Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to read a note from a female small business owner in my electorate of Lindsay, who says, 'I'm thankful for all that has been put in place during the coronavirus pandemic. We have so much faith in the way that this country is being led that we just purchased a new vehicle because of the $150,000 asset write-off. Due to having three apprentices, we benefited from the apprentice rebate.'

I'm not here to say how wonderful and great things are for women—I don't think there's a person on this earth who has been having a great time of it over the last few months. We've had the health impacts of coronavirus. We've had the economic impacts of coronavirus. As families, we've been impacted, ensuring that our children are still getting that great Australian education at home. But the Morrison government has been very focused on the health impacts, the economic impacts and our Australian families. From an economic perspective, I have over 15,000 small and medium-sized businesses in Lindsay. We were certainly a coronavirus hotspot at times, which put extra pressure on our community, and we've had over 4,500 organisations access JobKeeper. So we have very much been focused on the economic and health impacts. As you know, I have Newmarch House in my community.

Lindsay is a community that comes together and has a wonderful community spirit. I've got a female network within the Lindsay electorate of small business owners, and we have very much stayed in touch and talked about the road to recovery post-coronavirus. Part of that road to recovery is the large infrastructure investment that the Morrison government is putting into Western Sydney to create more jobs. When I've gone out and visited the infrastructure projects, it's been really fantastic and pleasing to see the number of women who are taking up jobs in construction and non-traditional female roles.

Encouraging female workforce participation is really important to me. It's something I did when I led W21, the 21st century global women's initiative at the United States Studies Centre, which looked at how growing women's economic participation would contribute to global economic growth and, certainly, economic growth in our country. So creating jobs for women is something I'm very passionate about. I want to ensure that in Western Sydney those jobs will be in industries that will feature with the development of the airport, and in manufacturing, agriculture and technology. This means that I have a strong focus on educating our young girls in science, technology, engineering and maths. This is a focus of our government, and the industry minister talks about this a lot. She has come out to Lindsay where we've worked with some amazing young girls in their development of their interest in science and maths and where that might take them in the future.

We need to be ensuring that we're reaching our full workforce potential. I am focused locally—and I know the Prime Minister is too—on ensuring that, as we emerge from coronavirus, women are still getting all the opportunities they can. That's why the recent numbers have been pleasing, with ABS payroll data showing that the number of women in jobs increased by 1.4 per cent in May, compared with 0.4 per cent for men. But we do have a lot of work to do. It is an encouraging start and I am completely focused, from a local perspective.

I know that getting a job helps many women. I've worked with women in social housing to get them to financial and housing independence. So, from all ends of the spectrum, I think supporting women and encouraging increased female participation in the workforce is something that we're all going to be focused on and, certainly, something I'll be focused on in my electorate of Lindsay.

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