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PROF. CARL RHODES:  Good evening, everybody.  If you could come and take a seat, please, those of you who are at the back.  We're about to start.  Plenty of seats in the front row.

Good evening, everybody.  My name is Carl Rhodes.  I'm the Dean of UTS Business School.  I'd like to begin by acknowledging that we're meeting today here on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation and pay respects to their ancestors and Elders, also acknowledging these as the first peoples of this land.

Of course, the acknowledgment takes on a special meaning this year, the year of the Voice referendum.  I don't know if you're aware that next week, on the 4th of August, it will be National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children's Day, a commemoration that began as a protest in 1988, the year of the bicentenary of white Australia.  Now, during the time of the Stolen Generation, Indigenous children whose birthdays were undocumented and unknown were given the 4th of August as a national birthday for all of these children and this is why this day was there.

Other things that have happened around this time in history, a couple of weeks later, on the 17th of August 2007, is the anniversary of the legislation that allowed the Northern Territory Intervention under John Howard's rule suspending the UN Rational Discrimination Act in taking that move.

I think it's fairly clear from just two examples of history around this time that false white heroics have failed Indigenous Australia and it's time now, I think, at a very minimum for a Voice to prevent atrocities happening again.  Vote wisely, Australia.

I would also like to welcome you here to UTS and specifically to UTS Business School, the building we're in now, where we work.  We're very proud to be hosting this event, you know, specifically looking at the activism and advocacy that led to the change in the welfare payments to single mothers earlier this year, effectively a series of actions that improved, materially improved, the lives of women and children around the country, but also I think today you'll be enjoying a discussion generally about how researchers, activists, policymakers and the community can work together to achieve meaningful reform.  This is democracy in action.

Now, some of you who haven't been here before might be wondering why on earth are we having this event in a Business School?  Why would a Business School be interested in such things?  We have a pretty bad rap in business schools.  We've earnt it, by the way.  It's well deserved.  But here at UTS Business School, you know, as a group of scholars and teachers in business and economics, nothing could be more important to us than how business activity, economic policy and economic management can and should support justice and progress.  We aspire to be a different type of business school.  We aspire to be a socially committed business school focused on developing and sharing knowledge for an innovative, sustainable and prosperous economy in a fairer world.

Now, when Anne Summers, Anne joined the school last year as Professor of Domestic and Family Violence, it was a big step for us in helping become that very Business School who we aspire to be and the value and impact of Anne's research is second to none, quite amazing really, and serves as exemplar and role model for what research can and should do in improving the lives of real people.

It also serves as a role model for the fundamentally democratic role that universities have in contributing to social and economic justice and progress.  You know, in an era where so many people think of universities as corporations and think of the higher education sector as an export industry, Anne reminds us that we are and can be so much more than that.

So I would like to introduce you to your host and MC for this evening, the honourable Verity Firth (applause).  I guess you know Verity.  For the few of you who may not, Verity is Pro Vice Chancellor of Social Justice & Inclusion at UTS and she leads the university's commitment to social justice and inclusion and that ensures that that commitment is embedded across all of the university's initiatives and activities.  Verity has had a long career working at the highest levels of government, including being Minister for Education and Training in New South Wales as well as New South Wales Minister for Women.  Enough from me, Verity, over to you.  (Applause).

THE HON. VERITY FIRTH:  Thank you.  Oh, it's nice and loud.  Thank you very much, Carl, and thank you to all of you for being here tonight.

This evening's discussion   I also want to acknowledge of course that we're on the land of the Gadigal people and pay respect to Elders past and present.  This evening tonight we really are here to celebrate, we're here to celebrate a really big victory for women who have been campaigning close to decades for more economic justice in this country, particularly single parent women, but we also wanted to do us a bit of an anatomy of a campaign because there's something really interesting about how this change was achieved in the Budget this year and there was a whole lot of serendipitous moments and almost organic, you know, actors that emerged in the process and we wanted to dig deep into that as well and hopefully learn a bit from what we think is a pretty interesting case study of social change.

Before we launch in on that and I can introduce my very illustrious panel, we're very excited to have them here tonight, I have a couple of pieces of housekeeping.  Firstly, we're live captioning the talk.  So you can have a look on the screen over there.  We're recording this session and we will share the recording with you next week, so please feel free to share it widely.  We had many, many people register for this event so that they could receive the recording.

ABC Radio National are also interested in broadcasting this event, so when there is a Q&A session later, be aware you are being recorded and potentially being played to a national audience, so perhaps keep that in mind as you ask your questions.  There will be a time for questions, so start thinking about what you want to ask, but keep your questions to the point and hopefully with a question mark at the end.

A little over three months ago Treasurer Jim Chalmers delivered the Budget and announced an important change to the welfare payment for single parents.  The Government announced that recipients of the Parenting Payment Single would be eligible to continue to receive it until the youngest child turns 14, which was up from 8.  The campaign to change that policy was driven by tireless advocacy over many, many years, particularly by some of the people on this panel, alongside many, many others from grassroots organisations through to philanthropic bodies through to parliamentarians.

At the heart of the reform was a desire to prevent thousands of single mothers and their children from falling into poverty.  The result, as I said before, is a great case study of effective advocacy and an organic alliance that emerged, including people with lived experience of single parenthood, activists and advocacy groups, philanthropic organisations, a government backed taskforce that was set up explicitly to address women's economic participation and, of course, a media who was prepared to tell the stories.  So tonight that's what we're going to be looking at, we'll be talking to some of the key participants and seeing what can be learnt from the success of this campaign.

So I'm now going to tell you who we've got here with us tonight.  First is Terese Edwards.  Terese is CEO of the National Council of Single Mothers and their Children.  She focuses on changing the dialogue on single mothers and making sure women's strengths, voices and respect are central to policy decisions.  She assists women in navigating complex systems to gain the information that best supports and protects their families.  Welcome, Terese.

TERESE EDWARDS:  Thank you.  (Applause).

THE HON. VERITY FIRTH:  Anne Summers is a journalist, commentator and best selling author.  She is currently a Professor of Domestic and Family Violence here at UTS Business School, where she conducts innovative data based research into domestic violence in Australia.  Her 2022 report The Choice: Violence or Poverty influenced the Federal Government to make changes to the payment system for single mothers.  Welcome, Anne.

DR ANNE SUMMERS AO:  Thank you (applause).

THE HON. VERITY FIRTH:  Sam Mostyn is the Chair of the Women's Economic Equality Taskforce, an independent group of eminent women established to provide advice to the Australian Government to support the advancement of women's economic equality and achieve gender equality.  Sam has extensive experience in governance roles across business, sport, the arts, policy, diversity, Indigenous and women's affairs and the not for profit sector as well.  Welcome, Sam (applause).

And last but not least, Laura Tingle.  Laura Tingle has reported on Australian politics for more than 40 years.  She has worked for the ABC since 2018 and previously held senior positions in print media, including more than a decade as political editor of the Australian Financial Review.  She is the Chief Political Correspondent for 7.30 Report and has written four Quarterly Essays, won two Walkley Awards and is President of the National Press Club of Australia.  Welcome, Laura (applause).

So my first question is around the question of the focus of the event really, how do we change bad policies and laws?  So what I thought I might do is ask each of you to give me a bit of information on your background and what drove your involvement in the campaign to change the single parent payment.  For Laura, I thought it would be interesting to see why you were so keen to report on the issue.  We might start with you, Terese.  Tell us a little bit about yourself and what drove your desire to work on this campaign.

TERESE EDWARDS:  Sure.  So first of all, thank you so much for the opportunity and I flew in this morning from the Kaurna lands and I do tread carefully and with respect because I know it's not my lands, it's never been ceded.

So you will see me without papers because my story fits within my heart and my soul.  So I think what has driven me the most is I am the person who answers the phone, who responds to the emails, and mostly 2023 is private messages over the Facebook page.

So there was the people who would intuitively understand the financial ramifications of what that meant and for a long time we've spoken in the framework of dollars and cents.  What is less probably known is the respect, the way women see themselves and the way that they want to be seen.  So most commonly I would get a phone call from a woman who would say, "I'm not like another single mum" and when we worked that through, what she was trying to say in a way that was buying into that really brutal neoliberal framework is that "I am amazing, I have stepped away from a really difficult situation and I've done that with absolute limited resources and I'm determined and fearless to carve out a life and to not let this be a mark on myself or my intergenerational role that I have as an absolute matriarch".  So that is what has driven me.  

What has really, really bugged me and has been equally burning is I think most of us in this room   and I'd like to actually see that there is many hands on that banner, that one that worked towards success, and it's a really important question because if you understand the history, you will then understand how important people have been in coming along and sharing that load, that load sometimes that felt a bit overwhelming.

So what also kept me going was a belief, this burning belief, that at one point in time we are going to have a moment and it's going to rain down with hope and with justice and we're going to just wash out the shittiness that has been part of the last two decades.

So if I can quickly just say that we've got people in the room who have been part of a bus that went from Sydney to Parliament House full of single mums that we had   I co produced a documentary in 2014 that I actually thought, in all fairness, Verity, that we'd stopped the crap before it even happened, we'd done enough.  I wrote   I was the author of the first report that the United Nations had investigated on the treatment of women in this country.

So they were the things that sort of kept me going, but also I think deeply and personally I wanted to square up the ledger and I was really spurred on between never, never dropping the ball, always wanting to fix that.

There was such an opportunity when I got announced on to the Women's Economic Equality Taskforce, my hand had been shown.  We knew what I was going to try and do, but I do want to share one particular moment.  It was a very recent moment and it stays with me a lot.  So on the 23rd of March, because we have no money so I have to work really hard and sometimes I don't get to events because I can't afford the flights, so we're not a well heeled organisation by any stretch of the imagination and there's a whole lot of smoking mirrors going on.  

But on the 23rd of March, because of some philanthropic support that we got, I actually got to fly in five women who live in poverty to be in the halls of parliament, where they always should be, they always should be, but we were doing an early morning event and the night before we went out for dinner and it was just, you know, one of those loosely arranged events and there's other people that are in the room that were part of it, but there was also Anne and Sam and there was some great folk from Swinburne and Toni Wren was there and there was just this moment where I actually got up and left and I sat back and I thought no one in this restaurant would be able to pick out who was in poverty and who wasn't, and if I can ever talk about what makes a successful campaign it is that spirit of equity.  So that was at the heart of that.

For reasons that I don't know why, I was the driver of the car, so I just   look, I got lost coming here, so we had lots of time chatting.  But we got back and the women who were part of the event, they were so ready to go the next day.  They were so ready, they were up and ready to speak their truth because they just sat at the table and that was one of the times where that stress, that stress that keeps you awake at night that runs the shower so the kids don't hear you crying, that stress, that belief, that mark that says you have failed, that was not present that night.  So they're the things that I take away and why I think it was such a successful campaign, so we had truth, we had respect, and we had determination in spades.  (Applause).

THE HON. VERITY FIRTH:  Wonderful.  Thank you.

TERESE EDWARDS:  This is mine forever, now.

THE HON. VERITY FIRTH:  Anne, talk to us a little about what drove you to get involved and what role you played.

DR ANNE SUMMERS AO:  I guess the role was somewhat unexpected, but I was appointed a Fellow, Inaugural Fellow, by the Paul Ramsey Foundation a year or so ago and given some money to do some research and I was attached to UTS while I did that research and I decided that I wanted to look at   within the DV area, I decided I wanted to look at single mothers because I'd seen a figure in the personal safety survey that suggested that single mothers experience violence at a higher rate than other women and so I thought well, where on the papers and books and discussions about this, I hadn't read anything, so it looked like a promising area of research and one that because of my deep sense of justice and fairness is one that attracted me.  I'm not a single mother myself, but I feel very strongly about the way in which single mothers in this country have been treated, particularly in the last 20 years, and the way they've been demonised and treated so, so appallingly, not just financially but culturally.

