Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The eighth of March 2011 marked the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day. This day is a celebration of the great achievements of women throughout the world and throughout our history, from women's suffrage to reproductive rights. It is because of the work of giants past that I am able to stand in this chamber and speak today. In this place, I carry the dreams, the work and the sacrifice of others and I want to thank them. A century ago, it would have been novel and perhaps inconceivable that women would stand in this great chamber, and it is thanks to many famous and not so famous women that I can.

It is also thanks to my working-class matriarchy that I can—thanks to my grandmother Enid Anderson and my great-grandmother Ada Huggins. In the language of the day, both were 'in service'. My great-grandmother supported 13 children on her own in a house with dirt floors. I thank my grandmother, who worked three jobs and lived in fear that the state would take her children because she was poor. I thank my mother, Faye Anderson, who worked hard to ensure that all three of her daughters would go to university. It is because of the hardheaded determination of these women and others like them that I have been able to run a successful business, sit on boards and be elected to parliament.

While we have much to celebrate, we are not done and more must be done. We must continue to fight for equal pay and equal burden sharing in the home. We must also continue to fight to improve the representation of women on boards. Research shows that improving diversity on boards, including increasing the number of women, has a positive impact on the performance of an organisation. I have witnessed this firsthand through the boards I have been a member of, both commercial and not-for-profit. While women make up 45 per cent of our workforce they hold only 10.9 per cent of positions on ASX 200 boards, according to the Women On Boards website, and 87 ASX companies still do not have a woman on their board.

We as a society—and I say 'a society' because a solution lies not just with government—must do more to encourage and create opportunities to sit on boards. I would like to commend the government on its joint initiative with the Australian Institute of Company Directors to offer 70 scholarships to give Australian women the skills they need to become directors or chairs. More than 1,900 women from across the country applied for the program, so clearly women are ready, willing and able to serve.

I also want to ensure that women have the financial literacy to plan for their retirement. My mum is on the pension, and as the member for Canberra I speak each week to women, many of them retired, who are doing it tough living on the pension, living in social housing. I am worried that too many women have not planned for their future beyond work. I am worried that too many women do not have a plan for retirement. For my own part, I am organising seminars to help women understand how much superannuation they have so they can work out how much they need for their retirement and how much they need to put away each week. That way, they will be empowered to work out how long they can take off with their babies, how long they can work part-time if they so choose, and when they can retire. Understanding the detail of what they need for their retirement will allow them to better plan for their futures. I am fortunate enough to say that these are the concerns of a woman in a developed country. I have just returned from a week in Afghanistan with the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Defence Subcommittee, where we had the opportunity to visit defence bases in Tarin Kowt and Kandahar. We also had a number of calls in Kabul and met with members of the lower house. One of them was a woman and she was very committed to improving women's rights there. So it was a great opportunity to actually meet with her. The situation for women in Afghanistan is suboptimal in most parts of the country, particularly in the provinces. In Oruzgan, female literacy is just 0.8 per cent and infant mortality is 37 per cent. Many girls are married at age 13 and many women have between 10 and 15 children.

We have come a long way in the last 100 years, but our achievements have barely touched many women in developing countries. We still need to fight to ensure equal rights and equal opportunities are shared by our sisters throughout the world.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Injustice has a finite life span. The pendulum will always swing to the right. Born out of inequality and oppression, International Women's Day recognises the economic, political and social achievements of women. On 8 March this year, International Women's Day celebrated its 100th anniversary. It is also a day celebrated worldwide that honours those who lived with this inequality and oppression and who fought to end it. Those first campaigners marched for women's rights to work, to vote, to be trained, to hold public office and to end discrimination. In March 1911, more than one million women and men attended rallies to campaign for women's rights.

Last night I was blessed to see the ABC Compass program on Patricia Brennan. As a former missionary doctor cum feminist theologian, Patricia is best known for her very public role in the fight for the ordination of women in Australia, a country which now has 400 Anglican women priests, 200 deacons and two women bishops. What is less known about Patricia is that she was also a specialist in forensic medicine and that most of her work in recent years dealt with sexual violence against women and children. The program is a moving biopic of an extraordinary woman of our time. I love how she was described: a woman of wild intelligence and uncommon valour, a seeker after truth and justice, lavish with kindness, quick to laugh and a lover of life.

