Emma Husar (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today I rise to place on record my support and commend Australia's efforts for a stable, secure and prosperous Pacific region. The Women's Leadership Initiative is a step towards gender equality in the Pacific. It contributes to expanding political representation, effective leadership and empowering women who face substantial barriers to participation. Harnessing the power of women is crucial for the development of any region, most especially in the Pacific. The initiative extends the benefits of Australian awards to include a collegiate mentoring opportunity for personal growth and strengthens relationships between women leaders in Australia and the Pacific. It is part of Australia's longstanding contribution to growth development of leadership in developing countries that started with the Colombo Plan in the 1950s.

I commend DFAT on running the aid and development programs that benefit our Pacific neighbours; however, there is more that we can be doing. To start, Australia can stop cutting our level of assistance overseas. Labor is deeply concerned that Australia is falling further in world rankings for overseas development assistance. The Abbott and Turnbull governments have relentlessly attacked aid funding and have taken Australia to its lowest level of spending on aid as a proportion of gross national income, or GNI, since the program began. Australian development assistance fell by over 12 per cent in the 2016 year. Minister Bishop has seen $11 billion slashed from the aid program under her watch. The 2016-17 budget delivered the weakest levels of Australian development assistance in history, spending just 23c in every $100 of our national income on foreign aid. Over the next decade that will worsen, with the Turnbull government's budget figures forecasting that our international development program will fall to just 0.17 per cent of GNI. This is an international embarrassment created by this government.

A backbencher thinks that they can rewrite their appalling history with this motion. Their lack of investment harms our efforts to alleviate poverty, which affects more women and children than men. It also harms our aspirations to make our region safer and more secure. Our reputation as a caring nation is at risk. We cannot abrogate our responsibilities.

We need to support strong Pacific women in positions of leadership, including political leadership. In August 2017 the total number of women elected to Pacific nation parliaments numbered just 39 in forum island nations, excluding Australia and New Zealand. There are only 39 MPs out of a total of 559. That is seven per cent of elected representatives. Sadly, it has never been higher than 10 per cent. In comparison, the Inter-Parliamentary Union reports that the world average of women elected members in July 2017 was 23.5 per cent. That is not helped by this government's abysmal support for women in our own parliament. Those on the other side of the House would like us to believe that that's okay and that we don't need to address this inequity either here or anywhere else in our region.

A look at representation by women in political office, even the most cursory check, shows there's much need for improvement. PNG has no female MPs out of 111 parliamentarians. There are no female MPs in the Federated States of Micronesia. The Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Tuvalu have one female MP. Tonga will hold their elections this November. Only one woman served in the last parliament. Nauru has two female MPs; Marshall Islands and Kiribati, three each; Palu, four. In the 2016 elections in Samoa, four women were successful, joining the one female there already; they now have five female MPs. Samoa is the only one that has a 10 per cent minimum quota. Fiji has seven MPs out of 50.

Australia can do more to support the development of women's political leadership and representation in the Pacific, including programs like the Women's Leadership Initiative. The Liberal and National parties can certainly do the same here. Fort-five per cent of federal ALP parliamentarians are women, compared to 21 per cent of Liberals and 14 of the Nationals. We know that the number 13 is an unlucky one for this government; 13 is the total number of female government MPs in the House of Representatives, out of 76. They are always asking their Dixers in QT about alternative approaches. Here is a brief explanation of how getting more women in leadership goes.

In 1994, Labor adopted an affirmative action rule that at least 35 per cent of our parliamentarians would be women. When we achieved that, we lifted it again to 40 per cent. Then, at our last national conference in 2015, we lifted the target to 50 per cent by 2025. On quotas, even Peter van Onselen has said:

Opponents of doing so say Liberals preselect on merit, not on gender balance. But for such logic to be sustained one has to believe that women are only worthy, capable or meritorious of holding 13 out of 76 Coalition seats in the house.

I welcome the Women's Leadership Initiative. (Time expired)

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