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

Yes, they are the government. You guys are not there yet. You will have to do better to get there. Good luck. Where was I? We are getting there in terms of gender representation but we still have a long way to go. This is one step along the way.

I want to say that this is an important change. It is important to make sure that parliament is considered a viable option for young women as a career choice. It should not be something they think they have to delay until after their child-rearing years.

Importantly, I want to stress that this change will also be able to be used by male members of parliament who have infants. We know that the gender workforce participation of women is lower than that of men. We know there is a huge gender pay gap and we also know that women do far more unpaid labour than men. Part of the way we change all of that and get better equity in the workforce for women is by men stepping up and doing more of that unpaid labour in the home—and child care, whether it is in the home or the workplace.

The importance, I thought, of this amendment is that it allows both new mothers and new fathers who are in parliament to have care of their infant. That helps break down those rigid stereotypes that say it is up to the woman to stay home and look after the children. It is those kinds of outdated notions that we need to challenge. We need to make our workplaces more flexible, allow fathers to have that wonderful bonding time with their children as well, which will enable women to do more in the workplace as we share those tasks at home more equally.

This is a really pleasing development. I thank everyone involved. I want to acknowledge that the House still has better rules than we do. Hopefully, over time we can revisit this and make sure that senators are not disadvantaged in comparison with members of parliament. But whilst we are setting an example here for other workplaces, clearly we need family friendly and flexible workplace arrangements for all workplaces, not just for parliaments. If we are truly to have gender equality and truly to address the gender pay gap, we need to make sure that all workplaces have flexible working arrangements available to parents, be they men or women, and we need to make sure that we have affordable and accessible child care, something that we sadly still do not have in this country. We need to make sure that the gender pay gap is eliminated. There is no need for a gender pay gap. And we need to make sure that there is a better distribution of unpaid work between men and women.

I will finish by saying that this is an issue that is obviously very close to my heart. It is an issue that has arisen for the Greens before. I pay tribute to Senator Hanson-Young, who faced the brunt of the standing orders several years ago with her young daughter, who was brought into the chamber when the bells rang unexpectedly and there was no other childcare option. I understand that Senator Hanson-Young's daughter was sitting quietly and not distracting anyone, but because that was in breach of the standing orders—I think it was then senator Barnaby Joyce who took it upon himself to be the champion of the standing orders—it saw Cora being dragged out of the chamber. I am pleased to see that we can move on from that ridiculous situation and that we now have some standing orders which will allow fathers or mothers who are senators to bring their infants into the chamber briefly at the discretion of the President when clearly there is no better childcare alternative.

I will conclude my remarks by saying thank you to all involved. We still have a lot of work to do, but this is an important step in making our workplace more gender representative and in attracting more young women into parliament. We still have a lot to do in other workplaces and, indeed, in the representation of members in this place, as well.