INTRODUCTION

The National Foundation for Australian Women (NFAW) is a non-politically aligned feminist organisation committed to analysing the potentially differential impacts of policies and their outcomes on men and women and whether the consequences of policies, intended or unintended, adversely affect women.

We welcome the opportunity to respond to the Labor Better Budgeting discussion paper.

For the past three years NFAW, in conjunction with experts from a range of organisations, has undertaken an analysis of the implications of the Commonwealth Budget through a gender lens. It has undertaken this analysis because successive Commonwealth Governments have progressively watered down, whitewashed and finally abandoned the women’s budget process put in place by the Hawke government in the mid-1980s.

The loss of the women’s budget process has meant that the Australian government no longer has a systematic way of analysing the impact on women of its policies or measure progress in achieving gender equality. NFAW believes that this national conversation offers a critical opportunity to address this gap in Australia’s budget preparation and analysis. Our responses to the questions posed in the discussion paper are set out in detail below.

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