Alarums and Excursions: The Inside Story—Women Working for Women in the 1990s

The Howard Liberal National Coalition government’s attack on workers’ rights, led from 1996, was anticipated four years earlier when in Victoria the Kennett Liberal opposition acceded to power. Then, swelling political meetings of protest saw hundreds of women filling Brunswick Town Hall, spilling out onto Sydney Road and Dawson Street. A growing climate of machismo made efforts to influence government difficult. Access to ministers, relatively straightforward under Cain-Kirner Labor, met obstacles testifying to women’s perceived irrelevance to politics and the polity. With the change of government in Canberra, in the mid-1990s women dedicated their energies to submission writing and media releases, meetings with MPs and senators – including ministers, where possible, to media interviews and public protest. The principal focus was Work Choices, introduced by industrial relations minister Peter Reith into the federal parliament in two tranches. Women saw the law as ‘anti-family and disadvantageous to women workers’. Debates led to deliberating intensively in groups designated ‘roundtables’, held in Melbourne at the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) building in Swanston Street. Invited women speakers analysed the proposed Workplace Relations Bill and proposed strategies for fighting back. Plans were made and funds raised for a team to lobby ministers and shadow ministers in Canberra, and take claims and concerns to the media. Press conferences attracted attention. Journalists were keen to exploit clashes between Women’s Movement activists and the new government. In Sydney, academics, politicians, public servants, and women’s organisation members shared intelligence, swapping ideas and faxing proposed amendments to the other states. In Perth and Adelaide, Brisbane and Darwin, Hobart and Canberra and country towns and suburbs, women expressed real fear that legislative gains of the 1970s and ‘80s promoting equal opportunity and anti-discrimination might be lost. The Human Rights Commission came under attack, the 1984 Sex Discrimination Act was teetering, equal pay – already in reverse – was at risk of even greater leaps backward.