I began this research and it turned out that the information I wanted didn't exist in the public domain, so I had to go to the ABS and they said, "We've got it, it's all down there in the micro data, we'll do a customised study."  The customised study produced this absolutely unspeakably sensational data which showed an extraordinary high rate of 60% of single mothers have experienced domestic violence, moreover, that the majority of single mothers were single mothers because they had left violent relationships.  So that was the first finding.  That was sensational enough.

The other thing that it showed that I hadn't actually gone looking for, but once the data was there you couldn't ignore, was that 50% of those single mothers, and that included those who'd experienced violence, were subsisting on government benefits and then I looked at the level of government benefits and how the welfare system has changed over the years and how single mothers are actually living in poverty and came to the conclusion   am I losing my mic?  Is that better?  No?  Yes?  

So the conclusion is inescapable that there were 275,000 women in Australia then, this is 2016, and I imagine still today, 275,000 women living in violent relationships.  Many of them have tried to leave or have left and gone back.  Many others have wanted to leave, but do not leave because they have nowhere to go and they have no money.

What it boils down to is they know what happens to women who leave because if you don't have a job or if you don't have family resources and you're forced to live on government benefits, you are going to be living in poverty.  So women are forced to make this choice between violence and poverty and that finding was so stark and no one had presented it that way before that the conclusion from that was inescapable.  

And so my report became a plea to the Government to say okay to the Government, in fact I was looking over some of my documents that I've prepared during this campaign and when I went to see the Treasurer last September, I gave a briefing note which I'm sure he didn't read, but it contained a sentence which said that the Government can't end domestic violence overnight, but it can end single mother poverty.  So changing this terrible change of law that Julia Gillard had brought in in 2012 and came into effect in 2013, 10 years ago, changing that law became, if you like, the lightning bolt, the linchpin, it became the symbol and the reality of what you had to do to not only improve the financial lives of a vast number of single women, but also as a Government to signal that you were going to end this regime of treating women with contempt.

One of the things that I'm very, very gratified by is that the report which was published on the 7th of July last year, today is the 28th of July, so it's all happened within a year.  It's been very quick for government.  One of the things that has really gratified me is the extent to which that report which was never   I have a published version of it now that we use internally, but it was only ever online.  So you had to go and download it.  I was amazed at how much it was   5,500 people have downloaded it from Paul Ramsey and another 600 from UTS and it's been published in a few journals, but what amazed me was the number of government ministers who'd read it and Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister, when I ran into him at the launch of the women's budget statement in Canberra in November, or whenever it was, October, and he said to me "I've read it cover to cover" and that was very gratifying.  I knew then   past conversations I was having with Sam, I hadn't at that stage met Terese but knew about her work of course   I knew then that we had a campaign in the making and that what lay ahead of us was how to make   our first very impertinent, if you like, demand was "Change it now, October Budget, please, Government" and we got a big eye roll on that.  "Okay, we'll settle for May."  And that's what happened.

THE HON. VERITY FIRTH:  And I'm sure everyone in this room has read the report, but gosh it's a good read.  I think one of the reasons why so many politicians did read it was it also read very beautifully, so it was an easy read as well as an extremely powerful one, and of course that data had never really been properly discovered and analysed before.  

So I think what's so interesting about this case study is that at the same time that this was going on there was also this going on, this creation of the Women's Economic Taskforce, and I want to talk to you, Sam, about your motivations, but also the role you played.

SAM MOSTYN AO:  Thank you and I'm just struck listening to Terese and Anne and will be with Laura that sometimes you get very, very lucky about high quality people who deeply care about an injustice and find a way to use either friendship or respect for one another to put egos aside and just do something and this is a story of a group of predominantly women who just decided separately and then collectively to do something for all the reasons you've heard.

I thought I'd start by saying the report that Terese brought us all to Canberra with her wonderful single mothers on that very early morning was to put a report to the Parliament on financial abuse and the weaponisation of child support in Australia.  I felt it was such an important morning I got all the women actors in that day to sign it for me because I like to keep an artifact of moments and this was one of those moments when Terese spoke, the women themselves spoke and then Anne spoke very powerfully and delivered one of the great lines we might talk about in a little bit that might have got Laura interested as well.  But there's been moments in this time together separately and together where we've just   could feel the momentum was in place and we had to get as many voices, very diverse voices, telling the same story so that there was an overwhelming sense of   there was no longer a chance to say no to the push.

So I think the thing I found fascinating was a bit like the introduction to tonight as to the fact we're in a business school, I was the President of Chief Executive Women, which once upon a time had been regarded as a kind of elite white women's business group that in the two years during COVID a group of us decided it was time to really lift the sights of this powerful group of women who held incredible positions across not just the business community but around not for profits, universities, states, they were a remarkable group of women, about 1,000, but the organisation never turned its mind to policy for women generally.  

It had been typically doing work on the role of women and leadership, the data on the gender pay gap, how many people are on boards, it had been very much focused on that more narrow progress, and with the support of all members, we decided to branch out into what would be the policies that would be wonderful for women in this country and we were encouraged to do that   at the time the New South Wales Government had a Treasurer in Matt Kean who was very determined to do something doing renewable energy, but as Treasurer he wanted to do something around the economic participation of women in New South Wales.  So I was fortunate, having given a speech at the Press Club, around what chief executive women believed was a course for major reform, including things paid parental leave and lifting the pay rates for childcare workers, those kinds of things, Matt reached out to me and said would I chair an economic advisory committee for women in New South Wales, which I did, and was joined by a small group of amazing women from across New South Wales and we delivered a report that led to a $5 billion commitment from the New South Wales Government into a child care fund now held by the Education Department to guarantee early education care and money for childcare workers in New South Wales.

So by the time we're heading towards a federal election and the Prime Minister had put at the front of his campaigning his own story of being a child, a son of a single mother, and had told that story many, many times and actually told that story again on the night that he declared victory, as part of that speech he thanked his mother and said he was going to make sure in his time there'd be no door left unopened for those who suffered any form of disadvantage.  He was specifically, I think, pointing to the communities he'd grown up around and particularly women.  

When I heard it, I thought there's the moment, there's a Prime Minister who's won an election, I think because in part of women, the role of the women Independents can't be underestimated.  So a number of those women Independents campaigned not just on climate change and integrity, but rights for women and economic justice for women and so there was this growing sense of a broader coalition coming into the Parliament, the highest ever levels of women in the Cabinet and numbers of women in the Parliament all of a sudden to start talking about the issues that affected women's economic participation and fairness and decency and you recall at that time there was a march for justice, we were dealing with the horrendous issues of violence against younger women, women were stepping up, young women, Brittany Higgins and Grace Tame, Chanel Contos, out there showing campaigning could work.  They were getting reform on consent, they were restating, I think, the rights of women and the marches began.  

Despite there being I think a degree of cynicism about those marches, it was speaking for something that was, I think, grounded in Terese's view of women having had enough, women speaking for other women and demanding something of our governments because with a sense that the data, particularly the data that was to come from Anne about this profound amount of violence and so many women making a choice about staying in violence or entering poverty and so all these things were coming together in a way that you could feel community expectations, women and particularly women all up and down the economic environment plus a political change, which meant, I think, that we could actually imagine something happening.

Then Katy Gallagher appointed Minister for Women and Finance and Minister for ABS, so that combination of tasks, and I think her early discussions together with the Treasurer and the Prime Minister set a course to say we've actually got a big job to do on women's economic uplift, women's safety, and because she's Minister for Finance and a key player in the expenditure review committee of cabinet, suddenly women's issues in the most important rooms of the Cabinet, not just at the Cabinet table, but inside the expenditure review committee.  

So it was then that Katy appointed or said she wanted a Women's Economic Equality Taskforce and asked me if I'd chair it and she chose the members of that taskforce, 13 of us.  So there'd been five of us in New South Wales for the Commonwealth 13, and Terese was appointed and had already been seen by the Government as playing an incredible role in that group.

We'll talk more about what we did, but I'll leave you with just an insider's reflection on the first meeting of the taskforce because the taskforce has members as broad as the Chief Executive of the ACTU, so the President of the ACTU, Michelle O'Neill; Jennifer Westacott, the Chief Executive of the Business Council of Australia; Terese; we had Danielle Wood, the economist who opened the Jobs and Skills Summit with that cracking speech about how important the economic value of women in this country is and set the tone for the Jobs and Skills Summit; and Jenny Macklin, a former Education Minister, very important minister in previous governments   13 of these women together asked to produce reports to the Government on how we would increase economic participation of women, but also look to the intersecting forms of disadvantage, particularly housing, violence, superannuation balances, the kinds of things you'd expect us to look at.

But in the first meeting when we were convened and the Minister sat with us, she opened it by saying, "I've appointed you to be totally independent, I don't want to tell you what to do or how to do it and I want you to be bold."  When she left the room, we had a wonderful conversation and Terese spoke first and made the request of the panel and said could we commit as a group to starting our work by first looking at the urgent priorities for women who suffer the most disadvantage in this country today, could we agree on that because if we could agree on that, that's where we'll start, but you'll get the head of the Business Council of Australia and Chief Economist for the Grattan Institute agreeing to that along with everybody else, we start there and we work up there and we'll get to pay gaps, we'll get to paid parental leave, but we'll start with most disadvantaged and that's what we agreed.  

I think in that moment, Terese, to have everyone around that table say that's what we'll do and that is what we did.  We preferenced everything to do with most disadvantage and started with Anne's report and we started to look at single mothers particularly, but also women fleeing violence, women   older women with homelessness issues, no superannuation balances, in poverty, they were the women we wanted to care about first and we were able to go to the October Budget with a series of asks of government, particularly around single mothers.  

We didn't get that on the October Budget.  We got paid parental leave I think from the Minister, but we went again for the May Budget and the Minister asked us to give an urgent set of budget recommendations.  We gave them six, which the primary one was the reinstatement of the sole parent payment and we wanted it returned to age 16.  We got to 14, and we will talk about that a bit later, but that got up in the Budget.  So our first report, which was really a series of urgent reforms for women we cared about most, most of them were met by the Government.

I like to think when you look at the Budget statement, I carry the women's Budget statement wherever I go, it's another artifact, not just signed by the Minister for women, it's signed by the Treasurer and the Prime Minister.  So the statements in here I go back and say are accountable by the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and Katy, the Minister for Women, and make very big, bold statements about where this government is heading in future budgets and in future policy making and we started with the women that were honoured finally in the Budget and we will deliver our final report to the Minister in the next couple of weeks that looks down the track at the next range of reforms we think are necessary for the economic and social justice reforms for women across the country.

All these things were at play.  There's things that happened at these meetings that became I think interesting from a journalistic and media point of view, but we were all operating and making calls.  I sent many copies of certain pages of Anne's report to the Prime Minister and sort of indicated, as he did   there were conversations with the Treasurer, conversations with the Minister for Social Services.  We didn't leave any possible option open, we went down every path, and we knew that we had everyone behind us and series of women speaking out in the community at different levels on every aspect of this in their own right turning up on radio, television.  So the story was emerging that there had to be a response.

THE HON. VERITY FIRTH:  That's a perfect point at which to come to Laura because often these things can happen behind the scenes, all these busy people lobbying, et cetera, but when does it become a story and what made you interested to start reporting on this issue?

LAURA TINGLE:  Well, if I take one step back, I'm sort of fascinated by how you overturn a paradigm in politics in particular or in economic theory or whatever it is and if you think about it, basically bashing up single mothers was something that went back, you know, and was a very fashionable thing to do in the sort of Costello era, all those women who were having babies just so they could get welfare, you know, and the same modus operandi was at work more recently with all the victims of Robodebt.

For a lot of this period I was working at the Financial Review and so there was basically two models.  Thank you.  I love it when I feel like a nightclub singer.  There was basically two models.  You were actually either in the media a bleeding heart or you were, you know, on board and I think that was certainly the sort of division that I was facing at the Financial Review and, you know, of course media is now deeply divided between News Corp, which is against everything everybody else is against, and the rest of us.  But I think generationally   this is probably too much information, but generationally I think a lot of my younger colleagues don't remember an era where you had a debate about this stuff.  It was just the way it was.

