Welcome back. Now, the president of Turkey, Recep Erdogan, says the terrorist who tried to remove him through a coup in 2016, a selective in Nigeria, recall that Erdogan had in 2016 accused allies of a renowned cleric, Fertila Gulen, who owned Turkish schools and hospitals across Nigeria, of sponsoring the coup. Now, Turkish envoy in Nigeria, Hakkann Gakil, had at that time called on Bahri to close the Turkish schools and hospitals in Nigeria, belonging to a group of private Turkish investors who are inspired by the philosophy of the Heismet movement. The Nigerian government had, however, rejected the proposal, causing tension between both countries. In what appears to be a reconciliation move, Erdogan told Bahri that his administration would share intelligence with Nigerian authorities. Now, joining us to discuss this is Michael Nketea, an international relations analyst. Many thanks for joining us on plus politics and plus TV Africa, Michael. Thanks for having me. All right. Let's start with the development that happened since 2016, and it has actually spiralled now into 2021. It's been five years since the attempt at coup, and the Turkish president on a two-day visit to Nigeria mentioned the fact that these alleged terrorists who tried to overthrow him are still in Nigeria. What does this really tell about the dimension that terrorism has taken in Nigeria? The categorization of people that others may consider as political dissidents in Nigeria as terrorists by the Turkish government is a bit problematic. It needs emphasizing that in 2016 when there was some form of military uprising against the government of President Tarif Erdogan, the Islamic cleric who is based in the United States of America was primarily blamed for the uprising in Turkey. So, categorizing or terming people who want a change in government, people who want to see an inform of leadership in Turkey, categorizing such an individual or such group of people as terrorists is a bit problematic to me. Second, based on current security challenges in Nigeria, I have my doubts that the government of President Muhabba the Buhari would give or provide a safe haven for people who also perceived to be engaging in other form of activities that are likely to destabilize a major country like Turkey. Currently, we are all witnesses to the instability in Nigeria as a result of the agitations by the Yoruba movement. Michael, if I have to button, sorry if I just have to button, just to understand you better right now, invariably what you are saying right now is that what the President of Turkey, Recep Erdogan is saying does not hold water in as much as he has said that his own country is in a battle in which the throes of terrorism and I'm sure that if he is saying that they are still active in Nigeria, they might have some sort of intelligent report or would you just say it should be outright dismissed? Well, I disagree with the President of Turkey or the Turkish government. I do not believe that those individuals, Turkish nationals who are in Nigeria are terrorists. I believe that these people are political dissidents. People who want to see a change in government in Turkey and I don't believe these people are terrorists and it also needs clarifying that what we are currently witnessing in Nigeria due to issues of insecurity, the threats posed by Boko Haram, separatist agitations by the Yoruba nation movement which was led by San Diego and also the Biafra movement led by Namdi Khan. I don't think the Nigerian government will provide a safe haven, haven for a modern individual group of individuals who are trying to also destabilize a modern country that would have been a clear contradiction to the policy direction of the Buhari administration. Those people in Nigeria may disagree with the Turkish government. They may be fighting for a change in leadership in Turkey but I do not believe that those people are terrorists and I believe that the Nigerian government should not in any way hand those people over to the Turkish government. It needs emphasizing that the Turkish government has a full human rights repose when it comes to the prosecution of people who are perceived as enemies of the state or openness of president, basically handing these individuals over to the Turkish government would warrant the idea indirect death sentence. So I believe that they are not terrorists. The Nigerian government is not providing a safe haven for them. These are just ordinary political incidents that need protection. All right, Michael, still to be clear. So invariably the administration of President Mohammed Buhari is actually doing the right thing for not actually closing down the Turkish school after all the claims and allegations in 2016. Plus you are saying that those who the president of Turkey has termed terrorists are primarily political distance just to be clear. Over time in Nigeria, there has been call to name those who perpetrate lots of violence here in the country as some terrorists. For instance, insurgents, bandits as it were and of course all the criminals that have terrorized the country in recent times. There have been renewed calls for the presidency to declare them terrorists. So if I may ask, how do you differentiate who are political dissidents and of course terrorists? A terrorist may be engaging in activities that threaten the sovereignty of states, either overthrowing the government, engineering or orchestrating armed attacks, financing armed attacks, activities that intends to create an environment and condition of fear and panic. But a political dissident is someone who is only interested in a change in government due to his or her disagreement with the current status quo of political leadership of his or her country. And such a dissident may be residing in another country due to perceived fear of repriser attacks on his or her life. So political dissidents or activists are clearly different from terrorists. Political dissidents, they do not finance the act of terrorism. They do not finance, engineer or engage or contract people to engage in armed attacks that threaten the sovereignty and the security of states. All those things are clearly the activities and motives of terrorist and political dissidents are only interested in change in the political landscape or status quo of his or her country without any result to armed violence or confrontation. All right, still the president of Turkey, that's a recent elegant actually called for cooperation in the fight against them, terrorism between both countries so that there could be some sort of success. But in your opinion, looking at all that has happened, you see a strange relationship, you know, you know, moving forward between Nigeria and Turkey? Well, in the last decade, since 2011, continuously Turkey has been a major training partner of Nigeria. And I believe that it serves the interests of both governments and states to collaborate, draw, draw in finding lasting solutions to these little bit of misunderstandings or standoff. I believe that there is a, if you look at the geographical position of Turkey, it falls right between the borders of Europe, it serves as a bridge between Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. East neighbor, neighboring countries like Syria, Iraq, Syria and Iraq, even Yemen, all these countries are facing challenges of terrorism, issues of insecurity. Nigeria also have its own security issues. The threat of Boko Haram is still rare, the threat of bandits, of our heads, armed headsmen, the threats of agitations by the Biafra movement and even the Euroban nation agitations. Both countries face similar threats and I believe it is in the interests of the Buhari administration and also the package government to draw, draw, drink amicable solutions to these impasse and find ways and means to cooperate militarily to confront the threat of terrorism in both countries. We should note that Turkey currently is a major manufacturer of military appointments and weapons and the Nigerian government can count on the expertise of the package government with regards to the supplies of ammunition, tactical combat deployments and training to, to, to confront the threat of terrorism in Egypt. These are avenues that the Nigerian government can explore. Beyond that, trade presents a wonderful opportunity. Turkey continues to be a major trading partner for a majority of African countries and the Nigerian government can build a solid trade militia. All right. All right, thank you so much. Michael Nketea, international affairs analyst. We do appreciate your time and of course your thoughts and all of your input on the show today. Moving on, right now, we'll take a clip showing Nigerians reacting to the over 400 million they're budgeted for the presidency and vice-president in 2022. And afterwards, I'll be giving you my take. I can say the money is much compared to Nigerian condition now because an average man, how can you compare that such amount of money with the feeding of average man in Nigeria? That amount of money can feed over two million people in this country. So it is allocated to the presidency alone. So the money is, the money is even too much. It's too much for the presidency to feed himself and the vice-president with that such amount is too much. Once I cannot feed myself by another 15 years, 15 years as of this morning. So it doesn't make sense. I think it's ridiculous.  I'm sure Nigerians are tired of hearing of these things on a daily. So what the truth is, what can we do? Vote them out. That's what they say, but that's our vote really counts. Alright, the voice of the people there. And here is my take. In 2020, the National Bureau of Statistics reported that about 83 million people lived below the poverty line in Nigeria. And we know that that number has probably gone up, saying that the pandemic caused many to lose just sources of livelihoods. Now the country and the rest of the world is going through a recession and economic challenges. A lot of Nigerians are forced to live lives that are below the normal standard of living. Now, every time the president shows up to give a speech or an address to other citizens, he edges them to persevere, promising that Nigerians would be better if they endured the hard times a little longer. But if Nigerians are forced to bear the perilous time, why not the president and his vice? Now in 2016, 103 million was for the president's feeding. Well, that of the vice president's feeding, gapped 24 million. Still a bit high, but fair. Our economy was relatively better. But from 127 million to over 450 million, in just about five years, that's over 100% increase. Nigerians are already tolerating the harsh economy. But these amount is insensitive to the needs of Nigerians. Many political pundits call for a decrease in the cost of governance. Can the president not hear us? Can our leaders not hear us? It is time to listen to us. The leaders we voted for in 2019, they should listen to us. It's high time these monies are chanted back to serve hunger in the land. And the meeting between the Turkish president and Nigerian officials is one of the best things that happened lately. It shows that the president has been warned, and to be forewarned is to be forearmed. The federal government seems to be sympathetic to terrorists. It should seat tight and stop paying leapservice to issues of security. Let president Buhari as a matter of urgency seek foreign assistance on Nigerians may just be captured by terrorists. And that's my take. Many thanks for being a part of the show. Plus politics return same time tomorrow. I am Justin Akadone. Bye for now.


