Writing in Crikey the other day, Eloise Keating suggested that “if Abbott wants to woo women, he should start with wages”:

Recent figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show Australian women earned just 82.5% of the average male rate of pay across the country in 2009. On average, a female worker would have earned more in 1985?—?and will be $1 million worse off over their lifetimes than their dads, brothers and partners.

That rather understates the size of the problem, because that differential refers to full time earnings, and 57% of women in work were full time, with 43% being part time or casual in 2009. As the recent House of Representatives Standing Committee Report on Equal Pay, Making It Fair, observed: Read more »

Tony Abbott’s paid parental leave scheme is more generous than Kevin Rudd’s.

Details are scarce but Abbott says it will cost about $3 billion a year to pay for six months’ full replacement of wages  up to $150,000.

The Government’s scheme comes into effect on 1 January 2011 and provides the minimum wage (currently around $543) for a maximum of 18 weeks. It will cost $300 million.

At 46 percent women are now almost half of the workforce.

The proportion of women working has doubled since the 50s, with women’s participation rate increasing from 29 percent in 1954 to 46 percent in 1985 to 58 percent today. Men’s participation rate is 72 percent.

While most women work full-time they are more likely than men to work part-time. 38 percent of women work part-time, compared to 14 percent of men. 70 percent of the part time workforce are women. Read more »

Opposition leader Tony Abbott on prime minister Kevin Rudd, Lateline :

"It is pretty clear he is a guy who is all announcement and no follow through. He is, t coin a phrase, 'All Hat And No Cowboy'."

Abbott didn't coin the phrase. It's been in use in Texas for decades :

"It is not a compliment in West Texas to be referred to as 'All hat and no cowboy'. It is a term of derision used to indicate the person has little real character beneath the very thin veneer of appearance."

It's a good line, but it doesn't sound very Australian.

There is argument that the correct West Texas historical phrase is actually "All Hat, No Cattle", which certainly sounds more local.

Or perhaps Abbott knows this phrase, too, and decided not to use it to attack Rudd, because it was popularly attached to George W. Bush from the late 1990s. Read more »

Tony Abbott has chosen to mark International Women’s Day which is, to his mind, of course, all about “benefits… provided to families with children”, by announcing a policy for six months’ paid parental leave at actual salary levels, funded by a levy on big business.

Or has he?

That’s the impression given on the tv news tonight, but a reading of Abbott’s actual speech shows that it’s not a policy announcement.

Rather, Abbott is determined to show that a Liberal government would:

let people know what it has in mind well before positions are finalized because the job of government is to make the best decisions, not to pretend to have all the answers from the beginning. Read more »

Via Possum, a couple of interesting charts to ponder.

These graphs below the fold show the movement in the net approval rating of Kevin Rudd and the Opposition Leader (Turnbull, then Abbott) over the last six months. As Possum notes, the youngest demographic is most disinclined to change their positive view of Rudd or their negative view of the Liberal leader, and the oldest demographic most inclined.

So, what’s going on here?

For a start, the ‘Gen Y sees through Kevin Rudd’s spin’ narrative is clearly wrong.

Read more »