Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

When the government became aware of the assault on Brittany Higgins in this place two years ago they had one job, and that was to listen—to listen to her and to help her speak out. When the story of the assault on Brittany Higgins broke just a few weeks ago, the government still had one job: to listen and to help her speak out.

When the story of the allegations against the Attorney-General broke, the government again had one job: to listen to the story of the woman we now know was called Kate and to hear her story. In the era of Grace Tame, who had to launch a campaign called 'Let Her Speak' to be heard, in the era when one in five women in this country will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime, in the era when that figure is so much worse for women of colour, in the era when one woman is murdered a week by a man she knows, and in this era when sexual violence against women is at epidemic proportions, the government has one job: to listen and, by listening, to send a powerful message to all victims-survivors of sexual assault—to tell them that they too will be heard. It's to tell women around the country that their voices will be respected and that they will be believed. It will tell the women of Australia that their government gets it, that their government understands the shared experience of every woman—whether that experience is the relentless comments, the looks, the words or being spoken over when you have something to say, or whether it's the abuse, the violence, the sexual assault or the murder. The government has had just one job in all of this, and that is to listen—to listen to women and to let them know that their own government has their backs.

It is because this government has refused to listen that the women of Australia have taken to the streets today all around the country. It's because, instead of listening, on every occasion this government has rolled out its political machine to silence women from speaking up. This is what Brittany Higgins said she was faced with two years ago, a political machine that made her choose between speaking out and keeping her job. And, this year, when she found her voice, the government moved to discredit her. The Prime Minister himself used victim-blaming language, drawing attention to what he called the vulnerable position she found herself in instead of taking aim at the alleged perpetrator and sending a message to perpetrators that it is they who will be held to account for raping women, not women who will be held to account for speaking out. The Prime Minister himself showed his complete lack of understanding of the epidemic of violence against women in this country when he had to ask his own wife what to do.

This year, when the friends of Kate found their voices on her behalf and presented a 30-page dossier of allegations against the Attorney-General, the government moved again to silence Kate. The Prime Minister didn't even read the allegations. He didn't even read them. He didn't read them before he declared that he had asked the Attorney-General if it was true. He said no and that was the end of it. Well, the women of Australia have shown today that this is not the end of it. We have seen today that this is not the end of anything. What we have seen today is the women of Australia saying loudly and clearly that enough is enough.

There is a rawness and a rage in our country today, because the women of Australia have had enough. They've had enough of being silenced, enough of being disrespected and enough of seeing machines roll out against them when they try to speak up. There is a conversation going on today about violence against women, and it is getting louder. It's in our schools. It's in our workplaces. It's in the corridors of this very building. It's in the streets. The only people who are choosing not to be part of that conversation are the government, the Morrison government, the very people who should be leading the way.

Question agreed to.