So when this debate came along, sure there'd been a change of government, sure there were all these people, ministers, who'd had lived experience of growing up in single parent households, all those things, but what was I thought really potent to me was that, if you think about a day to day way that on 7.30 we would cover the issue of single parents, and I know this happened and I think Terese was probably involved in a couple of these stories, you'd go oh, single parents bracket single mothers they're doing it really tough, you know, introduce case study, you know, here's single mum X, you know, and her two kids, lots of shots of them getting ready for school, making their lunches, all that sort of stuff, a couple of people saying, "Oh, yeah, it's not very good", but it was basically reporting something that just was, it wasn't reporting something that could change, and I think the important bit of what happened here was, you know, we'd had a position where it had become bipartisan to basically sort of say single mothers, a bit useless really, you know, they are, it was gutlessness really on a massive scale by a besieged government led by Julia Gillard that sort of led to the policy position.  

So you had a few things working for you if you wanted to change the policy.  One of them was shame on the part of the Labor Party, massive shame, though they never actually admit it, but you also had a few other things.  I think you had Anne's work, which did link in domestic violence.  You had research which said actually, this policy is completely counterproductive, that you're not actually forcing women to go back into the workforce and making something of themselves.  It actually was doing the exact opposite.

So on whatever level you looked at it, you were saying the policy is shit, it's not helping people, it's mean, it's contributing to this problem of domestic violence, and instead of a story where you just had one case study of a woman making lunch for her kids and saying, "I'm doing it really tough", you had all these different voices arguing all these different cases and that made it an incredibly potent argument which was very hard for the Government to ignore.

THE HON. VERITY FIRTH:  Yes, I think that's right.  I think the key about this was   and Sam alluded to it too   the massive nature of the alliance, right, the women from, you know, senior executive, you know, chief executive women also joining in Business Council of Australia, et cetera, et cetera.

SAM MOSTYN AO:  There was something I was going to add to Laura's depiction of that because there was also a story emerging   Terese knew it already, as did Anne, but the women we were meeting who had become single parents because of their escaping violence were certainly not characterised by coming from a low socioeconomic background or the kind of woman that had been the classic misuser of a welfare payment.  These were women who told their stories that they had good decent lives until they did not.  They were leaving security with children and having nowhere to go and they were going to be using this for the first time, this payment, and they were going to poverty which would affect not just them and ability to continue to work, which they wanted to do, they talked about wanting to be taxpayers, active contributors to the country, but their children were being affected and their educational outcomes compromised.  

So everything about that policy spoke to a woman that no longer existed if she ever did, but these tropes and ideologies and suddenly we were able to tell stories about not just the rights of these women and their children, but the fact they wanted to be part of an economic story and as you're dealing with an economy coming out of COVID, needing everyone participating, there was another angle to this and I think Danielle Woods' work on the economy of women was in there as well, and Terese reminded us all the time about the women we were really talking about and Anne, that report, the 60% of women single parents who had escaped a violent relationship irrespective of background was devastating.

LAURA TINGLE:  Toni Wren here tonight, who appeared, I think, before the Senate committee on poverty, a line relatable which was being on single parents payment is a bit like being in perpetual lockdown, which is just an example of those sorts of sort of compelling stories which made people go, "Oh, shit, I can understand what that's like", so you could identify with people, as opposed to them being this maligned group who were way beyond your experience.

THE HON. VERITY FIRTH:  I'm going to come and ask a more general question about the particular campaign and some of the key milestones because I'm sure there's really interesting things we can pick out of that, maybe good behind the scenes stories, but I want to come quickly back to you again, Anne, because I think one of the advantages also of this particular moment was yes, big momentum, yes a large alliance of people, but also there was a very specific nature of the ask itself, right, the ask was a doable ask, and a lot of that came from your report because I remember when I first read it, I thought this woman knows how to lobby government, she's obviously had experience in government because actually the recommendations were precise, clear.  So the question I wanted to ask you is did you envisage your research leading to   when you wrote it, did you have the advocate hat on, did you envisage your research leading to an advocacy campaign?

DR ANNE SUMMERS AO:  Well, given my life, I guess a bit hard to separate these things out.  I mean, if you see something is wrong, or if I see something is wrong and I generally want to do something about it.  This was an example of things coming together in a very almost dramatic way and, you know, coming up with these findings, coming up with this conclusion, which were devastating, they really were devastating.  

When we first saw those figures, I didn't believe them, I really didn't believe them.  I thought I didn't understand statistics, I'd read it wrong.  So the way in which I ended the report was to say maybe we didn't set out as a country to force women to choose between violence and poverty, but that's what we've ended up doing, so what are we going to do about it?  As I said in my memo to Jim Chalmers, we can't abolish domestic violence overnight, as much as we'd like to, but we can do other things, can relieve the poverty.  

The first recommendation was to reverse the Gillard decision and to restore the parenting payment to single mothers until their children reach 16.  Then there were various others like recommend the abolition of parents next   that happened.  The other recommendations didn't happen.  One is to abolish mutual obligations and some of the ways in which the pensions are indexed is different for job seekers and for single parents and for pensioners, so everybody is moving forward at a different rate.  The inequalities are entrenched and cemented in.

So I guess it was inevitable   I can't actually remember the moment, but it was inevitable.  My report came out on the 7th of July and I had my first meeting with a cabinet minister, who was Katy Gallagher, on 18th of July, so I guess we got cracking.

THE HON. VERITY FIRTH:  How do you get the attention of politicians?  I'm sure people in the room want to know, like how on earth did you have that momentum with politicians and what grabs their attention and how do you get in?

DR ANNE SUMMERS AO:  Well, I just wrote to her.  I didn't really know her.  I wrote a letter and asked to see her and having a report out there helped because they knew   when I went to see her, she had   as I said, the report was only downloadable back then.  She had a printed out copy her staff had printed out for her, which was annotated and tagged and she'd clearly read it very, very thoroughly and, you know, I said to her, "What we really need you to do is to reverse the Gillard decision and restore the payment to single mothers" and she said   she was very non committal.  She said, "Well, you really should talk to the Treasurer about that", and I didn't know the Treasurer, I had no real connection, but I wrote to him too and to my amazement, about three weeks later I got a reply, "It's okay, come and see me."

Getting access to these Ministers is not that hard.  I mean, Terese has terrific access.

TERESE EDWARDS:  I do a lot of stalking as well.

SAM MOSTYN AO:  Great story about Terese is during the job summit she was upset because she was stuck in   I wasn't there, but she told me this story, she was stuck in a Siberia of a conference room and right at the side where she couldn't see properly, but one advantage, halfway through everybody had to leave and when the Prime Minister went to leave, she grabbed him and she sat him down and went through my report with him.

TERESE EDWARDS:  I did.  

SAM MOSTYN AO:  Which was fantastic.

THE HON. VERITY FIRTH:  Perhaps the lesson is about seizing the moment.  Let's talk more about the campaign and then I'll open up to the floor because I'm sure there will be questions.  Terese, coming to you, what are some of   looking back on the campaign leading up to the Budget, what were some of the key milestones, good or bad, and how did you navigate those or is there a particular milestone you want to tell the story about?

TERESE EDWARDS:  The excitement for me was to get it in the Women's Economic Equality Taskforce and I had to   oh, Sam was just incredible because I'm sure you've all been in this position where you have to navigate that sense of being assertive without losing the respect or come across as too desperate or too demanding as you're bringing people along.  I felt I was all of them constantly and jumping in and out.  So we got it in and I didn't   I then worked hard to get it up to be the number one and I thought I'm either going to have lots of love in this room or people are just going to push the eject button.

So getting it up to number 1 I think was really important because it meant that there was this group that was established by the Government going, "Yes, at last and we think this is the most important one" and then it was almost like Anne coming along on the magic carpet with her report and picking us all up and taking us further along.

So that was really important and of course I've already spoken about women being there and speaking, but what was not so visible is how many women who   because often   and I don't include you in this at all, Laura, but how often women have to almost bleed on the altar to get their voice heard in the media and yet they did it and they did it and they did it and they did it again.  So strength and respect begets strength and respect, so more women were speaking out, more women were willing to speak out, so that was an absolute incredible moment.

But am I allowed to talk about after we got  

THE HON. VERITY FIRTH:  Sure.

TERESE EDWARDS:  So I kept getting phone calls from women all the time saying, "It's really going to happen, isn't it?"  "I think we're there, I think we're there now.  The Prime Minister has announced it.  I think we're safe", because he announced it on a Monday and of course there was the Federal Budget on the Tuesday night, but on Wednesday I was, of course, in Parliament House, but what I did is I have a pass, so I walked the halls of   I walked the ministerial halls by myself and I went into every one, every office and thanked anyone who was speaking and I got to the point where I was thanking innate objects, "thank you".  

And what did happen is I did capture Jim Chalmers before he went to the press conference, the national press conference, and I also had a meeting with the Prime Minister and I played him a message from a woman who had sent me a voice message and it was so beautiful and it was before it was announced and her little boy was there, you know, going, "Mum, mum" and she's going, "I'm just speaking to Terese, Terese is going to help us" and this little boy is going, "Oh, thank you, Louise, thank you", and I played that message to the Prime Minister and I said to him, "So when you think about this policy, I want you to think about this family and I want you to wear it deeply, deeply inside you."  Then I went back to that mum and I said, "The Prime Minister heard your message today and she heard your little boy speak" and then I watched her messages.  So that was pretty exciting for me.

But I do want to say one last thing is most of you would have these moments where you think where was I when Princess Diana died or George Michael, or that might have just been me, but I have this place in my lounge room where I was sitting where I heard that this change was going to happen and whenever I feel, you know, a bit sad about a call that I've had, I actually just sit there and I look at that place and I go yeah, magic shit happened right there.

THE HON. VERITY FIRTH:  That's just wonderful (applause).

DR ANNE SUMMERS AO:  Just quickly, because this is all sounding like, you know, it was a piece of cake and I just remember there was a time   I think it was late in March, late in March   when the press finally got on to the story and were running articles in the Herald and what have you and it was reported that the Government had made a decision and that they were going to stop it at 12 and I was just beside myself with rage.  I thought we have not done all of this, we have not come this far to have this kind of compromise, this absolutely playing by numbers, why 12, you know, what's wrong with   why 12?  

Sam and I had many discussions about this, about what to do and how we were going to circumvent this and the other thing we learnt is there was tremendous opposition to us within the bureaucracy, particularly within the Department of Finance, they were actively working against the policy.  There were certain members of the Cabinet who I won't name    

SPEAKER:  Please.

DR ANNE SUMMERS AO:     later   who were actively working against us and even though we had the Prime Minister theoretically and the Minister for Finance, possibly the Treasurer, we weren't sure.  It was by no means certain that we were going to be able to change this and we all   I know Terese and Sam discussed it, are we going to cop it, are we going to cop 12, have we come this far to accept this shocking compromise, and I thought that even 14 was unacceptable, but I was persuaded that it was better than nothing.  

But I just thought we cannot accept 12 and so I decided to get in touch with the Prime Minister directly and I wrote him a letter where I set out a whole lot of arguments as to why this was a bad decision and why he shouldn't do it and I reminded him what Gough Whitlam had done in 1973 with the supporting mothers benefit and later supporting parents benefit and how that was a payment that did not expect women to work, they accepted that it was a full time job, there was a legacy there that this government could pick up and should pick up, and I don't whether that had any influence on him or not, but I felt I had to do something.  

He did respond in a very encouraging way, so I hope   and certainly when he announced the policy, when he came back from the Coronation and got off the plane in Perth and announced the policy the day before the Budget and acknowledged the work of Sam and myself, which was very, very nice to hear, so I like to think that our intervention did work and.  We got it to 14, which I still think is not enough.  There are 15,000 single parents and probably 30,000 to 40,000 children who have been left behind by this decision and the other thing to say about it, it's a great decision, it does give them more money, but they are still living in poverty.

