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

As others who have spoken to this before me have noted, in the latest World Economic Forum Global gender gap report, Australia has moved from 43rd place to 26th place. That's a pretty impressive jump of 17 spots. It is the largest improvement in Australia's ranking in the report since the index started comparing nations in 2016. There is no doubt that that jump was contributed to significantly by the fact that, for the first time in history, we have a federal government which has more women than men in it—53 per cent are women—and we have a government that has spent the last 12 months starting to implement an agenda for gender equality that goes from workplaces to politics to schools to all aspects of society.

The Minister for Women, Katy Gallagher, is right when she says that better gender representation leads to better outcomes. It is almost obvious—although for hundreds of years people, men, didn't seem to realise it—that the more people you have around the table from different backgrounds bringing different experiences and different points of view to a discussion, the better the outcomes you will get and the more representative the outcomes will be. So it's a significant achievement, but there's no doubt that we still have a long way to go in Australia for gender equality.

We're all pretty wrapped up in the Matildas at the moment. Seeing how those young women, who are strong and fierce and feminine and tough and just amazing athletes, are representing their country in a way that we would want anyone, male or female, to represent their country and the way that Australians are responding to that is amazing. More Australians watched their last match than watched the AFL grand final, which seems to be blowing some people's minds, although a lot of us would say that we've been telling you for a very long time that women's sport is exciting. It's different to men's sport in many ways. Sure we don't jump as high or run as fast—always; sometimes we do—or kick the ball quite as hard or throw it as far—

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