Budget ‘can’t be seen through gender lens’, says Jane Hume

Newly appointed Women’s Economic Security Minister Jane Hume has signalled the government will not apply a ‘gender lens’ to the May budget.

Scott Morrison and Governor-General David Hurley at the virtual swearing in of new ministers at Government House in Canberra on Tuesday. Picture: Martin Ollman

Newly appointed Women’s Economic Security Minister Jane Hume has signalled the government will not apply a “gender lens” to the May budget, despite calls from leading female economists for a framework to drive more equitable policy-making.

The October budget received considerable criticism that it ­included very little in specific support for women, despite female workers’ over-representation in the most acutely affected industries during COVID-19, such as retail and hospitality.

National chairwoman of the Women in Economics Network, Leonora Risse, said the government and Treasury needed to adopt “a framework to facilitate a gender-equitable approach to policy-making” in order to ­address inequality.

Dr Risse, an RMIT lecturer who specialises in gender issues, said it was imperative that when assessing budget measures the government “considers what way will men be advantaged and in what way will women be advantaged”.

The focus on what the budget could include for women comes as Scott Morrison swore in his new ministers via a virtual ceremony on Tuesday, after his third reshuffle since the election saw the number of women in cabinet return to a record seven.

The Prime Minister this week said he “will be working hard to explain right across the country just how much all of the initiatives of our budget deliver positive outcomes for women”.

Senator Hume, however, told 2GB on Tuesday: “I don’t think you can appropriately put a gender lens on the budget.”

While she did not pre-empt what would be in the budget, Senator Hume left open the prospect for measures which “better target” childcare subsidies. “If there is an opportunity to recalibrate that (childcare support), to make sure it is better targeted (and) women are encouraged to take those extra hours, to go back out into the workforce, to take on a different kind of job, that is exactly what we should be focused on,” she said.

Josh Frydenberg declined to say if the Coalition would analyse the impact of budget measures on women, but said a newly established cabinet taskforce on women would help apply a “fresh lens” to the government’s agenda.

The Treasurer said there would be discussions at the “highest level of government with a ­renewed commitment to delivering outcomes for all Australian women”.

Senator Hume said lifting ­female workforce participation and addressing the gender pay gap “are the real great contributors to women’s equality and ­empowerment economically”.

She also foreshadowed further tinkering with the superannuation system, saying there were “a lot of structural features of the super system that disadvantage women”.

The Victorian Liberal said the system didn’t account for breaks to care for young children — which mainly fell to women — or for the gender pay gap.

“These are structural inequities I think we can address far better,” she said. “I don’t want to front-run what might be in the budget, but it’s an issue I feel particularly passionate about.”