THE HON. VERITY FIRTH:  We'll get to that too.  I love the fact you quoted Gough.  Always quote Gough Whitlam to a Labor Prime Minister.

SAM MOSTYN AO:  I know we're running out of time.  A couple of shoutouts who did an enormous amount of lifting.  Katy Gallagher is one as Minister who appointed us who spoke to Anne.  She had before her a copy of the   of Whitlam's speech in relation to the first women's budget back in the 80s   sorry, the Hawke one, she'd gone back into history, she delivered a magnificent speech, if you haven't heard it, to honour Susan Ryan at the Susan Ryan Oration on International Women's Day to ANU where she likened her own political ambition and these things to what Susan Ryan had done coming through the ACT as a single mother, as Katy had done as Chief Minister, being a minister in cabinet and fighting for these things, and citing Susan's view about you can't give up on any gains and every gain you get is the potential for a loss, so keep going.  

So her determination I think within the cabinet room particularly with some of the colleagues that were not as supportive of this would have been happy with either no reinstatement of the payment or much lower, I think she did an amazing job.  The Treasurer was also raised by a single mother, so he had an interest, so there were all these issues that sat there with their thoughts about what it really was to be raised in those families.

The Office for Women, there were a couple of people in there who worked so hard behind the scenes to get the information through the Department of Social Security, through employment, all those things that we needed to get access to and understood what was happening in the build of the policies going into the cabinet process.  They're often undercelebrated.  It had also been an area, as you described, Laura, that office under a Morrison Government had been undermined, had been treated as irrelevant and good people, good women in the Office for Women really had had a hard time supporting good policy and Katy had come along and asked them to support us.  

So there were things going on behind the scenes, but we did get word that we'd had some success, but it was sitting at 12, 12 years of age, and many moments in this campaign where there were furious amounts of work going on and discussions about what to do next and this was all happening when in Canberra with Terese with a number of the Independents and had those women speak about their own lives and Anne   I'll ask Anne to use the line   Anne spoke at this event in the House of Reps committee room and made a comment about the Prime Minister that was so, so compelling   I'll get her to say that in a minute   that I rang a friend in the press gallery, brother in law perhaps, and asked if he could get down and have it recorded for commercial television because I thought it was an extraordinary moment from a campaigner and feminist of such standing that might just shift the mood and Mark Riley, Channel 7, got in touch with Anne and I think  

DR ANNE SUMMERS AO:  Chased me out to the airport to interview me.

SAM MOSTYN AO:  The line was extraordinary.  It was frustration about surely we can understand why we're doing this and what happens to these young children if they are back into poverty in their early years and you said if the Prime Minister was growing up today under the system we had in the circumstances he had then, he would  

DR ANNE SUMMERS AO:  He would be in juvy, not be the Prime Minister.

SAM MOSTYN AO:  That had such a compelling moment because it took it back to the children affected by this and I think that then ran on Channel 7 news, I think the second story that night, and I think then, Laura, you did a piece that 7.30 ran a piece with Anne and Terese and made it a story and a number of us were doing radio all over the country reminding people what was happening to children at the age of 12, most still in primary school, not yet ready to start high school.  The age of 12 was probably one of the worst compromises because these mothers would be preparing their children, then becoming   dealing with poverty, kids going into complex new arrangements, more expensive issues going into high school and that would be catastrophic.  So I think that next push got us to 14 against great odds.  It wasn't enough, but we achieved something.

THE HON. VERITY FIRTH:  I love that story because I also love the idea of knowing when just to keep fighting because it's always a tactical decision, right, when do you accept the compromise, when to keep pushing.  It sounds like you absolutely made the right call.  

Laura, I'm going to come to you.  It's interesting hearing the story of Anne's brilliant line, which is a brilliant line.  Are those the sorts of things that help capture media attention?  This is me also trying to think about lessons for activists and advocacy groups, how should they deal with the media, how do they get the media's attention on these meaty issues, or is it something a little out of their control?

LAURA TINGLE:  Well, you are never going to be able to completely control it, so the first thing I'd say is work on the presumption you're not going to be able to control it, but yes, you have to have a couple of stunning lines, preferably.  As I said before, I think it's really important to have, you know, all of those bases covered, you know, the policy base, the politics base, the human face of this base, you know, so that it's not just one of those issues, it's not just "Oh, Labor is under a bit of pressure", you know, blah, blah, blah, but saying, "Actually, this policy is shit", you know.  So I think those are the really important aspects of it.

I suppose just the other thing that's really interesting is, you know, to understand   I mean, this was basically a coalition of women who hadn't really worked together to get an outcome like this before and to actually sort of become functional so that you can make decisions like okay, we're going to keep fighting, we're going to withdraw, these are things that are not to be underestimated, but to also understand, you know, where your entry points are, you know, like the bureaucracy has its pluses and minuses, but if you know where to go in, you know, that's really important, you know, to know which levels of political play you can work on and to make decisions like do we go in on sort of emotional level, do we go in on the hard headed level?  

I think in so many areas now it is really important and if you think about it, you know, the sort of great sort of socioeconomic debates of the 80s certainly under Hawke and Keating were fought on economic policy grounds, you know, there was modelling done by people, not to say, you know, in this case, oh, the sentiment has changed on support for single parents, but it was to say, you know, this is not economically efficient and I think, you know, you should never underestimate the power of actually just being able to argue on all of those fronts at once.

THE HON. VERITY FIRTH:  Mmm, yeah.  Now, I know we're going a bit over time, so I do apologise for that, but I did want to give the opportunity for the audience to ask some questions if they do have questions.  We've got a roving mic up the back here.

SPEAKER:  First let me say I totally love and admire and respect all the women on the stage.  You've done a great job.  As a male in a male dominated society, may I say my frustration is communication and, for example, last night I helped a friend's daughter at a strata general meeting get on the committee and I noticed that she was talking in indirect language, commonly a female language, and asking round about questions and I gave her direct words and she got the result she wanted, go on the committee, got the result, got the water leak repair organised.  

And as an ex TAFE teacher, I remember an example of a female indirect language asking a subordinate, "Would you like to write a report on this subject?", came back two weeks later, "Have you got the report ready?" He said, "No, I didn't feel like doing it."  Her question was, "Would you like to" and he interpreted that as a male "would you like to", "no, I wouldn't like to".  

So my frustration with   I think great voice to text thing on the screen, I've had a lot of trouble hearing the voice here, so it's been great I can see that on the screen because I couldn't hear it.  So this is my problem between male and female.  I don't understand a lot of the female language as a male and in a male dominated society you're getting great results, but is there a better way to communicate in, you know, the 5 o'clock news 4 second sound bite  

SAM MOSTYN AO:  I think that's what we did.  I thought it might be useful to read you something   I'd encourage people to look at the letter that we wrote to the Minister and the Treasurer prior to the Budget because we decided to write a letter with direct language with the recommendations, but we set out the context.  I just want to read you how we wanted to position this.  We said that "Australian women believe their economic security will come from not having to rely on anyone else, feeling seen and trusted within our economic aspirations, being free from violence and being able to participate in and have access to decent, well paid and secure work.  What we have heard is that today they feel frustrated, disrespected and unsafe and that they feel economic security is out of their reach."  

It was from that we leapt over to make the number one recommendation around the sole parent payment with the lead in that said, "This is the only way the Government can show its commitment to a longer term pathway of economic reform and demonstrate its ongoing commitment that an investment in women's economic equality is one of the smartest investments that can be made and then put number 1 the sole parent payment.  We want to make it quite clear this is not about welfare payments" (applause).

I guess to your comment, I think many women speak direct language, we speak very directly.  Maybe it's into an audience that sometimes chooses not to hear the directness of what we're asking for, but we are   I think an increasing number of women, encouraged the whole way talking to women for whom we were advocates, they were clear about how much they'd been left out of this economy.  So hopefully we're well and truly   and Terese had been extraordinary in bringing the story for women.  You couldn't find a more direct report than Anne Summers.  It's extraordinary (applause).

THE HON. VERITY FIRTH:  I think one of the things Terese said at the beginning about that meeting of the women in Canberra and that feeling of truth, respect, equity, that spirit of equality, I thought that was powerful because it's also the strength that that gives you, right, the strength of feeling you're in a room with a whole lot of people who feel exactly the same as you and you're going to do something about it.  

I'll allow one more question and then I think we'll have to wrap up.  I apologise.  It's such good quality conversation, I never want it to end.  This woman here, yes, thank you.

SPEAKER:  Hi.  I just want to ask you a very direct question.  I work with women with a criminal record trying to get back into employment and if there ever was an issue about equality and equity in employment, it's actually female ex offenders because the only discrimination in employment that still exists is criminal record, on the basis of a criminal record.  

Now, I was really interested to hear the numbers of women that are affected by this change in legislation.  There are not as many women with a criminal record.  It is a very gendered issue and many researchers are now finding that unemployment, discrimination is gendered very much because people don't like to think that women have actually been naughty and so they haven't been very naughty in most cases and most of them are very disadvantaged.

So in terms of changing this discrimination, do you think it's based on the numbers that are affected and how far can we go, do you think, in terms of community emotions, I suppose, and support in running that personal card because we have plenty of stories.  I'd just like to know those answers, please.

SAM MOSTYN:  I'm happy to have a quick go.  Terese and I were in a meeting this week finalising our final report on this material for the Minister and one of the things that we will be very strong in our report, particularly in the narrative, is that there is no doubt that there is a gendered impact on employment services, and you saw it through Robodebt, you know, predominantly women affected by Robodebt.  Women cannot get in and out of the education, skills and job markets as easily as men.  

We've got a highly gendered set of disadvantages for women in employment and we'll make a strong comment about in addition to applying gender responsive budgeting and policy making across the Australian Public Service to look at those big systems, particularly employment, and to unpack those things where it's most gendered and I suspect those women who carry a criminal record will be in that category.  It doesn't matter that they're a small number.  It will be indicative of a group of women who are constantly up against and cannot get into work and it's often through the employment services system that that is baked in and so we'll make statements about that.  

I think the new work and skills commissioner when appointed will be advised to have a gender lens on the work and skills program which would take them to those groups of women who have a particular set of disadvantages and that will include the women you're speaking about.  It would also include women who come to Australia as partners of professional visas who can't work, even though they are skilled.  So there's numbers of small groups that are kept out of the employment system that if you read carefully what Danielle Woods said about the available people for our economy, these groups of women form a backbone of opportunity.

So I think you're right to raise it.  The more there's evidence about their availability for work and the problem in the system that can be solved, advocates like us can raise it, but we want a public service that is actually paying attention to those issues and reforming it so we don't end up with those women excluded or ending up in like the Robodebt victims.  (Applause).

LAURA TINGLE:  I think it doesn't come down to numbers, but it does come down to a portrait.  I mean, how many women are there who are facing this, what's the situation they face, you know, in a sort of   they get out of bed in the morning and this is what happens to them.  

Most people would have no idea about the experience of women who are ex offenders, so it's a matter of, you know, portraying, getting that data.  In the same way Anne collected the data on connection between domestic violence and poverty, it's about getting that data together and painting a picture of women in this case and saying look, they want to be working and this is what happens when they try to work and these are systemic problems or, you know, prejudice problems, whatever, but that you actually have a coherent picture of why it is the way it is.  

SAM MOSTYN AO:  As Jess Hill would know, Aboriginal women who are incarcerated often are incarcerated because they've defended themselves in a domestic violence situation and they're wrong offender, so there's a large piece of work about who is the offender, but they carry the stigma of offence and come out of jail, so you've got compounding forms of disadvantage because of a system that is against them.  

