Take solace: It could be worse!

WHAT WOMEN WANT (AUSTRALIA)

What Women Want (Australia) is the only political party dedicated to advancing issues affecting Australian women. We want our parliaments to be more representative. We believe that the male domination of politics limits and negatively impacts on decisions and policies. What Women Want (Australia) will dedicate its work to giving women more of a say in the direction of our country and the important policies that shape it. The work of What Women Want (Australia) will not exclude men, as we know that they play an important role in many women’s lives.

What Women Want (Australia) simply wants to promote greater participation from women of all ages. We believe that everyone in our society will benefit from that.

Decisions and policies made by government affect women’s health and well-being. They also affect the lives of others, particularly that of their partners and children. We believe that with more women in Parliament these decisions would be more ‘woman and family friendly’. Policies would have the ‘stamp of practicality’ from women who are ‘walking the talk’. Women who understood how hard it is to juggle work and family and how good it is when as a woman you are supported.

And that's just the blurb on the front of their web page! That picture is there too.

It's called: "Three women jumping at the dawn and holding their arms in the air".

No, really, I haven't made any of this up. I vaguely heard about these clowns before the election and sure enough when I saw them on the ballot paper I put their candidates 64th and 65th out of 65. This was just after the socialists who came in around the 63rd position. There may have been some other party that was intent on replacing the national anthem with an Elvis song and declaring war on fear that I put higher than those two parties. Not surprisingly, the Australian people did not give the kooks too much support either. Even though (apparently) it's "what women want", according to their website.

How serious a problem does your persecution complex have to be to seriously believe that government should do MORE for women. They are correct, no other party dedicates themselves to advancing issues affecting Australian women. There's a good reason for that, well two if you want to be facetious.

1. The government of Australia governs for all Australians, therefore any issue affecting Australia that the government deals with are issues affecting Australian women.

2. The only issues that are ALLOWED to be advanced are those specifically dealing with the advancement of women!!!

I mean, for god's sake there's an Office for the Status of Women in Australia! While I could write a few pages on how stupid, sexist, callous and supremicist just the introduction to these witches' website is, my intention is to have a look at the lighter side. With that in mind, let's have a look at their policies.

What Women Want(Australia) supports Medicare. We will push for a further opening of Medicare services including:
Dental services
Midwifery
Physiotheraphy
Complementary and natural therapies

Increasing and Diversifying the Health Workforce

There is an impending crisis in the health workforce. The average age of nurses is 49 years and there are workforce shortages in all of the health professions. We cannot continue to import our medical and allied health workforce.
What Women Want will increase the number of university places for medical, nursing, dental and allied health students, further...

Health Funding

What Women Want will abolish the private health insurance subsidy, which has not worked, and spend this $3 billion per annum on increasing the health workforce and the extension of medicare into the primary health areas mentioned above.

The primary health care program which provides for GP referral psychological counselling sessions will be expanded to include social workers as eligible practitioners.

So far, the health plan is redeem three billion dollars, previously used to help people buy private health insurance (meaning how many extra poeple will end up on the already-strained public system?) and spend it on an ever-widening array of health practitioners. Including SOCIAL WORKERS. Phew! Good plan so far, moving on...

A Woman’s Right to Choose

What Women Want will ensure that all women have access to legal, free, and safe pregnancy termination services which includes unbiased pre and post termination counselling.

Of course. Well there's another expense we would need to fund somehow. This is pretty much more of the same as current policy though, the only change is that it's completely free. I wonder if I'll find a "men's right to choose" section...

Position Statement

Women must have the right to choose whether to continue with an unwanted pregnancy.

Many abortions could be prevented with stronger social policy initiatives. It is easy to demonise women for choosing abortion. It is far more difficult to take steps to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. The reasons women terminate pregnancies are often social. Women simply feel unable to care for a child when they are alone or in a relationship with real challenges, be they financial or social, such as substance abuse or domestic violence.

Interesting. Apart from the reasons listed for having an abortion being somewhere between misleading and a flight of fantasy, what I find interesting here is that while abortions should be freely available...we should try to avoid them. Accordingly we need strong social policies to turn unwanted pregnancies into "wanted pregnancies":

We challenge governments to prevent pregnancies from becoming unwanted with strong social policy programs and social welfare that enables women, if necessary, to support a child alone.

Wouldn't the logical social policy objective be to avoid unwanted pregnancies in the first place, thus reducing the need for abortions?

That is, IF we want to reduce the number of abortions. Because they're bad. I think. But irresponsible women (and their arguably equally irresponsible partners) should have as many free abortions as they like, paid for by all taxpayers. Should women have free breast implants too? They're good for your psychological health, after all...

But remember: giving a subsidy to help people afford private health care is wrong.

Well there's a cohesive plan for healthcare....

Oh. my. god.

I had a look at the section on violence against women. It's outrageous, which is to say, exactly what previous governments have been going on about. It's meticulously footnoted with statistics from the OFFICE OF THE STATUS OF WOMEN (nothing like impartiality there. No really, there's nothing like impartiality there!) and, in typical feminist fashion calls for more and more funding (more jobs for the girls!) and "improvements" to the criminal justice system (more men in jail!).

That's not going to do anything positive for my blood pressure, so I'm just going to move on!

Position Statement

We support the development of innovative, consumer-driven programs to complement traditional mental health services. People with a mental illness are entitled to be able to access support and treatment services. Regional services, in particular, need to be extended. There needs to be a real focus on prevention and early intervention rather than only treating people when they are seriously ill.

Honestly, do I need to make a joke about the women's party being closely correlated with mental health problems?

More calls for early intervention. Women's innate desire for safety and security seriously handicaps their reason, doesn't it? Why is it they wish to break free from the shackles of their evil husbands and cosy up to the shackles of the state?

Well, I wanted to have a look at these birds for a laugh. But it's kinda like a black man checking out the Ku Klux Klan (where a lot of early feminists came from - coincidence?) site for a chuckle.

I'm not laughing as much as I'd hoped. Unfortunately I'm not taking much consolation in the fact that offering women up as superior does not get votes, because the same noxious attitudes and blind belief systems will be hard at work through the office of the status of women and the other machinations of government anyway.