'Pro-women policies the issue'

'Pro-women policies the issue'

By Bill Mason

BRISBANE — "The main issue in the current debate in the ALP about more women MPs is not just how to get more women into parliament, but how to promote more pro-women policies", Democratic Socialist candidates Susan Price and Ana Kailis said here on April 30.

"It is important to increase women's representation at all levels of decision-making, since women have been scandalously excluded from parliament and every other position of power in society in the past. But the Labor Party — including Labor women MPs — should look at the party's poor record in government on supporting women's interests", Price and Kailis said in a joint statement.

"Let's make sure all ALP candidates, men or women, are committed to voting for repeal of all anti-abortion laws, and that the party will carry out its policy without any so-called 'conscience vote', for a start", they added.

They were commenting on the public row between prominent ALP women and right-wing Labor figures such as Queensland state secretary Mike Kaiser and MP Wayne Swan over the National Labor Women's Conference call for 40% quotas for women candidates for state and federal parliaments by the year 2000.

Price and Kailis were Democratic Socialist candidates in the March 26 Brisbane City Council elections.

From GLW issue 141