Hello, my name is Emily Schudel and I'm an instructional designer in e-learning in the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Kamosan College in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. I want to first take a moment to acknowledge that I was born and raised on the traditional lands referred to as Treaty 4, located on the territories of the Nihiawak, Anishnepake, Lakota, Lakota, and Lakota people, and the homeland of the Métis and Mitchiff peoples. And I am grateful for the past 14 years to have been an uninvited visitor on the traditional territories of the Lekwangan and Wasanich people. Almost two years ago, Kamosan College, via a proposal by Sybil Harrison, Directorate of the Library and Learning Services, and the NET Plant from Special Projects, Continuing Education and Contract Training, received an open sustainability grant from BC Campus and in turn funded eight projects to develop or redevelop courses using open educational resources. The project has brought together 11 faculty members, as well as librarians, copyright experts, instructional designers, curriculum developers, indigenization specialists, graphic designers, multimedia support staff, and others to work on the projects. This session will showcase the projects and the benefits they are bringing to students, to the community, as well as to other programs around BC and beyond. As the first project of its type at Kamosan, grant recipients will serve as examples to their fellow faculty members around what it means to collaborate and design for open, as well as advisors for future OER development projects. In addition, the support network created from this project will be better able to provide sustainable support for future projects, provide advice to the college around sustainable practices and OER, and advocate for the creation of policies and strategies for embedding open education into the college's framework. While I will be presenting for two faculty members, the others will tell you about their projects in their own words. Hi, my name is Sandra Carr. I teach a 10 month foundation fine furniture program at Kamosan College. My open project was to create a book using press books that focused on all of the stationary power tools in the workshop, because there is no current textbook that's available to teach what we need to teach. So I was excited to use press books knowing that it would be open source. One of the real advantages I think to this is that my students after they're done the program are going to have access to the material. So currently, if everything is in the course shell, we use D2L at Kamosan, then shortly after the students kind of lose access. So with this online textbook, they'll be able to come back and use it after their program is done. And I'm hoping that other trades programs can find use for some of the content. So other trades do use some of the same equipment, so that'll be available. Also, just general interest users could access it as well as the K to 12 system. So I'm just going to flip over to the book, which is a work in progress. And it's been great to be able to sort of work on this and organize all the content in a similar fashion. And I'm finding it really easy for students to navigate around. So we've got our main headings. And then of course all of our chapters within that. I've been writing on my own copy, of course, and then for a lot of the graphics of which are really well suited to the content to have a lot of images. Having it be digital means there's no sort of limit on what I can include. And I've been just doing pictures with my iPhone as well as doing some of my own graphics and having Kamosan's graphics services jump in there as well. And yeah, it's just been a great resource. It's a work in progress. The next thing that I'm going to work on once I've done the writing and the images is to include video where I can have demonstrations of the content as well as specific demonstrations for the different projects so that they'll be very applicable to our current curriculum. That's my product. Thanks. And then I'm here to give a very short presentation on my role in Kamosan's open education project. My goal was to take a very large 600 page textbook and reduce it. So my textbook was called the power of selling. It was about 10 years old and it was very outdated. And so what I did was this is the front page of it. It's called the power of selling and I work in the marketing department. It's what I teach marketing and sustainability. And so what I did was I took this textbook and I eventually it was reduced down to 250 pages from an open source textbook with updated sources and updated examples. Two new chapters, one on current trends and one on how to close that was missing in the original textbook. And I added some new visuals. And so it became this much more manageable textbook that students could get through with current examples and current research. Some key learnings if you are going to endeavor on a project, a review on a textbook is that it took a long time to review all the sources and the examples to update the material. And so if you were trying to do this, I would have a look at how old the textbook is that you were trying to or you're thinking of updating. It was actually way easier to write the new chapters than it was to review the old ones just because it was so outdated and a lot of the sources didn't work and I spent a lot of time sorting through that. It was nice to have the sort of the overview. So if you start with the chapters that you want to write and then write the chapters to the topics. I think that would be much easier, but do expect it was very time consuming. And so consider the age of the textbook that you're trying to revise and whether or not it would be easier just to rewrite to start over versus a rewrite. And so next steps for me is it's going to upload to press books going to get it into an online format for reading. And I want to make some instructors aids. I think that would be key for getting adoption of open source textbooks is for having some instructor help, particularly for anybody who's new to teaching this course. So those are my goals. Brian Coey teaches sheet metal at Kamosan and his open project was to create new and updated course materials for his program, including student and instructor resources in the form of an open textbook. When Brian started this work, materials he was using urgently needed to be updated. There were no textbooks meeting the need of his program, nor were there industry training authority or provincial resources, even though four BC institutions have sheet metal programs. In addition to receiving funding from Kamosan, Brian also received separate support from BC campus to work on program materials with Okanagan College. There are four levels for sheet metal apprentice training and Brian decided to take on a small chunk starting with level one and concentrating on the module for layout or pattern development. Meaning the modeling of a 3D object, but showing what it looks like two dimensionally to start with. Brian worked with the graphic designer at Kamosan to create animations and also created videos of himself performing some of his pattern development tasks. I want to show you a bit of Brian's open textbook and where it came from. First, we can see how this material used to be presented to students using two dimensional drawings with elaborate text explanations. And now we see the same material presented as animated graphics along with text explanations. While creating materials was one of Brian's goals for this project. He also wanted to make them open to help students save money and to provide them with a vetted resource for when they are out in the workforce. Brian has already seen some of the rewards from his hard work.  And back in his shop, students now have the opportunity to watch his videos and animations before coming to class and can then go home and review them on their own until they feel comfortable. I should mention that Brian has also received the BC Campus Award for Excellence in Open Education for creating his open textbook pattern development sheet metal level one. Hi, my name is Pooja and I'm joining you from the traditional territories of Lekwangan and Vasanich speaking peoples. I teach math at Kamosan College. My project started with my desire to offer a good quality digital content to my students at minimum cost. I have listed the four most important outcomes of this project. First and foremost, the textbook cost dropped from about $120 to around $35. My students can now freely access three open source textbooks derived from existing open materials. To help instructors, I have created some PowerPoint slides. Lastly, for students and instructors, there is an infinite number of practice questions tailored to the content. I created these questions on my open math platform and all these libraries are available to use. Here is an example of the PowerPoint slides available for use. Lastly, I would like to show you a question in my open math. The information like the angle and the length of the shadow can be randomly generated by clicking on new version. Each question comes with a step-by-step solution so that the students can easily understand how the question has been solved. Thank you very much for this opportunity to share my work. Hello, my name is Peggy Hunter. I am an instructor of human anatomy and physiology at Kamosan College in Victoria, BC. My open education project involves the creation of a website that allows students to access lab anatomy material outside of the schedule classroom. Kamosan College's anatomy courses like most anatomy courses everywhere have weekly three-hour labs. During that lab period, students have access to an assortment of models and slides. These models and slides, in addition to various dissections and specimens, are the foundation of our anatomy labs. These courses are very content-dense and typically the students are seeing this stuff for the first time. They get one exposure to the material. And the next time they see it, it is in the context of a lab exam. Now, some institutions have the luxury of an open laboratory where students can come in at any time and review anatomy lab material. At Kamosan College, we don't have sufficient space for that. So, in order to give students more access to lab material for study purposes, about a decade ago, I took photographs of all of the models that we use and most of the slides. And a website was developed, which remains a work in progress. Now, the website was designed to give students access to lab material outside of classroom time in a way that they could interact with the material and self-test. I'll show you the website here and it will take a moment