A key WEL role is to lobby Federal and State Governments to adopt policies and programs that improve the position of women and remove discriminatory attitudes and practices.

Our Federal system of government makes this lobbying task very complex. Generally, there is a mixture of both Federal and State involvement in most policy areas, with funding primarily provided by the Federal Government and State Governments mostly responsible for service delivery.

WEL is structured to mirror this political set up. At the national level, WEL Australia draws on experienced WEL membership throughout Australia to comment on Federal legislation and activities, while the State WELs focus on their respective State’s legislation and programs.

Most recently, WEL Australia’s efforts have been directed at developing a set of pre Federal Election policy papers, The Issues at Stake, focusing on broader policy and funding issues that can only be addressed at the federal level. These and other WEL Australia policies can be found on the WEL Australia website at www.wel.org.au .  

The Issues at Stake don’t aim to be comprehensive but to hit on some key issues all major parties should address as a priority. This includes a demand for universal paid maternity leave and the winding back of destructive IR and welfare initiatives, namely WorkChoices and Welfare to Work. Using these papers as a springboard, WEL Australia is set to launch a pre election lobbying campaign aimed at influencing the major parties contesting the coming elections.

At the NSW level, WEL NSW developed a set of Policy Proposals for NSW in September 2006 in preparation for the NSW State Elections. As with the current federal level policies, our aim was not to put forward a comprehensive program of reform but rather to focus on a more limited set of specific measures aimed at redressing existing inequities experienced by women and girls. Priority areas were identified by WEL members in discussion with other women’s groups. 

Following an extensive mail out and lobbying effort, our Policy Proposals attracted quite a positive response from the State Government. Both before and after its re-election, we have been able to enter into an ongoing dialogue with the Premier’s staff, the Office for Women and a number of key Ministers. We would like to think that the move of the Office for Women to the Premier’s Department has in part been influenced by our lobbying. These policies also became the basis of our input to Premier Iemma’s NSW State Plan.

Policy Proposals for NSW can be found on this Website.