Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a brief contribution on that part of the Procedure Committee's report which relates to the caring for infants. Can I just start by praising the Procedure Committee for considering this issue. I wrote to the committee earlier this year and asked for this to be put on their agenda. I am very pleased that we have now seen the result today, whereby we are updating our standing orders such that new parents, be they mums or dads, can now briefly have care of their infant in the chamber. Obviously, this would be when there is no better option available—it is not like the chamber is really fun for kids. We can now briefly have that option, at the discretion of the President, of course, when no disturbance is caused.

I want to thank the Procedure Committee for bringing this chamber closer to the 21st century. I will note that we are still sadly a little out of step with the House. The reason I raised this issue earlier in February was that the Senate has had a long tradition of allowing breastfeeding in the chamber, a tradition that I strongly support, but not all of our state parliaments share those good pro-bonding pro-female rules. We have had that long tradition, but earlier this year the House actually updated their rules to be even more family-friendly than us here in the red chamber.

Clearly, there is a bit of rivalry between the two chambers. I thought it unfair that members in that place be allowed to have care of an infant while the Senate was still restricted to the rules that we must be breastfeeding our infant at the time. Hence the suggestion that we modernise those rules. Again, I congratulate the Procedure Committee for looking at this rule. But I do note that I thought it was a little disappointing that we saw fit to put some fetters on that rule, such that it was a discretionary decision of the President, that it was only for a brief time and that it was only where no disturbance was caused. I am sure that those parameters will be adhered to, but I thought it was perhaps a little disappointing that they needed to be spelled out, given that the House rules were a bit more generous in that regard and said simply that a member may have care of an infant in the chamber.

But the 21st century is here, and we are slowly getting closer to it in this chamber. I instigated this process before I fell pregnant. So it was not motivated by self-interest; it was motivated by a desire to make sure that this place is more family-friendly so that we can get more young women representing their states here in this chamber.

We are not doing so well in terms of gender representation. Overall, the parliament is at about 30 per cent female, and here in the Senate we are quite close to that as well. It is better than it was, but it is not quite as good as it needs to be. This parliament has gone backwards with the recent loss of some female senators on the government side who were then replaced by men. So we are actually heading backwards in this most recent term of parliament. We need to arrest that and turn it around.

Part of the reason we need to do that—