Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Early Childhood Education) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very privileged to stand here today to speak in support of the Fair Work Amendment (Paid Family and Domestic Violence Leave) Bill 2022, and I'm incredibly honoured to be a part of a government that is passing such an important bill—important for so many women out there.

Rather than get into the technicalities of the bill in the time that I have here, I'd like just to ask the indulgence of people present here and those watching. Just grant me a little bit of indulgence. I'm going to ask you, just for a minute, to imagine yourself at the shopping centre doing your weekly shopping or maybe grabbing something for dinner that night because it's your turn to cook—in my household, every night is my turn to cook. You've got your trolley and you're pushing it down the aisle, and just across there you see a woman dressed in a nurse's outfit. She's carrying a basket. She's grabbing a few items as she goes along. Obviously she's got a list that she's working from, and obviously she's in a hurry. Coming around the corner, you see another woman, a mum with two children: a two-year-old who's starting to throw a little bit of a tantrum, and a one-year-old in the trolley who's getting fairly restless. It's that time of the day for them when they really just want to go home, have their dinner and be put down to bed. She's got a little bit of a frown, and she's trying to figure out how she's going to wrangle it all.

Moving on to the next aisle, you see another woman, perhaps a bit older—perhaps she's retired or perhaps she's still working—and she's standing there looking at the myriad of pasta choices, wondering which pasta to get. I've been there. There's always so much choice in pasta, yet people still insist on making their own. Then, down the way a little bit, you see another woman coming along. She's got her heels on and she's dressed in a business suit. She too has a list and a basket, and she's just grabbing things off the shelf. Obviously, she knows exactly what she's cooking for dinner.

Now I want you to pick one of those women—any one of them. Pick one of those women and imagine that that woman is going home to a partner that she is absolutely terrified of. Imagine that she's going to go home and she doesn't know if she picked the right pasta, because, if she picked the wrong pasta, there'll be hell to pay. Imagine that she's going to go home and that child still hasn't settled and, if she hasn't settled the child by then, there's going to be hell to pay. Imagine that she's going to go home and she doesn't know if she's going to make it through the night again without a bruise or a broken wrist or a broken arm or a black eye. Those are the statistics: one in four women—any women. One in four women that you walk past in the shopping centre is going home to a place that is not safe.

Then, when she gets the courage, the ability and the capacity to finally leave, she knows she's going to live in poverty. She knows that she might have to lose her job. She knows that she's going to have to find someone to look after her kids. She knows that she's also going to have to show up to work every day. She's got to get her mortgage sorted out. She's got to find a place to rent. She's got to get her bank finances sorted out. She's got to do shopping. She's got to furnish her house or an apartment, if she can find an apartment. Perhaps she's got to go to a refuge and spend time in a refuge just to be able to be safe. I've been there, and I've been absolutely honoured by having so many women come and share with me their stories of being there.

When they finally leave—and I say 'finally' because it takes more than one go, and many women go back again and again and again, because they have no place to go and they have no financial security, which means that they're forced back to their abusers, to the perpetrators of violence—they need time. They need the time to get their affairs in order and to have some stability for themselves and, if they have children, for their children, who are often with the woman who has had to leave a violent situation and an unsafe home.

When I stood up here, I said I'm privileged to speak about this, because there was a time in my life when I couldn't even have imagined being able to speak about this topic. There was a time in my life when I couldn't even have imagined that we here in this place would be passing such a bill and recognising exactly what is needed to support, help and assist women—and men, but primarily women—who are leaving violent situations. There are many of them out there, my friends. You just don't know who they are.

I remember the first time I spoke about my story. It was at a professional women's gathering, and the number of women who were teachers, doctors or lawyers who came to me and shared their stories with me would absolutely blow your mind. Sixty-eight per cent of women who are escaping family and domestic violence are employed in some form or another. Sixty-eight per cent of those women have to go to work the next day. If those women are in casual work, they have to forgo a day's work and a day's salary in order to be able to rent and furnish a place, sort out their finances, go to court, get a restraining order, seek a lawyer or just take the time that they need to look after their own wellbeing and the wellbeing of their children, if they have children with them.

This is a good bill. This is a bill that we can all come together to support. Yes, I know that there are some concerns: how are the businesses going to afford it—dah, dah, dah? But let me tell you this: if you had ever had to stand in front of your boss and say, 'Hey, I might have to go to a refuge tonight,' and have him respond, 'Well, are you going to make it into work tomorrow?' then you would know just how important this bill is. You would have no reservations whatsoever in supporting this bill. If you had ever had to find a place to live, furnish that place, get your kids off to school—or maybe even change their place of schooling—or go to a court to get a restraining order, you would know how time-consuming it is, and you would know what kind of support you need to be able to do that when you're coming out of trauma or when you're still in trauma.

I said I didn't want to get into the technicalities of this bill, but I will just make a plea to everyone here about how important this bill is, from and on behalf of all the women with lived experience who I've had the absolute honour of meeting over the years—how much this bill means to them and how much it means to them that we are standing in this place talking about this, talking about a way to support them out of family and domestic violence. The situation hasn't changed in the 30 years that I've been a survivor. The numbers are still up there. We're still counting dead women. Anything that we can do—any measure that we can take to help women get out of family and domestic violence, support them and wrap around them and their children as we're doing this—will go a long way to lowering that startling statistic of how many women die every week and how many women are living with family and domestic violence. Anything we can do to make that statistic lower and to support women is a good thing. It's a good thing.

In closing, I commend this bill to the House. I think I've made it pretty clear that I commend this bill to the House. I feel very passionately about this bill. I think I've made that pretty clear too. I implore every member of this House to think about it. Think about that woman at the shopping centre. You might not know her, but, in passing this bill, you can make a difference to her life.

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