Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's my great pleasure to rise and speak on this consideration in detail and pay tribute to the Minister for Women and to this government for the many ways in which we are standing up for women and investing in women, whether it's in the workforce, whether it's assisting women with child care or whether it's the very important role of supporting women who are the most vulnerable in our society, those with a disability and of course those who have confronted family violence.

A hallmark of this government is the many ways in which we have invested in the many causes for women. There's one that I was very proud to celebrate just a few weeks ago. With the Treasurer and the Minister for Jobs and Innovation, I visited a new aged-care centre in Grovedale. I was very proud as well to open that aged-care centre a couple of weeks ago when I returned.

While we were visiting the centre, we were celebrating a new program. We have committed $10 million for the Launch into Work program in the 2017-18 budget. It is providing wonderful training, mentoring and work experience to assist women moving into the workforce. There were about 10 women who were recipients under that program. That is 10 new jobs just in one aged-care centre, supported by our government, on the ground, giving the delivery of jobs that we need and focusing on giving women opportunities to return to the workforce. That is just one of the many examples of the way in which we are supporting women in the workforce.

Boosting women's workforce participation is an economic priority for the Turnbull government. We can boost GDP by as much as 13 per cent while strengthening women's economic security. What a celebration we have before us with the coalition's record on promoting women's workforce participation. Women's employment is at a record high of over 5.6 million women in the workforce. Part of that is because of the way that we're also investing in child care. We're making it easier for women to return to the workforce. We've made a historic investment overall of an additional $2.5 billion in child care. This investment is encouraging more than 230,000 families to return to work or increase their paid employment and support early-learning opportunities for children. In the budget, an additional $428 million has been provided to support universal access to preschool in the forthcoming year. We recognise that those 15 hours of kindergarten in preschool years are very important, and we've made a very substantial investment.

One of the very big focuses for women in the workforce and a big focus of our government is in acknowledging the important role that parents play in caring for their children. There are a range of programs and payments to support them. Currently, the government spends a substantial amount of taxpayers money in three main areas of family support—around $19 billion in family tax benefit, a total of around $7 billion all up in childcare support and around $2 billion in paid parental leave. These are very substantial investments—$19 billion alone in family tax benefit. FTB is very important in supporting women and families, particularly when women want to return to work.

I touched earlier on the work that's been done for women affected by family violence. I spent a large part of last year doing an inquiry into family violence law reform and understanding these issues in a lot of depth. The Turnbull government has led the way in investing in women's safety, starting with a $100 million women's safety package, which was announced back in September 2015, and those investments have continued. Making sure that women are safe in their home and in their workplace is an incredibly important focus. I'm particularly proud of the investments. I ask the minister to expand on some of these investments that our government has made.

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