Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Women I table a ministerial statement on the 58th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women and I seek leave to incorporate the statement in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The statement read as follows—

On 8 March, I led the Australian delegation to the 58th Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (the Commission) held in New York. The Commission takes place annually to evaluate progress on gender equality and to identify critical and emerging issues and challenges.

Australia's high level participation at the Commission sends an unequivocal message confirming the Australian Government's strong commitment to women's empowerment and equality domestically, regionally and internationally.

Australia's recently appointed Ambassador for Women and Girls, Natasha Stott Despoja, accompanied me as a valued member of the delegation and we jointly advocated Australia's priorities at the Commission.

Australia's decision to appoint an Ambassador dedicated to promoting women and girls' human rights globally reflect our deep commitment to gender equality and women's leadership in particular.

I believe it is incumbent upon all people fortunate enough to live in free and democratic societies to do what we can to speak out to protect the human rights of women and girls.

Each year, the Commission aims to establish a set of global standards and formulate recommendations for governments, intergovernmental organisations (including in the UN system) and civil society to promote gender equality and the advancement of women worldwide.

The priority theme for the Commission this year is "Challenges and achievements in the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals for women and girls". This year's Commission comes at an important moment in the lead-up to the elaboration of the post-2015 development framework. I joined other global leaders in reflecting on the challenges and barriers in implementing the Millennium Development Goals and ensuring gender equality remains a key priority as we shape the post-2015 development framework.

Australian priorities for the Commission on the Status of Women

As head of the delegation, I delivered a statement to the Commission on behalf of the Australian Government which outlined the Government's unwavering commitment to promoting gender equality and women's empowerment.

Australia is advocating for a 'twin-track' approach to the post-2015 development framework that:

Australia again confirmed to the Commission that we have zero tolerance for violence against women and girls both domestically and internationally.

We have joined international action against harmful traditional practices including, child, early and forced marriage, and female genital mutilation.

125 million women and girls have undergone FGM and 2 million babies are born to girls under 15 each year.

These are critical issues that must be addressed, domestically and internationally, and we must continue to ensure they are not swept aside. There is simply no excuse for any form of violence against women and girls.

Australian activities at the Commission on the Status of Women

Whilst in New York I met with many of my counterparts from around the world. These included our Indo-Pacific neighbours and also Indonesia, New Zealand, Japan, Philippines, Republic of Korea, Samoa, Timor Leste and Tonga. I also had meetings with many of my counterparts outside our region, including Canada, Denmark, Liberia, Netherlands, Norway, Turkey, United Kingdom and the United States of America.

Other meetings included discussions with senior United Nations officials who are seeking to mobilise the UN system to empower women and to overcome the scourge of violence against women, including the heads of UN Women, the UN Population Fund, UN Development Program and the Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Ms Bangura.

In addition to sharing success and challenges in our domestic work to achieve gender equality, we discussed how we could work together to ensure a successful outcome at the Commission and on gender equality issues more broadly.

I also participated as a panellist in a number of events, speaking on a range of issues, including women, peace and security; women's economic empowerment; education; violence against women and women's priorities in the Pacific.

I was particularly pleased to launch the Australian Chapter of the Women in Public Service Project on 12 March. I look forward to the contribution this project will make to ensuring Australia is a place where women participation equally in public life and where this goal is also supported in our region.

Australian Delegation to the Commission on the Status of Women

In addition to Natasha Stott Despoja, I was also joined by:

The professional input of the Australian delegates was invaluable in providing expert advice to government on the priority and reviews themes during negotiation of the agreed Conclusions; and liaising with other civil society advocates both on the ground in New York and in Australia.

The strong Australian civil society presence at the Commission is vital in ensuring critical and emerging issues relating to gender equality and women's advancement will remain at the forefront of international policy discussions.

Conclusion

The extent of the challenge to achieve greater empowerment and equality for women and girls domestically, regionally and internationally continues to be vast. However, the Commission understands Australia is committed to working with others to advocate against the inequalities faced by women and girls and to entrench their human rights.

It was clear that we must continue to work together to support progress on the Millennium Development Goals, particularly in the Indo Pacific region.