That's also why a voice matters because the Voice would say for those women, those Aboriginal women, that gets back up into a policy discussion about why they suffer such chronic disadvantage in those circumstances.  But I agree, I think that storytelling and putting it into a context that people can have empathy with is terribly important.

THE HON. VERITY FIRTH:  Alright.  So last question for the night.  I apologise for this.  I think we could go all night, but we promised to end by 7.  

I'm just going to go across the panel now and say what next?  There's obviously still more to be done, so what is the next   about to say cab off the rank.  I'm sure there's plenty more than just one cab off the rank.  What next?  What do we need to be helping you achieve in the next couple of years?

SPEAKER:  JobSeeker increase.  

TERESE EDWARDS:  It is a fair comment.  What I would particularly like to see happen is that we seize this moment because not only did we change the Parenting Payment Single, we did slay the beast known as Parents Next and that was such a nasty, mean thing, but what I think can happen is for women to be able to capture their own portrait and write their own slate of who they are and what they want and their voices to be heard.

So one of the things that I find frustrating particularly in the welfare sector is there's still paternalism, so others still get to talk on your behalf, so that's why I'm really excited to be here, but I think that that is the next piece because once you actually flip the script, you then can have really good outcomes that flow from that.

DR ANNE SUMMERS AO:  I think the single parents policy reforms are not overt.  I ran into the Treasurer at a conference recently and said, "We are going to get the 16, you know", and he said, "I know".  So we'll be counting on tying up that little particular bow next Budget.  

But I think the bigger picture, the comments made by the Robodebt Royal Commissioner about the attitudes to welfare and which you've written about beautifully, Laura, in this country over the last 20 to 30 years is something that has fundamentally changed us as a people, we've become mean and uncaring and un understanding of the circumstances in which people can find themselves and where once we would lend a helping hand, now we treat them with resentment, treat them like criminals, Robodebt being the most egregious example of that.  But the mutual obligations which all single mothers still have to do, have to perform, that is still   that policy is based on the assumption that you are the undeserving poor and you have to do something in order to earn and deserve the money the   the paltry amount of money the Government is giving you.

We need to completely rethink the welfare system in this country, and that includes JobSeeker, it includes everything, but I think we should have another Henderson Royal Commission or something that looks at the whole system because it is really crook from bottom to top.  (Applause).  

SAM MOSTYN AO:  I agree with Anne and Terese, we have more work to do on the primary recommendations we put before the Government before the last Budget.  We will launch our formal report of the taskforce which wraps up at the end of this month, in the next couple of weeks, and we make a series of very significant recommendations to the Government of the kind that I was hinting at about where government must continue to go and it picks up things like rental assistance and JobSeeker and supporting wage cases for early educators, teachers, nurses, all of the care economy.  We know that so much of the disadvantage for women that is suffered at the end of their lives over the life course with no superannuation and homelessness starts with an insecure, underpaid, inflexible job, often several of them that holds up the whole show through our care system, so we're going to talk very much about the care and work and where women feature in that.

I think   when we do launch that, read the report and whatever support you can give for the various recommendations, your voices matter because if you agree and don't just see this as being matters for government but we can see how important it is for the future of the country we're launching it   pointing out that this is actually dealing with some of the most extreme gender segmentation and segregation the world knows in this country.  So we're dealing with gendered norms that persist no matter what we've talked about tonight and Anne pointed to it in the welfare system, but we're probably one of the most gendered normed countries in the world.  We have a view about who does care, who gets to earn, who gets to be wealthy.  They're tropes, they're very, very damaging and they hold us back, and we see that most acutely and most disgracefully in the rates of murders of women by their former or current intimate partners and the domestic violence death rates at the moment are once again on the rise, which would say we're still not understanding what it means to respect women.  

So that respect and gendered norms about where respect comes from, how we raise young men to respect young women, this is a broader conversation and the Minister for Women is currently in negotiation around the country talking about the national gender equality strategy and that language might seem a bit obtuse, but it's really to say can this country actually deal with the gendered norms, are we prepared to face into that and make some solid changes about how we respect men and women equally and raise children, young people with that in mind and ultimately see a reduction in the violence, the extreme violence and death and murders that are perpetuated against women in this country.  

So they're big aims but, you know, that's where the big play is for this country to be competitive and to show we actually do care about women and I think there are a lot of men who want to be part of that and this isn't a zero sum game, it's a better country, it's a better society when we do these things.  So just a couple of small things.  (Applause).

THE HON. VERITY FIRTH:  What about you, Laura?

LAURA TINGLE:  Well, obviously there are a lot of things to be done in the welfare system like housing, rent assistance, or housing in general is a complete crisis.  But, you know, since Anne is agreeing with me, I'll agree with her and say we need to change the politics around welfare and, you know, if you haven't read Catherine Holmes' opening statement in the Robodebt Royal Commission, I really urge you to do it, quite poetic for a judge.  So the welfare system, you know, this has been a chink in the armour of it, I suppose.

As Sam says, it's also about the workforce and if you think about what we're talking about here, it's seeing an opportunity and just going for it and given that the greatest growth in the labour market in the next 20 years is actually in the care economy, this is not only the time to be doing it, but it's time when you've got to do it because, you know, it is terrible.  It is just   people being paid more or less poverty wages to be caring for our sick, disabled, our elderly, and so this is something, particularly if you have a Labor Government in power, that, you know, has to be addressed not just because it's a good thing to do, but because economically you need to have people able to live and actually provide services that we need.

THE HON. VERITY FIRTH:  Wonderful.  Thank you (applause).  And thank you again for all of you coming tonight.  I think you'll agree with me that was just a fantastic conversation, so rich and I just want to give them another round of applause (applause).  

Also in the audience tonight is Jess Hill, journalist and author, who is going to be penning a case study.  We're so fascinated by the success of this campaign and the different elements that led to that success that Jess is going to be talking to people, interviewing people and writing up a case study, which of course we'll share with everyone who registered tonight.  You'll also be sent a link with the recording and we'll also send you details of when ABC Radio National decide to play it.  Thank you again for coming and have a wonderful weekend.  (Applause)

Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, this land was never ceded and we want to pay respects to elder's past and present for their continuing ownership and custodianship of the land upon which this university is built. So my name is Verity Firth. I'm the Pro Vice Chancellor of social justice and inclusion here at UTS. I'm also at that stage of life where I can never work out whether I need to keep my glasses on or not, maybe I should put them just perched on my chin like this, on my nose like this. It's my real pleasure to have you all here today. We're also live streaming this event, so that we've got all of you in the room. But we've also got some people online, who were really keen to be able to access the event online. So it's my pleasure today to be joined by Professor Carl Rhodes, Dean of the UTS Business School, a panel of speakers, Anna Bligh and Leanne Ho. And we also have, of course, our keynote speaker, Professor Anne Summers AO with us and I will introduce you properly to her shortly. There is a couple of housekeeping though we do have to go through. So today we're going to be talking about the implications of Professor Summers findings, in her report, The choice: violence or poverty, revealing the stark choices and consequences for women wanting to escape domestic violence. We will discuss how we can remove barriers facing women looking to escape partner violence. We will also discuss the national plan to reduce violence against women and their children, how it seeks to encourage and support women to leave violent relationships. But of course, whilst you can be supporting women to leave violent relationships, there's no point encouraging them if there's absolutely nowhere for them to go. And this is what Anne's report points out so well. The truth is that the Australian welfare measures ensure that as many as half the women who choose to leave violent partners will end up in poverty. As Professor Summers writes, the government may not be able to immediately stop domestic violence, but it could stop poverty, and it chooses not to. I really do want to urge everyone to read and compelling and powerful report. Not only does she painstakingly comb through ABS data to discover the truth about the link between violence and single motherhood, she also outlines the shifts in discourse around single motherhood. In her words, quote, single mothers have been transformed in the eyes of the federal government, from being mothers to being seen as economic units to be forcibly funneled into the workforce as soon as possible. When I read the report, I really, really want you to read it because it's deep in data, right? So she's gone and she's looked at the ABS stats, and the data is there and the proof is there. But she has such a compelling narrative style, that you absolutely get swept up in the power of her argument. The most powerful for me was in fact, the final chapter which talked about the history of parenting payments in Australia, and how far we thought we had come. And yet how far we have now fallen and the way that single mothers have been increasingly demonized rather than supported, particularly since the 90s. But I'll leave it to her to elaborate further. I'd also like to acknowledge that in today's discussion, it will include topics that may distress some people it may be triggering. So if you have at any time, feel uncomfortable or have discomfort or just a bit overwhelmed, just leave, it's fine. Don't force yourself to sit through distress and you can always join us again later. But to officially begin today's event, I am now going to introduce Professor Anne Summers. She has just joined the UTS Business School and we're extremely excited to have her as part of UTS. It's a huge coup for us. Professor Summers is a leading feminist and renowned journalist and researcher. In 2021, she began work with us as a Paul Ramsey foundation fellow where she undertook her original database research that informed her groundbreaking breaking report, The choice: violence or poverty. So I'd now like to welcome Professor Summers to give us a keynote before the panel discussion. Thank you.

04:31

Thank you so much for that terrific introduction. I'm still not used to hearing the word professor in front of my name. So I think who's that who are they talking about? So I haven't quite got used to this, this this honor. Before I begin, I too would like to acknowledge that we are meeting on unseeded Aboriginal land, the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation and wish to pay my respects to elder's past, present and emerging. You've no doubt already heard the headline findings of my research disturbing data about the extent and the consequences of domestic violence in Australia today. Tonight, I'll just summarize the main findings and add a couple of new observations that I think are especially relevant for business so that we have plenty of time for questions and discussions. Before I do, I just let me remind you that these findings are based on never before published data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the ABS. The data has been customized for my report by the abs in response to my request for information about single mothers and their experience of violence. I had been surprised to discover that the ABS does not identify single mothers as a specific data set. In its Personal Safety Survey, the PSS which is study, which is conducted every four years into violence in Australia, including partner violence, which is the term the ABS uses to designate domestic violence infected by a cohabiting partner. In response to my requests, they were able to extract from the PSS 2016, which is the most recent one available, a data set that comprised 311,000 Women in single parent families or with children aged under 18. This data set is amazingly comprehensive, providing a massive amount of data on the experiences of violence of these women and its consequences. And which is able to be compared with women in other household formations, who did or did not experience partner violence. The data is available for you to look at yourselves, if you wish, as it is linked to the appendix of my report. There's a lot more information there than I used in the report because it dealt with a huge range of matters that were not directly relevant to my purpose, but may be of interest to you. My purpose was to measure the prevalence of domestic violence in Australia today and to examine at least some of the consequences for the women and children affected. I present my overall findings in the form of a proposition, which is also of course the title of the report. That proposition is this: Australian women who are experiencing violence have two choices. One is to stay and live with violence, the other is to leave. Now, this might sound like a statement of the bleeding obvious, but it has in fact never before been measured with authoritative data as to its prevalence and the consequences of each of these choices. In 2016, an estimated 275,000 Australian women suffered physical and or sexual violence from their current partner. These women were currently living with violence. To give this number of context, the combined populations of Hobart and Launceston in 2016 was 287,013 people. So these 275,000 Women at 1700 made at least one effort to leave the relationship, but subsequently returned. They returned for various reasons, they'd love their partner, he promised to stop the violence. They missed their home, they didn't want their children's lives disrupted, all those sorts of reasons. But around 15% of them came back because they had no money and nowhere to go. In addition, there's another 90,000 of these 275,000 Women who wanted to leave, but didn't. The reasons they didn't want to leave a set out in detail on the report. But they include wanting to work things out, wanting the violence to end. But for 22,000 of these 90,000 women, the reason was they had no money and no financial support.

