The first thing I'd say is it did last at the federal level in a very explicit and visible way for 12 years, and that's not bad for any exercise. All the state and territorial governments introduced these, what I thought and what I now call the “femocrat”-based, gender-responsive budget, meaning it was driven by the women's policy units within government. Those exercises continued in similar forms right up to about 2001.
What happened after that is that at the federal level we got a change of government, which has changed again very recently. In 1996 it abolished the femicrat-type exercise and replaced it each year with a ministerial budget statement. So it was still visible, but it was more politicized and less reliant on analysis. It was a recognition that government was saying they still needed to be accountable to the public in some way.
In South Australia the exercise morphed into various forms. Even in 2003 the treasury was still publishing an appendix to the budget papers, saying this was the impact on women and girls.
What I would say is it never stays the same. A mistake we made in Australia was thinking we could have the same model forever. Things change, particularly the economic and political climate. By the early to mid-1990s, we shifted into a discourse that the role of government had to be reduced all the time. The basis on which we had introduced gender-responsive budgeting was in more of a Keynesian economic environment where it was possible to get substantial increases in funding for women's issues. When that environment changed, we didn't really have a strategy, other than stopping the worst from happening.
We know a lot more now, but I think each country has to design the exercise according to its conditions. I would say now there's more of a consultative process within government on these issues and much more emphasis on whole of government approaches, but we don't call it a gender budget exercise or a women's budget exercise; we try to always bring the budget element into the process. What we're still lacking I think is a strong movement outside government to put pressure on the budget.