Emma Husar (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Glenmore Park Learning Alliance is in its second year and coordinates young people from our community who are school prefects and captains. It is a chance for the primary students to gather with the support of senior students and hear from a range of guest speakers and learn how their leadership can be enhanced and refined. I was proud to share my journey with them and was followed by local footy legend Mark Geyer, who talked about his own story.

At one point, I asked the kids what they were passionate about. We had sport, teaching and learning thrown in there, but one contribution to our conversation has stayed with me since that day. It was the soft little whisper of a young lady who spoke of her desire for girls to build up other girls and support one another to make the community a better place, which is a massive contribution when you are 11 and only in grade 6.

When I looked at the group, and when I attend school leadership inductions at schools across Lindsay and at my own kids' school, I am always reflective of the gender balance we place on school leadership. There is always one boy captain and one girl captain. I am yet to be at an induction where this is not the case. It makes me think that if we can manage to get the gender balance right in schools, why can't we get it right here?

And it reminded me of the shameful track record this government has in advancing women, and the smug comments about women holding up half the sky that the Prime Minister goes on with. If that is the case, Prime Minister, why are you not funding our women's legal services; why are you cutting penalty rates, which will have a greater impact on women; and why on earth would you walk away from funding women's shelters? These are all questions for the member for Wentworth and we will never, ever hear an answer, because he is too obsessed with Labor, Bill Shorten and the unions instead of forming a view in line with community expectations and not the right wing of his party.