Zaneta Mascarenhas (Swan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

MASCARENHAS () (): Labor governments have the ability to transform lives for people for the better. I remember standing in the House of Representatives when we passed the new paid family and domestic violence leave bill. I had goosepimples. Women fleeing domestic violence will now be able to access 10 days leave. This is good policy.

I reflected on why Labor is able to transform women's lives. It's because we have women in significant numbers in the caucus. We also have women in leadership roles. In the nineties the Labor Party recognised we needed more diversity in our ranks, and to address this issue we introduced quotas. Over time we increased the target, and now the Albanese Labor government has 50 per cent women in the caucus. What happens when you have more women in parliament? We make more holistic policies. What happens when a party ignores or alienates women? We just have to look at the crossbench. The Liberal Party likes to think that affirmative action targets don't work, but I have to point out that the women on the Labor frontbench and backbench are very impressive. Our targets indicate to women they are welcome in our party and in the House. Imagine if the Liberal Party had got the memo that gender diversity is important. Imagine if they had implemented action back in the nineties.

On the argument of merit versus tokenism, I point out the impressive qualifications on the crossbench—ex- CEOs, leaders in the not-for-profit sector and not one but two medical doctors. I don't think that women on the crossbench are tokenistic.

Imagine what a government does when we know that women matter. We act on how we can empower and support women. This week we'll be debating a gender equality amendment bill in this place. This bill will look at paid transparency through the Workplace Gender Equality Agency and at organisations with more than 100 employees. It will be a powerful tool in combating the gender pay gap and other measures. However, another large driver for the gender pay gap is the disparity in hours worked between men and women, and the cost of child care is one of the huge factors that drives people away from doing more work—and, typically, it's mothers.

For me, deciding on where my children would go to child care was one of the most emotional decisions I had to make. For me, it was more emotional than my IVF journey. I wanted to make sure my children were in a place of love, a place that had fun and play and care. On top of that, I wanted a childcare centre that I could afford while returning to a very demanding job. I also highlight that I'm very grateful for the women who came before me and the people who decided to make the old parliament bar into a childcare centre. Today there still might still be people passing out and throwing up at the same place, but it's actually toddlers who need their afternoon naps and babies who might have spit up too much milk.

Nationally, 73,000 people who wanted to work did not look for work because of the rising cost of early childhood education. Typically, it's women who make the decision to leave their jobs or reduce their working hours, forgoing income, which also results in lower superannuation and less career experience. This is an opportunity cost that deprives our nation of its full talent. It means women, on average, are retiring with less superannuation and, on average, are earning less than their male counterparts in the same careers. It also often means that unpaid work at home is disproportionally resulting in more women needing to contribute to that.

Like many Australian families, my husband and I both work. We do our best to share the parenting duties, to ensure that we spend quality time with our children while balancing our careers.

At the moment, 60 per cent of mothers with young children work part time. I worked part time when I went back to work, and I'd say that my previous workplace was a very supportive one that supported part-time workers. Often I hear women talk about the utopia of having a role where you can be in a leadership role and also work part time, and too many workplaces don't actually support that.

In my previous workplace, they had restructured the company and one of my colleagues was on maternity leave and so people were applying for roles in executive positions. There were multiple people going for a role. Mary Stewart was on maternity leave; she went for the role and the board made a decision that she was the best person for the job and they didn't care that she wasn't going to start for another two or three months and they did not care that she was coming back part time. This is unusual for corporate workplaces. Unfortunately, this was the exception to the rule. We need to make sure that women can step back into their careers and be in leadership roles and also have the ability to work full time or part time and not have it affect their career.

When it comes to women deciding on whether to return to work part time or to work full time, the cost of child care is a huge factor. The Labor government has a multipronged approach to dealing with the gender pay gap. Making child care more affordable is one of the key measures in our toolbox to bridge that pay gap. In Swan, 6,900 families will benefit from this policy. Under Labor's policy, a family with a combined income of $120,000 will save $1,780 in the first year of our policy. Our policy means that around 96 per cent of families with children in early childhood education will be better off. No family will be worse off.

Treasury estimates that the government's childcare reforms will add the equivalent of up to 37,000 extra full-time-equivalent workers in the economy by financial year 2024. We also know that this will boost the economy through increased productivity and also will give families the ability to bring more income home for households.

Over the past eight years, childcare costs have soared by 41 per cent. The Liberals were elected in 2013 and took five long years to implement some reforms, which, frankly, did not go far enough. This goes to the beginning of my speech: the coalition simply did not have enough women in their caucus for the blokes at the helm to actually understand what women need. Simply, the coalition didn't have a plan for helping working mums who wanted to enter the workforce.

Labor's cheaper childcare policy is a cost-of-living measure with a significant productivity dividend. Labor is getting this policy done, with a three-point plan: first, by increasing the childcare subsidy rate to 90 per cent for families with their first child in child care; second, by increasing the childcare subsidy rate for families with one child, with household income of less than $530,000; and third, by also keeping the higher childcare subsidy rate for the second child in care.

It's also important to note that this policy doesn't just include children in child care; it also covers after-school care, which is so helpful when children begin school. Often I hear parents talk about the difference between child care and when their children start school and that after-school care makes the difference as to whether people make the decision to work part time or full time.

It's only 95 days until this policy comes into effect on 1 July. I'm glad that we're giving cost-of-living relief to families whilst also bringing about a mechanism that has the potential to reduce the gender pay gap.

This is also on top of our 12 month inquiry into the rising cost of child care in this country—and I know, as a mother with children in child care, that, year on year, prices have been increasing. Childcare costs have increased by 41 per cent over the last eight years. The ACCC will lead an inquiry which will examine the driving factors behind the rise in childcare costs and out-of-pocket expenses and will make recommendations to the government on the ways that we can ease pressures on families.

Let's contrast this with the Liberal Party. There was no plan and little action on this issue.

I'm so proud to be part of an Albanese Labor government that is making child care more affordable and helping women to have more financial freedom.