Our guest speaker was the excellent Marie Coleman, speaking on the “Gender Lens on the Budget“, an annual review conducted by the National Foundation of Australian Women, of which Marie was a foundation member. Among her long, long list of work done and positions held, Marie was:

… the first woman in Australia to head a statutory authority when she chaired the Whitlam Government’s Social Welfare Commission in 1973.

(text and photo from NFAW website)

The NFAW’s Gender Lens documents pick apart the federal government’s 2020 Budget, revealing how different groups in the community have been affected. Older women, for example:

Overall, …the 2020 Budget is a missed opportunity to improve the lives of older women who face the greatest difficulties: single, older renters totally reliant on JobSeeker or pension payments; those who are homeless; a significant proportion of those on the long waiting list for home care packages; and those locked out of employment.

It is also another missed opportunity to begin resetting policy to disrupt the structural accumulation of poverty across the life course that reaches its peak with disastrous consequences for so many women in later life.

[www.ag.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-03/National-plan-to-respond-to-the-abuse-of-older-australians-elder.pdf]