Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As Senator Bernardi outlined, I too was a delegation member to the IPU Assembly. It was also the third time I have attended IPU meetings. They take a little bit of getting used to, but the assembly is a really important group for Australia to participate in. It is the only organisation where parliamentarians actually come together.

As a member of the Labor Party, I am partisan with my politics. I am sure that would come as no surprise to anyone—though I can see Senator Bernardi shaking his head in disbelief over there. But this is a chance where as a delegation we put politics to one side and work together. Even though we might be a very long way apart on some major issues amongst us, it is an opportunity for us to work together as parliamentary colleagues. We see that right across the IPU.

I would also, as Senator Bernardi has done, sincerely thank those who support us, in particular those from the Australian parliament, both from the Senate and the House of Representatives. We are well supported. There are many countries there that do not have that sort of support. To have people from the Senate and the House of Representatives whose knowledge you can rely on, who are very thorough and who work many more hours than we do is an absolute credit to the way that our democracy works and the way the Australian parliament works. Our embassy staff also worked incredibly hard to brief us. We got good briefings before we left and once we were in Zambia. Again, it is an opportunity for us as politicians to see how hard our embassy and consular staff work. Nothing was too much trouble.

This year we continued with a motion we put up at the last IPU in Vietnam, where we talked about the representation of women in the member parliaments of the IPU. I am pleased to say it is something that the IPU takes very seriously. Countries that do not have women among their delegation are penalised in their voting and so on. This time we looked at how we could increase the representation of women parliamentarians across the world. The work that we have done here, or that I have done in particular, will form part of the motion that Australia will pursue in Geneva. That initial motion was initiated by the government and this time was picked up by me—again, it really shows how we can work in a bipartisan way that I do not often see in this place. We, as the Australian delegation, have put together a motion in partnership with Kenya on how we look at increasing the participation of women across the world.

In the session where I was the rapporteur it was incredible to hear of the struggles of women right across the world. It was also somewhat ironic—and I did draw it to the men's attention—that we had countries with all-male delegations telling us how we needed to improve the participation of women. I think they need to hold a mirror up and have a good look at where they are going with that.

It was really interesting to hear how women struggle; for example, in Tibet. Something that stops women participating there is that people have to travel across rugged terrain to boarding schools, which in the past had boarding facilities only for males. Women were not even able to get to school. It was an incredible insight for me to hear firsthand how countries are really challenging the lack of representation of women and to hear, too, how countries you would not expect were tackling the notion that it is a woman's role to remain at home with children; that they were saying: 'No, that is not really what we want. We want to see much better participation.'

I look forward to whoever is on the next delegation taking that motion forward.

Question agreed to.