Globally inequality persists across many countries and women continue to face discrimination in access to education, work, economic assets and participation in government and commerce. Violence against women remains pervasive and continues to undermine efforts to reach our stated goals.

Without addressing gender inequality in all its forms, we cannot expect meaningful progress in other spheres of development. The Australian Government will continue to support and advocate for the rights of women and girls to be fully respected and promoted in a proactive way that reflects Australian values and interests.

I am determined that this Government's commitment to gender equality remains resolute and unwavering.

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

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

We welcome the significant progress achieved in recent weeks and particularly welcome the acknowledgement by all countries that Millennium Development Goals need to recognise and have a stand-alone goal for gender equality once those MDGs expire in 2015. I would like to place on record my thanks to all of the women who were involved in negotiating that great outcome.

I wish to express some concern about a short statement in the minister's response just tabled, where she notes: 'Without addressing gender inequity in all its forms, we cannot expect meaningful progress in other spheres of development.' On that note, I wish to place on record the Greens' extreme concern at the mooted proposal to abolish gender workplace reporting requirements currently overseen by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency. There has been quite a lot of talk about the fact that these reforms will be either watered down or abolished entirely and lifted from their current application to workplaces of 100 employees up to workplaces of 1,000 employees, which would cover some five per cent of workplaces across the country. You cannot fix the gender pay gap by hiding it, so clearly we need to keep gathering this data—if the minister is serious about tackling gender inequality in all of its forms. I would urge the minister and those on the government side to reflect on those words and keep these very important gender workplace reporting mechanisms on our books.

I also wish to place on record my concern with the finance minister's recent statement that he believes women in parliament are a 'side issue'. Again, if we have professed concern about gender inequality in all of its forms then I would ask the finance minister to reflect on his very inappropriate remarks about the representation of women in this place.

I conclude my remarks by addressing and putting on record our concerns about cuts to foreign aid funding. If Australia is playing, as it should, a strong role in the international community in supporting women's rights and supporting equality for women, then how on earth can we achieve that by cutting a projected $4½ billion from overseas aid funding in the forward estimates? That makes a mockery of the commitments that Australia was part of making, in recent weeks, at the convention on the status of women, and I would again urge the government to not take that step of cutting this crucial funding that will, in fact, help the status of women across the country.

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too wish to take note of the statement that has been presented to us today. In particular, I want to put on record my appreciation to the minister for making this statement public and bringing it into the chamber. This is an issue we have discussed many times at Senate estimates. It is very important, when we take our position as a nation to the session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, that it is brought back into this chamber for discussion. So I want to note the minister's action in doing that.

The 58th session is particularly important because at the moment the UN is looking at what is going to happen in the challenges, achievements and implementation of the Millennium Development Goals for women and girls. Certainly, the statement that Minister Cash presented in relation to the delegation of the 58th session was a positive statement. It talked about celebrating what we have achieved in this country around the issues of the Millennium Development Goals. We must celebrate the fact that in this period nations of the world worked together to look at issues around poverty and to make an international commitment to move forward. And we had a goal: to look at the independence and empowerment of women—which was goal 3. This is a goal that has not been universally successful around the world. The issues which Minister Cash focused on in relation to the statement were things with which we can agree across the chamber. Certainly we agree with the statement that it was a commitment for all of us.

Minister Cash also noted the appointment of the Ambassador for Women and Girls. That is a wonderful process that will move into the future based on an initiative of the Labor government. In the future we will be able to see the importance of having such a position. Through the position of ambassador—and there is no-one better than ex-senator Stott-Despoja to take up that role—Australia could then move internationally to look at how we can engage with the women and men of the world to ensure that Australia can take a leading role through our aid program to improve the safety of women and focus on the development of women's issues.

The minister went on to talk about the most important element—absolutely no tolerance for violence against women and girls. She went on to talk about the National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and their Children, which is an important element of public policy which this government has taken forward, again on the basis of things that had been done before. It is so important that there is this cross-government commitment to looking at the issues of safety for women and girls in our country.

I take on board points that were made by Senator Waters in her contribution. In terms of looking at the empowerment of women in our nation, it is clear that there must be an effective review of what we are doing. We had a review built into the National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and their Children program. The program can be assessed and we can look at real achievements and work with organisations and individuals who have made a difference in their communities.