to load this up. This is the homepage for my anatomy website. And if you take a look at the navigation bar here, you can see there are links to models and slides. The site is also searchable, but I think the easiest way is to just click on the navigation bar. We'll just take a look at one of the models here. This is a sagittal section through the brain model. And you can see a picture of the model there with various structures that are labeled. Now, the way the website works is if students pass the cursor of their computer over a structure, the name of the structure should appear. And this allows students to review and self-test. So all the models are there. And we also have an assortment of slides. I'll just take you into one of the blood slides here. And the slides may also have labeled structures on them. So the slides are identified at the top. And this cell, for example, is difficult to find basic. So basically that's the website. And it has never meant to be a substitute for hands-on experience. It has, however, allowed students unlimited access to lab content for review purposes. And it has been widely used across both campuses in all commonsense anatomy courses. Now, these same models and slides are used everywhere and rolled over. And I think that this site is potentially useful as an open educational resource for anyone who teaches anatomy. Hi, everyone. I'm Stephanie Ingraham, the Chair of Physics and Astronomy at Kamosan College. I'm working on creating an open textbook on BC campus that will cover the physics of medical imaging and radiation therapy. I teach a physics course for students in the Medical Radiography Technologist Program within the Department of Allied Health. It covers topics such as electromagnetic radiation, the structure of matter, electricity and magnetism, X-ray production, radiographic imaging, nuclear imaging, radiation therapy, sonography and MRI. I was finding that there was a limited selection of textbooks that suit the course curriculum at this level. My goal is to instead create an open textbook that will provide a simple, free way for students to access the course materials. I have been writing modules, creating and finding open source images and designing original practice problems with solutions. Here, I've included some examples of images that I've been working on. Specifically, you can see two types of X-ray production, the diagnostic X-ray spectrum and a schematic of wave fronts and rays. Next, I've included some examples of the body of the notes. I'm currently launching a draft of material with my course this term, providing an opportunity for student feedback. I hope to revise before publishing at the end of the year. In the future, I plan to expand the textbook by including videos and instructor-specific resources. I'm very grateful for the support and collaboration I've experienced from Komosen's open project team over the past two years. I hope that this will not only be useful for our students, but also for students and instructors in similar programs at other institutions. For general physics courses that touch on the same topics and for anyone interested in the field of medical physics. Liz Morch is a faculty member in the dental hygiene program at Komosen. A while ago, Liz began to design online modules for her nutrition course in the program, but she quickly recognized the need to provide flexibility and how and when students could access the content. In addition, she also knew of several other programs at Komosen that could benefit from having access to nutrition materials. After searching for OER and open textbooks through BC Campus and Creative Commons, Liz was unable to find existing open content relating to nutrition which would be applicable to her course. Her project, therefore, was to develop online modules for use, not only in her course, but as resources for faculty to teach any nutrition courses. In addition, while some individual nutrition components are available through Health Canada, Liz determined that students in her course would require more engaging information. So in her project, she has not only included text-based content, but also images and videos, all Creative Commons licensed or public domain, as well as interactive components to support student learning. Still in development, including adding attribution and licensing, here is the WordPress site Liz has created through the open educational collaborative with support from Komosen College personnel. As the site development continues, Liz will be adding additional evaluation tools in the form of online assessments and additional videos, images, web-based resources, and H5P objects to enhance engagement with the material. Sarah Ederly, Jana Srirachi, and Alex Purdy's goal is to develop a competency-based open educational resource to support learning in Allied Health's 112th Patient Management course. Allied Health 112th is a patient management course taken by Medical Radiography, Medical Laboratory Assistant, and Synography students at Komosen College. It is a term one course for brand new students covering important topics such as infection control before they go to clinical placements. The course was originally created for the Medical Radiography program. It was expanded in the fall of 2019 to include Medical Laboratory Assistant students and in the summer of 2021 for Synography students. Some of the challenges we are currently facing include the addition of new programs and their required competencies. The textbook required for Medical Radiography students is not suitable for the other Allied Health programs. Therefore, the student experience differs greatly by program, even though this is intended to be a transferable course. Our programs are aligned to professional competency profiles. Therefore, we want to keep these in mind when developing resources. The main idea is to replace the textbook. This word cloud displays the range of topics covered in this resource. As part of this work, we will be reevaluating which competencies should be included in this resource. This may have implications for the course curriculum. Therefore, we will also make recommendations to the AHT department on areas that have been identified as out of alignment or two disciplines specific to be addressed in this course. As a result, we would like to develop some instructional guidelines, recommendations, principles for teaching in an interdisciplinary classroom. This may include an appendix, a list of ideas for laboratory activities that could develop so that anyone looking to use this resource for their own program or setting benefits from our experience and expertise and understands our shared vision for how this could be used in an Allied Health post-secondary program or course. We hope to overcome several challenges that were mentioned earlier. In particular, to develop a resource that caters to all three programs currently at Camoson College and replaces the need for students to purchase a textbook or three different textbooks that an instructor would have to work with. In addition to the cost savings to students, we believe the students would benefit greatly from an open educational resource that considers the Canadian context and emphasizes the specific competencies related to their professional specification in a way that is learner-centric and applied. We hope this will result in greater pedagogical flexibility and ease of sharing while maintaining the academic needs of the course to support program-specific learning objectives. The next steps for us in the project, aside from finalizing all the individual projects, is to make recommendations to institutional administration based on the lessons we have learned about the time and support required to dedicate time to the creation, adaptation, and use of open educational resources to let more faculty can begin to engage in their own open projects. If you have any questions or want to know more about our project, please send me an email. Thanks so much for watching our presentation.


Hi everyone, Joe for jazby's casebreaks.com with 2021 Panini Proceeds Football Hangar Box Edition, break number 42. A few things happening here. First dice roll will be the 10 hangar box spots that extra spots are given away. So only sold 22 spots outright. Randomize those 22 names. Top 10 extra spots. Second dice roll will be for the giveaway. And then the third and final dice roll will be the giving away the 10 rookies and stars teams. Serial box edition. This is a winner take all situation. Top name on the run will get all 10 teams. Pretty nice. Now, first big thanks everybody here. Let's give away those extra spots. First dice roll. Top 10 after two and a two for the hard way. One, two, three and four. After four, congrats to Jeff Carl, Jeff Carcarl, Jeff Larry. Jeff and Carl. And Carl. After four times, congrats. Extra spots going your little buy one, get one scenario. Dig that. Now, let's do the break itself. Let's gather everybody's names. And all the teams are in right here. Let's go. Let's roll it. Randomize names and teams four to two, six times. One, two, three, four, five. And six in the final time. Four and a two, six times for the teams. One, two, three, four, five and six in the final time. All right, there's the first half of this right here. No trade windows in this second half right over there. Let's just get into it. Alpha ties by team print and Rippity Riff. And there's the serial box where that's coming up in a separate video. Star's serial box. Thanks, everybody. These are just comments here. Stefan Diggs. Nice Joe Burrow, second year. Travis at TN. Quitty pay. There's some rookies here. These will ship. We're at TN. These are comments again. All right, nothing too crazy here. But the crazy part is, is one person is going to win the remaining 10 teams in this rookies and stars break. That's going to be crazy. A winner take all scenario. Go bigger, go home situation. All right, let's flip back over here. Let's gather everybody's names one through 32. Third and final dice roll. And we're going to randomize that three and a three sixth the hard way. So the name on top winner take all gets these 10 teams right here. After three and a three hard six. Good luck. One, two, three, four, five and six in final time. After six, drum roll, drum roll, drum roll. Spot two is the worst.  Unless your name's on top, Carl. My apologies. Appreciate you giving it a shot. But there can be only one. After six, it's Jeff. Congrats to you, Jeff. You got all, you got those 10 teams in rookies and stars. Jaguars, Patriots, Niners, Jets, Bears, Bucks, Bangles, Steelers, Texans and Dolphins. Congrats to you. Hey, Larry, Carl, everybody else. Thanks for giving this a shot. I'm Joe. I'll see you next time for the next one. Bye-bye.


