Half the machine?
A campaign to achieve parliamentary gender equity in the ALP was launched at a conference of Labor women in Perth last November. Since that time, women ALPers have been campaigning to pass resolutions requiring 40% of Labor parliamentarians to be women after the next two elections. The preferred target is 50% — the "Half by 2000" campaign.
A move to combat sexism, you might think. A specific campaign to raise women's issues within the ALP, maybe. Maybe even a commitment from those women ALPers to build campaigns to combat sexism? Hardly.
The reasons for the campaign have been stated quite clearly.
One. "Our party cannot ignore the universally recognised electoral advantage presented by women candidates." (Joan Kirner, November 1993). That is, it's a ploy for more votes, on the basis of the gender of the candidate, rather than politics.
Two. "Women are entitled to also expect that they will be put in safe seats." (Joan Kirner again.) That is, some women also want a safe career in politics.
Three. "... the community is demanding the different type of politics that women represent." (Joan Kirner, April 1994.)
Kirner and Carmen Lawrence had some comments in relation to Bronwyn Bishop and Margaret Thatcher — also women politicians, but who don't help the cause of women simply on the basis of their gender, as Labor women are claimed to be able to do.
Thatcher "basically said women could do it the man's way". This, according to Kirner, is how Thatcher managed to destroy the women's movement in the UK. Apparently, ALP women will do it the women's way — whatever that means.
On Bishop: "She represents attitudes and values that I can't endorse and that I don't think are progressive of women's interests. I don't think her views are likely to improve the position of women in political life in this country." (Carmen Lawrence.) So with Bishop, it is her politics that they are rejecting.
But hang on a minute. How do ALP women represent a qualitatively different kind of politics from ALP men?
When Carmen Lawrence was premier of WA, she cut women's services. A safe sex campaign was dumped and replaced with a "just say no" campaign. She brought in savage juvenile justice legislation and Thatcherite economic policies. When asked to introduce abortion repeal legislation she replied, Now is not the time.
ALP women who make it to "the top" are part of the ALP machine. That is the same machine that has consistently introduced workplace "reform" and cut social services in ways that harm women. ALP women who make it to preselection abide by the dictates of that ALP machine.
In cautioning against a quota system in March, the federal president of the ALP, Barry Jones, said the gender of the leader of the party didn't matter. He's right. It's not the gender of the party leader or for that matter of parliamentarians that determines what they will or will not do for women. What matters are the policies and actions of the party. The ALP's record on this speaks for itself.
By Kath Gelber