Unfortunately, over the last couple of years, at the same time as there has been investment in issues around domestic violence in our nation—both in programs to support victims and also in raising awareness—we have seen some frightening statistics, as you would know Madam Acting Deputy President Ruston. As recently as International Women's Day there were a number of articles in the Australian press that talked about the fact that there are more women suffering—more victims of domestic violence—across our nation than in the recent past. There needs to be a greater focus on debates around violence, awareness and safety in our community. There is no doubt that that is an important element for us in Australia. It is also important as we move into the international framework where we all agree on the need to look at the safety of women. We need to have the data to ensure that we can say that what we are doing is effective.

On that point, one of the clear issues around goal 3 in the Millennium Development Goals was the issue of the empowerment of women and their independence. I take on board, absolutely, Senator Waters's comments about the Workplace Gender Equality Agency. The rise of the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, which has taken many years, has been as a result of reviewing what has been going on. It is all very well to make splendid speeches. It is all very well to be extraordinarily passionate about the fact that women need to have equal opportunity in our country as well as overseas. But if we do not have the data to back that up—if there is no agreed independent assessment of data to indicate what is happening in our workplaces—then it is something that we can talk about in a rhetorical way but we cannot actually see what works and what does not work.

We have in place the basis for making that data available in Australia, after years of discussion. We have all talked about how many times we have won equity in wages in this country. Very soon after I came into this place I made a statement that we had celebrated equal pay in Australia, I think, at least four times—and we have still not got it. In fact, the pay gap now is around 17 per cent—but we are not sure. We know it is around 17 per cent but we have not been able to identify in which industries and in which workplaces these gaps are wider, and what causes them.

So one of the reasons that the Work Place Gender Agency was put in place—with expectation that it would collect data—was to ensure that we had that database. We are just waiting to see the first round of results from the first full year of data collection. They are confronting. We have already seen some of the data come into the public domain. That data shows that in some industries we are not achieving true equity for women in Australia—let alone comparing favourably with the international community.

We need to look at that data, see why that is happening and then put effective, responsive policies in place to ensure that we get the results that we all seek—that women who are working in our country can expect to have equitable wages so that they can make independent assessments and decisions about their lives. We know—certainly in the international context—that when you have economic security you have the ability to make choices around education, employment and around personal safety. All too often we see that the most vulnerable are those who suffer the most in our community.

One of the really positive aspects of the ministerial statement that was made on our behalf at the UN meeting was a commitment that we would work together in the future. We are committed to designing a post-2015 development agenda that works in the international arena to look at meaningful progress in our spheres of development and look at effective ways to drive economic growth and build stronger societies. Australia has had a strong history in working effectively in the international aid area in looking at issues around women and girls—maternal and child health, reproductive support and education opportunities for women in developing countries in our region.

We have recently seen cuts in our aid budget. I think that is something we need to review in the context of what will be the expectation for women and girls in those regions. I am not saying that there should not be any review generally of our international aid budget, but, if we are looking at our commitments through the lens of women's independence and security, we need to look at what programs there are in our international aid budget, working with the Ambassador for Women and Girls, who has a key role in looking at international aid and the developing nations. We need to continue to work effectively in that space.

At the International Women's Day celebrations we had in Australia, we had a commitment from Minister Bishop and Minister Cash that that would be part of the way that the international aid budget is being planned and reviewed—that women's independence and security would be part of that process. We have an opportunity. We have had a wonderful history of Australia working at both the national and international levels to see how we can ensure that women have their rightful equitable place in our community.

After the 2015 process, much of the focus will be on what is going to happen next. One of the clear challenges for all of us is that we need to continue to have a special focus on women and girls. There is no argument about that. We will need to continue that process. Each year when Australia goes to the United Nation's Commission on the Status of Women, we can proudly say what we have achieved in our own nation—how we have worked cooperatively with our neighbours, in particular, to see how we look at the independence and security of women and know that this parliament, as part of that process, will be able to review what has happened and will be able to be part of any statement that is made. It is not for us; it is with us. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.