Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Innovation) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of the answer given by Senator Cormann to a question I asked a long time ago at the beginning of question time. My question was about the fundamental right that Australians now have, have come to expect and perhaps think this country has always had—that is, the right to expect when you work that your employer will contribute superannuation. There was a time when that didn't exist. Certainly, I grew up in a part of the country where superannuation wasn't anything that was discussed around the kitchen table in Curran Street, Blacktown, where I lived. But the Labor Party instituted superannuation for all Australians, a universal scheme, and those opposite in government—and you just heard a speech from one of their representatives—were so out of touch at the time we set it up that they said it could never work, that businesses would fail and the whole economy would fall apart.

They're still out of touch, because today when I asked Senator Cormann to actually recognise the fact that, right now in Australia, Australian women will retire with 42 per cent less in their superannuation balance than Australian men who are working in the same country, the same economy—42 per cent less. The calculation of that amount is about $113,000.

Senator Cormann, the Leader of the Liberal-National party who will seek the vote from the Australian people to come back in here, couldn't even answer that question and confirm those facts. Part of the reason he can't confirm those facts, and perhaps he doesn't care about those facts, is that his coalition are going to—and this is what he said—continue to consider all options. That's what they've been doing for five, nearly six years—considering all those options. And do you know who they've been leaving out the whole time? Australian women. They haven't got enough women who want to join their party, who want to stay in their party or who want to be a voice in their party because it's dominated by men who simply think that they know better and refuse to acknowledge the reality.

If you looked around this chamber at question time, you would have seen 15 women here in the Australian Labor Party out of a team of 26—15 of us—standing up for women. It's not just the team that's here—and I want to acknowledge the great work of Labor parliamentarians, men and women, over years who have advanced the cause for women to get fair and decent superannuation. We've come up with a policy to address that. And the voice of women has been loud in that debate inside our party.

On the other side, there are 30 Liberal-National party members. Only eight of them—only eight—are women. Having an absence of a women's voice in your political party in this day and age is absolutely a failure. This government is failing on women's representation and, because of that, it's failing to provide adequately for the women of this nation.

My second question was to Senator Cormann asking him if he will invest the $400 million that Australian Labor are going to invest to make sure that women are going to have a secure financial future so that, when they go on maternity leave, they'll get their maternity leave, which Labor delivered, but they'll also get a superannuation payment on that of $1,100—roughly that amount. That's going to translate to a massive improvement in the amount of money that they will have on retirement. I will just go to the example of a woman who gives birth to a child at 27 and another at 29—two children; she's under 30. The difference that this policy of Labor—this $400 million investment in the women of this country—will make is $24,350. That is no small amount. We understand, as the Labor Party, with the strong voice of strong women, that we have to do better for 50 per cent of this population, who are retiring in poverty.

My second question was to ask the minister if he knows, if he can verify that older, single women are one of the fastest-growing groups falling into homelessness. If they spent just a minute or two at their local real estate agents and saw who was coming in and the desperate state that Australian older women are in, they'd know that they need to change their policy. They could have matched Labor. They're the government. They could have said on Monday that they were going to institute it straight away. But they didn't. What they're doing to do is what Senator Cormann said—they're going to continue to consider all options. Well, they've been considering the wrong options for too long, and Australian women deserve better.