Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Waters for the question and acknowledge her long interest in improving women's economic equality in this country. It's a priority that she and I share. I think you've seen in the last two budgets how seriously the government are taking or making that priority, and we're addressing it through the payment system, where we've made some significant changes. We are also doing it through the work we're doing in women's policy more generally, through our National Strategy to Achieve Gender Equality and through our work on the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children. To begin with, I just wanted to put it in that context.

We have been clear—in fact, I heard the Treasurer on the radio this morning reconfirming our commitment to doing super on PPL when the budget allows for that to happen. I acknowledge that the Greens' position is that we link the PRRT or the high-balance super accounts to that change. That's not how the government works. We're not hypothecating, in a sense, where we're making revenue changes to expenditure decisions. These are all matters that come back through government in the normal way, which is that we take a range of decisions on one side of the budget and we take a range of decisions on the other.

But it remains a priority for us. That's part of the reason why we are trying to get the budget back into better shape—so that we can make these investments. I think it's probably a little bit more than $200 million—I haven't seen the updated costings for it—but we are trying to make room in the budget for sensible investments like these that will provide a boost to women's economic security, as we know that is good for the economy as well.