Taking into account the failure of the Australian Fair Pay Commission to make an adjustment in 2009, WEL has recommended that the Minimum Wage Panel grant an increase of 9 per cent in the minimum wage. Such an increase would help to restore a minimum rate that is fair and bears a reasonable relation to living standards in the wider Australian community.

WEL’s submission focuses on living standards, promoting social inclusion,  and the application of the principle of equal remuneration for work of equal or comparable value.

Question to Minister Jenny Macklin, Senators Trish Crossin, Claire Moore, et al: since when did feminism condone compulsory loss of rights for  categories of women, for example a sole parent, because some of them may have needed “protection”?

This paternalistic (maternalistic) policy making undermines the idea that women are full citizens with equal rights. Women who are in need of protection have the right and obligation to decide, maybe collectively, whether they hand over their rights to others. Please don’t use women’s needs as an excuse for bad policy as it sounds a bit like Philip Ruddock wearing his Amnesty badge while persecuting asylum seekers.

Read the report here and the submissions here.

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Taking into account the failure of the Australian Fair Pay Commission to make an adjustment in 2009, WEL has recommended that the Minimum Wage Panel grant an increase of 9 per cent in the minimum wage. Such an increase would help to restore a minimum rate that is fair and bears a reasonable relation to living standards in the wider Australian community.

WEL’s submission focuses on living standards, promoting social inclusion,  and the application of the principle of equal remuneration for work of equal or comparable value.

Changes to the pension and benefit system are always fraught because of the very mixed views in the community about who is entitled to public support. WELA would therefore support an independent body to set rates, changes and rises. An arms length process may counter political populist plays and moral panics about the potential problems of paying for the ageing population. It should also cover related expenditures and concessions such as the current allocation of resources for retirement that create the gross inequities of the Superannuation contributions taxation concessions.  Low income pensioners are being squeezed at the same time as higher income pensioners gain extra payments and major tax expenditures go to the really affluent. An independent body could oversee a total expenditure (cash and concessions) of over $50 B per annum, which is currently grossly maldistributed.

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The trade union movement has been preparing a landmark case to try to win pay rises for 200,000 women doing some of the nation’s most demanding jobs. The case will be launched today. If successful, it will mean sugnificant pay rises for women who work in women’s refuges, aged care facilities, community centres and counselling services.

The Government has expressed strong in principle support for the case, although it will have to bear much of the cost.