Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I've heard of mansplaining, but I think we've got 'man-interrupting' going on here against a woman speaking her mind, an Australian Labor woman speaking to the reality of Australian women who are at this very time making decisions in one critical by-election in the seat of Eden-Monaro. They've got a choice between sending another bloke to Canberra like this lot or sending a great woman in the shape of Kristy McBain, and I encourage them to do that. The problem with this government is that it simply does not listen to the voices of women and it does not understand the challenges of being a woman in Australia and, if its members are going to call being a woman in Australia and standing up for women 'identity politics', then they need to go back and learn a few understandings about what identity politics actually is.

Minister Ley in the other place declared that women have been hardest hit through COVID-19. And what I'm worried about, as an Australian woman standing up for women impacted, is that this government has lined up a set of policies by which we are set to snap back to unaffordable child care. Right around this country, women are talking to me. They're talking to their partners. They're sitting at dining room tables figuring out how much they can actually manage in terms of putting food on the table or paying for child care because this government has so mismanaged the whole childcare sector. They are dudding aged-care workers, not providing them with the promised money that they announced. We see this time and time again: a series of announcements from this government and then a failure to deliver. They're taking away from childcare workers. They are refusing paid parental leave. These are the priorities of this government.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis—in response to great, passionate advocacy by the unions of this country, the big businesses of this country and the Labor Party, and when we begged and pleaded with this government to provide wage subsidies—it finally came through with jobseeker. Yes, they came through with it, but who did they take it away from first? They took it away from the women of Australia. They took it away from the childcare workers, the most female dominated industry in this country. Women in Australia need to remember that this government does not stand up for them. The Liberal-National government have failed Australians.

It's a matter of international record. In the World Economic Forum's The Global Gender Gap Report 2013, Australia was 23rd in the rankings in terms of women's economic capacity. After seven years of this blokey dominated LNP government that's out of touch with the women of Australia, the reality now is that we've slipped all the way down to 44th of 153 countries. And after what the government has done in response to COVID, I have no expectation that our position will rise. In fact, I'm sure it will get even worse. We know that this government has failed Australian women. As the Labor Party, we are very concerned that child care will not be accessible to women, that they won't be able to get back to work and that there will be barriers to their participation in the economy and the society. We are concerned that Scott Morrison's snapback will actually be a job crusher for the women of Australia.

Question agreed to.