'Pro-women policies the issue'
By Bill Mason
BRISBANE — "The main issue in the current debate in the ALP about more women MPs is not just how to get more women into parliament, but how to promote more pro-women policies", Democratic Socialist candidates Susan Price and Ana Kailis said here on April 30.
"It is important to increase women's representation at all levels of decision-making, since women have been scandalously excluded from parliament and every other position of power in society in the past. But the Labor Party — including Labor women MPs — should look at the party's poor record in government on supporting women's interests", Price and Kailis said in a joint statement.
"Let's make sure all ALP candidates, men or women, are committed to voting for repeal of all anti-abortion laws, and that the party will carry out its policy without any so-called 'conscience vote', for a start", they added.
They were commenting on the public row between prominent ALP women and right-wing Labor figures such as Queensland state secretary Mike Kaiser and MP Wayne Swan over the National Labor Women's Conference call for 40% quotas for women candidates for state and federal parliaments by the year 2000.
Price and Kailis were Democratic Socialist candidates in the March 26 Brisbane City Council elections.