Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have literally just run into this chamber after being out the front of Parliament House at the March 4 Justice today. It's a march and a rally where women are asking for their voices to be heard. They're just asking for some acknowledgement, particularly from the Morrison government and the Prime Minister, about the experiences that too many women have on the streets, in restaurants, in nightclubs, in their homes and in their workplaces that have their genesis in gender inequality and that manifest as harassment, assault and often, tragically, as rape.

We are at a pivotal moment. We have been at pivotal moments in our history before, and we are at one now. As my colleague the member for Holt reminds me, and as others have said, it's a reflection point. This is a time not just to use the words 'gender equality' and not just to use the language of empathy; it's a time to live gender equality and a time to live empathy. It's a time to be kind to ourselves, to our neighbours and to everyone. If we don't grasp this moment in time, this reflection point, this tipping point, then we are destined to have another couple of hundred years in Australia of inequality and big sections of our community feeling that their day-to-day existence isn't seen.

We know it's not just women. We know that our First Nations people have been struggling for centuries to have their history before white man acknowledged and their history since white man acknowledged. We know that people in our communities with disabilities have been waiting their entire lives to be seen for the value that they bring to our communities and to their families and for government to not just talk about them when it's politically expedient to do so but to do the hard work to make sure that people who are living with disability get to live lives of fulfilment, just as those of us who don't have a disability do.

We know that people who are gay, lesbian and transgender are still struggling to be accepted. They don't want everyone else to live the lifestyle that they live. They don't want everyone else to all of a sudden say, 'Okay; I'm gay now,' or 'I want to celebrate you the way you celebrate you'; they just want to be allowed to go about their lives and love who they want to love and be who they want to be and celebrate the way they want to celebrate without being told that they're wrong or evil or corrupting—just the way I'm free to go about my life without being told those things because I'm straight. That's what gay and lesbian and transgender people want. We know that people of colour in our community, from First Nations through to the waves and waves of immigrants that have made our country a magnificent multicultural community, just want to be heard and accepted within a community that too many times still, unfortunately, judges others.

I was at an International Women's Day event in Frankston North on Thursday when one of the amazing young women who spoke at that event said, 'Why can't we just love each other more? Why can't we just be loved?' At another event that same day, a young man, who must have been about 12, at a gender equality forum said, 'Why do we all judge each other so much?' If those young people can ask those questions, why can't our government not only ask those questions but also genuinely dedicate itself to be part of the answer? We just need to be kinder to each other.

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