Like the budget before it, the 2021-22 Budget held out the promise of structural reform to address gender equality. Disappointedly, it delivered yet another missed opportunity for...
Category: Politics
Letter to the Prime Minister
To the Hon Scott Morrison MP Prime Minister of Australia Women’s March for Justice – calling for a safe and equal Australia – #enoughisenough The last month has been a distressing time for our...
Processing power through partnership and collaboration
The contrasting models of demagoguery and democracy flared spectacularly over the Australian summer as the world witnessed the frenzied dying days of the Trump Presidency as it gave way to an...
Who are the women of the extreme right?
On January 6, Ashli Babbitt, 35, became a martyr. The Air Force veteran was in the act of scaling a barricade of furniture in Washington DC’s Capitol when she was shot in the chest at point blank by...
The baby boomers: why MPs are calling for change
When Kate Thwaites was pregnant with her second child last year, she got angry. She got angry at the fact that, despite the widespread availability of sophisticated (and secure) videoconferencing...
Leadership doesn’t always come from the top
As we neared the end of 2020 with great hopes for better times in 2021, we reflected not only on a year marked by a global pandemic, but also the fifth anniversary of the signing of the Paris...
2020: Women, politics and public life
It has been both a remarkably good and remarkably bad year for Australian women. Their leadership in Australian politics and public life has been more prominent and successful than ever before. Yet...
The ACT, women and the body politic
Following an historic 2020 election, the ACT’s legislative assembly now comprises 60% women. Not only do women make up the majority of elected representatives, at least half of each party’s MLAs are...
Hypocrisy, power and chauvinism in the Canberra bubble
Male and female MPs are put under very different levels of scrutiny when it comes to their private lives. Not only have male politicians been happy to use their female colleagues private lives for...