Tania Lawrence (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Affirmative action is more straightforward and powerful than we might think. Action to affirm the rights, abilities and potential of all human beings makes a better Australia and a better world for everybody. Some people are lucky enough to get affirmative action from birth—and I consider myself lucky in that way. They receive encouragement, and pathways to achievement are clear and open to them. But there are those who are given very different messages and very rocky roads. When they are discouraged, we all lose. We need people of ability, with contributions to make, to be speaking and doing so loud and clear, not muttering in corners.

For centuries, women were told that the halls of power were not for them, unless they happened to be born into a ruling family—and even then, a male was almost always preferred. All sorts of decisions were made without hearing or even considering women's opinions or perspectives.

Thirty years ago, our party, the Australian Labor Party, decided that waiting for this to improve wasn't good enough; it was time to act. That's always been a fundamental Labor principle: we don't sit around telling Australians that it will all work out in the end, in some mysterious way; we take action. It is our job and our responsibility. Successful people everywhere know that you have to set goals and targets along the way. Any person with a dream needs a plan to make it happen.

It was a different world back in 1994. The first goal then was to have a female candidate in 35 per cent of all held and winnable seats by 2002. Labor achieved that in 2004. But we were already on the move with a new goal. Back in 2002, we understood there was no going back. The answer was more determination and higher goals. We decided then that, by 2012, 40 per cent of held and winnable seats should have female candidates. After the federal election of 2013, 40 per cent of the Labor caucus were women. This was a percentage to be dreamed of by most parties in most nations around the world, and there was plenty who dismissed it as silly—an impossible dream.

In 2015 the ALP national conference adopted a new target: half of all our MPs and senators should be women by 2025, and that was achieved at the election of 2022. It is difficult to say this without strong personal emotion because I was one of those new members of parliament who are part of this great milestone. I want all women, all the students up there in the gallery, whatever your political views and allegiances, to be able to experience the intense mixture of emotions of being sworn in here to serve this country. It's a profound sense of duty and responsibility that is almost overwhelming.

Being part of a group of women now representing the people of Australia on equal terms for the first time is thrilling. For Labor this is happening in parliaments across the land. Now 50.2 per cent of all Labor members of parliament are women. Would it have happened anyway, just part of an ordinary everyday evolution? Well, let's see. We don't have far to look, just across the chamber. The Liberal Party in this parliament, sadly, is going backwards with its lowest percentage of female representation in 30 years. How can I say this gently? You are heading the wrong way.

In March this year Labor launched Working for Women, a strategy for gender equality. The strategy has goals and targets in five priority areas: women's safety, valuing care, women's economic equality, health, and decision-making and leadership. It is not a set of feel-good words; it is a statement of commitments with a track record to prove they can and will be achieved. Already the consequences of achieving parity are self-evident. The conversations change, priorities shift and funding gets committed. Here is just a sample of what can be achieved in two years: pay increases in industries overwhelmingly dominated by women, including in aged care; a tax cut for every female taxpayer, with 90 per cent of women now better off; modernising and expanding paid parental leave to 26 weeks by 2025; cheaper child care—families to have more choice over their childcare arrangements; a $56.1 million women's health package, with 22 endometriosis clinics now open; a $4.7 billion national plan for preventing family violence; and 10 days paid domestic violence leave.

I represent the electorate of Hasluck—all, not just 50 per cent. I am proud to say that, thanks to affirmative action, the debate about whether women should be reflected in this place as proportionate representation in parliament is done.

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