Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—Today, in my capacity as acting Minister for Women, I am pleased to speak to the Women's Budget Statement 2021-22, a $3.4 billion landmark investment in sustained and practical outcomes for Australian women and girls.

In achieving this, I acknowledge the dedicated and rigorous work of the Cabinet Task Force on Women's Safety and Economic Security, led by the Prime Minister and by Minister Payne from the other place. I would also like to acknowledge the work of Minister Ruston and her contributions as the first women's safety minister, and Minister Hume in her work as the first Minister for Women's Economic Security. And Minister Ruston has just joined us in the House.

When the cabinet task force, established by the Prime Minister, came together for the inaugural meeting on 6 April, we set ourselves an ambitious agenda, an agenda informed by our core values: respect, dignity, choice, justice and equality of opportunity.

In announcing the cabinet task force, the Prime Minister said that it would bring fresh lens to achieving the outcomes we all want for women across our country.

The Women's Budget Statement is an early and significant milestone in the work of the task force, and forms part of a continuum of effort by this government throughout its term.

The Morrison government remains committed to ensuring every Australian woman has every opportunity to reach their full potential, contributing to our communities, society and economy in the ways they choose.

We have already made a significant investment in realising that commitment. And I can assure you that this government and in particular the women's task force are determined to keep striving for further change.

We know there is more to do to assure women's safety, economic security, health and wellbeing, while opening the pathways for women to thrive and lead in their chosen pursuits.

For this country to be the best it can be, we need to support and create opportunities for Australian women and girls to be the best they can be.

With the work that we all do in this place, we strive to foster an Australian society where women and men, girls and boys live and work and grow together in a spirit and culture of equality and mutual respect. Gender should not determine our level of opportunity or our level of ambition; these should be universal.

While we continue to focus on our economic and health recovery from COVID, women's workforce participation is at a record high of 61.8 per cent and the gender pay gap is down to its lowest level at 13.4 per cent. Neither of these figures is where they should be, but we are proud of the changes that are in progress.

And I can announce that we are close to meeting the target we set in 2016 of 50 per cent women's representation on Australian government boards: as at 31 December 2020, a record 49.5 per cent of Australian government board positions were held by women.

One woman on a board is a start, two is a voice, but parity in leadership and decision-making means that we all benefit as we draw on women's and men's experiences.

With this as our ambition and our imperative, let me outline this year's women's budget measures, starting with $1.1 billion to prevent and respond to violence against women and their children.

Women need to be safe and women need to be able to achieve financial independence and economic security.

This government is also investing a further $1.9 billion dedicated to the economic security of women, including $1.7 billion on top of our existing $10 billion-a-year commitment to child care, ensuring that women and their families have greater choice about how to manage family and work.

But we recognise there is more to do. In this women's budget, we are making targeted investments:

Whether it be the sickening and sadly too frequent incidences of intimate partner violence, or the emerging challenges of online abuse and harassment and stalking, violence in all the pernicious forms it takes must stop. Everyone has the right to safety, in their homes, workplaces, place of study, in the community and online—everyone.

I would like to acknowledge the many women and children who have experienced or are experiencing harrowing family, domestic and sexual violence—every one of their stories tells us how we can and must do better. We thank victim-survivors for their bravery in telling their stories and the frontline workers, such as those I met with recently in Albury at Betty's Place and the other services I have seen across the state. These women work tirelessly. They are intervening at the point of crisis with compassion and insight. They are working every day to support women leaving violent relationships and improve their long-term outcomes. The evolving service delivery at Betty's Place reminds us of the particular challenges faced by rural and regional women. Services such as those in our rural and regional cities fill a vital need for support for victims and survivors. And the best way we can support them is to stop it at the start.

This budget commits $1.1 billion for women's safety, the largest single Commonwealth investment in women's safety in a federal budget. This investment provides funding for:

This represents the Commonwealth's down payment on the next national plan which will commence in mid-2022, after consultations including the National Women's Safety Summit to be held at the end of July. The Commonwealth is working with states and territories to develop the next national plan, acknowledging the need for all governments to play a role.

We are committing:

This budget is making significant strides in supporting women and children from diverse backgrounds, many of whom are at higher risk of experiencing violence.

