for preselections
No full textThe Victorian Liberal senator argues for a system of quotas to be introduced to increase the representation of Liberal women in Australian parliaments.The party’s organisational wing already uses quotas, and these should be extended, she argues, to all preselections
Quotas for the Liberal Party?
No full textJudith Troeth is trying to persuade Liberals that more women in the parliamentary party means a larger pool of talent, writes Marian Sawer in Inside Story
VICTORIAN Liberal Senator Judith Troeth is a brave woman. In 2005 she was part of the group led by Petro Georgiou MP that forced the release of women and children from immigration detention. In late 2009 she crossed the floor to support ending the mandatory billing of asylum seekers for detention – a policy that had resulted in unpayable debts and a lifetime penalty for some asylum seekers. This year she has been a vocal critic of opposition leader Tony Abbott’s policy of reinstating offshore processing and restoring temporary protection visas.
Senator Troeth was also one of the four women senators, each from a different party, who co-sponsored the 2006 private members’ bill that removed the ministerial veto over the importation of the “abortion pill” RU486. The veto had been in place for ten years and was a legacy of an agreement between the Howard government and the independent senator, Brian Harradine. Its removal was a unique…
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Representation of women in Australian parliaments 2014
No full textThis updated paper draws on recent data and research to discuss trends and issues relating to women in Australian parliaments within an international context. It includes data on women in leadership and ministry positions, on committees and as candidates in Commonwealth elections.
Executive summary
Across Australia women continue to be significantly under-represented in parliament and executive government, comprising less than one-third of all parliamentarians and one-fifth of all ministers.
Internationally, Australia’s ranking for women in national government continues to decline when compared with other countries.
The representation of women in Australia’s parliaments hovers around the ‘critical mass’ of 30 per cent regarded by the United Nations as the minimum level necessary for women to influence decision-making in parliament.
There is no consensus amongst researchers in the field as to why women continue to be under-represented in Australia’s system of parliamentary democracy, although a number of factors contribute to the gender imbalance. This paper includes discussion of some of the structural, social and cultural factors influencing women’s representation including the type of electoral system, the culture of political parties, and the nature of politics and the parliamentary environment in Australia.
This updated paper draws on recent data and research to discuss trends and issues relating to women in Australian parliaments within an international context. It includes data on women in leadership and ministry positions, on committees and as candidates in Commonwealth elections. Whilst the focus is on the Commonwealth Parliament, the paper includes comparative information about women in state and territory parliaments.
The issue of gender diversity is also discussed within the broader context of women in leadership and executive decision-making roles in Australia including local government, government boards and in the corporate sector
The case for Liberal women
No full textIf the Liberal Party did more to assist the entry of more talented women, it might assist in the rebuilding of the party, writes Marian Sawer in this book review for the Australian Review of Public Affairs
THERE HAVE always been brave women among Liberal politicians – from Florence Cardell-Oliver in 1939, the sole parliamentary voice against banning advertising of contraceptives in Western Australia, to Judi Moylan and Senator Judith Troeth standing up to the Howard Government’s demonising of asylum seekers.It is often said there are not enough serious books about conservative politics. Margaret Fitzherbert is making a serious contribution to remedying this deficiency, at least in relation to Liberal women. This book is a history commissioned by the Menzies Research Centre (the Liberal Party think tank) and written by a Liberal Party member and former ministerial staffer with serious political aspirations. Only last year, Fitzherbert challenged a sitting member for preselection in a safe Victorian seat.
Fitzherbert established her credentials as an historian of women within the party with her earlier book Liberal Women: Federation to 1949. The current book takes the story up to ‘women of the Turnbull era’—an unfortunate subtitle, suggesting limited shelf life. But the book itself has the virtues as well as the vices of an insider account by someone with both good connections and continuing political ambitions. It provides a largely reliable and well-researched history of Liberal women and women’s policy from the perspectives of Liberal politicians, even if it rarely moves beyond these perspectives to attempt broader analysis...
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Senate sees a not too distant future for Pacific pickers
No full textThe revealing detail of a bipartisan Senate report suggests the government will eventually have to abandon its opposition to Pacific Islanders picking Australian fruit writes Peter Mares
AT THE Pacific Islands Forum in Fiji this week, Prime Minister John Howard has once again rejected proposals for Australia to open up its horticultural labour market to Pacific Island workers (even though New Zealand is moving cautiously down this road).
The prime minister can back up his position by pointing out that a six-month long Senate inquiry did not support calls for a pilot scheme to test the feasibility of a Pacific seasonal labour program.
But it would be a pity if the committee’s stance was taken as evidence that proposals for a seasonal labour scheme lack merit. The senators themselves describe their decision not to make a formal recommendation as “unusual” and the substance of their final report suggests that Pacific Islanders may indeed be harvesting Australian fruit in the not too distant future.