09:10

We also need to note that almost 110,000 of these 275,000 women were not in employment or are not are not in employment, meaning they have no financial resources of their own, making them even more dependent on the violent partner. So in support of the first part of my proposition, the numbers show that 275,000 Women in Australia are living in violent relationships, and that as many as 34,805 of them would like to leave, but have no money and nowhere to go. So if for example, we had a national target of reducing the incidence of violence in Australia by say 100,000 a year, we could reduce that target. We could achieve a third of that target immediately by providing money for this 34,805 Women to leave. As a result, these women are choosing to remain with the violence, we can help them to leave if we wanted to. Now let's look at the women who left. The ABS customized data shows that in 2016, there were 311,000 women with children under 18, who were living as single parents. Of these 311,000 Women 185,700 has experienced partner violence. That translates to a shocking 60% of single mothers who have experienced violence from a previous partner. This is the headline finding of my report. And to understand just how shocking it is, I need to provide some context. Whenever you read about domestic violence in Australia, via newspaper articles, or even government documents, the rate that is usually cited is the major finding of the ABS personal safety surveyed 2016. And that is that one in six or 17.3% of Australian women aged over 18 have experienced partner violence since the age of 15. Now the trouble with that figure is it includes all women in Australia, including those who've never had a partner. And let's not forget that the ABS definition and partner violence is violence perpetrated by a cohabiting partner, ie someone you live with. So it's not really very useful to include in our prevalence figures, women who by definition, could not have experienced partner violence. Yet we do, even the government does. It makes more sense if we look at women who've ever had a partner. And when we do that, that figure increases to 22%. Now that's a pretty terrible figure 22%, or almost one quarter of Australian women who have ever had a partner have experienced violence. I don't think most of us knew that. I certainly didn't. There's another group who've suffered terrible rates of partner violence, and that is women who were once partnered, and who now live alone. There are around 800,000 of them, and 40% of them experienced violence from a previous partner. Now, this is a truly shocking figure, and this group deserves urgent investigation so that we understand more about the consequences of experiencing domestic violence in Australia. I mean, who are these 800,000 women? I mean, I've never heard of them. They're not single mothers. They're not. Who are they? And I really hope somebody decides to make that a research topic. And I'm not doing it because my focus was on single mothers. And then to start astounding 60% of the single mothers in my study have experienced partner violence. This is almost unbelievable. In fact, when I first saw the biggest I didn't believe them. I thought that I was reading them wrong. But I because I'm not a statistician, so what would I know? But then I asked some statisticians and they actually asked the abs, correct figures, right. So the key thing for us to know that is that these women were not single mothers at the time that they experienced the violence, they were married, or in a de facto relationship, because as we have already seen, the ABS‘s definition of partner violence is sexual or physical violence or emotional abuse, which is inflicted by a cohabiting partner. So what we have to understand is that these 185,700, women are single mothers, because they lived violent relationships. In fact, as the ABS customized data shows, a full 75% of them say that the main reason they separated permanently from their partner was because of his threats or actual abuse, or his emotional control, what we now call coercive control. You will note that the number of women who stayed is greater than the number who left

14:04

my report contains an enormous amount of detail or provided and verified by the ABS. In other words, the ABS read my report when it was finished, to make sure that I'd got everything right. They would they didn't give it the sort of the tick and say they loved it or anything like that. But I think they did, really, they don't often get this much attention. But what they did verify was that I had quoted and interpreted the figures correctly. And so we have the reassurance of the ABS on that. There are details in the report that have never been published, and many of which are very hard to read. We learn a lot about these women and what they have suffered, how the violence so often begins when the woman is pregnant, how it impacts on their daily lives and on their children. I'm not going to go into the details here because you can read Report. It's just download it go to violenceorpoverty.com. And it's available and it's free. And you'll see the terrific graphics and the data visualizations that really underscore the dire situation. Instead, what I want to concentrate on tonight as some of the consequences for these women of having endured this violence, these are facts that we didn't know, until we ABS provided this customized data, I will look mostly at the financial impact of having suffered violence. But first, I just wanted to make the important point that 67% of the women who experienced violence while living with a partner, and that is a total of 113,300 women had children in their care at the time. And 88,600 of these women said their children saw or heard the violence. One of the things that's very troubling about this is that we know that there is a high rate of a high risk of intergenerational transmission of violence. Children who have either witnessed violence themselves against a parent, particularly against a mother may themselves grow up to be either a victim or a perpetrator. Without intervention, or at least some at least some of these children might grow up to be either perpetrators or victims of violence themselves. So this is a very important finding in itself. And for what it tells us about the likelihood of violence being transmitted into the future, unless we take immediate and drastic action. Now. This is an area that deserves a lot of further investigation. And as a society, we bear responsibility for ensuring that it does not happen. But what I'll be presenting now and the financial consequences for these women of having left violent relationships. perhaps the most dramatic and consequential changes are to their employment. The ABS figures show that of the women who had been assaulted by a previous partner in the past 10 years 51% were not working at the time. 33% of them did not take time off work, although 15% did. In other words, as we saw the champion 75,000 Women who remained with violent partners, there appears to be a lower rate of employment among women who experienced violence. I've been very fortunate to have Professor Bruce Chapman of the ANU and his colleague Matt Taylor contributed to this report via some truly groundbreaking work they have done using Hilda data on the income consequences of living violent relationship. As we know the PSS, Personal Safety Survey is a cross sectional survey. A cross sectional study giving us a snapshot of a situation but unable to track what happens to the women were concerned about. Hilda is a longitudinal study, meaning that experiences can be tracked over time. Bottom line is that women who separated because of domestic violence suffered far greater drops in income than women who separated for other reasons. Perhaps the most startling finding is that women who are single mothers due to living in a violent relationship suffered a 45% drop in household income, compared with an 18% drop for childless women who did not experience domestic violence. Why is this the case? Is it because having experienced violence robs women of their confidence or their self esteem, makes them reluctant or fearful of re engaging with the world. The fact is, we don't know that we have to find out both for the sake of the women themselves and for the economy. And this is going to be my next project. Chapman and Taylor at the School of Business, thanks to Carlos

18:50

Chapman and Taylor have postulated their data suggests that the experience of partner violence impacts negatively on a woman's ability to or maintain employment post separation. They propose to investigate this further. Their findings ought to be of particular interest to business because business needs to involve itself in finding ways to bring these women into or back into the workforce. It is not enough just to have domestic violence leave important and necessary as that is. We also need to come up with ways to help women who are not in the workforce. And for 60% of the 185,700 women who left violent relationships are in employment, but most of them are in such marginal employment, that they do not have sufficient earnings to support themselves and their families. As a result, a full 50% of them rely entirely on government benefits as their main source of income. And this is where the poverty comes in. Because as we know, the payments for single parents are very low, and have been made much worse by policy decisions by governments since 2006. I have adopted the term policy induced poverty, an extremely active expression coined by Dr. Susan Mary of Good Shepherd, to describe the financial situation in which single mothers find themselves in. Perhaps the most confronting figure from the ABC, that from the ABS story shows that 48.1% of the single mothers are in the lowest quintile for equivalised weekly household earnings, meaning their weekly income is $460 or less. The consequences are that these women are living in incredible financial stress. This is documented in various ways in the report. But I would like to just draw your attention to some figures that look at the cash flow problems that these women experienced in their households. Over the previous 12 months. 60% of them have had one or more cashflow problems, for example, 78,000 couldn't pay a utility bill on time. 24,000 couldn't pay the rent or the mortgage on time. 20,500 were unable to heat or cool their houses 16,000 couldn't pay their credit card, minimum, and 17,400 went without meals. But to me, the most heartbreaking and revealing number is the 36,300 women who could not pay their car registration or insurance. We all know that it's almost impossible, particularly if you're a single parent, to have employment, if you don't have a car. If you can't drive to work, if you can't drive the kids to childcare if you can't do all the normal things associated with most suburban lives. Not all of us live in the inner city. with public transport, most of the things involved in suburban living in this country requires a car, and you're excluded from society, from society in so many ways that make it very hard for you to get back in if you don't have a car. So, that is a particularly poignant finding and one that we did not have that one that we have not been able to quantify until now. So we've seen that the income of law is low, we've seen that women are having a great deal of trouble getting by something like 27,000 sought assistance from welfare organizations, while others were able to seek help from their families. These women so many of whom left violent relationships and help who and now single mothers are living in poverty, in some cases, extreme poverty because of government payments policy. Starting in 1973, when the Whitlam government introduced the supporting mothers benefit single parents were treated with dignity, their payments gradually increased to the pension rate, and they were not required to seek employment, as it was recognized that their single parenting was in itself a job. Now, there are various changes over the decades, but none so drastic, or so cruel, as the 2006 welfare to work so called reforms, whereby the Howard Government decreed that once your youngest child turns eight women on what was then called the parenting payment, would have to go on what would have to go on to the doll, then known as new start, which paid considerably less. From now on, these women were no longer seen as seen or treated as single mothers. They were unemployed. Current recipients were grandfathered, but all new applicants fell under the new system.

23:30

Two things happened after Labor came to power in 2007, which made things even worse. First, in 2009, Kevin Rudd changed the indexation arrangements, decoupling the link to male weekly earnings and instead tied the dialed in indexation to the CPI, which was lower. The result was that the gap between parenting payment and the unemployment payment widened even further every six months, and has been doing so ever since 2009. And then, in 2013, the Gilad government removed the grandfathering which resulted in some 80,000 Women immediately being forced onto the New start what's now called job seeker. This catastrophic move radically changed the system that previously had acknowledged these women were parents not unemployed workers. It decreased their fortnightly incomes immediately by about $200. And via the new indexation arrangements by increasing amounts every six months. So at the moment, the current rates of bass payments this is of March 22. For the parenting payments single is $892. a fortnight $892 Parenting payment for job seekers single with dependent children and that is a single mother whose youngest child is eight or above the rate is $691. a fortnight you can compare that with the age pension a couple who are on 1448, a fortnight almost $1,500 It's a fortnight everyone says, age pensioners do it hard. But the age pension couple does not have kids who grow out of their clothes every six months, who, especially if they are boys eat massive amounts, and who demand the latest sneakers want mobile phones and all the rest of it. Even when you take into account that the woman on jobseeker, with two children aged 10 and 12 will get some extra money, some family payment benefits a bit of rent assistance if she's renting, and an energy supplement of $9.50 which is fairly meaningless given today's energy prices, the total amount she receives is $1,189.66. a fortnight. I know I'm throwing a lot of things that she but this really is about the numbers. And just to spell it out the amount of money that this single mother with two boys or two children, sorry, aged 10 to 12, she receives $258, a fortnight less than the age pension in a couple of games, you can buy a fair bit of food for that. So what this means that these women are trying to get by on very low payments, while at the same time being subjected to the humiliations. And I would say the cruelty of the mutual obligations while trying to raise kids, I won't go into the details of that. But we all know about that. Of course, we all know about single mothers, the stigmas are so so often attached to them the income difficulties they have, that so many of them that their kids are living in poverty, what we didn't know. And now cannot unknow is the connection between that poverty and the fact that a very large number of these women are single mothers, because they have left violent relationships. We say to women who are in violent relationships, why doesn't she leave? Well, this is one reason she doesn't leave a lot of those 275,000 women that we talked about in the beginning, they know they know what will happen if they leave. And so they have to make this terrible choice about enduring the violence, knowing it could escalate in intensity, and frequency, it could put their very lives at risk. We know from the N rose study of social attitudes to violence that some 32% of Australians think that a woman who stays in a violent relationship is partly responsible for what happens to her. So as well as the violence, these women also have to deal with the stigma of being a victim. And we also know that was so few of those women working full time are working at all, they had very few financial options, and so are therefore pretty much stuck in that situation. On the other hand, those women who have left the 75% of them leave 75% of those who leave, leave without taking any property or assets. That means clothes, household goods, like washing machines, but it also means kids school reports, family photos, the stuff that tells our story, and which in an ideal world we would pass on to our kids and their kids.

