Susan Ryan (Dec'd)

Recent articles by Susan Ryan (Dec'd)

Monthly digest on housing affordability and homelessness July/Aug 2020

The following is the latest instalment of a monthly digest of interesting articles, research reports, policy announcements and other material relevant to housing stress/affordability and homelessness with hypertext links to the relevant source.

Are the 'big four' accounting firms above the law?

In 2004, the federal parliament passed the Age Discrimination Act, making age discrimination in employment, education and the provision of goods and services unlawful. But the major accounting firms seem to think it doesn't apply to them.

Monthly digest on housing affordability and homelessness June/July 2020

The following is the latest instalment of a monthly digest of interesting articles, research reports, policy announcements and other material relevant to housing stress/affordability and homelessness with hypertext links to the relevant source.

SUSAN RYAN supports Pearls and Irritations.

Anyone who wants to keep up with policy developments, both failures and successes, cannot rely on mainstream media.

SUSAN RYAN. Vale Graham Freudenberg.

Anyone who has heard of Graham Freudenberg, and most aware Australians have, think of him not so much as an individual , but in association with the great men, the massive political personalities whom he served.

SUSAN RYAN. Older Australians, winners or losers?

In this election , there was an extra 300,000 voters aged over 65 compared with the 2016 election. The parallel increase for young voters was 135,000 , less than half the older voter increase. Did older voters exercise this voting strength in the interest of their age cohort? It seems not. I see more losers than winners among older Australians.

SUSAN RYAN. Older women are budget losers.

The 2019 budget contains little to improve the circumstances of the poorest older women. Increases of 10,000 previously announced home care places are provided for. An extra 13,500 residential places were provided. A new $8.4 million is allocated to mandatory reporting against quality indicators in residential aged care. Tax changes are of little use to older women living on pensions. One-off energy payments of $75 for an individual or $125 for a couple will reach pensioners and carers. An elder abuse hotline allocation of $18m is re announced. Over ten years $185m will be allocated to establish a dementia, ageing...

SUSAN RYAN. Ladies in Red.

In the late 1970s, federal Labor, still in opposition after Whitlam, was struggling. New polling research enabled me to advise national conference that Labor would not regain office unless it increased its support among women voters. If women had voted Labor in the same proportion as men had, Labor would have won every election since World War 2 , with the possible exception of the Chifley loss in 1949.With these findings, measuring the gender gap in polling analysis was introduced, and has remained there ever since.

SUSAN RYAN .When it comes to women, all Liberals are conservatives.

It was with a sense of irony that on Saturday August 25th, a few hours after the parliamentary Liberal party concluded days of ugly self-mutilation by electing Scott Morrison as Prime Minister and Josh Frydenberg as deputy liberal leader, I attended at Old Parliament House Canberra a government sponsored launch of an exhibition to honour 75 years of women in the federal parliament. In 1943 Enid Lyons, Liberal, was elected to the House of Representatives and Dorothy Tangney, Labor, from Western Australia became the first woman senator. Despite Lyons earlier history as a Labor party member, and her marriage to...

SUSAN RYAN. The Irish teaching orders in Australia.

For over a century many children, particularly from poorer families, in cities and country areas, and indeed a good number of indigenous children, got a sound basic education in schools established throughout Australia by the Irish orders. As well, students in these schools were exposed to the principles and practice of social justice, typically through an Irish lens. I believe this inculcation of social justice values may not otherwise have happened for those students.

SUSAN RYAN. Class warfare or fighting for fairness

Every time Labor in Opposition proposes to remove or reduce a publicly funded benefit from a high earning individual, or a medium to large company, anguished cries of class war ring out Is it class warfare to reduce investor tax concessions at a time when in NSW alone over five years homelessness has increased by 48%?

Update to May 2017 Making Housing Affordable series

Pearls and Irritations continues to publish various blogs on housing affordability, recognising that the cost of and accessibility to appropriate housing remains out of reach for a significant part of the Australian population.

SUSAN RYAN. The impact of the 2018 Budget on women. It is most notable for its omissions.

The National Foundation for Australian Women (NFAW) each year prepares an analysis of the impacts of the federal budget on women. Since the Coalition government abandoned the practice of including a Womens Budget Statement in the official Budget documents, a policy-oriented womens NGO, the NFAW, has prepared this work.This extract gives an overview of the impacts of the budget on older women. The clearest impact of this budget in relation to older women is this: for women home owners, there are potential benefits. For women who dont own their home, there are few if any measures of potential assistance.

SUSAN RYAN. Book launch. 'Jesus the forgotten feminist' by Chris Geraghty.

The Catholic Church here and globally faces a crisis of loss of support arising especially from its deeds and omissions in relation to appalling sexual abuse of children. Our secular societies are experiencing a massive epidemic of allegations and charges of sexual harassment and violation of women in their workplaces, be they on film and television sets, in the training of medical specialists, on university campuses, in major corporations, within churches, just about anywhere where men dominate womens employment prospects. The Catholic Churchs failure to protect children, and our first world societies failure to protect women, are connected...

