Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm delighted today to speak to this motion and, more broadly, to support my colleague and neighbour the member for Indi. Whilst the issue of the proportion of women on our boards, both agricultural and non-agricultural, has been the subject of much discussion in this place, particularly amongst the women over many, many years, I have to say that I have moved my own position somewhat since those early days. If I had stood up here 15 years ago, I would have said, 'No, no, no, leave it as it is. Women need to compete on their merit, and they have plenty of merit. Let's just get on with it. The times have to catch up with the increasing proportion of women who are entering the workforce at a variety of different skill levels.' However, having watched the situation for as long as I have, I am moving much more towards the position that the member for Indi has enunciated this morning. I am particularly sympathetic to her description and calls on the government when it comes to the proportion of women on agricultural boards and those boards that have a composition which is at least in part determined by government. If we, through our research and development levies, are supporting an entity, then we have a stake. We may not officially have a stake at the table, but we should have an ability to influence something as important as the composition of the women on those boards—not the appointments, not the individuals, just the broad composition.

This debate has moved from nothing at all, to targets. Those targets are often expressed as: 'Well, it would be really good if we could get here. Everyone come on board and let's admit that we aren't where we need to be, and it would be really good if we could get here." I've seen this in the Liberal Party over many years. In fact, my good friend Chantelle Fornari-Orsmond said at the New South Wales Liberal Party's AGM on the weekend—and I'm paraphrasing her here because I didn't actually attend; I've just read reports of what she said—'Can you men stop pretending that you support women in positions of leadership and power in political parties and then doing absolutely nothing about it? Stop coming here to our regular events and just rolling out the lines and then going away and doing what you've always done.' I'm not suggesting, as others of my gender may, that there's a boys' club and there's a conspiracy. I don't actually think any of those things exist, and I certainly don't think they exist on agricultural boards. But I just think there's a lack of momentum and there's a lack of commitment, and if everyone keeps doing what they've been doing then the pace of change, as the member for Indi has outlined, will just be too slow. I think we need some hard targets in there at some point in time. I think we need a commitment that says we actually have to get to these numbers.

This is no more important in any section in society than it is in agriculture. What I know, as someone who has lived her life in rural Australia—and, while I would have once described myself as a 'farmer's wife', I would probably now describe myself as having been a farmer for 17 whole years of my life—is what women contribute. I saw firsthand what women contribute in their communities. I represented, as I call them, the 'wonderful women of the west' in outback New South Wales through the Millennium drought. That was 10 years of the most heartbreaking climatic and societal conditions that any family could face. Families broke apart—of course they did—under the strain. Children were sent away to school. Children came back from university because they couldn't bear to see their parents unable to work the farm and unable to support the cost of keeping them in their education. There was untold pain and distress.

But it was the women who kept things together. The women never took a top-down approach to life and the future; it was the women who always did everything from the grassroots up. They kept their families together, they kept their communities together and they recognised that the holistic approach is the only one that sustains into the future. So we need those women on our boards. We need them making decisions. How dare anyone suggest that somehow they're not capable? We know that they are.

The Australian Institute of Company Directors, a very august body, and many members in this place are very supportive of the member for Indi's motion today, as am I.

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