The government is investing $48.9 million to bolster comprehensive data collection and research, which includes ongoing funding for two of the most important sources of national data on violence against women—the Personal Safety Survey and the National Community Attitudes towards Violence against Women Survey. In addition $31.6 million will be invested over five years to the new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Personal Safety Survey.

The government is steadfast in its commitment to improve the services and outcomes for safety for women and children. And I know I'm joined by all members of this place who stand with me in that resolution.

Rebuilding a strong Australian economy will lay the foundation for women's workforce participation and economic security. The measures in the Women's Budget Statement provide targeted support to increase women's work choices and address barriers in the paid workforce, and to help ensure that women can build a financially secure future.

The childcare investment alone will add up to 300,000 hours of work per week, allowing mothers, fathers and carers, up to 40,000 people to work an extra day a week and boosting GDP by up to $1.5 billion a year. In addition, the government is:

Everyone should feel safe at work. Everyone is entitled to respect in the workplace. There is additional funding to support the implementation of our response to the Respect@Work report. The government is committed to building a new culture of respect in Australian workplaces.

To support more women into a greater range of industries and occupations, the government is investing an additional $12.2 million for the National Careers Institute Partnership Grants program to support projects that facilitate more career opportunities and supported career pathways for women.

We know that women make up the majority of the workforce in sectors dedicated to the care of our most vulnerable, often at the front line of the services we all depend on, and we are grateful for the contributions they make every day. We are funding retention bonuses for registered nurses in the aged-care sector and continuing training. We are providing funding to support informal carers of older Australians, including through increased access to respite services.

We also know that many women, particularly those in later stages of life, can find themselves suddenly financially vulnerable. It can stem from family breakdown, poor superannuation outcomes at retirement or a continued need for financial dependence that comes from being on the wrong side of a gender pay gap throughout your career. The Morrison government is focused on improving retirement outcomes for women and will remove the $450-per-month threshold under which employees are not paid the superannuation guarantee.

Divorce and family separation should not mean lifelong economic sacrifices and insecurity for women and their children. The government is also investing $10.7 million to streamline the process for distributing property after separation or divorce, and to provide access to lawyers to assist with mediation for property distribution.

Stable housing is another important underpinning of women's economic security and wellbeing. Recognising this, the government is establishing the family home guarantee to assist eligible single parents with dependent children—the vast majority of whom are women—to enter or re-enter the housing market sooner with a deposit of as little as two per cent of the purchase price.

You can't be what you can't see. Women leaders—and seeing women leading—shows other women what we can achieve, and more importantly what society can achieve where decision-making is equitably shared between women and men of diverse skills and talents.

With women's leadership comes respect for women in the workplace, the belief among women and men that positive change can and will happen, and generations hereafter of Australian girls and boys growing up in a country where gender equality is insisted on and embraced. That's why we are investing $38.3 million into expanding the highly successful Women's Leadership and Development Program.

Sport is a fundamental part of Australian life and women have much to contribute as players, leaders and role models. Watching Ash Barty take her place as world No. 1, Sam Kerr literally kick goals and the AFLW and Women's Rugby League grow in support is as exciting as it is inspiring. We are investing $17 million to support world-class sporting events over coming years including eight additional Matildas international matches and the FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup. Initiatives like this not only provide us with goals for young women to aspire to but create a pipeline of employment and leadership and mentoring for women and girls.

The health of Australian women and girls is critical to their social and economic wellbeing. Maternal, sexual and reproductive health is a key priority area for Australia's Long Term National Health Plan. Chronic, preventative and mental health concerns can disproportionately affect women. In recognition of this, the Women's Budget Statement includes investment in breast screening as well as funding for accessible outreach services for women with breast cancer, including in regional and remote areas; cervical screening; funding for work on reducing the rate of preterm births; and legal and mental health supports for women experiencing family violence in regional and remote communities.

Improving postnatal care for mothers, families and babies is imperative. We're building on the national perinatal mental health check initiative to achieve universal screening across public antenatal and postnatal care settings. Ante- and postnatal depression are in many ways still being understood but every mother on their journey to motherhood deserves to be heard. So many families have been touched by postnatal depression, and I know that mothers reflecting on their own experiences understand the importance with which universal screenings and informed natal mental health care are needed.

