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

It certainly gives me great pleasure to stand and speak tonight on this report, Empowering women and girls: The human rights issues confronting women and girls in the Indian Ocean-Asia Pacific region. But I would, firstly, like to put on the record that my thoughts this evening—and, indeed, those of many others in this chamber, I am sure—are very much with the people of Fiji and Tonga as they begin to deal with the utter devastation that has been caused by Tropical Cyclone Winston. While the full extent of that cyclone's impact is still emerging, there are reports that entire villages have been destroyed and critical infrastructure has been damaged.

Fiji and Tonga are, of course, very close and dear neighbours and friends of the Australian people, and Labor will support the Australian government to do all it can to help with the recovery efforts. I welcome the Australian government's initial $5 million package of assistance to Fiji as an immediate response to the devastation that has been caused. I also note that in December last year I joined a cross-party parliamentary delegation to the Pacific with the then minister for the Pacific and other members of this House and saw firsthand some of the remarkable work that was being done in the region through Australia's involvement in a number of the development projects there.

One of our site visits that I wish to bring to the House's attention was the visit to the Tonga Red Cross Society emergency centre. It was a centre—a shipping container; not a grand facility by any stretch of the imagination—that enabled a range of stores to be immediately available during times of national natural disasters. The grant to enable stores to be strategically stored around Tonga was from the Australian government following Tropical Cyclone Ian back in 2014. I know that the people of Tonga will be especially thankful that those assistance packages are in place, because I understand that over the last two days the Tonga Red Cross Society has distributed the Australian funded pre-positioned supplies from those facilities, such as tarpaulins, hygiene kits, buckets, cooking equipment and mosquito nets. So I am very glad that the Australian-funded facilities that I—and members with me during that delegation visit just last December—saw have been put to extremely good use during this time of terrible need. I wholeheartedly offer my support, of course, to the very resilient Tongan and Fijian communities as they recover from this most recent natural disaster.

I also welcome the opportunity, as I mentioned earlier, to speak today on the tabled report, Empowering women and girls: the human rights issues confronting women and girls in the Indian Ocean-Asia Pacific region. Whilst I am not a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, which undertook the inquiry leading to this report, these are issues in which I have a deep and personal interest. Indeed, I have an interest in matters that need to be addressed by this parliament and members of this region.

The human rights and empowerment of women and girls in our region and more broadly across the world is a key issue in the fight for gender equity. I acknowledge the member for Ryan, who joined me on that delegation I was referring to just a little earlier. Indeed, much of the focus of that delegation was on these issues of gender equality and how the Australian government might be able to assist our closest neighbours in doing increased work on these issues.

I have spoken many times in this place on the issues faced by women and girls here in Australia. But, as identified in the report, the issues faced by hundreds of millions of women and girls across the Indo-Pacific region are enormous. For some women and girls the situation is dire. Their lives are blighted by incredible levels of violence and extreme experiences of poverty and ongoing exclusion from economic, social and political participation. These are issues that are very telling, I would suggest to the House, in terms of how nations are seeking to address not only what is good for their own nations but also how we, collectively, as a region, seek to ensure that all our citizens—and that certainly includes the 50 per cent or more of our citizens who are women or girls—get to enjoy full participation in their political, social and economic lives.

As I said, whilst many countries in our region are indeed making progress in advancing the human rights of women and girls, a great deal more progress is required. Women make up, for example, less than four per cent of parliamentarians across the Pacific Island countries—the lowest rate in the world, and well below the global average of 20 per cent.

However, I do note that the people of Samoa will be going to their federal elections next month, in March, and they have really led the way in the Pacific in terms of ensuring increased representation of women in their parliament. They have introduced legislation that requires a quota to be met of women parliamentarians. They have some especially terrific women already in parliament, but I expect them to be electing even greater numbers of terrific women into their parliament next March. I will be watching that election very closely, and I send my good wishes to each and every woman candidate in those upcoming elections in Samoa.

Across the Pacific, men outnumber women in paid employment outside the agricultural sector by approximately two to one, and women occupy only a third of formal sector jobs. Somewhat frighteningly, I would suggest, more than 60 per cent of women in the Pacific have experienced physical or sexual violence. This is an issue that is of great concern, and not only to Australian governments—it is an issue that we had many discussions about with political leaders in Fiji, Tonga, the Solomon Islands and Samoa, just last December. I know these issues are pressing on the minds of all of the leadership in the Asia-Pacific region.

The levels of physical and sexual violence are intolerable, but when we were having these discussions in the Solomon Islands—particularly when their minister for education was expressing the challenges before them as a parliament—I made very clear that Australia does not travel to the Pacific with a clean sheet of paper for ourselves in this regard. Our rates of violence against women and children in Australia are also intolerable. Indeed, we are trying desperately to combat the level of violence in our own culture. So it is something that we need to work in close partnership on in the Pacific region. There is much that we can teach and learn from each other. I note, however, that we cannot continue to see the level of cuts in the Australian aid budget that we have seen over the years, if we are to make real progress on this front.

Debate adjourned.