NSW Premier Chris Minns is marking International Women’s Day with a trip to the microwave oven — to reheat a tasty little treat for Nine Entertainment.
On IWD 2023, Minns — then in the middle of what would be a successful election campaign — announced Labor would be providing $5.8 million to the Future Women Jobs Academy, a training outfit co-owned by Nine Entertainment and publishing veteran Helen McCabe. Nine, of course, happily carried the announcement.
Scroll forward a year and how does Minns mark IWD 2024? By, erm, reannouncing the $5.8 million handout. Lest people notice the cut-and-paste, Minns and NSW Women’s Minister Jodie Harrison carefully noted, “This commitment was initially made prior to the election, one year ago today on International Women’s Day 2023.”
Reannouncements of handouts are a staple of all governments, though when NSW Labor was last in power, the microwave ovens buzzed long into the night in a government where programs would often be announced multiple times. But usually it’s a second- or third-term phenomenon — it seems rather early for the Minns government to be heating up old announcements. Perhaps it senses it may only be a one-term outfit.
Tarla Lambert, editor-in-chief of Women’s Agenda, told Crikey that the press release “is a pretty embarrassing and feeble attempt to save some IWD face. When other governments this week have showed up with strong reforms — including the Queensland government’s significant investment into women’s health and the federal government’s announcement of superannuation being paid on top of paid parental leave — it’s frustrating to see the NSW government floundering in what they bring to the table for NSW women.”
The $5.8 million is intended to “support 1,000 women to access the free, virtual service, delivering one to two hours of activities per week to members to build their confidence, capabilities and connections needed to commence their job search, secure employment pathways and thrive at work”.
Future Women’s jobs program has received plenty of taxpayer largesse. In 2022 Crikey reported it had received nearly $9 million from the federal government. By last year, the handouts had reached $17 million despite the lack of any independent assessment of the effectiveness of its programs. Future Women eventually appointed an independent auditor to vet its programs, though the results of the audit are not clearly available on its website.
Curiously, it’s the Coalition, not Labor, that has the bragging rights when it comes to female employment: while in power federally (during all of which, the Coalition was also in power in NSW), female unemployment fell nationally from 5.7% in 2013 to 3.7% in 2022, and female participation rose 3.5 percentage points. Under the NSW Coalition things were better still — female unemployment fell from 5.8% in 2011 to 3.4% last year and participation rose more than five percentage points.
Since Minns was elected, female unemployment has risen above 4% and participation has fallen in NSW, though we can put that down to the Reserve Bank’s interest rate hikes. But maybe reheating old announcements about virtual job services isn’t quite enough?