To ensure that Australian women have access to life-saving medicines and essential services, the government is investing in new and amended PBS listings, including $19 million for the listing of Oripro to prevent women going into premature labour. These measures complement the government's overall investment in health for the Australian community.

This Women's Budget Statement is for all Australian women and girls. I stand here today as a member of the Morrison government and a member of the cabinet women's task force, but it is all women of this place, on this side and the other side, who are helping to drive this agenda. Our voices are being heard in here but for the women outside of this place, we stand here for you. For those of you who are disenfranchised, for those who feel they are suffering in silence, to victim-survivors, to advocates, to young women starting their education or career journeys, for all the women who are empowered and those who are being heard, for the women in our cities, women in our regions and for the women on their traditional country—to all women: we are listening and we are acting. I commend the Women's Budget Statement to the House.

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I begin by welcoming the decision to restore the Women's Budget Statement this year. Bob Hawke introduced the Women's Budget Statement in 1984, driven by the marvellous Susan Ryan, who we lost too young. At that time, it was a world first and for decades after it was a proud local tradition; until, of course, Tony Abbott abolished it in 2014. After eight years, this statement is an admission that government policy can affect men and women differently and that, unless we measure these things, unless we pay attention to them, women inevitably fall behind. Tony Abbott knew that, I assume. He was the minister for women, after all. That's why he abolished the Women's Budget Statement in the first place. Since then, it's no surprise that this government has been failing the interests of Australian women.

This year has forced us to a reckoning with some of those failures. It's put a face to our problems—the brave face of young women who refuse to accept silence and who insist on demanding something better from us as their representatives: justice, respect and an equal voice at the decision-making table. That's what women are asking for, whatever their politics. Yet, we still live in a country where women are paid less than men for their work, where too many retire into poverty, where families can't afford child care and where violence is a terrible fact of life. I think what our discussions before the break told us, if anything, is that every woman has a story of sexual harassment, sexual violence or domestic violence—every single woman in this country has a story.

Insofar as there are policies in this budget which acknowledge these problems, we welcome them. There are a number of things here that we have called for and we support unequivocally. We welcome them and we hope that they have been designed and delivered in good faith. We hope that they're free of the suspicions and ideology that stopped the government taking these issues seriously for the past eight years. But you can understand why some Australian women are struggling to believe this Prime Minister's promises. They're looking at his record and assuming that this is just another political fix, because the government's record on women's policy does not inspire confidence.

Since the Liberal Party came to office, childcare costs have risen by a third. Nine hundred and forty thousand women have been forced to raid their superannuation accounts to survive the pandemic. A million women are looking for work. In fact, Australia has plummeted 26 spots down the international rankings for gender equality. We are now 50th in the world for gender equality. That is the lowest we have been since these records have been kept. It's only now, minutes to an election, after the Prime Minister has so profoundly lost the faith of Australian women, that these promises come.

This Prime Minister has never had trouble making promises. It's keeping promises that he struggles with. Already the details in this budget don't match the sunny promises he's given us. When you read these documents you see that the budget forecasts a drop in the number of Australian women in the workforce. It forecasts a pay cut for Australian women and a tax hike after the next election. You have always got to check the fine print with this guy, because, beyond the hype and beyond headlines, it's just not clear that any of these promises will actually be delivered.

Those opposite now say that they're going to implement the Respect@Work report, which we all know was sitting on the then Attorney-General's desk, gathering dust, for more than a year. And you think, 'Oh, well, better late than never.' Again, you hear the headline, 'We're accepting all the recommendations,' but when you read the fine print it's very far from the case. You learn, in fact, that the government is refusing to deliver on the most urgent changes recommended by the Respect@Work report. There's a pattern here, and they can't shake it.

Of course, Labor welcomes any additional funding for women's safety. We do. We welcome additional funding for women's safety, because wherever I go in this country, from Launceston to Newcastle to Rockhampton, what women's services tell me is that things have never been harder—literally, never been harder. It has never been harder to house women and their children trying to flee domestic violence. It has never been harder to get them the legal assistance that they need. Why is this only happening now, eight years in?