Hello and welcome to this International Women's Day webcast. We're being brought to you live through the generous support of Redback Conferencing and they have provided the facilities and the technology to us and have helped us pull this event together in less than a week and we're very grateful. My name is Georgina Dent and I'm the contributing editor of Women's Agenda. We have three fabulous women here today to discuss how the new federal laws will leave women and children worse off and I'll introduce each of them now. So we've got Dr Cassandra Goldie who is the CEO of the Australian Council of Social Services which is the peak body for the community services sector in Australia. She is a strong advocate for action to reduce poverty and inequality. Hi Georgie. Hi Cass. We've got Samantha Page down the end who is the CEO of Early Childhood Australia the peak advocacy body for children under eight, their families and early childhood professionals. And then finally next to me we've got Professor Marion Baird who is the co-director of the Women, Work and Leadership Research Group at the University of Sydney Business School. She is an expert on women and leadership on paper and to leave schemes and organizational responses to the changing gender and age demographics of the workforce. Welcome to three of you. Hello. Happy International Women's Day. I know. I know. To everybody. So look together we're going to unpack what's been going on with the proposed changes to childcare subsidies, to paper and to leave family tax benefits and a series of measures that if they come to pass we have reason to believe they will leave women and children worse off. Mostly this has revolved around the government's promise three years ago to fix childcare even though it does feel like longer than three years. I'm not alone in feeling that. But the combination of making those promises and the determination to make budget savings have combined and put us in the position we're in currently. So before we get into the substantive conversation I just wanted to say that there will be an opportunity to ask questions. So if you have any questions at this point feel free to type them in and they'll come up and at 3.15 we will get through as many as possible. The current situation is that the government has combined the Jobs for Families childcare package bill into a welfare savings bill and it includes reducing the amount of paid parental leave that's available to women and seeks further cuts to family tax benefits. This bill has passed the lower house twice and been referred to a Senate committee inquiry. You can find a link to the submissions to that inquiry on the site of this webcast. Some of the crossbench senators are talking about splitting the bills and to help us to understand that a little bit more I'd like to ask some at the page why you think these bills should be separated. Sure, so early childhood Australia and many others in the early childhood sector believe the package should never have been brought together with the welfare spending cuts and the changes to pay parental leave. Investment in early childhood education is not a welfare spend. It's an investment in education of young children and an investment in workforce participation. The economic modelling that was done by PricewaterhouseCoopers specifically on the childcare package as proposed in the legislation demonstrates that it pays for itself within three to four years. It really should not be linked to or reliant on cuts in other areas in order to pass the childcare reform legislation and it should be dealt with separately on its merits and we've been pretty clear about that from the beginning and we're very disappointed to see the childcare package in the omnibus bill. Cass Acos has expressed some concerns as well about these bills. Can you talk to me about that concern? Well really serious concern, Georgie. I mean the big picture here it's important for us to ground this discussion is that we do an analysis about the level of poverty in Australia so almost three million people are living below the poverty line in Australia despite being a very wealthy country and over 20 years of pretty strong economic growth and we have 730,000 kids living below the poverty line and one of the groups most adversely affected by not having enough are absolutely single parent households and over 80% of those households are headed by women and in those households 40% of the kids are living in poverty so we should be really, really concerned we scrutinising carefully the big discussion about where savings should be made what we should be doing with the budget of course that's how this has all been framed up the World Economic Forum said just last week the biggest risk to economic strength of a country is growing inequality so let us get this clear this is about good economics, good social outcomes as well the government has been relentlessly pursuing welfare cuts we have ACOS, this is our area of expertise we have promoted and supported a range of savings I won't go through them all now but roughly we think that we have delivered in conjunction with the government about 20 billion in savings for what might have been seen as welfare that was not well targeted something like the age pensioners you know, chlorine about the assets test this bill contains welfare cuts that we say and we know will directly hit the incomes of the lowest income families including single parents and their children and so we've had a big contest in the parliament about it you're quite right, we've at this point in time got enough cross benches to say they've looked at the detail they are not prepared to support those measures the family payment cuts, there's another one the pensioner education supplement many women are affected by that these are all measures that will particularly hit women and of course they say well you've got to do that because if you want your investment in childcare they haven't been doing that on some of the other measures and I'm happy to talk about the gender issues here the tax cut that was delivered last year for people on $80,000 and over benefits mainly, higher income men nobody had to find savings amongst higher income men in order to fund that so this is a very gendered picture as we see it as well and I think the fact that it is International Women's Day today and I think it's worth noting that in no uncertain terms that these are seen as women's issues that are being couched as welfare spends when that's not actually how they necessarily ought to be characterised Marion, another welfare measure that I don't think should be defined as welfare but it is, is paid parental leave so currently the bill allows women to claim up to 18 weeks of leave at the minimum pay as well as any employer funded entitlements that they get this as you know has been offensively labelled as double dipping even though it was actually part of the rationale for the introduction of a minimum wage scheme in the first place what would be the impact of these proposed changes to paid parental leave on women? Yes, well look, first of all let me start by saying one of the big issues is this problem about calling it a welfare payment as you've observed because the current parental leave scheme is really designed around two primary objectives and one is to increase women's participation in the paid workforce and as Cass has said these sort of issues about participation, productivity and economic growth are always examined by think tanks, big corporates around the world and they all say to increase Australia's GDP, to increase our productivity we need to increase the number of women in the paid workforce so on the one hand we've got that policy objective and then on the other hand we've got this omnibus bill lumping areas that will really affect both women's ability to participate but also increase inequality so what I do want to say here is that I think it's an incredible shame and a terrible indictment on policy development in Australia that we now have pieces of legislation that had been carefully thought out in the past lumped together in this one bill and seem to be really having to fight each other so that's probably why we all need to separate them again and say the issues are very clear these are three separate areas that all need careful attention in a policy sense we need to link them but we don't need to trade one off against the other that's really important so back to what would happen so if the paid parental leave changes go through women would lose just the headline any woman who works for hospital or teachers at the moment or works in the public services of the various states and the federal government will lose somewhere up from $9,400 they'll just lose that straight out because that will be cut from their parental leave payment that they currently receive from the government if you work in the private sector and for example say your company offered 10 weeks paid parental leave to supplement the minimum payment through the government scheme those employees will lose $6,700 to $7,000 straight up so these are enormous cuts we're talking about a lot of money that not just women have factored into the planning for having children but so have their whole households and so if we think about the implications of that first of all there's a cut to their income when they have a new member of the family so obviously there's already pressure in the household if there's a cut to income people then, and we know from the research that the biggest motivating factor to return to work is actually loss of income people will be forced back into the workforce earlier with younger children which puts immediate pressure back on the childcare system so it's a really ludicrous situation we're now in and the paid parental leave bill was not developed out of thin air it's had decades of preparation we have evaluated it the Productivity Commission has worked on it we have had Senate inquiries into it we know it's working well so to now unravel it and unpack it is a really sorry state of affairs and I'm just shocked that Australia has got to that point and that on International Women's Day 2017 we still have to argue the case for what around the world are actually seen as legitimate public policies I mean Marion, Georgie you may not know this but actually Marion and I worked very closely together back at the point of the very early design and thinking that was being done around the fact but at that point Australia had virtually no statutory paid we had no statutory paid parental leave scheme whatsoever and I was working at the Human Rights Commission with Liz Broderick, the Sex Discrimination Commissioner at the time and this was very carefully designed when it was delivered by the government at the time it was always seen as being a first stage it was always seen as a first minimum step in the right direction and when the former Prime Minister Tony Abbott was promoting the so-called role goal scheme we said his framing of it was right he said it is a workplace entitlement we should be trying to secure six months income replacement the debate was how you financed it and in the early design of it there was always an expectation that once the first stage was implemented that there would be the evaluation test to see what was the reaction from employers how it was delivering on expected outcomes both benefits for babies and for parents and then we would have a further look not about how to claw it back but actually how to finance getting us to where we really want to be because it's a very modest scheme it's a very low level of paid parental leave in Australia compared to other countries and it does beg a belief to me that that impact on babies is completely missing it's missing from the evaluation it's missing from the legislation it's certainly missing from the rationale for changing the scheme there's just no recognition that World Health Organisation recommendations have been incontrovertible for a long time that babies should have 26 weeks at home with their parents and look, if they come into childcare younger then that will do our very best to give them the best possible start but ideally they stay at home with their parents for 26 weeks and that's what we should be aiming for that is a genuine real option for families and parents without asking people to impoverish themselves or sell their house to fund