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

I rise today proudly to speak on International Women's Day, which is the focal point for the movement of women's rights right around the world and has been celebrated for over 100 years. Disappointingly, though, we're going to have to keep celebrating and keep going to all of those breakfasts for the next 200 years if we continue on the trajectory that we have already set for ourselves. The day helps us to recognise and honour some of the amazing women and the important, impressive achievements of women right around the globe. International Women's Day also helps us to galvanise collective action across the globe. We have seen this movement gain more momentum and we've seen the fourth wave of feminism, if you like, across the globe, fuelled by movements like #MeToo, Time's Up, and the one that Tracey Spicer, our own, launched right here in Australia over the weekend, the NOW movement, which is a way for Australian women in the workplace to be heard on sexual harassment.

International Women's Day marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity, which the World Economic Forum's Global gender gap report 2017 tells us is 200 years away. That's a lot of International Women's Day breakfasts right there, just to be treated equally. We don't want to get above you guys—don't panic. We just want to be treated equally: pay, conditions and all of those things. And we must take steps to close the gender gap. As Bill Shorten, our leader, has said:

Achieving equality for women and men is a test of our national character and an essential building block for national prosperity.

I am incredibly proud of Labor's rich legacy in addressing the gender gap, not just delivering empty words. 'Legacy' is probably the wrong word, given that we're still championing this cause and taking steps to reduce the unfairness between the sexes, including introducing the Commonwealth Sex Discrimination Act; the national women's alliances, so women had a voice in government; and the Workplace Gender Equality Agency to help close the gender gap. We set up 1800RESPECT and had to fight for the funding to continue, and we saw the dreadful privatisation of that service last year. We introduced the National Women's Health Policy in 2010. We raised the childcare rebate to 50 per cent—not entirely a women's issue though. We listed RU486 on the PBS. And we set ourselves quotas for female representation in the halls of power. We are on track to deliver those quotas and the key targets that we set for ourselves. We haven't stopped and will not stop fighting for the 75 per cent of women who have lost their penalty rates.

Last year on International Women's Day Bill Shorten announced that we would develop a comprehensive blueprint for gender equality, which my colleague Sharon Claydon ran through before. Through our Labor Status of Women Caucus Committee, which I am very pleased to be a secretary on, chaired by the member for Newcastle, we spent last year hearing from over 5,000 women at 35 hearings as part of our Setting the Agenda conversation, giving women in our communities a voice. I am proud that a Labor government will work to set up frameworks for gender responsive policy and decision-making. We will introduce gender impact assessments on cabinet submissions and new policy proposals, and bring back the Women's Budget Statement, unbelievably scrapped by then Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who was also the Minister for Women, disgracefully. Further, a Labor government will convene a ministerial council on gender equality.

When International Women's Day first began, women were championing their rights and demanding that they be given the right to vote. We have moved on from that argument. In terms of political representation, back in 1994, Labor said we needed more women in parliament. Back then, we had about 14 per cent. In 2018, and with the recent election of Ged Kearney in the seat of Batman, today we are now at 48 per cent. The coalition, by comparison, pathetically, are at 22 per cent. I did hear the member for Bennelong talking about the importance of women. I challenge him: set up your own status of women caucus committee within your own party. The motion that is before us today is not even supported by the Minister for Women, who is supposed to represent half the country. Also, two out of the three speakers offered up by this government are blokes—telling us about our women's issues. Having women in parliament and in positions of power makes a massive difference to all women around the country and also around the world. Sadly, we're seeing the coalition have to play catch-up, and all we ever hear from them is whingeing about our quota system. Well, guys, boys, it works.

I am proud that, in Lindsay this year, we brought together 130 women for my International Women's Day event. We had Jane Caro join us as our special guest, and she was inspirational and formidable, as she always is. We had an awards ceremony for the incredibly impressive women who are doing great things in our electorate that you never hear about because, typically, women go about what we're doing quietly, amongst ourselves, and we don't put ourselves out there to be recognised or big-note ourselves and put ourselves up for awards—which is one of the challenges that we've got. I want to thank all of those people and wish everyone a happy International Women's Day.

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