Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for External Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I've been reflecting over the last couple of days on the poor state of affairs within the government, particularly on its representation of women and the possibility that after the next election it will have five women in the House of Representatives. I understand that the Prime Minister has made it very clear that he doesn't think that quotas should be introduced or there's a problem with bullying within his organisation but he believes that everything is hunky-dory, despite the protestations of a number of leading women from the coalition.

While I was reflecting on this I thought I would look back and see why Labor has been so successful. I first came into this place in 1987, which is a bloody long time ago. When I first came into this place the Labor Party in the House of Representatives had only eight women, there was only one woman in the coalition in the House of Representatives and the total proportion of women on both sides, in both houses, was 11.6 per cent of the total membership of the parliament. Contemplate that. When we think about what this parliament should be, who it represents and what it should look like, surely we should be saying that, as near as possible, half of the representatives in this place should be women. By 1994 the number of Labor women in the federal parliament had increased, thankfully, from 11 per cent to 14.4 per cent. Today it stands at 47 per cent. That's not an accident. That's by dint of a number of very, very important people—women in particular—taking the initiative to change the way we do business, to make it the responsibility of the Labor Party to ensure that representation of women was properly accounted for within our membership and within those people who represent the community in this parliament.

It grew out of some great initiatives. Long-term Labor community and women's campaigner Leonie Morgan had seen the work of EMILY's List, an organisation established in the United States in 1985 to fund campaigns for pro-choice Democratic women, and advocated strongly for the establishment of a similar network to support Australian progressive women candidates. Leonie joined with women such as Kay Setches, Joan Kirner and Candy Broad to build support for the idea, in Victoria first and then nationally. And it was in 1996 that EMILY's List was launched here in this place. Those determined women understood the importance of providing support to get women into parliament, and, after a campaign which involved Carmen Lawrence, Julia Gillard, Helen Creed, Jenny Beacham, Judy Spence, Meredith Burgmann, Jan Burnswoods, Carolyn Pickles, Anne Levy, Molly Robson, Sue Mackay and Fran Bladel, the ALP passed its first affirmative action rule as far back as 1994. It's not hard, I say to the Prime Minister. This required women be—a very modest target—35 per cent by 2002.

Despite this landmark achievement, the following federal Labor preselections resulted in the number of women preselected falling. So other action needed to be taken. It's important that the action taken was around driving change and getting the Labor Party to understand that we needed to increase that representation so that it was 50 per cent. And so a new target was set. We stand here today—and I see my colleague next to me here—proudly, looking at the fact that, beyond the next election, there's a very high likelihood that, if things come to pass as we would hope, well over 50 per cent of Labor representation in this parliament will be women. And that's something I think we all should be extremely proud of. I certainly am.

As I look at the despondency in the government benches and see the women jumping ship in the way they've been doing, talking about the bullying that has been happening in what must be a pretty awful organisation, I see no protection from and no advocacy for their position by the Prime Minister. In fact, I saw him standing aside as, only yesterday, one of their potential candidates resigned and said that she was not going to recontest—not because she didn't want to be the member but because of bullying within the organisation.

We all know that parliament can be rough and tough and all that sort of stuff—and we've heard people talking about women 'manning up', for god's sake! Let's be clear about it. We know what some people in the government believe of women, and one particularly offensive individual, Liberal MP Trevor Evans, called Labor women in politics 'cardboard cut-outs'. How bloody offensive!

In our leadership team of four people are two women: the Deputy Leader of the Labor Party, Tanya Plibersek, and the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Penny Wong. We're proud of this.

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for External Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes—would you describe them as cardboard cut-outs? I certainly wouldn't.

I want to talk about other jurisdictions, and the Northern Territory in particular. Fifty per cent of Northern Territory elected representatives are women; 66 per cent of their cabinet are women.

It can be done. You just have to have the will to do it. And, with great respect to all the males in this place—and I see the member for Leichhardt sitting here, who I think shares many of my views around this particular subject—we men have just got to accept that, in this place, women are equal, and they should be equal, and we should set targets to make sure that affirmative action works for women in the community. How can the Prime Minister possibly think it's okay that, beyond the next election, they might only have five women in the House of Representatives in the coalition? How can that possibly be okay?

Forty-six per cent of the Labor Party membership in my electorate of Lingiari are women, and I've been really fortunate, during the course of my life, to have really strong women involved. There were those from my own family, obviously: my aunties—they wouldn't put up with rubbish, I can tell you—and my mum. I'm proud of the way in which they inculcated in me the respect we should have for everyone in the community and, most particularly, to appreciate that women can have whatever role they choose. If they choose to be politicians then you should support them in doing so. That's really important. But there was one particular woman, who, for me, was a bit of a hero, who worked in partnership with a great man, who was one of my mentors—Nugget Coombs—and that was Judith Wright. Now there was a woman who had attitude and was able to express it!

I've been blessed in my time in this parliament. Currently 50 per cent of my staff are women—these are good women: Jo Nicol, Kirsty Hunt, Bianca Doyle, Caitlin in my Canberra office. They are wonderfully strong women and very assertive women, let me tell you, who have no trouble putting me in my place. But I want to reflect on a number of others who had a significant influence on me and on their assertiveness in making sure I understood, from their perspective, the need to acknowledge women. I briefly want to mention Margaret Gillespie, who was my first chief of staff and who went on to become the national secretary of the CPSU; Carol Burke, who, sadly, is no longer with us, who was a really, really wonderful woman, a wonderful human being, who taught me a great deal about the respect I needed to have; and my own partner, Elizabeth. Let me tell you, if you want to see some assertive people in your life, meet my partner, Elizabeth, and our two daughters, Frankie and Tessa. If you think that they would cop the crap that's been coming out of the Liberal Party, you'd be sadly mistaken. I applaud them for standing up for their rights and for the rights of all women.