Dave Sharma (Wentworth, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to share with you a speech written by 11-year-old Danni Frelic as part of the Raise Our Voice in Parliament campaign, where participants were asked the question: what do you want Australia to look like in 20 years? This was Danni's response: 'Filling precisely half the chairs in the Senate were women, half in the House of Representatives and everywhere in the entire House. In the surgery room, exactly half the doctors were women and half the nurses too. At the sports field, half the audience were at the women's game and half the competitors were women too. At the building site, half of the construction workers were women. Half of everything was given to women; nothing less, nothing more. This is what I want in the year of 2041.

It's obvious women are unequal to men in terms of work, stereotypes or life in general. How come there are hardly any famous sportswomen in cricket, basketball or rugby? Why do I never see any female construction workers when I walked past a building site? And what about those girls who have dreams to become Prime Minister? Only once has that ever happened—once.

When I'm older I want to be a brain surgeon. However, these days I would expect to be one of the few. During the pandemic women have especially become more unequal than ever. Mothers with kids have even sacrificed their jobs to deal with the otherwise unsupervised children. But we have to come back from this. We girls deserve equality; we deserve the image of 2041.'

Thank you, Danni, for your wonderful contribution and your insightful words.