NFAW welcomes the opportunity to respond to this inquiry into the way the Victorian state government budget addresses gender equity. We view the inquiry as particularly timely in the light of its intersection with the government’s Gender Equality Bill. Indeed, our recommendations and discussion largely address the intersection of an annual Women’s Budget Statement (WBS) with the operational arrangements proposed in the Bill.
Gender-based analysis defines the ways in which public policies affect women and men differently. It does so through the systematic use of data to better tailor the development of government programs. The Commonwealth government stopped production of its Women’s Budget Statement, part of the official Budget papers in 2014, after 40 years of production.
Most of the provisions included in the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023 (the Bill) were recommended in the submissions made by NFAW and other women’s organisations to the 2021 Review of the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 (the Review).
mproving decision-making around future pandemics requires an understanding of the decision-making that underpinned Australia’s COVID-19 response – not only how decisions were made, but also by whom and on what basis.