it that's right we knew that there were women who were being forced back to work within weeks because there was absolutely no income guarantee if they took time at home with their baby, new baby and I think the point that you have all raised is that you could be forgiven if you flip through the newspapers over the last two years you could be forgiven for thinking that there has been no research in this area that we are not equipped to manage these issues but the reality is all countries have been managing women working and having children for a number of years and Australia is, in OECD terms, we really are lagging I think America is the only country that's behind us in terms of our parental leave payments and it is quite extraordinary to consider that we have what was proposed as the starting point is now being wound back that's right and again it seems that there is very little understanding and I might be mistaken here but on the part of the decision makers they seem to be blind to these consequences Cass, you have touched on this we might add to that that the decision makers in this bill are all men well that's a shared theme from all of us shouldn't we have escaped anybody that the senior minister is responsible for the design of all of these measures are all men yes, we need to take note of that and that also feeds into the question that I was going to ask you Cass about what you touched on but it is across the board these changes to family tax benefits to the childcare system to parental leave they do seem to be having a disproportionate impact on women so there does seem to be a sort of gender blindness in a sense can you talk about how you see that how these proposed changes so look just earlier today I was at an event being hosted by the Australian Financial Review and of course over there there are very significant powerful voices continuing to prosecute the we need to get cut to the company tax rate now if you get into the sophisticated economic analysis for the cost that will be to the budget there is a serious question over the value for the return there is nowhere near the debate going on about that in contrast to seriously good investment in the areas that we are talking about and Marion has alluded to that the economic analysis that has been done about the GDP lift to really supporting women's work for participation without trading off the well-being of children and families and so we have got this perception and it is a reality that on the one hand governments and they are being led by male leaders at this time who are persistently prosecuting the notion that you just need to lower taxes thank you very much we'll take a tax cut if we're on high incomes mostly men and this cuts the company tax rate but in these areas it is again like sorry women you've really got to step up trade off do the hard work give up something in order to get something now none of us ever wanted to be in that position that is not the way to do good policy but I really think it is important for us to call this to say this is what we are seeing and I don't think it is escaping the people in the community who see this very uneven approach and if there is one thing that we don't talk enough about in terms of the wellbeing of community how do we build resilient societies we've got a concern about some of the debates going on in Australian society creating enough capacity for people to spend time with people they love spend time with their care really is important and that is not to be just soft hearted that is a human need and at the same time for us to get a balance in terms of the investment in these areas we are talking about early childhood education and care and the early years for children whether you are talking to a social policy expert or an economic expert or frankly the Gonski panel they all said this has to be a top priority for Australia because we really are lagging behind we shouldn't accept the fact that by the time children get to primary school we are going to always have the highest higher level of children hitting primary school with the level of disadvantage that we are currently seeing we can really change that but we've got to get these policies right we are probably all showing our age how many times were we told 2015, 10 years ago you have to have the evidence there just isn't the evidence about what works or what policy would be effective in these areas we've got so much evidence now it's coming out of our ears we must not consider legitimate or the policies aren't connecting to the research I mean the research into the value of investing in early learning is completely you cannot argue against it it's the strongest research I've ever seen and yet it doesn't seem to be influencing policy in the way you would expect it to influence policy it does seem to be an ideological debate as much as it is a debate about evidence and if I have one more minister in the suit in his fifties tell me what has to happen to get women back to work as a mother, as a single parent as someone who is heading up an organisation that's been advocating for women's workforce participation for 75 years I think we have a really informed opinion about that and we could be providing a lot of good advice on how to construct the package how to make paid parental leave work better how to address inequality and improve outcomes for young children but we're just not being listened I feel frustrated that we're not being listened I share that frustration and I think that the across the board because I listen to what each of you say and I think about this in the context of women in businesses as well and I think there's so much compelling evidence that a more diverse leadership group creates more profit and that's just one aspect that's not the reason why we should have more diverse leadership in terms of their businesses you would think would be compelled by that sort of by the financial imperative but they're not and it takes me it brings me to the point that I don't think the solutions are beyond us but it does seem that the intent to implement those solutions is beyond us Sam can I ask you to elaborate a little bit on your on the opposition to the childcare bill as it stands children and why is that not acceptable sure, so overall we do support the direction that the bill is taking childcare subsidies so anybody who's had anything to do with the delivery of early childhood education care or using children services would know that the current system is something of a basket case with multiple subsidies that nobody despite how familiar you might be with the system can actually calculate with any accuracy what one family might be eligible for is far too complicated and so the new the bill that's put in the parliament at the moment takes that very complex system, streamlines payments into a single subsidy and then applies a work activity test and a means test at the same time which will see the subsidy a lot more generous for low and middle income working families a bit less generous for very high income families but we are talking over 300,000 per annum in household income and most families in fact we estimate that 3 out of 4 families that are using childcare will be better off under the new system the caveats on it are that the emphasis is very much on workforce participation it's really dropped what we used to call the dual pillar of child development so we used to talk about early childhood education and care as achieving two goals one is about child development one is about workforce participation and this package seems to be too weighted towards workforce participation and that means that it's reduced access to childcare subsidies for families that aren't meeting a much more demanding activity test than currently applies to the childcare rebate so under the new system both parents have to be working or studying or volunteering there are a few different definitions of activity but both parents need to be meeting it and they need to be meeting it all of the time and so what we're concerned about is the families that are in insecure work casual work, contract work in between jobs for given time and what that will mean for children's participation if they're in and out of services if they're dropping in and out of eligibility for subsidy the other thing we're concerned about is the safety net so there is a minimum amount of 12 hours a week for families under 65,000 in household income so that is low income families a minimum of 12 hours a week 12 hours a week just isn't enough it's not enough to provide two days a week of a quality early learning program so it really needs to increase at least 15 hours which is the preschool equivalent we'd like to see it higher, 18 hours would be even better and then the other area of safety that we're concerned about is the children in rural or remote areas and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children so we know that there are big barriers to access and participation in rural or remote areas and the way those services have been funded in the past is through a block grant funding model and moving them on to a mainstream subsidy system is problematic and we need the government to address that in this package and come up with a better strategy for ensuring rural or remote services are available and then Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children we know are twice as likely to start school vulnerable on more than one developmental domain and they very rarely catch up from that and so as a consequence they're less likely to do well at school to enjoy school to get the benefit out of schools that the other children enjoy and to go on and complete school and go on to tertiary or trade qualification training so we've I think that's been long identified that getting a better early education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children is a national priority, needs to be a national priority we need a higher safety net in terms of number of hours for Aboriginal children because a lot of them are in mainstream services so a higher number of hours but also security and sustainability for the Aboriginal services that are operating around the country which are used by a lot of Aboriginal families and so these are aspects of the bill that can be changed so the bill can be amended, we've proposed some amendments we've worked with the government and those amendments it's not we're not blocking the legislation but there are some important amendments that are needed to make it fair and this could and could still because it hasn't been legislated yet so there's still time and that's why we're here this could be reworked to deliver on the best expertise right across the country and globally around early learning for children which is a huge benefit to be gained by children accessing a minimum of two days per week this is 2017 that is well understood we see of course high income families who will of course be having their children at the right age going into early learning opportunities because they know it's great for early learning developmental needs and so this idea that the only way you can access it the government support to do that is if you are in workforce participation arrangements completely cuts out that guarantee that's what we should be working to in a country like Australia this is absolutely doable but the government you're saying Sam has a single focus it seems on well if you're going to be allowed to put your kids into early learning opportunities you've got to pay for it by going to work well it's also it's out of touch with the reality of people's lives it's not like you can put your name down on the casual roster at Coles get the call and say oh I'll just sort out childcare I'll just find a childcare spot and put my child in for the day in a place where they've never been before with educators they've never met before that's just not reality that's not how it works and we have one informer in USA women in the workforce are in casual or part-time work arrangements they need to have childcare in place already before they are able to go and put their name down for more shifts or to take up the extra work that they might be looking for it's just the wrong way around to see it as an incentive that if you get more work then you'll get more childcare subsidy that just to me that's wrong it's not real world it's not in touch with people's