Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Kingston for this matter of public importance today and for the terrific contribution she made focusing on child care, in particular, earlier. I also pay tribute to her for the policy work that she's done to develop what is a fine childcare policy for Labor. Our policy will make child care more affordable and more accessible for Australian families. It will encourage women to take on that extra hour of work, that extra day of work. On this side, we never want someone to say no to an extra hour of work or an extra day of work because it doesn't make sense for them financially. Only our policy will increase participation and economic growth. It's not surprising that there is a difference in policy between our side and that side.

We saw today the release of a report from the Menzies Research Centre, co-authored by the member for Boothby. As the report acknowledges, the Liberal Party is nowhere near on track to meeting its commitment to seeing half of its elected members be female by 2025. We had the same goal to reach 50 per cent by 2025. We're almost there now. They're stuck at around about a quarter. I want to compliment the member for Boothby for her involvement in this matter. It is a brave thing to do; it's gutsy. I want to compliment her for calling out this problem in the modern Liberal Party, because it is a serious problem when you acknowledge that something is an issue, where you want to increase female representation and then you stick solidly to 25 per cent for decades after that. Unfortunately, the report goes on to vehemently reject any kind of quota or target system, saying that it undermines the principles of competitive enterprise and reward for effort.

Someone gave me a good bit of advice today about how we deal with this issue of inequality of female representation in politics and in other male dominated areas. They said, 'You could solve this problem overnight if only women had the confidence of a mediocre man.' I think there are a few people on the other side who would prove that point.

The truth is that things like achieving equality do not happen on their own. Organisations, including political parties, set targets for all sorts of things. Businesses set targets for profitability. Businesses set targets for market share. If a political party is prepared to be judged by the public on achieving gender equality, why wouldn't it be prepared to set a target?

Why wouldn't you set a target? How does progress happen unless we say, 'This is what we want to achieve, and this is our mechanism for getting there'?

I have made this offer before, and I make it really sincerely and in the spirit of bipartisanship: I would be happy to sit down with senior Liberal women, as I've done with some senior Nationals women and say, 'This is our experience. This is how we fought for and achieved change in the Australian Labor Party.' It doesn't happen by accident. It doesn't happen overnight. It's happened because these women here and many, many thousands more have fought for and achieved this change over time.

I'll tell you what, having women at the table when decisions are made gives you better policy. If you had more women around the cabinet table, you wouldn't have a Prime Minister saying 'I don't know what the women are complaining about. We've built them a great road to get to the maternity ward' that's hours away. You wouldn't have people on the other side saying, 'Well, tax policy is not gendered.' Give me a break! You wouldn't have this situation where you make an announcement in 2018—the Boosting Female Founders Initiative—then reannounce it the next day, then reannounce it the next year and still not have spent a single cent of that $18 million to support female entrepreneurs, which is obviously something that we support on this side as well. And you wouldn't have funding for domestic violence programs and sexual assault education in schools cut at the same time as White Ribbon is releasing information showing that 40 per cent of young men think that it's not domestic violence to punch—to punch!—or control your partner. That's the problem with not having enough women sitting around the table when decisions are being made. You get the wrong decisions. (Time expired)

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