After almost a decade of reports, inquiries and royal commissions, with hundreds of recommendations ignored, why is it coming just weeks after the Family Court was abolished? We all know how important it is for people making decisions during family breakdowns to have a specialist understanding of the dynamics of domestic violence, something that the Family Court had. The Family Court's abolition was not wanted by anybody working in the area. Specialised family courts run by people that understand the dynamics of domestic violence are absolutely critical to keeping women and children safe. That's what all the evidence tells us. You look at decisions like this and it is a bit hard to take the Prime Minister's promises seriously.

It is more than just the policies and the gap between announcement and delivery. Over the last couple of days, the Prime Minister and those opposite have been asked to vote on the member for Bowman and his fitness to hold high office. At every opportunity they've had to put their votes where their rhetoric has been on keeping people safe and on, as the minister said, preventing the use of the internet to stalk and harass people and for coercive control and to call out this behaviour and stand against it, what have they done? They have voted to protect this guy, a taxpayer funded troll. They voted to protect an extra 22,000 bucks for him to keep his committee position. It is a bit hard on the one hand to say you want to take strong action and then on the other hand the minute you have the opportunity to take strong action and call it out to instead actually defend this guy. The guy has been caught upskirting a constituent! Honestly, what do you have to do to lose the faith of those opposite? You just have to shake your head, really, when you think about it, don't you? You just want to shake your head. What does it take?

I hope those opposite reconsider that, because, like I say, there are measures in this budget that we are very happy to support. But do they not understand that this sends the most mixed of messages to the women of Australia to say that it matters, that this stuff is important, but be prepared to defend a guy who is stalking, threatening, harassing and upskirting his own constituents?

I also want to say that, as Labor's shadow minister for women, I get what it is that we need to achieve for Australian women. But actually what's even more important is that we have a leader in the member for Grayndler who understands, a shadow ministry that understands and a caucus that understands. Having a critical mass of women in the parliament on our side changes things so profoundly. When I came into this place, we were about a quarter female on this side of the parliament. We now are close to half. It is such a profound difference not to have to explain from scratch every time one of these changes needs to be made.

We have a policy agenda ready to go from day one. Our childcare policy would make child care cheaper for 97 per cent of Australian families. Three-quarters of those who would benefit from Labor's policy will not benefit from the policy announced by those opposite—a million families with more affordable child care. Imagine what that would do not just for family budgets but for women's workforce participation and for the national budget. Imagine the difference that would make when we increase the rate of women's workforce participation. But we don't need to imagine it. We know that this would unleash billions of dollars of national wealth. We know, too, that Labor is committed to pay equity. We would strengthen the Fair Work Commission's ability to order pay rises for low-paid, female dominated industries.

So much has been said, quite rightly, over the last few days about the importance of getting the workforce right in aged care. We absolutely need to invest more in supporting people to choose aged care as a career and supporting them to stay in the career. That means paying decent wages. How can it be okay that you can earn more stacking shelves at Woolies than by caring for our oldest and most vulnerable Australians, or our youngest and most vulnerable Australians? It's just not right. We need the Fair Work Commission to be able to order pay rises for low-paid female dominated industries. We also need to give greater job security to casuals and gig workers, as our policy does.

On superannuation, we're committed to getting to the full 12 per cent, because we know that too many Australian women are retiring into poverty. The fastest-growing group of people moving into homelessness is single older women. On women's safety, of course we know that if you're working and you're trying to leave a violent relationship that you need that 10 days of paid domestic violence leave which Labor has committed to. That's to go to court, to give police statements, to change the locks, to get the kids sorted at school and to attend counselling or to come out of hospital. You need that 10 days of paid domestic violence leave. We don't want women to have to choose between their jobs and staying safe.

That's our promise: at work, in the family and in retirement we have an agenda for women, written by women. It wasn't written to solve a momentary political problem; it's an agenda that you can trust, because, for us, equality will never be an exercise in damage control. It's who we are and it's why our party exists. It's our simplest and our most important belief, that every Australian is born with the same value and with the same rights to safety, happiness and independence. When we fail to meet this standard—when we fall short of equality—it's bad for women but it's bad for men too, because equality is good for women and it's good for men too.