lives what we know is that the majority of single mother households mother is working what we know is most women feel under-employed when they're in casual and part-time arrangements there's no need to incentivise work women want to work but you've got to make it possible and to make it possible children need to go somewhere that's feeling secure it's regular they know the educators they know the other children they're settled and work can happen instead of this idea that we're going to take it away from you when you lose a shift or when you're on a part-time contract now I know there are some I don't want to over-simplify it there are some clauses in the legislation that will allow for people on casual and contract work but I don't think it's enough it would be so much easier if we could say two days a week for children and then if you're working you can have more days I also just want to be clear that we're not here saying all children should go two days a week from the time maybe that's not the argument at all the argument is that if children are going to attend early learning they should get at least two days so that they have regular participation it's still an option for families it's not a compulsion and we're not advocating five days a week do you know what I mean it's two days a week that we know children can cope with and they'll benefit from and that can be a regular level of participation I mean in terms of my understanding of the research is that that's where you actually get the richest return on the investment in early learning which is why having that sort of framework for children in that category it's a compelling case for doing that that's right, particularly in those critical two years before school if children can get it should be three or four days in those two years before school you can actually equalize opportunity you can actually overcome the vulnerability that those children might walk in the door with before they transition to school so that's really significant but also for younger children they're often coming from vulnerable families and having two days a week of stability in a quality program with good relationships with educators can also be a very beneficial experience and it stabilizes families that are vulnerable are often in insecure housing, insecure work they've got a lot of things to do just to get through the week so providing that support to them it's not particularly expensive and I think that we'll see the lift in workforce participation that's predicted we will, we'll see more people working more hours as a result of the subsidy reform but there's no need to cut loose those vulnerable families we can afford to support them too Marion I wanted to talk to you now about the because another issue that comes up a lot with casual work the casualized workforce in particular is pay equity it tends to be lower paid jobs when it's a casual the basis on which you're working I'm interested to know from you how do you think the recent penalty rates decision will impact women, what does the likely impact there Yes well the penalty rates decision is another example unfortunately of a policy that will have a more negative effect on women because that's where women tend to work so women cluster into what we call feminized industries and two of those are hospitality and retail so that's the first issue we know there are more women in those sectors 55 to 56 57% the second issue is that because of the childcare pressures women often opt for weekend work when their partners or other family members can do childcare so now we're seeing a double hit in a sense on these women they're working on social hours and they're missing out on family time and the time use research does show that weekend work is detrimental to people's social relations Sunday work particularly and the work on Sundays and the family time or community time you lose is never recaptured if you work on a Sunday and that makes sense to all of us what happens on a Sunday doesn't happen on a Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday or Saturday so there is a penalty for those women already working those days so to cut the penalty rate will affect women now penalty rates were originally introduced for two reasons one they were a deterrent to companies to open on the days that the community felt were days for the family and community so Saturday and Sunday and then more later Sunday and secondly they were to provide some compensation to people who worked on those days for the fact that they were missing out on regular family and social time so what this decision is really also saying that those women or anyone who works on those days is no longer missing out on that family time which I find a bit paradoxical because if we're arguing that we've moved to a 24 seven society and so people don't go to church on Sundays now but they use it to go and eat out together or shop together isn't that community time too but we're saying that the people who work those days shouldn't be compensated for the time they spend at work so it will have an impact it will have an impact on women who are already in low paid jobs these are often women who have downgraded their jobs because they need the more flexible hours and because they need the care on the weekend so I am I am really disappointed to see that decision and I think we will see women having to do one of two things either decide not to work on the Sunday or actually have to increase their hours in order to meet their financial commitments and of course you know we know that we've got a gender pay gap Australia move we haven't sorted that have we no we do 18% and it's actually gone up a little bit it's hovering around there it goes up and down a bit but it certainly isn't decreasing that's right and then in the bigger context again about you know what's going on in terms of who is the sort of distribution or the share of the benefits of growth of economic activity the public is absolutely right to be seeing the fact that we've got this low growth in wages generally that we've got this down when pressure on low paid work that's right we're highly casualised and profit margins are huge that's it and again you know sort of a line which is what we need to do as a country is cut taxes so the outcome of this cannot be that we see low paid workers in Australia taking home less that cannot be the outcome and each of us have talked about the importance of the right kind of flexibility let us focus on the machinery that we need to get the right kind of flexibility the reciprocity between employers and you know people participating in the workforce and I come back to your point Sam about the barriers to greater flexibility part of employers frustration is some of this chaos around childcare arrangements being able to take up shifts quickly all the rest of it but it would be extraordinary for us to see that the next most significant reform in the wages area is a further cut to the incomes of low paid people in Australia Sam, two things I'm sure you may have seen Fairfax Media published a piece today which is the case of a woman who is qualified as a childcare educator but she's actually working as a cleaner at a childcare centre and she's earning more as a cleaner than she was as an educator this is alarming at the best of times but it's also particularly relevant today because a lot of childcare educators are walking off the job in about 13 minutes at 3.20 I understand because they are taking home such a little wage can you talk about that Sam? Yes more power to those who are walking off today and thank you to the parents who are supporting them in doing that we've had a lot of positive commentary from parents who do understand how important the work of early childhood education is and the fact that early childhood educators are qualified at 3 or a diploma or a teaching qualification and yet they're paid very poorly in comparison to others in the teaching world and the education world and in fact in comparison to fitter and machinists they understand from the article that ran on the weekend it is really time that we recognised just how significant children's development is in the early years how much brain development happens in the first three years, how critical it is that we're giving children the best possible start before they transition to school to learn the critical skills they need to engage in education and they're not learning your ABC they're actually learning about getting along with others following each other's direction, cooperating collaborating, negotiating being able to manage your own emotions these are the critical skills that children in that year or two before school need so early childhood educators are doing very important work and it is time that we recognise that and it's really just an accident of history that this work has been devalued in comparison to work that is say in the manufacturing arena or other industries and it's time we fixed it it requires a one-off significant adjustment to fix it and I'm not underestimating what a significant adjustment we have 150,000 educators in Australia it's a big adjustment but we are hoping there is a gender parity case before the Fair Work Commission and we fingers and toes crossed that that comes to a good conclusion I suppose one of the difficulties is that we've seen the cost of childcare and the amount of money that parents but also the government are spending on subsidies has increased exponentially but none of that has gone to an increase in the pay of the educators some of it has so some of the price increases are about wage but that increases to the minimum wage and flow on through the awards so usually about half of the percentage increase in childcare fees every year is related to wage increases but it's minimum wage increases it's not it's not a structural adjustment of what we're talking about in terms of lifting wage rates to a better, more equitable level I just wanted to remind people that are listening that we will be taking questions soon so if you've got any feel free to send those through Cass on that subject of the pay gap what can what do you think we can do to move let's get the list out shall we for him so I think this the issue of the valuation of work is really one of the big outstanding agendas for all of us I absolutely hear what Sam says I think the term sort of accident might be a little bit kind today about what kind of time that work value and I think in the if we draw a little on some of what we've seen for example in the US where people in the community have watched people doing certain kinds of work who are getting paid extraordinary levels of money the kind of executive bonus that happen you would know George yourself and Marion you know that we have a gender pay gap that's pretty offensive at that level you know when we look at the gap in terms of who gets the bonuses at the high end and you know and there is something that's deeply cultural in this which just needs to be consistently called out one of the most important things is full transparency now it's not popular to talk about that but I tell you what you know having been in the rooms where a young say in the legal profession I've seen it happen where we were interviewing them and the female said oh this is you know and she turned around to her male colleague and he was getting thousands more than her on the first round of pay negotiations for absolutely no reason whatsoever and she didn't know that until that moment and often in this it gets talked about oh women here is a deficit of women of course you know oh we're just not tough enough we just don't negotiate hard enough you know what are we trying to value here what kind of behaviours do we want to value what I think and we talk about as a feminised characteristic I certainly don't want this to be seen as it's only women that behave in a particular way only men that behave in another way but in terms of behaviours what we typically see in a feminised way is some factoring in a circumstance I've been in workplaces in caring industries where women will factor in if I push for more I can see the consequence of this will be a lack of services why don't we actually value that and at the same time say there's a culture from the top that says we are committed to ensuring often more male dominated may I say the high up you get decision making and employers