Sharryn Jackson (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am proud to stand here today as someone who has always been an advocate for women and women’s rights and representation. While it is an amazing privilege and honour to be one of the 1,055 people who have been elected to the House of Representatives since Federation, it still disappoints me that only 77 of those 1,055 have been women. I am strongly of the view, and always have been, that the parliaments of Australia, the parliaments of our democracy, should reflect our community. Women make up over half of our community and should be duly represented. To that extent I want to welcome the new senators, especially the new women senators, to this parliament: Catryna Bilyk, Michaelia Cash, Sarah Hanson-Young, Helen Kroger, Louise Pratt and of course the returning Senator Jacinta Collins.

Whilst it is lovely to have that group of six women join us in the parliament, it disappoints me that there has been no change to the gender mix in the Senate as a result of the last federal election. I have to say that I think this is a significant lesson for political parties and I am proud that I believe my party has at least begun to address this issue. As many would know, in the 1980s we introduced affirmative action in organisational positions in the Labor Party and of course in the 1990s we introduced affirmative action for parliamentary representation. I am proud to say that, when one considers the latest statistics of the composition of Australian parliaments by party and gender as at 1 July 2008, my party’s representation has grown significantly, to the extent that it is at at least 30 per cent and in many cases closer to 40 per cent across Australian parliaments. Frankly, I stand here today and say there is a lesson in all of this for all political parties and especially for the opposition parties.

If you look at the particular case in Western Australia, where we have an election coming on 6 September, Saturday week, it is a significant example and an interesting comparison. In the case of the Labor Party, in contesting the 59 seats in the Legislative Assembly, some 19 of Labor’s candidates are women. In contrast, the Liberal Party have six women candidates in the 59 seats. When you examine these statistics more closely and look at those people who are candidates in what is usually described as winnable seats, you find that the Labor Party has some 13 of its candidates in winnable seats in comparison to at best one Liberal candidate in the 59 seats of the Legislative Assembly.

In the federal electorate of Hasluck I have some seven state seats which impact upon my electorate. I am incredibly proud that in three of those seats we are seeing some wonderful women candidates. I wish them the best of luck for Saturday, 6 September: in particular, Juliana Plummer, who is contesting the seat of Kalamunda; Rita Saffioti, the seat of West Swan; and Lisa Griffiths, the seat of Darling Range.

The figures for our opponents in the Legislative Assembly are that only two women were elected at the 2005 election for the Liberal Party. One of those women has now left the party and is standing as an Independent candidate. Another retires at this election, largely due to the conduct of the Liberal Party members in Western Australia. I do not often agree with commentator Peter van Onselen but his article in the Sunday Times on 17 August is one with which I agree. He points out that there is great potential that the Liberal Party in Western Australia will not have a single female representative in the Legislative Assembly after the election on 6 September and at best it will have three. He also points out that the ‘great irony of the Liberal Party’s mistreatment of women is that the three people who have been best placed in recent years to do something about it, but have not, are all women’. He particularly cites the federal deputy Liberal leader, Julie Bishop, and Helen Morton, who ‘were two of Troy Buswell’s strongest defenders’. (Time expired)