The Government's new workplace relations system promises to give women, and men, the opportunity to make their work arrangements more family-friendly.

The first Women, Management and Employment Relations Conference took place almost twenty years ago, in 1989. Since then, many conditions for women in the workplace related to management and employment for women have changed.

But too many have not.

Women's equal access, participation and experience in the labour force; pay equity and the ability to be financially independent and secure in retirement are key parts of the equation to once again position Australia as a leader on women's rights.

The Government has begun the process of accession to the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) - the international treaty on women's human rights.

As you know, full time working women are paid about 15 per cent less than full time men. Data sources and income measures all vary but on almost every measure, women earn less than men.

The impact of this long term pay inequality is that we now have a generation of women who are retiring with, on average, less than half the savings of men.

This is a major economic problem for those individual women, but it is also a serious issue for the nation. From the moment a woman enters the workforce she is likely to earn less than her male colleagues, regardless of her career, industry or level.

If we are honestly going to confront the major education and employment challenges we face today and in the next ten years, we need all the stakeholders involved.

For the last few months I have been leading the review of one of the world's largest human capital services companies. With more than a dozen business units and subsidiaries in Australia alone and locations spanning the globe, the review has touched on the pointy end of engagement with government and the public sector, labour and education policies and the rise of knowledge and intellectual property as a service component.

While conducting the review I have also had the fortune of seeing global research and data on the movement of labour, migration of skilled and unskilled workers and the dynamics involved in developing economies strengthening education infrastructures and skills training for the future.

As some of you will know I have also, in the last twelve months, spent time reviewing higher education frameworks in South Africa, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Malaysia.

On a recent trip to South Africa I noted a move towards consolidating vocational and technical education across what we in Australia would call TAFE.

Scratch most Australian organisations and you'll discover a productive diversity that's too good to miss.

The most useful ideas that think tanks produce are those that are not only practical and applicable, but imbued with easy logic. Sometimes they provide a new slant on things so that existing processes can be made more efficient. Other times, they reveal hidden assets that few have identified, though they're right in front of our face.

One such example was a project undertaken nearly 15 years ago by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA), in conjunction with the then Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA), which was part of the Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet. Sandy Hollway, who later went on to manage the Sydney Olympics ran OMA. The project looked at ways of making business more aware of the repository of skills, talents and contacts buried inside the country's multicultural workforce.

It is not uncommon in Australia to find firms scouring the globe for new markets for their products when, say, the brother of a foreign-born employee in the HR section is looking to import that very thing into their home country.