Sally Sitou (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is a card that I have in my office in Parliament House that is significant to me. It is a card Senator Penny Wong sent me after I delivered my first speech in this place. It is significant because of what Senator Wong means to me. She showed me that there was a place for someone like me in politics. I remember when I was working in this building 15 years ago when Senator Wong was sworn in as the first Asian born cabinet minister. It was a significant moment because it crystallised to me the idea that perhaps this country was ready for greater diversity in our parliament. I am floored by the idea that, 15 years later, I now get to step into this place to be part of a majority female government—the first time we have had a majority female federal government in our country's history. So, on this International Women's Day, that is what I would like to celebrate, as well as the record number of women in our cabinet.

It is also significant that it comes some years after the Labor Party delivered our first female Prime Minister. Those achievements were not by accident; they were deliberate. A contentious debate was had in the party in the 1990s. It was one that we resolved in 1994, and that was to introduce quotas in our party. It was a hard decision but I think it was the right decision. That has been borne out in the make-up of our parliament today. It is important from a symbolic point of view, absolutely. But, more than that, it is important because of all the things that we have been able to achieve by having more women our parliament.

It is no accident that it was during the Rudd and Gillard years that Jenny Macklin, the then minister for community services, introduced our country's first statutory paid parental leave. It was a policy that I directly benefited from a few years later when I had my own son, and it made the world of difference. Any parent will tell you that those first couple of years are the most rewarding but also the hardest. The ability to combine paid parental leave from my workplace as well as that provided by the government meant that I could take a full year off and spend time with my son.

We now have a majority female federal government. In the first nine months of this Albanese-Labor government, what we have been able to achieve for women across the country includes expanded paid parental leave, improved affordability for child care, making gender equity an object of the Fair Work Act and introducing paid family and domestic violence leave. It gives me incredible pleasure and it is a great honour to be able to serve alongside people like Senator Katy Gallagher, the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Women. It is the first time that we have had a minister who has held both of those portfolios. It is a deliberate decision to put women's economic equality at the heart of decision-making in this government.

I get to serve alongside people like the member for Newcastle, who has guided the federal parliament through the implementation of Jenkins review, to clean up the work culture in this building, and I think we all benefit from that. I get to serve alongside the member for Lingiari, who spoke so beautifully just then about the experiences she has had. And there is the member for Swan, the member for Higgins and Senator Payman. They are all incredible, extraordinary women from diverse backgrounds. I'm really excited to call these women my colleagues and my friends. But what excites me most is the knowledge that Labor women will come after me, and that they will build on the incredible legacy that the first majority female federal government has been able to lay. So that card that Senator Wong sent me is significant to me, but what is more significant was an interaction that I had in my electorate when a mum came up to me and said that she was proud of me, because I gave her daughter someone to look up to. Thank you.