it's more men to say we're not having that we're not going to take that we're going to value the fact that you are doing this but we're going to ensure that there is full equity so in some countries we are up to date on some of this we have corporations and enterprise that fully publish all of what everybody is getting paid and wow that has a pretty stunning effect it's not the only thing I think but I think that's certainly something I think is well and truly overdue it is interesting because Australia does have a leading program in terms of reporting so what companies do actually provide to the workplace gender equality agency is world class what's interesting is that I think on the latest figures it's less than a quarter of those organisations who are forced to report on their pay have actually done an audit themselves so I mean they've got all that information there they're required to report and they do report not only a quarter or less act on it and it is interesting because if I have interviewed a number of and queued us to them there's a couple of male CEOs and managing partners of law firms who have come out and said I didn't think the pay gap existed I thought why on earth would we pay men any more than we pay women and they did Henry Davis York is one law firm that did it and the pay gap was about 20% and so they said about changing it the CEO of Channel 10 did the same thing the only way it's changed is if you actually look into your data assess the problem and then you change it but there doesn't seem to be that's not happening nearly enough now we have got a question here from Emily and she says sole mother poverty seems to be largely ignored by mainstream feminism at a time when feminist activism is increasing when it comes to women's economic security issues such as the gender pay gap dominate discussion we're guilty of that however this is one small part of the equation for sole mothers how can we encourage more debate and action around sole mother poverty and women and class more broadly I think it's a great question I mean I've certainly thought a lot about this personally having been in an environment where we're very strongly looking at sort of gender policy issues and then more recently being in the Australian Council of Social Service where there's a very strong focus on particularly for people on low income and that the experience of you know in any sort of you know how you identify your lived experience can be very different depending on your economic circumstances and I don't think we should just say well it's up to wealthier women to carry the charge for lower income women but I do think you know collectively for us to some people say oh well we know what we've forgotten to do is continue to talk about class now whether that's the term you want to use or you know something else economic circumstances I absolutely think it's crucial that we ground our discussions in what I might call some of the brand brother circumstances of families because one of the issues is that of course in every day in the lived experience you will choose to be where you can depending on what you're dealing with and if you are on very very low incomes and I've given you the very clear picture about the level of poverty and how that particularly affects single parents and overwhelmingly that is about women and their children you will be making a decision today to work on finding more employment which is absolutely what women are trying to do rather than being involved in what might be seen as a loftier debates about number of women on boards and so collectively we need to be going where does our collective voice need to be at any given time and I certainly think this is you know an example of where we've absolutely wanted to call it out across the board to see the connection between the two but can't assume for example that if you fix gender equality on boards we're going to be dealing with the issues of women who do not have genuinely do not have five dollars at the end of a week to enable their child to go and do a bit of sport and you know we've had this relentless push from government it was a labour that started it during Julia Gillard's prime ministership where they cut you know single parents payments and as a result we saw we've done the analysis we've seen an increase in the child poverty rate as a result of that measure that was done on the labour government you know they increase the age pension but they cut the income so I think I think it's a good debate for us to continue to have about the public perception of being a single parent you know I think that there is a less tolerance to this notion that we've had a politician recently have a crack right it's just appalling it's absolutely appalling it's just graceful and of course more power to the single parents that have absolutely mobilised to be speaking up particularly low page in low economic circumstances and being proud of the really important they do it's one of the personally I can't stand the term jobless families because I can tell you if you're in a family and you've got kids you're working very very hard to make ends meet and look after your kids at the same time but I think also it is such a big I think Bob Hawke did us no favours back in the 80s when he declared no child to live in poverty because it's like we haven't been able to talk about child poverty since then so parent poverty is very tied up with child poverty and the fact that we're not doing enough about that and we're not talking about it and I don't necessarily think it's the job of feminism there's a movement to do that but I do think as a society what kind of society do we live in that we don't care that children are missing out and missing out every day and missing out every weekend because we're not prepared to address the horrific rates of child poverty that we have in this country and we need to talk about it so the other problem I think is that family payments became mired in a debate about middle class welfare for a while so the assumption was that all family payments were there for middle class welfare and indeed I know ACOS and Early Childhood Australia supported early rounds of cuts to family tax benefit for that reason they were poorly targeted they were going to families that didn't need them but we've done that hard work there are no middle class welfare payments these days and the cuts that we're talking about now are cutting much deeper to low income families and it's time we all got concerned about that I think not just the feminists or the women but everybody in the 30th anniversary year though of the famous commitment from Prime Minister Hawke he delivered it's not the story that gets told but with the policies and it was about family payments he reduced the level of child poverty by a full 30% as a result of that and so that's the story we need to be reminding ourselves that these are structured because of this persistent push again to see family payments as middle class welfare you know ironic well not ironically but I think during the coalition era John Howard also did have an understanding of where the family payment system the architecture of it was very important in the way it interacted with wages so this idea that it's to say okay the wage fixing arrangement has gotten Australia the minimum wage case is about the right level of payment of wage for a single person now there are those that advocate we should have the right level of wage to ensure that a single person can look after a partner and two children we don't think that's the right move but this is what family payments was meant to do was to provide the right kind of retargeting from tax revenues to ensure that there was enough income in a family if you had one person working you know at the right time that calibration of the right level of income and family payments is therefore extremely important in terms of protecting from child poverty and it's woefully inadequate now Marion do you think feminism is failing single mothers look I'm glad you came back to that really Georgie because I've been thinking about that a lot look feminism now I don't think it has but feminism has so many other issues it's also dealing with at the same time and within feminism and feminist groups there are groups who have particular interest on single mothers or on a policy but I so I wouldn't say that we have forgotten that but I do think it's something to remember and I constantly sort of have to rethink this myself that a lot of our policies are really shaped around still a norm of a couple with two children in a household and when that's the beginning of your policy development then it's not very long before you see that people who don't fit that pattern fall out of the debate fall out of the parameters and the policy doesn't work for them so I do think it's a good reminder so thank you to the person who asked the question that we do have to think about the different ways in which households families are formed and how do we need to protect and enable them to contribute to the community that we all want to live in because the inequalities are what leads to divisions we want to make sure that we don't live in an economy we live in a society and we have to make that society work and we have to protect those who need that protection vulnerable children parents particularly women because they are mostly the ones taking the responsibility who don't have the income and of course there's that whole shift in the whole policy debate not just in Australia but everywhere it's not about this than I do but it's that rhetoric now that you have to work in order to be entitled to some payment from the government as well and women who are single mothers looking after children asking them to work as well in cities where it's so expensive to live and to travel I think becomes an almost impossible hurdle for them and the policies we just have to somehow we have to really be conscious of the online policies that are able to address those problems I mean I think you know we're obviously for all the right reasons importantly talking about women today on International Women's Day and women's perspective on all of this I don't think anybody sitting here is the message is are we just what meant to get out of the way not at all I think the very serious concern we all bring today is that we've got male decision makers following the expert advice in areas which we know particularly affect women and children and it is I've been so struck by some of the reactions where you have a leader the Canadian Prime Minister literally just putting that being prepared to name I am a feminist too and in getting contrast I am trying to remember the last time we had the Prime Minister give a wide ranging speech on gender equality in Australia and frame that up as one of his priorities well at this time I am talking about the current Prime Minister and to really speak to that agenda it is not about political correctness you know this is a term that gets used to try and shut down very important changes that we have yet to deliver on and gender equality is one of them I think back to your point Georgie too is we've lost the scrutiny of how we are tracking and whether we are making a difference so we used to have reports in the budget cycle that looked at what are the impacts we did that's right and we've called for the gender whip no that's been dropped we don't have the data being published up in recent weeks which is very interesting because it's like this International Women's Day there seems to be much more focus attention on some of the data that's been released lately that does suggest that we are not tracking in a progressive upwards direction that we are actually losing ground on some of this issue no we are losing definitely look we've got one other question we've just got a few more minutes but Vesna has asked what do you think it is about Swedish and German societies viewing equality compared to Australia I'll start that one I think Sweden more than Germany so let's talk about Sweden their gender equality ethos goes back a long way I think one of the important things in Sweden is that they have a much stronger notion of what they call the social settlement or a social contract and one of the parties in that is employers we haven't had a chance to talk about them much today in Sweden the employers the state the unions or