After visiting key horticultural regions around the country, the Senate Employment, Workplace Relations and Education Committee assessed farmers’ complaints of worker shortages to be exaggerated. Its report, Perspectives on the Future of the Harvest Labour Force, says that the supply of harvest labour - while “sometimes precarious” - is “currently sufficient” to meet the needs of industry.
But that “is the position now” (my emphasis). Liberal, Labor and Democrat Senators agree that “prudence requires the government to make contingency plans for introducing contract harvest labour as early as five years hence.” The senators note the “heavy investment and greatly expanded areas under cultivation” in horticulture and lambast “the unaccountable failure of agribusinesses to factor labour supply into investment decisions.”
Horticulture is already heavily reliant on foreign workers in the form of “backpackers” (young travellers for selected countries who qualify for Working Holiday Maker visas). The report warns that this fickle labour supply could be “interrupted by shock waves from a major terrorist attack or the onset of a global pandemic.” It notes complaints that footloose backpackers do not make ideal harvest workers (they are liable to knock off and head for the coast if the weather gets too hot) and that “the inefficiencies of their workforce participation result in additional costs to growers.”
The committee also concludes that backpackers distort wage levels: “As their purpose in travelling is essentially recreational rather than related to livelihood, backpackers accept low pay as normal.” As a result of this and other factors, the committee regards “harvest labour as being, in general, too poorly paid,” making it unlikely that there will be an influx of new workers to the industry.
In short, the Senate report predicts that the “current local labour supply is unlikely to increase, and will probably decline” and says that the “prospects for some mobility of harvest labour from Pacific states may become more likely in future.” The committee believes that “in the near future an Australian government may need to put aside purely domestic considerations” in order to address harvest labour shortages, and it urges the government “to have some work done” to develop the detail of practical policy options: “Governments should not be caught by sudden events and developments which would result in hasty ad hoc arrangements, the result of having to make policy on the run.”
Tasmanian Liberal Senator Guy Barnett goes further. In supplementary comments he calls for action beyond the “wait and see” approach of his colleagues, proposing “a targeted and tightly controlled pilot scheme to meet a demonstrated labour force need in a certain area over a given period.”
The other members of the committee indicate that they would have liked to join Senator Barnett in advancing more adventurous policy recommendations but were constrained from doing so by party political considerations. With industrial relations building up as a key issue for the next federal election, the Senators said it was “difficult... to disregard the influences which affect them as party members at this moment in the electoral cycle.” They add that any “exploration of policy which includes... a proposal for admitting foreign workers is likely to be vulnerable to populist sentiment at this time.”
This is a remarkably candid but ultimately depressing admission of timidity, given that we are still a year or more out from a federal election with a third of the parliamentary term still to run. It raises the question: at what point in the electoral cycle would senators feel able to canvas controversial policy recommendations?
By contrast, the committee was surprisingly blunt in its comments on Australia’s recent experience with temporary labour migration for skilled workers on 457 visas. In what amounts to a rebuke of the government and the immigration department, the committee (chaired by Liberal Senator Judith Troeth) refers in a number of places to problems associated with the 457 visa. The report notes “increasing evidence of unscrupulous exploitation of 457 visas by some labour contract firms and their business clients.” In abattoirs, for example, “ad hoc arrangements” and “unregulated” living and working conditions can “result in the exploitation of workers” with “little or no social benefit flowing from such arrangements.”
The inference is clear: until problems with the operation and supervision of 457 visas are addressed, temporary labour schemes for unskilled workers like fruit pickers are unlikely to gain political support.
The committee’s unequivocal conclusion is that the “answer lies in regulation” and the “much more stringent supervision of contractors and employers.” This is a welcome finding and it underlines the need for detailed preparatory work to be done before a full-scale Pacific seasonal labour scheme could become operational. The committee notes that there are numerous practical issues to be addressed (such as how to house Pacific seasonal workers, how to split the travel and administrative costs between employers and employees, and how to ensure fair recruitment practices in source countries). As I’ve found in my own research into the operation of Canada’s seasonal agricultural workers program, the devil with such scheme lies in the detail.
If a scheme for Pacific Islanders to work in Australian horticulture is to be successful then it will need to be “conducted with high levels of formality and regulation,” as the committee argues, and be seen “not simply as a labour supply measure benefiting the Australian economy, but as a regulated instrument of Pacific region policy.” •
Peter Mares made a submission to the Senate inquiry in his capacity as leader of the senior ARC-funded project Pacific Labour and Australian Horticulture at the Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University of Technology.
Photo: Amanda Rohde/iStockphoto.co
