Jenny Ware (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this issue in relation to the gender pay gap. I want to first of all acknowledge that data recently released by the ABS does show that the national gender pay gap is the lowest on record. It's now fallen, based on those statistics, to 11.5 per cent. This is good news.

Since being elected, I've spoken on many occasions about the need for the government to do more for women, particularly on paid parental leave. That is why I am very pleased that the government has now agreed to include superannuation, for example, on government funded paid parental leave from 1 July 2025. That was supported by those on my side and, similarly, the expansion of paid parental leave—with access to up to 26 weeks of leave by July 2026—is a measure that's been supported by the coalition. This is to be commended because for far too many years now women have been financially punished for the intrinsic role that they have in bearing children.

These are measures that will go some way to assisting women with both the gender pay gap and the disparity between Australian women's average superannuation balances and Australian men's. Women's superannuation currently sits at about two-thirds of the superannuation balance that males have, and this is particularly concerning when it is recognised that women also tend to live for a lot longer. We are now in a situation where, I think, this is at a crisis point. We're now in a situation where we need to be pulling out everything we can to help women increase their superannuation balances to ensure their security into retirement.

This then moves us into a space where the government has significantly failed and continues to fail women and Australians overall, and that space is housing. In March 2022, this Prime Minister went into the election and said that mortgages and rents would be cheaper under Labor, but, after two and a half years, that is simply not the case. In fact, the average Australian mortgage holder has paid $35,000 more in interest than they were paying two and a half years ago.

The impact of the housing crisis is particularly costly to Australian women. I just had a look at a study that was done by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute recently, and it revealed a couple of points that I will quickly summarise. Women are less likely to be able to save for a deposit on a home. For those who do manage, it takes far longer; on average, it takes a year longer for a single woman to save for a deposit than it does for a single Australian man. Women are, therefore, far less likely to own a home to support them into retirement. Also, older women who are paying off a mortgage experience much higher levels of stress than their male peers, which obviously impacts both their health and their wellbeing and places further demands on our health system. Most severely, as housing does become less affordable, the number of women experiencing homelessness continues to rise, with the rate of increase for women being much higher than the rate for men.

In that space, women over the age of 55 in Australia are now the fastest growing demographic of homeless Australians. This is something that needs to be addressed urgently, and there are measures that this government could put in place that would help to achieve that. For example, homeownership is shown to be one of the greatest safeguards and one of the best ways to improve quality of life into retirement. That is why it is mind-blowing that the Labor government won't allow women the choice to be able to withdraw their superannuation if they so wish to be able to purchase a home. It is significantly impacting women, particularly older women over the age of 55 and 60 who may have experienced a divorce and then are unable to buy their own home with the proceeds from the family law settlement. That's why the coalition supports this very sensible policy, and I call on the Labor government to also support this if they are in fact serious about women. (Time expired)

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