labour talk about these issues of gender equality it's part of the national conversation and it's just part of the policy making process in Australia we've gone down these separate routes historically the concept of institutional legacy and the pathways you're on it's very hard to change that I agree once you're on one when we see particular things happening like we see at the moment to come back to where we began about the omnibus spill we know that if that's introduced we are setting Australia on another direction that will be in time even harder to pull back from so it's really important to address that now but you know it's imbued now in Swedish society men and women participate men and women have policies that enable them to take time off from work and to look after children they institute policies that say if the men don't use the leave then they lose it and the family loses extra leave as well so it's just a framing it's not just, I mean it's fundamentally a different way of framing policy and to say that men and women are both citizens both have the right to work and both have the right to care and to facilitate that it's not a policy unfortunately you did mention Sam I think it's a really good point we've lost the notion that we develop policy on the basis of evidence and it's really moved to some ideological basis but that ideology is not about gender equity or equality through society it's some other and I'm not even sure of the right terminology now some market ideology or neoliberal ideology I'm not even convinced it's that it's some mistaken ideology about perhaps a business driven motive that doesn't necessarily make sense as you've said Cass very much individual responsibility well that is the big shift that is the enormous shift that's happened that the responsibilities on each individual not a community to respond to these problems about early education we'll get some people saying children should be the individual responsibility of the parent that had them and not seen as a social investment that's something that I don't think was such a strong sentiment a decade ago what we don't tend to do is track the sentiment I actually think that we shouldn't underestimate the significant real shifts that have happened in social expectation and social norms as you know there are many men who are wanting to have much more flexible arrangements to genuinely of course want to spend more time with the children if there are two parents as a couple there's a compact that's what we want to do and then increasingly again the system around has not changed and it becomes impossible and then we hear these stories of in the end I gave up and we have to end thank you so much Marion and Cass and Sam for taking part and thank you everyone who logged on and participated we hope that you found the discussion illuminating and I'm hopeful that we can keep up the resistance so perhaps prevent this omnibus in its current form thank you very much


and welcome to our channel. Today I'm going to make a video on criminal rehabilitation. I've prepared seven tips on how to prepare and complete a strong criminal rehabilitation application. So the first tip is the personal statement. Any criminal rehabilitation should include a good personal statement from you, the person that is the applicant, a personal statement that explains in detail when the act was committed, what was the act and what was the details around the act. It should also include the dates of the charges and the conviction. This is important because it's going to allow the officer to understand the circumstances around the offense. So often what I see from my clients is, for example, theft, petty theft, assault charges, DUIs, and often it happens when people are a little bit younger, 18, 19, 20, 22, and now they're much older and for example they want to come visit to Canada or they're being sponsored by a spouse to Canada and they have this on their record. And even though sometimes it's hard to go back and remember events, these events because it was a long time ago and maybe you're not proud of it and you're ashamed, I really advise my clients to sit down and take the time to write the personal statement because even though the officer is going to have the police clearances, an FBI report for example, or the court judgment, probation documentation, sentences, things like that, those documents often don't allow the officer to understand what actually happened because for example if somebody, I don't know how to, for example, the DUI, but maybe there was circumstances around that. For example, you were struggling with depression or you had just gotten some bad news about something and it was a difficult time in your life, maybe you were having some financial difficulties, which is very possible. This is life, life is not always easy and sometimes things happen when we're younger or it doesn't have to necessarily be that we're younger but sometimes we have periods of time where life is just difficult and certain things happen like criminal convictions. So it's good to take the time and write, I usually recommend to write like a good two, three pages. It's not important that it be very long, it's about the quantity of papers that you write, the pages that you write, but the quality of it, but usually I find that a good personal statement is a couple of pages that really goes into detail about your personal situation, even though it's private, even though you may not be comfortable to write that, it's good to really spend a couple of hours, review it a couple of times and write a good personal statement for your application. I find that this really makes a big difference when the officer is reviewing your criminal rehabilitation application. The second tip is to make sure that you include in your application original clearances. So for example, if you are a citizen of the United States, you have to include original clearances from all the state that you lived in for more than six months since the age of 18 and you have to include an original FBI report. It's very important, currently those are the requirements. It might change when you watch this video, but it's been like this for many, many years. It's important not to submit copies, you have to get the originals and sometimes it may take some time to get the originals, but you have to go through those hurdles and obtain those documents. And you have to make sure that those clearances are valid. Sometimes what happens, for example, a client retains me, let's say in January 2019 for criminal rehabilitation and we start doing the paperwork. I give my client the list of documents, they apply for the clearances, we get the clearances in the FBI report, let's say in February or March 2019, but then there's some missing documentation, the personal statement is not done or other things happen and now the client wants to file in September 2019. Well now we can't use those clearances anymore because it's been a couple of months that they, not that they're expired necessarily, but it's a little bit outdated for immigration. So it's important that when you start the process for the criminal rehabilitation you really do the legwork and you're prepared to prepare and get all of the documents because submitting clearances that are outdated might result in the application being refused or returned to you. Third tip is to ensure that you give all the right court documentation. So depending on how your offense was dealt with in the court system, if it was in a trial, if it was only a plea agreement and then there was just documentation, if it was just a disposition, however it happened we need to include the documentation. So that includes court judgment, court transcript. If you were on probation, the terms and conditions of that probation, if you completed your probation letter from your probation officer stating that you completed the probation, if you had to pay a fine, proof that you have finalized and paid the fine, if you had to do some community service or you had to attend like an AA program or some other programs, all documentation is related to that because to be eligible for a criminal rehabilitation depending on how much time you have to have had completed the sentence, we need to prove to the officer that you completed your sentence and sentences include completing probation, completing mandatory programs, completing jail time, completing community services. Tip number four, well tip number four was what I just talked about, ensure that your sentence was completed and that you have evidence of this. For example, I had a client who had a certain offense and completed everything, probation, imprisonment, everything, but there was an outstanding fine and he hadn't paid it yet because he had moved and he had lost track to make that payment and it was many many years later, it was like eight, nine years later, but we couldn't apply for the criminal rehabilitation up until the time that he had completed this complete sentence so he had to pay that fine and then we were able to apply so that's really important to make sure that you've completed all of the sentences. Tip number five, if you're applying for criminal rehabilitation, it means that you're coming to Canada for some reason, maybe a permanent reason or a temporary reason. If it is a temporary reason like you want to come visit some friends or family, it's important to include in your application your ties to your home country so if you are for example from France, you should include employment details, employment letter, tax documentation, if you have any assets, property, house, car, to show to the officer that yes you are on your way to getting hopefully currently rehabilitated, you want to come visit Canada and at the same time you're demonstrating that you're not going to overstay in Canada, that you're not going to work illegally in Canada, that you have a life in your home country for example in France and here are all the documentations to show that you have a life but also you have a balanced and organized life in your home country. Tip number six, you have to include in your application the foreign law so if you are convicted for example in let's say Germany of assault, minor assault charge or something like that, the officer needs to see and assess what that offense would have been if it would have if those acts were committed in Canada, what would the equivalent conviction be and for that the officer needs to look at the foreign law so you need to see under what statute or what rule you were convicted under and print out those laws from the German code, the German criminal code and include that in your application. And tip number seven, it's important to include an explanation as to why you believe you are eligible for rehabilitation so depending on what type of conviction or convictions you had, if it's major or complicated and you're not too sure, I really recommend to hire a lawyer for this. What we do as lawyers is we prepare a strong submission letter, it's a cover letter where we outline the whole background, this is in addition to your personal statement which we would include in the file, we would include all the details of what led to the offense, we would include information about how the sentences are completed, we would do what we call a criminal assessment so we would compare the foreign law to the law in Canada and we would make argumentation as to why if this offense had happened in Canada, you would have been convicted of this type of conviction and because of that because this many years have passed, you are eligible for rehabilitation, you also include strong submissions on your life, the reason why you want to come to Canada, how you have a balanced life in your home country and you want to come and visit Canada or you want to immigrate to Canada and why you deserve to be rehabilitated and how much you have changed from the person you were to the person that you are now. So we're really going to details in this application because the decision making process is a discretionary one so it's not just fill out the form and submit it, sometimes you can do that and you might get an approval but most of the time officers were really going to details in these types of cases because immigration takes criminality quite seriously. I hope you enjoyed this video and if you have any questions don't hesitate to contact us. Thank you.