Only a week ago at St James Church, Pakenham, we celebrated 13 years of service by the Reverend Hilary Roath. The Reverend Hilary Roath was one of those 400 Anglican women priests. I was asked almost 14 years ago by Neil Speedie what I thought about a female priest. I said, 'That is no problem for me. All of my life I have been surrounded by women working in the ministry and taking leadership roles in our community.' Hilary began her service at St James when the issue of ordination of women and the appointment to churches was still controversial. Hilary was a daughter, a mother, a grandmother, a great-grandmother, a pastor, a confessor, a confidante, a priest, a community activist and a friend. She lived her life in the exhilaration of birth, the celebration of marriage and the sorrow of death every week of her congregation's life. She was a teacher, a storyteller and a defender of the faith. She helped turn the annual Christmas Carols by Candlelight from a small singsong to a grand celebration of the birth of the living God, with thousands of people attending the celebration each year. Hilary laughed with the joyous, cried with the broken-hearted and walked with those with a wounded spirit. Hilary grew and changed from a woman who happened to be a priest to a priest who happened to be a woman. She stands upright today as a great achiever: a woman in a man's world, much loved and appreciated, carried by her personal courage and her grace. Hilary retired on 15 May, and many tears were shed. I was honoured to speak at the service and I spoke about a large candle, of the type you see in churches. They are very thick and, when you first light them, they are easily snuffed out, but as they burn over the years and the wick and the flame go deeper into the candle they become nearly impossible to snuff out because the candle goes down so low that, even if you do blow it out, the heat in the wick and the power of the hot wax usually flame the wick again, and then you have to try to put it out again. It cannot be put out.

In my address I said that Hilary was like that candle in the church. With all the trials and tribulations of a woman in that service at that time, over these 13 years, she was the candle that could not be blown out. Whilst the member for Canberra talked about the history and importance of women through the generations, we should never forget the women who are around us today, equally serving and equally contributing, like Patricia Brennan, who has, sadly, passed away. What a great legacy she leaves and what a great legacy one of her own, Hilary Roath, leaves in our local community.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak on the motion on International Women's Day and I congratulate all those who have spoken, especially the member for McMillan as the token bloke in this debate because, for women to progress in this world, it is not a female issue; it is a gender-equality issue and all people need to embrace the change. One of the deterrents to full equality, for women and men to participate equally in our developed world, is that the unfortunate burden of housework still falls disproportionately to women. I have spoken at many functions for International Women's Day, and at a couple of women's luncheons recently, and my message is that, until the blokes do their fair share around the house, we are never going to progress on this issue. That might be a flippant comment but it is actually one of the defining factors in how we determine the roles of men and women in our society.

On 8 March 2001, Australia joined with the rest of the world to celebrate 100 years of progress towards gender equality. International Women's Day gives women global recognition for their achievements. One of the things we forget is that this is regardless of nationality, ethnicity and linguistic, cultural and political background. It is an internationally recognised day. It is one of the few that most countries around the world actually observe.

In 1911, when the first International Women's Day was recognised, more than one million women and men attended International Women's Day rallies, campaigning for the right of women to work, vote, be trained and hold public office and to end discrimination. Tragically, as we celebrate 100 years down the track, we are still fighting for the same things. Much progress has been made, but it is not universal and it is not in every country across the globe. Whilst this is an occasion to look back on past struggles and accomplishments, it is, more importantly, an occasion to look forward to the yet to be realised potential and opportunities that await further generations of women, and also to the opportunities that gender equality presents for men.

In Australia, we have had some significant milestones. Our progress includes the first women's vote, in South Australia in 1895: it was the first place in the world where women were given the right to vote at a state level. In 1902, Australia was one of the first to give women the right both to vote and to stand for public office at the federal level. Sadly, though, the numbers are not great in that instance. Women make up over 51 per cent of the populace in Australia but, since Federation, there has been a grand total of 1,578 members of both the Senate and the House of Representatives in Australia, of whom only 143 have been women. These are statistics from the last parliament and I apologise because I have not updated them. Over our years of federation and consistent democracy in Australia, only 9.1 per cent of the total participants in the federal parliament have been female.

