Zaneta Mascarenhas (Swan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

One of the popular nightclubs in Fremantle, back in the day, when I was a young adult, was called Zanzibar. It's no longer there, but it was where Little Creatures is now. It was a really great nightclub where the music would be from the eighties and nineties and you'd dance your heart out until, I think, one o'clock in the morning. At midnight, every time, the song 'Love Shack' would come on. I remember one particular night when I was there with a close girlfriend and, as everyone was getting ready to leave and we were going down the stairs, this guy came up to her and basically held himself close against her. It was really gross, and she felt quite violated.

I remember working in country Victoria, in Hamilton—I was there commissioning a mineral sands plant—and there was a great pub there. I remember standing around with a group of my colleagues, including a flocculant provider. We were standing around, and then this random man came up to us and—it was as if it was happening in slow motion—he came up to me, and it was like he was going to grab my breast. I didn't think that that was going to happen. It felt like it was happening in slow motion. I didn't think that he'd actually do it. And he did it. At that moment, Mr Pink, who was the flocculant provider, was kind of like, 'That is not on!' and arranged for him to get chucked out of the pub. Mr Pink broke his glasses.

I'll also share another story, of Shanene, a woman who I met in my electorate of Swan. She's a Torres Strait Islander woman. She had this amazing, high-powered job, working for a local council. She fell in love and had this amazing relationship. They had this 12-month honeymoon period. Then I'd say that what started to happen was financial abuse, where he'd take her company credit card, or take her work car, and then he'd just continue taking. That was the first part of it. Then it started to escalate into physical violence. And sometimes he would come up to her workplace. Shanene ended up in a nine-month coma. She had to learn how to walk and talk again.

So, when we talk about the elimination of violence against women, there is so much that we need to do. It's about speaking to our children. It's also about speaking to our peers and other adults. It's about challenging what happens in our workplaces as well. It's also about what we are doing as institutions and governments.

My kids and I have a routine in the morning. I always say to my kids: 'What time is it? Can you guess what I want?' and I stand there with arms open wide, waiting for a cuddle—and they don't have to give me a cuddle if they don't want to. One of the things I also do is, when my son wakes up, I ask him, 'Can I give you a kiss?' And this morning he was like, 'No.' I actually want to teach him the ability to say yes and no and to ask for consent. Consent is something that we can do time and time again. The behaviours that we teach our children are the foundations of how they will be when they become adults.

I remember listening to a radio interview where we heard about the release of doctored pornographic images of students. Most of the parents whose children were victims of this did not come out and speak to the media, and I understand. That would have been really challenging. There was one mother who came out, and the conversation that she had with her son was, 'Little girls don't grow up imagining being strangled during sexual intercourse.'

It is fascinating that strangulation is taking place more often in these intimate relationships. I don't think that it's something that people imagine doing. The statistics show that girls are more likely to be strangled compared to boys, and it's fascinating that this is what's happening to some of our teenagers and young adults. I think that we need to make sure that we have our eyes open and that we know some of the things that are happening in this community. We really need to give our teenagers the tools to know about consent and also know what good sexual relationships look like.

In one of my previous workplaces, we had an ex-CEO that would come and travel from interstate from time to time. One of the things he would do with the colleagues that had been around longer is give them a kiss. He would say, 'Hello! How are you going?' and you'd get a big kiss. One of my colleagues shared with me that she felt uncomfortable about that. After it happened a second time at a dinner, she made a point to say, 'I'd prefer not to kiss you.' And then another senior member of the management team was like, 'What? You don't want to kiss this guy? I'll kiss him instead,' and basically belittled her. It was interesting because later on I had a conversation with both of these blokes. I explained to the one who did the kissing that all that he needs to do in the first instance is ask for consent. The other one who trivialised what happened found it really challenging to understand what had happened and that he had not done the right thing. The thing that I'd say about workplaces is that I want people to challenge themselves to make sure that they are calling out these instances when they happen. Workplaces have a really important role to play.

I'll talk about institutions and governments. I'm really proud that the 47th parliament is the most diverse parliament that we've ever had. I'm also proud that the Albanese Labor government has a majority-women caucus. What this means is that women's issues are on the forefront of our agenda. We are making sure that we are being really intentional with the way that we think about women and help women, particularly when it comes to domestic violence. For me, as a new member of parliament, I felt a real sense of privilege when we introduced the 10 days of domestic violence leave into the House.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 10:08 to 10:21

I was explaining the opportunity for us as a community to act on violence against women, and it starts with talking with our children and our peers, looking at this in our workplaces and looking at what we can do on an institutional level. This year, 39 women have died due to violence against women. A staggering one in three women and girls have experienced violence since the age of 15. It's clear that this is a systemic issue. This is something that we'll continue to work on day after day.

This has come out of a national conversation that has been amplified this year. We saw the Me Too movement. There was quite a lot of conversation. We also saw what happened during the previous parliament as well. We are continuing to make sure the parliament has safer workplaces. It's great to see that the Albanese Labor government has made a record investment into this area, with an extra 500 frontline workers being funded. We're also ensuring that we have 4,000 homes for women and children fleeing domestic violence, and of course we have the 10 days of domestic violence leave which I spoke about earlier. Earlier this year, we talked about investing $2.3 billion into this area, and we've made further commitments since then.

One of the things that I have been working on in a committee that I sit on—the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services—has been a look into financial abuse, because financial abuse is a form of coercive control and it is a window into an escalation of violence which can include physical or mental violence. Everybody has a role to play when we talk about the elimination of violence against women and girls, and I challenge everyone to play their part, because we should be the country that eliminates it first.

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