Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) acknowledges that for nearly two decades a 10 per cent GST has been applied to women’s sanitary products;

(2) notes that:

(a) this is an unfair and discriminatory tax on women;

(b) tampons and pads are not luxury items but rather essential items;

(c) Australian women are fed up with paying extra for items that they need to live and work;

(d) Labor has announced a concrete plan to scrap the GST on sanitary products; and

(e) Labor’s plan:

  (i) would restore equity but also save a woman up to $1,000 over her lifetime; and

  (ii) has already attracted the support of a number of state and territories, putting progress within reach; and

(3) calls on the Government to:

(a) immediately adopt Labor’s plan to abolish the tax on women’s sanitary products; and

(b) work with the states and territories to end this tax once and for all.

A tax on tampons and sanitary products is a tax on women, plain and simple. The tampon tax costs Australian women around $30 million a year, with individual women forced to pay $1,000 over their lifetime. As time has passed, this tax has become more and more conspicuous for its hypocrisy and blatant discrimination. It's a relic from another era that simply doesn't belong in today's world.

I'm very pleased to be bringing this motion before the House this evening on the very same day that our colleagues in the Senate agreed to axe this unfair and discriminatory impost on women. But it's appalling and embarrassing that the Turnbull government is doubling down on its commitment to this preposterous throwback policy. At the very same time that Mr Turnbull is running a relentless crusade to hand back billions of dollars to big business, multinationals and the banks, he's pushing back on removing this ridiculous tax on Australian women. Let's be clear, tampons are not a luxury. They are a necessity, just like other GST-exempt health and hygiene products such as sunscreen or incontinence pads. Anyone who tells you otherwise has clearly never menstruated.

This issue is one that shows how deeply removed this government is from the modern world—how absolutely and utterly out of touch so many of its members are with basic community standards of fairness and equality. They're going in to bat against the GST on superyachts, but won't lift a finger to remove the tax on women. They think it's fine for a tax to be levied on tampons, but not Viagra. Devoid of any sort of sensible argument, to protect the tax the government has reverted to childish name calling, with the Treasurer declaring that calls to remove the tampon tax are 'silly'.

On this side of the House, we see things very differently. I think it's very fitting to note tonight that there is not a single government member who is prepared to rise and speak on this motion. I do want to pay special tribute to the member for Ballarat, who will be speaking later, for her lifelong commitment to ensuring that this tax on tampons and sanitary products is removed. We on this side of the House have a concrete plan to axe this unfair tax. We'll work with the states and territories to scrap it urgently upon coming to office. Any financial impact will be offset by adding GST to 12 therapies which the Chief Medical Officer has said have no scientific basis or any evidence based proof of efficacy. People will of course still be able to access these services, but they will have to pay GST on them. It's a fully funded plan that we have: it won't hurt the states, and it has already secured the support of the premiers of Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia and the chief ministers of the ACT and the Northern Territory. The Turnbull government has no excuse not to act.

Of course, from the outside, it's all blindingly obvious that the tax needs to go, but it illustrates a much deeper and more impactful problem: what happens when you develop policy that affects women without having women at the table? One thing is for certain: if women had had a deciding say when the final details of the GST inclusions and exclusions were being nutted out by the Howard government, this tampon tax would not have made it out of the starting gate. But back in 1999 these laws were drafted by a largely male cohort of public servants, reporting to a largely male cabinet in an overwhelming male parliament. Is it any wonder that this is what they came up with? The reality is that until we have equal representation of women in this place and the other place, until women have equal access to the policy development table, until Australian women have equal representation in cabinet, this parliament will continue to develop policy that disadvantages women.

Labor has a plan to fix the tampon tax. It's fully costed and it's a no-brainer. More importantly, Labor has a plan to make sure this sort of discriminatory policy never sees the light of day again—at least, not under a Labor government. We'll restore the women's budget statement so we know what the gender impacts of budget decisions are. We'll subject every single piece of legislation to a gender analysis to identify any potentially adverse gender impacts. With 48 per cent of our federal representatives now being women, we'll have the right people at the table to make the right decisions for Australian women. It's time for the government to follow suit on axing the tampon tax and bringing these important initiatives forward.

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