27:56

Those women who have chosen to leave often for fear of their lives, they simply pick up the kids and run they've gone to a refuge if they can get in. We know that women shelters currently TURN AWAY 50% of the women who seek emergency assistance, they've gone to the family or friends. We have figures that show a lot of these women and their kids have slept rough. They've slept in caravan parts or in abandoned buildings, or in their cars. It's a shocking situation. This is what what we say are saying to Australian women who experienced violence, stay and put up with it with the violence and the stigma of being an abused woman or leave and have a 50% chance of living in poverty. The thing that's particularly galling and the thing that shocked me the most about doing this report and the findings is that because of the indexation arrangements, the situation gets just keeps getting worse and worse and worse. What I've tried to show tonight is that the consequences of leaving a violent relationship have been demonstrated by the ABS data to put women and their children into a very precarious financial situation. They may have escaped the violence, although in fact 36% still continue to experience violence from their previous partner for the first year after leaving, but around 50% of them are burdened with this policy induced poverty. Whatever policy reforms solutions we arrive at, we still have to look at the overall situation and ask ourselves whether we are happy as a society to be trading off violence for poverty. That is the proposition and is one that's not one that any of us can no longer ignore. The challenge for all of us is what are we gonna do about it? Thank you.

Professor Carl Rhodes  29:55

Thank you so much, that for that keynote presentation and My name is Professor Carl Rhodes. I'm Dean here at UTS Business School. And on behalf of the school, and our friends at the Center for social justice and inclusion at UTS, we really is our honor to be hosting this really important, important discussion. I also extend our thanks to the Paul's Ramsey Foundation for their support of and research into what is clearly an urgent and important issue. I also acknowledge that we are here in a business school perhaps not the place, you would normally expect to have a discussion like this. But to draw attention to, as Anne has clearly showed, unequivocally, domestic violence is intertwined with economic and financial justice. And it's very much an economic issue, as the report is entitled, you know, resulting in the choice for many between violence and poverty. Anne’s very clear in showing that this issue of domestic violence with single mothers is far worse than we may have imagined. And this clearly is no time for ethical by standing. The report is a harrowing read. If you haven't read it, I suggest that you do, but also a call to immediate action, what can be done? So this evening, we're delighted to welcome guest panelists to join Anne and invite them to join me here with Anne on stage. Firstly, we have the honorable Anna Bligh, and is CEO of the Australian Banking Association. She's a respected Australian leader, and former Premier of Queensland. He'd been an advocate for education and the role of women in public life and services for the non for profit sector. welcome Anna. We also have Leanne Ho. Leanne is the CEO of economic justice, Australia. She is a human rights lawyer and leader in the community and pro bono legal sectors. He has previously worked as the Legal Adviser to the United Nations peacekeeping missions, and its human rights advisory panel. Welcome, Leanne. So we're going to spend about half an hour or so talking about some of some of the issues raised by Anne’s research and Anna, I might start with, with you, if you don't mind. Financial institutions are clearly a key part of the economy and of and of the fabric of our society. Financial institutions are a key part of the economy and the fabric of our society. Do you think financial institutions have a role to play in helping tackle violence against women and their children or other forms of domestic violence?

33:18

Absolutely, not only do I think they have a role to play, they actually are playing a very significant role for many women. There's certainly much more that could be done. But well, first of all, let me say, I think there are a few better ways to control someone than to ensure that they have no access whatsoever to money. I worked in a Women's Refuge in 1981, in 1982, in Brisbane, which is 40 years ago. And I can tell you how surprised I used to be about how many women would call and say, I've got an hour, he's out of the house, I've got an hour to get out of the house, I don't have any money. And we will just say come get on get in a taxi, we'll pay it when you get here. And it was I mean, I was a very, you know, young worker at the time, I didn't have much money either. But we're literally talking about women who didn't have five cents, and didn't have a bank account, they didn't have a single coin in their purse. And that really means you can't do anything. In those days, it meant you couldn't use a public phone. It just complete it really is a way of complete control. Then there are plenty of women in these circumstances who have some of their own money, but it's caught up in things like joint accounts, which you know, then controlled by their partner. These are all things so the role of financial institutions, particularly banks and credit unions, and the like, I think it's fair to say have really evolved over the last 20 or so years and are evolving further. Australian banks now have a they started in 2016. put in place a sector wide guideline on dealing. So basically saying this is not an issue on which banks should compete. This is something it shouldn't matter who you bank with, you should be able to walk into the door of any bank and expect that certain you'll be treated in a certain way and be entitled to certain rights and entitlements. So the guidelines sets out a whole lot of details, some ways are kind of really boring, but can actually, you know, really make a woman's life much worse if she's leaving. So you know, things like commitment, banks will not pass on to debt collectors, any debt that's associated with a family that's experienced violence, they have abilities to do things like freeze accounts, particularly freezing, sorry, freezing joint accounts, so that they can until they can work out whose money is this before that account gets strain, and the woman ends up even closer to poverty. But the other interesting thing that I think has really confronted banks in the last couple of years is anyone who's worked in this sector will know that perpetrators can be incredibly relentless in the way that they will pursue and stalk and, and really threatened and terrify people and control. But banks have found in 2019, the Commonwealth Bank identified that perpetrators were using their banking, their online banking platform, as a vehicle of abuse for victims. So for any of you who've ever made a transaction, you can put in the reference, you can put a little note to yourself, no money to my friend for the concert. What they found was that there was very high numbers, they found it through one of their customers they were reconstructing accounts for. And they thought, well, if it's happening to one of our customers, let's go and have a look, they found 8000 of their customers who were experiencing sometimes 100 of these messages a day. And the perpetrator, they couldn't identify that it was not friends, etc, it was people perpetrating it by sending 10 cents, they were using really low value transactions, the purpose of the transaction was clearly not to transfer 10 cents, it was to send a you know, a very abusive, threatening message. And so every bank has now working to basically the terms and conditions have changed, if they identify that they will remove you from their banking platform, if you are the perpetrator. So, you know, it's not only that banks and financial institutions, including insurance, and superannuation, I think have all got to think about the role that collectively they can play. I think they've got to know what their role is. It's not I think, to work through with the woman, some of the very complex emotional issues around leaving or the experience of the violence. But on the other side about how what can we do to make sure you get you are kept as far away from abject poverty as you possibly can be, then banks are really well placed. These are people who know how to do this, who can really assist women who might really basic things, we had to get AUSTRAC agreement. AUSTRAC is the regulator that regulates money laundering law, any of you who've opened an account or gone and got a new credit card, you'll know you have to take 100 points of identification.

38:10

The number of women who leave a violent relationship where she doesn't have access to her passport, she doesn't have access, she doesn't even have a driver's license. Or if she does, she doesn't have access to it. Almost impossible to go and get a bank account for the bank to be consistent with the 100 points requirement. But last year negotiated with austrac, that banks can use other forms of identification sort of statutory declarations from relevant people to get up because if a woman doesn't have a bank account, she can't get as meager as it is. It's better than not having anything. And so that was a quite a stumbling walk. And it's those things. They're all little tiny things. But if you've just left a really violent relationship with no money, no bank account, or money in the bank account that's controlled by a violent partner, or it makes it much much harder to make a life for yourself and your children. So yeah, absolutely critical role to play.

Professor Carl Rhodes  39:11

Look, thanks. Thanks. Thanks so much. I might turn to you now, Leanne and move from the private sector, to the public sector. I mean, Anne's report very much highlights how we have an inadequate Social Security system, which means that many women don't leave violent thing will have to return to them, or else face homelessness, or you know, what's referred to as policy induced poverty. I mean, from your experience and from an economic justice point of view, our welfare measures perpetuating violence or re traumatizing women.

39:51

Anne’s done such a fantastic job of going through all of the figures about the way that domestic well Aren't victims survivors and up in poverty, that I really wanted to paint a picture using some of the case studies that come from our Community Legal Center work. But before I do that, I just wanted to really dispel this idea that the supplementary payments on top of the base rate of Social Security payments makes the inadequacy, okay, because this is something I hear over and over again. And, as I mentioned, when you look at rent assistance, and supplementary payments and family assistance payments, a single mom with two kids under five leaves on the poverty line. And as those children get older, or falls further and further and further below the poverty line, and a single woman without children lives $100 per week below the poverty line. I just wanted to add that to the you know, the inadequacy ask. So, Anne also talked about the hoops that we make women go through in order to get these meager payments. And let me add some color to that with some stories. So, at the parents next inquiry, we provided some of these examples. A mum with a severely disabled child, couldn't go to a job service provider appointment, and had her payment suspended until she could come to one of our community legal centres to have her payment reinstated. And also to get an exemption, it boggles the mind that someone with a severely disabled child couldn't get an exemption on their own, and needed that kind of support. And imagine the traumatization of not being able to provide food or medicine for that child when they were so unwell. Another case was a Mandarin speaking woman who didn't speak any English, experiencing family violence. And she was only able to get an exemption from her mutual obligation requirements after the intervention of a support worker. Again, imagine the trauma. But it's not only these hoops that we make women goes through that are traumatizing them the actual process of claiming payments, because the rules don't make sense because they don't take into account domestic violence and those experiences. They actually in themselves traumatize women experiencing violence. I'm just gonna give you some examples around something really simple to understand, which is crisis payment. So if you're experiencing domestic violence, and you go to Centrelink to apply for a crisis payment, you have to or the violent partner has to leave home permanently. So we've had a case recently where the victim survivor was very hopeful that one day she'd be able to go back home, no crisis payment. We've had another case is a bit further back, where the perpetrator actually got sent to jail because of the violence. And because he'd be paroled in 15 months, she couldn't get a crisis payment, because she was he was going to come back home. Now home is defined as a fixed residence. So if you're in temporary accommodation in a Women's Refuge, you can apply for crisis payment. And finally, and this isn't the only problem was crisis payment, but you have to apply for it within seven days. Now, my husband is in the audience, and he can't get his stuff together for a tax return within seven days. How do we how do we expect someone leaving a chaotic, violent situation to get everything they need together to apply for crisis payment within seven days?

44:43

These are the kinds of rules that don't make sense. That re traumatize victims survivors and economic justice Australia. We're pushing to change

Professor Carl Rhodes  44:58

that thanks so much. have flatly and really terrible, terrible stories. And Anne just turn it turning to you now in your report, you make six recommendations, five of those relate to suggested actions that need to be taken by the Australian Government. I mean, your reports been out for some weeks now. What's the reaction been? And How hopeful are you that your recommendations will be adopted? Three weeks today?

45:27

I have this is working. I have to say. How’s that? I have to say I've been very, very kind of gratified and very pleased, obviously, that the report has been

45:53

as widely received. I mean, it's had fantastic publicity. Most of it positive, had a bit of bit of stick from a few people, but mostly positive, mostly people are kind of reeling in shock. As as I certainly was the first time. I've been living with these figures now for 18 months. And so I'm not as shocked as I first was when I first saw them, and just literally didn't believe them. So but I'm, I'm really pleased that the, the report has been given the distribution, the media reach and everything, the numbers are just absolutely phenomenal. And people are even downloading the stats, which is crazy. Hundreds and hundreds of people are downloading the stats and looking at them, which I think is very important. And, I mean, what's been very interesting is we hold a fact sponsored by UTS. And by Verity’s Center, a Chatham House rules, private briefing two days before the release of the report for some sets, senior bureaucrats, Minister offices and other relevant people in Canberra. And we were delighted at the turnout, we had people from Treasury, and finance from Prime Minister and Cabinet from the PMO itself. From social services, the evil people in all of this, the woman who is in charge of it all turned up, up to criticism. And it was really remarkable people were calling us the night before begging to be allowed to come. So I do sense and because the comments were all Chatham House Rules off the record, I think, you know, there are a lot more frank than you'd normally get from conversations with bureaucrats. And the the willingness with which the some of these, these advisors were to take what we're saying, to give us advice on how best to try and get change. It did give me a sense that perhaps the change of government has changed a few things. And we certainly hope so. I mean, bearing in mind that some of the worst things happened with the last Labour government, like I get to be starry eyed about this. But I do think there's also quite a degree of guilt amongst a lot of sitting Labour members about what happened. And I do hope that there's an appetite to reverse the at least the worst of them, and that is certainly support the women with kids over eight, back onto the parenting payment, and it wouldn't be much better at least to be an extra couple of $100. a fortnight, which is better than nothing. But that's to me is the minimal change. I mean, gotta go a lot more than that. I mean, what we're recommending is that the, the women's stay on the parenting payment, the parenting payment be raised to the level of the single age pension, which would give it another few $100 a week. And more importantly, the indexing would change. So they wouldn't be getting worse off every six months. So that's what we are advocating. I was very pleased to be called by the Minister for Finance and Minister for Women, Katie Gallagher. And I met with her last Monday and, and put the case for these changes. I don't know whether it's possible to get any change in the October budget. But certainly, we're trying very hard to get at least that minimal change in the October budget. I think there's a degree of of willingness. There's a you know, tough budget situation, of course, but you know that the government says they haven't got the money. Well, they don't want the money. What about these probability women and their kids? They have certainly haven't gotten any money. So I can't say what's going to happen. And I wouldn't want to make any rash predictions, but I'm just a little bit hopeful.

