Australia: PM "told to quit as minister for women if gender reporting rules eased"

Submitted by Minuteman on Thu, 2015-01-15 01:57

Link here. (All hyperlinks below have been added. - Ed.) Excerpt:

'Tony Abbott is facing calls to resign as the minister for women if he does not commit to mandatory gender reporting requirements for big business.

The government recently released the summary of a nine-month-long consultation process with business on gender reporting.

At present, employers with more than 100 staff must report annually on the gender breakdown of employees.

Additional reporting measures, including data on new hires and promotions for women and statistics on parental leave, were due to come in on 1 April but were deferred while the government considered the findings of the consultations.
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Senator Larissa Waters said:...“If the workplace gender reporting requirements are weakened on Tony Abbott’s watch he should step down as the minister for women.”
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The Diversity Council warned that turning back gains on gender reporting would be “archaic” and “unbelievably dangerous”.
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Many employers complained about the red tape involved. Kate Carnell from the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry said: “The current requirement for remuneration reporting across an entire workforce already creates a significant compliance burden.”
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“The reporting would encourage employers to ask for applicants to specify their gender on application forms and résumés which could be potentially viewed as leading to discriminatory behaviour.”'

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Comments

Can't say I'm glad she's the Mistress of Sexism (i.e., sexism vs. males). But I like her take on protecting The Land Down Under's natural resources, flora, fauna, etc., e.g.: http://larissa-waters.greensmps.org.au/save-the-reef

I plead ignorance on Australian politics, so I can't say whether she really is sincere in her environmental beliefs, whether she's done better than others may have for it, or whether her criticism of Tony Abbott's record on conservation of Australia's patrimony is either warranted, motivated merely by politics, or some combo thereof. (Minuteman, GaryB, or any number of other MANN readers from Australia could definitely comment better than myself on such topics.)

Know how Congressional committees can write in/out paragraphs or sentences here and there of originally-submitted laws, sort of pick-and-choose, so the final bill often looks nothing like the one that was first submitted to committee? Know how various POTUSs have said they wanted a "line item veto" wherein they can cross out this or that line from a passed bill, vetoing some parts of it but not others?

Wish "We The Sheeple" could do that with elected reps. I mean, when you go to vote, wouldn't it be great if you could vote for just some part of a rep, only the parts of them that will support what you want them to and not others? If Ms. Waters were for example a candidate from my district, I could line-item vote for her like this: OK on the preserve-national-patrimony stuff, but nix on the blathering feminist foolishness stuff, etc.

Now that'd be TRUE representative democracy for ya.

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Submitted by Matt on Fri, 2015-01-16 04:58