Sally Sitou (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Groom for his contribution and I do note that he is the deputy chair of the economics committee, so he has a strong interest in this space. I have one word for him—that is, surplus. Surplus not in one year but in two years, something we haven't seen in years and years under those coalition governments. If he wants to talk about spending restraint and fiscal responsibility, that is my answer to him—two surpluses back to back.

I have been in this House now for a little over two years. I have been elected for a little over two years and there have been moments in the last two years that will stay with me forever regardless of how long I get to stay in this place. There is one that I want to share with everyone here today because it is a good indication of what good governments do. As a female federal member of parliament, International Women's Day is a very busy time in the calendar. You get invited to a lot of events. There was one event in particular that I made sure I went to and that was at a construction company down the road from my electorate office in Burwood. I must admit that I had some preconceived ideas about the make-up of the company and the type of workers they would have. But I really wanted to go to this International Women's Day event because I wanted to talk to the people there about all the measures we are taking as a government to ensure we have great gender equity in this country. So I bowled up and talked about the fact that we have, for the first time in our country's history, a majority-female federal government. But that in and of itself is not the achievement. The achievement is all the things that come from that: we've made child care more affordable, we've increased pay for those working in the aged-care sector, and we've made domestic and family violence leave a part of work entitlements. All of these measures are there because we have a majority-female federal government.

I finished on this one note, and I think it's important that I bring it up. I talked about the Paid Parental Leave scheme that the Labor government introduced and is strengthening. An important part of that is that part of the paid parental leave is put aside for the other parent. That was the key point that I wanted to make to this group of construction workers: we want to encourage both parents, mothers and fathers, to take leave so that they can provide care during this critical time.

I finished up my speech and asked if anyone had any questions. There was a gentleman who put his hand up, and I thought: 'Oh no. He's going to be accusing me of being too woke or the like.' But he put his hand up and he said something that really floored me. Mind you, he did it in front of all his colleagues, his male CEO and his male chair of the company. He said that, when his daughter was first born, he took a year off to look after her and it was the best year of his life; he bonded with her, and he was so grateful to be able to take that time off. That, to me, illustrates what good governments do: they recognise where the country is at and where society is moving towards—that is, to have both parents play a critical role in the care of their kids—and they help to nudge it there. So I'm so proud of the measures that we are taking on paid parental leave.

It was a Labor government that introduced this country's first government paid parental leave more than a decade ago, and it was something that I personally got to benefit from. And it's a Labor government that is strengthening that paid parental leave scheme. We are going to be increasing it to 26 weeks by 2026, and one of the key measures announced in this budget was that we are going to be paying superannuation on that paid parental leave. All of us in this place know that superannuation is an investment in someone's retirement. You put the money in now, and it's an investment that grows. We know that, at the moment, women retire with 25 per cent of the retirement income of men. This is a critical change that is going to change that. My lesson to those opposite is that, when you put women at the heart of your government, you also put women at the heart of your budget. This is the change that we need to see.

See this speech in context