Eva Cox AO is a feminist with 50 years activities for creating Truly Civil Societies. In 1995 she warned us in her ABC Boyer Lectures how to achieve these, so is still advocating.

The primary votes for the major parties continue to shrink, signaling that the voting public will vote for candidates heralding real change. We have new levels of female independents and Greens and a greater diversity of winners, with the ALP only just scraping together enough votes and support to govern.

The two key calls for reform that underpinned the votes and united most voters were: environmental actions and integrity measures. The pattern of winners clearly suggested that the style of democracy advocated by the major parties suffers from major distrust. To build a democracy that works for everyone we need to increase the trustworthiness of parties and also open up, and action, broader social concerns.

So let‘s be audacious up front with what needs to change.

We have more independent women who will support issues like closing the gender wage gap - Albo has this on his agenda but it is limited to the current model adjustments. More women in parliament should support needed changes to what should constitute paid labour. Currently ‘work’ is assessed on maledefined skill valuing, and should be expanded to include previously unpaid and underpaid social skills and care.

Therefore reform #1 should be to set up a major inquiry/review of the value of ‘feminised’ skills and contributions to social wellbeing and competence. This should raise the rates of pay of these jobs substantially and fix health and care component’s staff shortages.

Add to this action on the Uluru statement to fix another major inequity and trust should return!