SUSAN RYAN. Cricket cheats and Australian culture.

The big question for Australian culture is not which of the three cheats is most remorseful, but why this bad behaviour by cricket heroes, once exposed, has apparently caused greater distress to Australians than any other cheating currently in the public domain. Banks cheating their customers is the subject of a current Royal Commission. The Australian Tax Office publicly warns against claiming unjustified concessions for holiday houses. Everyone is aware of cheating by insurance companies who try to refuse valid sickness and disability claims by policyholders.

SUSAN RYAN. Homelessness, Australias disgrace ignored.

The last few days have seen a media preoccupation with relentless attacks on a new federal Labor proposal to eliminate the payment of cash cheques to those who dont need their dividend imputation credits because they pay no tax. The media has channelled expressions of shock and rage, and accusations of robbery, from Coalition politicians and bodies who represent well-off retirees.

SUSAN RYAN. Ruddock and the religious freedom review.

In commercial matters religious freedom needs no further protection. There is no case for extending exemptions from existing anti-discrimination measures to the commercial provision of facilities, catering, furniture or entertainment that may play a part in hospitality following a marriage.Such goods and services are not a legal part of the civil marriage contract and should not attract the religious freedom protections that apply to the conduct of the marriage ceremony. The commercial provision of services is legally separate from the Marriage Act and is covered by the 2013 amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act. We need a Human...

SUSAN RYAN. A roof over their heads.

The Annual Report for 2016 of the Womens Housing Company demonstrates solutions to the terrible and growing situation of older women facing homelessness. These solutions however continue to elude policy makers, the media and business, whose failures to recognise the size of the problem and its costs to the public purse inflict great damage on the human rights of poorer older women.

SUSAN RYAN. Skills retraining still more miss than hit.

Like car manufacturers who, despite decades of notice, still left many workers stranded, NABs more sudden announcement underlines the fact that massive redundancies are not only a feature of old industries.

SUSAN RYAN. Postcard from Ireland, a resilient democracy

It is heartening to see Ireland, so recently condemned as an economic basket case with social attitudes belonging in the middle ages effectively renew and redirect its democracy

SUSAN RYAN. Tent City, Martin Place.

The Berejiklian government in NSW showed this last week that it could act fast. To deal with the reported discomfort of the Premier, caused for months by a tent city of the homeless situated in Martin Place just opposite the Parliament, a new law was passed, peremptorily. The Sydney Public Reserves (Public Safety) Act empowers NSW police to order people out of Martin Place. There was no dallying. Within a couple of days of this enactment, the embarrassing tent city was dismantled and its occupants cleared away. Is the Premier now free of discomfort?

Older women need housing too

In the growing discourse around affordable housing, the federal and some state governments are edging forwards. Recently proposed changes have merit, but they may exclude poorer older women in need of housing.

SUSAN RYAN, OLIVER FRANKEL, JOHN MENADUE. Upcoming series on Making Housing Affordable.

After Easter, Pearls and Irritations plans to publish a series 'Making Housing Affordable' addressing key aspects of the housing crisis and recommending solutions, with contributions from a range of experts and other key stakeholders, including economists, planners, demographers, housing providers and policy makers.

SUSAN RYAN. Housing affordability requires immediate government action

The 2016 Intergenerational Report from Treasury predicted that by 2050 the numbers of people in Australia over 65, currently nearly a quarter of the population, will have doubled. Average age expectancy will be over 95 for women and men. Where will those people be living?

SUSAN RYAN. Book review. The Dark Flood Rises: Margaret Drabble.

As our sort of societies experience the demographic revolution, most of us are living much longer than ever before, in cultures that have not responded well to this increased longevity. We also find ourselves living in cultures that so far have failed to develop dignified and helpful practices and values for dealing with the inevitable.

SUSAN RYAN. Affordable housing and inclusionary zoning.

There are recent signs that governments are belatedly starting to move on the urgent problems created by the lack of affordable housing. A variety of data sources shows that increasing numbers of people, especially older women, face homelessness. Based on 2011 census figures, among poorer single older women alone, we are looking at something like half a million who do not own a home and once they have left the workforce cannot afford private rentals. This problem does not only affect poor older Australians who have ended their working lives. Younger people, especially in our cities are locked out...

SUSAN RYAN. Older women - the new homeless.

It is more than timely that focus on increasing inequality in Australia include recognition of a massive contributing factor: the lack of affordable housing, especially for older women. Several groups have been identified as severely disadvantaged by the lack of affordable housing: unemployed young people, single parent families, and low paid workers who need to live near their place of work. Older women, especially single older women need to be recognised as facing an increased risk of homelessness. How has this come about?

<