50:09

If we don't get an get an in October, there will be all out campaign for me. And, you know, we have time to really, really rally the troops. And the fact that so many people are responding to the report suggest to me that we could mobilize a very, very effective campaign, that the government would find it very, very difficult to ignore, because I mean, the levels of cruelty involved in this. I mean, you're talking about parents next and when we parents next just has to go with there's absolutely no question has to go one of the stories that you're telling some terrible stories, the and the one of the stories that's in my report that I you know, really stuck with me is that, and again, it goes back to the thing about having a car, you don't have a car, and there's this woman, she's on parents next. And she didn't have any car registrations has she? And they said to her, Well, you you register it, and we'll reimburse you, but she didn't have the money to to pay the money to get reimbursed. Kid was sick. She had to take him to hospital in the pram at night, along the side of the highway to get to the hospital. I mean, that's that sort of thing is just, I mean, what, who allows that in a rich country like Australia to treat women and kids who are industrious to treat them so abominably. So, you know, I think we will try arrays. And if that doesn't work, we'll try. Shame. If that doesn't work. It'll get really ugly, I can tell you.

Professor Carl Rhodes  51:39

Thanks. We might take this opportunity now to take some questions from the audience. We've got a hand here first, then here.

52:02

Thanks. Hi, I'm Tony Wren from anti poverty week. Thanks so much. And for the report. Many of us have actually been working on this for many years. And I really want to acknowledge Therese Edwards, from the National Council for single mothers and their children. She actually took this issue to the United Nations in 2018, and took a single parent who was subjected to this with her. There's been a lot of advocacy, as fantastic. Your report has ramped that up, because we've been talking about it to deaf ears for years, literally years. And obviously, the issue that really concerns my organization is the impact on children. We know that children who grow up in poverty have three times the chance of living in poverty as an adult, they also it really affects their life, right them in terms of education, health, everything. So the fact that we have about 600,000 children with a single parent mother on these low payments, that's a large proportion of all the women, all the children living in poverty in Australia. And we really need to take action because we are one of the world's wealthiest countries in the world. And it's just not right. And we can do better. I'm glad you're hopeful. I'm glad you've had those meetings. We've been very disappointed in the last few years because the labour opposition hasn't been prepared to commit to any changes, to increase job seeker to change the age, the myriad of other things that you've recommended that we've all recommended. So we really hope there will be a change now they're in in government, because it really, absolutely has to. So thanks very much, and thanks to their panelist.

Professor Carl Rhodes  53:49

Thank you very much. It will take that more as a comment than a question but well said we'll go here.

53:57

Right. Thank you. Thanks so much, and for your important research and the panel. Hi, Leanne. My name is Jane Hazara. I'm a sociologist, and I'm a passionate advocate for preventing domestic violence. I'm also an ambassador for safe haven for safe haven, which provides emergency accommodation for women fleeing domestic violence and the children. You were saying in that campaign, if it's not released to enough money at the Blake's budget in October, we should start the campaign now, because quite frankly, they should all be in shape, what's been happening, the lack of the lack of money that's been given to women and their children living in poverty, and they're having to have that horrendous choice between the two. So there was a meeting last week between Amanda Rishworth, Federal Minister for Social Services and the Attorney General's was there a discussion about we need to do something this is an emergency and we need to treat it urgently. Do you know were you there at that at that meeting, and I think And I'm speaking to Leanne about it. Do you know what happened there? I mean, it's so obvious that we need to have the economic focus there to lift it. They're living below the poverty line. And I believe personally, as an advocate, we need to be jumping up and down right now for the campaign to increase it by does anybody else feel that? Yeah, definitely. By October, we don't wait to see if they put it in the budget. We do it now. Yeah. And what can I do to comment about that?

55:33

Can I take this opportunity to say that we need to get this issue into the national plan? Or have another 10 years of not addressing it? So? Yeah, exactly. And there was a tiny, tiny mention of Social Security in relation to migrant women. And that was out one little to keep banging on about this to government. And there was no consequence to not even addressing that issue.

56:06

I mentioned of single mothers and then draft were not even mentioned. No, so all I know, I'm and I haven't, we didn't know anything about what happened to that meeting on Friday

56:17

night, I've only seen the press releases, which were largely about a good atmosphere of cooperation on the states.

56:29

I mean, I that was a meeting about the national plan. The two of you. And, you know, I I have said, you know, that I think that the kind of data that I've collected and others have been collecting for years, that kind of data should inform the national plan. And the fact that it hasn't in the past is just absurd. It's just absurd. I mean, so, you know, and we all know, it's got to have targets, realistic targets, and it's got them they've got to be met, there's gonna be penalties. We're not meeting, it's got to be a proper plan. I'm heartened by the fact that Amanda Rishworth is holding the plan back, and he's not going to release it for some months. I don't I haven't met with her yet. I'm hoping I might be able to. But from what I've heard, is she, the new plan was supposed to start on the first of July. And and she took the view that it's better to be late and and try and get it a bit better get it? Right. Well, right would be great. So I don't really know what's going on there. But we certainly I think needs are making a lot of noise about that as well, because it's stupid to have a plan that doesn't address these issues.

57:38

Yeah. And I just wanted to mention Jesse Hills books, which made me do that explains a lot about the the inadequacies of that 12 year plan. If you haven't read it, please read it, read it. And there are a lot of holes there. And as you said, No ta you know, lack of targets, lack of strategies. And we need to really do something about that, why starting another 10 year plan when the jury's back on what we have to do. And that just makes me furious.

58:05

Can I also say about the national plan that a lot of it seems to be about putting responsibility back onto the states and territories. And that something that we can all advocate about is that the Commonwealth through the Social Security system should be taking some of that responsibility as well. And that's something that State Women's Safety ministers would want to hear.

Professor Carl Rhodes  58:37

I think we had a question up here as well. Sorry, we're making you do the full exercise here.

58:49

Hi, I only just heard about this a couple of days ago. I'm a social worker. And I'm in a unique position where I actually work in a childcare center. So it's not very common to have that happen. So I'm quite curious to know your thoughts around childcare, we have childcare costs that are probably most expensive, like one of the most expensive in the world. I work with a lot of families where they access additional childcare subsidy. So it's free childcare for a certain amount of time, and then it drops back down. And just to give you a figure, it's 140 a day at least, and we're a long day care provider. So I'm wondering, with the report, I haven't been able to read it but I was just wondering the panel's thoughts around how our childcare subsidy works in Australia. Yes, we have some things in place, but financial hardship only goes for 13 weeks. So you can upskill a mother for maybe 13 weeks if she has the capacity to get in to see a counselor to see her GP. I think it's just quite difficult for these families when I speak to them. The other question I had as well is around the data. I'm quite curious to know, once children are in school, does that change the data at all. So once that the age of five, I'm just wondering how that changes for families as well, because with families like women leaving or being not leaving, being able to escape the violence, does that change at all when the children are older, whereas when they're younger, a lot of families can't access childcare. So they don't actually have any spot to get their stuff together. To be able to make a plan, it's much more difficult when you have your children with you 24/7 rather, if they're at school, at least, there's some time to be able to collect your thoughts, or I'll make a plan or make appointments or attend them.

1:00:55

I don't really deal with childcare in the report. And there's not a lot I can say. I've been out of country in the last five years, I did most of this work in New York. In fact, one of the beauties of just working with data is you just need a computer. And childcare policy is something that I used to be very involved with when I worked for the Keating government. In fact, I was involved in the design of the childcare rebate, which I still think was the best policy. And when the fairest, I honestly cannot tell you about the current childcare policy, I don't understand. I haven't yet educated myself about it as I know, I need to but I've been concentrating on this. I mean, all I can say is in the context of women escaping violence is that the cost of childcare is usually another factor in keeping him in poverty, because it's unaffordable. And also the whole issue about if you don't have a car, you can't get there. So, you know, I realized it's a huge problem. And I'm sorry, I can't be more specific about it. And as we think about children under five, I'd, you know, I take your point that if you've got little kids to mind, it's much harder to get out there and do what needs to be done. I mean, this is where the services offered by shelters can be very important because shelter will offer care. While you do those things. If you get a caseworker, he'll say, okay, you can leave the kids with us for the next five hours while you go and do what you have to do. But of course, there aren't enough shoulders and those that are severely over overstressed.

1:02:48

Like Anne it's a while since it's a long time since my children were in childcare. And it's hard. It's actually what I what I do think has happened, is it it's much more complicated. And that doesn't help. And I think that I know, the current government has, you know, one of their election commitments is in relation to improving childcare, proving the funding of it. And I hope that starts to make a difference. But I think what I wanted to say in relation to that, to your question was just, and that goes to the national plan, one of the opportunities that the national plan should do or should have is to really think holistically about the kind of safety net that someone needs when they walk out that door. And it should be, you know, how does it intersect with state government agencies, federal government agencies, Social Security Systems, the childcare system, but also the private sector, you know, people are going, it doesn't really matter if you're a mum with, you know, in a violent relationship with children who are dependent on you, whether you will have to go and deal with the bank, or the Department of Social Security, or you know, somebody else, it's all just difficult. And every single part of every single experience is a barrier, that you have to jump over. And if the national plan could think about it, or much more holistically, so that, you know, the childcare system linked up better with the Social Security system, and, you know, worked through where is there a role? You know, again, banks are a good example, but so is Woolworths. These are very big corporations. And that means they are very big employers. And that means statistically, they have a large number of employees, employees whose lives are affected by this. They probably have a large number of employees who are perpetrators as well. And you know, that for many women, their workplace is the only place they're allowed to be other than their home, which is an unsafe place. So, you know, there's a lot that could be done by joining those up a bit more. And I when I look at the national plan, it's all very siloed and actually, that's not how women's lives or parents lives, you know, it's like one continuum from you know, the minute they wake up, and how do we make that an easier experience?

Professor Carl Rhodes  1:04:59

You know, They say that the moral test of a nation is how well it treats its citizens who are in need. And I think if you read Anne's report and listen to what we've heard today, I think it's fair to say that Australia has failed that test. And there is a lot of work to do. We've run out of time for discussion today. So I see some hands raised, I'm sorry, we, we will be able to continue this discussion upstairs on level three, where we'll have a small reception and I welcome you to join us there. And also to assure you that this event is not just a one off thing you know, here at UTS and UTS Business School, this is something we work with and we will be continuing to work on continuing to seek progress and continuing to get to a position where Australia passes the moral test that I just mentioned. So really, thank you very much to the panelists today Anne, Anna, and Leanne, you'll have very similar names but thank you very much for for joining us today. I think we could have any more hours but again, let's continue that conversation more informally. On level three that's one level up from here and thank you all to for for coming here those of you here in person as well as those who are joining through the live stream Thank you.