By Tony Iltis
and Kamala Emanuel
HOBART — About 50 people, mostly women, attended a forum on August 18 organised by the Women's Electoral Lobby to discuss issues of interest to women in the August 29 state election.
Women candidates presented their policies and faced questions from the audience. State Liberal minister for the status of women, Denise Swan, admitted the Liberals are "about half way through" preparing their women's policy — after three years in government!
A number of candidates urged women to vote for women regardless of politics because they can bring a "different" approach. ALP spokesperson Judy Jackson spent most of her time in a vicious diatribe against the Tasmanian Greens. Most of the audience felt Jackson and Swan were evading questions.
In contrast, Democratic Socialist spokesperson Jenny Forward argued for the need to build a grassroots campaigning women's movement able to take up the wide range of issues — defence of sole-parent benefits, access to education and jobs, working women's rights, child-care, as well as broader issues such as opposition to racism and uranium mining.
Forward emphasised the need to campaign for the repeal of anti-abortion laws. She condemned parties that "hide behind the conscience vote as an excuse for refusing to recognise women's right to control their own bodies". This is the case with the Liberal and Labor parties, and the Tasmanian Greens.
Forward urged women not to simply vote for women because they are women, but to vote for candidates whose positions are in the interests of women. She added that it was not enough to just to vote for such candidates and urged women to get active in campaigns for women's rights.
The Greens' candidates, Christine Milne and Peg Putt, raised the need for adequate funding for services for migrant women, supported Aboriginal land rights and argued for improved funding for sexual assault services. They explained that the Liberal-Labor changes to the electoral system would disadvantage women.
Milne and Putt seemed to believe an increase in the presence of women in parliament would mean greater benefits for women in general. They argued for the provision of child-care in parliament, without making the point that free child-care in all workplaces is a right, and a prerequisite for women's further participation in the work force economic independence.
The Green candidates said that parliament needed a "feminine non-adversarial" atmosphere to counter "male economic rationalism". They did not take a clear stand on abortion rights.