We need to be doing more on this, but we also need to be doing more at a local level. I attended many women's luncheons and someone said to me, 'What have you done in your own electorate to progress women's equality?' I was stumped by that and I thought, 'What have I done at a personal level in my electorate, more than just being a figurehead and representative of someone who can achieve this?' I have been in parliament for 13 years and I have an 11-year-old and a nine-year-old, so I have juggled quite a lot of what many women grapple with in being in the workforce. I owe a lot of that to my partner. As I say, let us not take away from the equality and the mix of that. In my electorate I have seen and supported some great things. At a sporting level, which is analogous of other things, the Box Hill soccer club—a great soccer club—for many years only had a seniors women's team. Recently, a senior men's team asked to join because the women's team was doing so well and they wanted to learn from their example. The rugby union club—in Melbourne that is a bit odd—was the first to have a female team. It was the first to get a rugby women's team up and running and those women have been participating actively in rugby union. So, if we can engender women to participate in all things, particularly in sports where you do not usually see them, that is a way of showing that we need to do more. We need particularly to do more in developed countries; we need to be leading by example; we need to ensure that in Third World countries their issues are not about getting into parliament but about health care, education and domestic violence. Tragically, domestic violence is still on the rise in Australia. More needs to be done, but we have a lot to be proud of.

Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the member for Canberra's motion on International Women's Day. International Women's Day has been celebrated for 100 years. It is a day to reflect on the economic, political and social achievements of women. As we reflect on the last 100 years, many things have changed. Women in Australia have more choices at all stages of their lives. They can go to school and study subjects of their choice. They can go to university to continue their studies if they wish. They can enrol in the course of their choice, subject to academic entry requirements. They have the choice of working after they have married and returning to work after they have had children. Legislation has been passed that provides for equal opportunity, but have attitudes really changed over the years? Is there now true gender equality?

There are a number of observations that I can make in relation to my electorate of McPherson. From a political perspective, there are four state seats that are either wholly or partly within the boundary of McPherson. Three of those four seats are held by women. There are six council divisions, again either wholly or partially within McPherson, and three of those six divisions are held by women. So, arguably for McPherson voters, the gender of elected representatives is not an issue. I make the point that I believe that those who make it to this place have a special duty to remember and acknowledge the contribution to society that women make and to encourage other women to consider a role in politics.

When I look at surf lifesaving I see an increasing number of girls and women becoming actively involved and being acknowledged formally for their skill and competence at the annual award presentation ceremonies, and many of those award ceremonies are currently being conducted throughout the Gold Coast. When I look at small business I see an increasing number of women starting and operating a small business, particularly a micro business, many of which are operated from home. When I look at community organisations I see an increasing number of women taking on executive committee roles, as well as providing operational support, as they have done in some cases for many, many years. I believe that women are perfectly placed to represent communities. They appreciate and listen using broad inputs; they understand the difference between outputs and outcomes.

I am a mechanical engineer, an industrial advocate, a small business operator and a politician. I am the mother of three beautiful daughters, Emma, Jane and Kate, who I miss every day that I am here. I understand the conflicts that working mothers face every single day. For those women who choose to stay at home and tend to the children, I understand your choices and celebrate your right to choose that course. Women who stay at home work hard and deserve recognition for placing families first, often to the detriment of their careers.

I turn now to the issue of the recent decision in the equal remuneration case 2011, handed down by Fair Work Australia last week. The case revolved around non-government social and community services—SACS—workers employed in mainly not-for-profit organisations. It is a sector with which I am familiar. This decision is not about male and female gender based pay. At its core is an argument about one predominantly female private sector employment grouping against another that involves state and local government employees. It is a comparison of two predominantly female groupings. I am troubled by a decision that focuses on arguments based on the pay rates between the private and government sectors in the name of comparable worth.

David Gregory, Director of Workplace Policy with the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said of the decision:

… the Tribunal's willingness to compare public sector wage levels with private sector awards is a dangerous path given the very different circumstances between the business of governments and the business of private community employers, many of whom are small not-for-profit businesses.

Mr Gregory went on to say that ACCI will continue its intervention in this case 'to ensure that the gender pay jurisdiction remains tightly limited to actual and genuine claims about gender rather than other wage setting factors'.

I make it clear that I support equal pay for work of equal value, but I do not support a claim for a wage increase for predominantly female sectors based on a comparison of the public and private sector wage rates.

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.

Sitting suspended from 13:31 to 16:01