Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Goodness. Okay, everybody on this side of the House was a councillor! I will leave it at that. No—a large majority of us were councillors, and we learnt the skills and we learnt to understand the things that impact on people's lives at that very grassroots level, and we took that very grassroots level to the national agenda. I spent a little bit of time in the state parliament, but I would have to say that this is absolutely the ultimate place in which you can make a contribution to the political agenda.

When I was elected to Swansea, I was actually the first woman from the Hunter to be elected to a lower house seat in either the state or federal parliaments. But the really good news is that 70 per cent of all elected representatives in the Hunter are now women. That is phenomenal—really phenomenal. It shows that Labor has a real commitment to seeing women in this parliament and women in every parliament in the country. I can see Joel sitting down the front there, endorsing my comments!

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