Rhetoric and flowers
In September the federal National Party released its first ever women's policy. An unidentified "Labor man", interviewed in the Melbourne Age, confirmed that the policy was so similar to the ALP policy "you could just about cross out National and insert Labor and no-one would be surprised, apart from the absence of reference to sole parents".
Last month, a Morgan Gallup poll indicated that the "gender gap" in voting patterns still exists. This gap was extremely pronounced in the mid-'70s (when 37% of women supported the ALP and 57% the Coalition). It reversed in the mid-'80s (48% of women supporting the ALP and 43% the Coalition) but has reverted in the '90s (ALP: 32%, L/NP: 49% in 1991; ALP: 38%, L/NP: 43% in 1992).
The October 7 Age carried a feature entitled "Wooing Women" (accompanied by a nauseating montage of Tim Fischer, Paul Keating and John Hewson bearing bouquets) ostensibly comparing the underlying attitudes of the Coalition and the ALP towards women. On October 10 the Australian ran "Keating's Problems with Women" and "Reconstructed PM Proud of his Record", both dealing with Keating's "style" and "personality" and their effect on women.
The ALP hopes to reverse, or at least close, the gender gap at the next election. It has launched a media campaign to lift Keating's image with women and to undermine Hewson's. Keating's advice from his minders appears to be: when it comes to women, forget the economy, just straighten your tie and smile!
In the Australian article, Keating complains that Hewson has an unfair advantage in the image stakes — "Having no political track record of much kind and coming as a freshman to the television screens with a sort of mild-mannered presentation has, I think, given John Hewson some image with women ... But, you can't fool all the people all the time. Hewson's spiteful personality ... will become apparent, and I think the one group in the community that can't cop spite is women."
No, you can't fool all of the people all of the time, and you definitely can't fool all the women — though that doesn't stop them from trying. The closing up of the gender gap revealed by the Morgan Gallup poll has, surely, far more to do with the Liberals' Fightback package, especially the patently discriminatory GST, than with Keating's or Hewson's "images".
Hewson has been trumpeting a policy that "mainstreams" women's concerns, while supporting a tax that hits women hardest of all. Keating claims credit for giving "women access and opportunity in education" while privatising education and abolishing income support for students, thereby substantially reducing women's access to tertiary education.
Keating has even bestowed his belated approval upon the women's movement of the early '70s, saying "... while at the time I might have regarded this stuff as extravagant, in its proper historical context it was correct ... Australian women [are] not going to be copping any of that stuff they copped back in the '60s and '70s."
We not only won't put up with what we copped back in the '60s and '70s; we also won't put up with what we're copping now. Women need real policies, not the odd bunch of flowers.
By Karen Fredericks