Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise very happily to second this motion moved by my good friend and fierce advocate for Labor women, the member for Lalor. I stand very proudly as a Labor woman elected to this parliament and a member of Australia's first ever female majority government.

This significant milestone in our nation's history didn't happen overnight and didn't happen by accident. Almost 30 years ago, on 26 September 1994, only 32 of Australia's then 225 parliamentarians were women and women made up only 14 per cent of the federal parliamentary Labor caucus. That's when the Australian Labor Party made the historic decision to introduce quotas for women. Affirmative action quotas were designed to give more opportunities to women, build our capacity at all levels and improve the culture of politics within the Australian Labor Party.

The first quota was set at 35 per cent for women to be preselected into the held and winnable seats. Crucially, at the same time it was agreed that there would be a sanction applied if this was not met. If the quota wasn't achieved, preselections would be overturned and the nomination process would start again. This sanction has been critical to the success of affirmative action, and it is closely protected to this day. In 2002 the quota was increased to 40 per cent by 2012. In 2015, we went to 50 per cent by 2025. Guess what? It is now 2024 and we've smashed that target. We smashed it two years ago. Every time we've set a target, Labor has exceeded it and delivered it ahead of time. We know that quotas work. The evidence is there for everyone to see. We have Australia's first female majority government and parliaments right across Australia are teaming with strong, smart, capable women making smart choices for Australia and for women.

Not only did affirmative action get more talented people elected but it changed the culture of our party for the better too. It also changed the outlook for Australian women. Labor governments have always worked hard for women, and we are proud of the decades of accomplishments. They're too long to list them all, but we value people who work in the care economy these days, we are improving women's safety, we've addressed a stubborn gender pay gap in this country that existed for so long, we have a strategy to address gender inequality in Australia for the first time in our history, and we've made women's health a priority. We know that there's much more to do, and that's why we've got a laser focus on gender equity in this nation, and we are committed to working hard every single day.

But, as I mentioned, women's participation in politics didn't just happen overnight, and neither did that list of achievements. They came off the back of decades of hard work by so many women that came before us. There were women like Dorothy Tangney, the first Labor woman to be elected into the federal parliament in 1943 and the first woman in the Senate; Joan Child, who was the first deputy speaker in 1984 and the first female Speaker in 1986; Julia Gillard, Australia's first and to date only female Prime Minister; and, in this 47th Parliament, Linda Burney, who became the first Indigenous woman to be elected into the House of Representatives in 2016; and Tanya Plibersek, the member for Sydney, who was first elected in 1998 and is the longest serving woman in this House. There are many in the other house, of course, with a lot of firsts as well, but these are just a few of our Labor women firsts.

These are things we are proud of. We do not take them for granted, however. We know that the women who worked so hard to pave the way before us—all of those Labor firsts and all of those Labor women champions that worked behind the scenes—would never stop and rest up, thinking: 'Oh, job done! We can all go and rest now!' We know this not to be true. We are forever vigilant about the issues of gender equality in our parliament, in our party and in our nation, because women's representation matters. It strengthens our communities and it strengthens our democracies. We know as Labor women our place is not simply in the House and the Senate. It's in the cabinet and it's in every place where decisions are made.

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