Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The President has received the following letter from Senator McKim:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I give notice that today the Australian Greens propose to move "That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

That women in Australia deserve genuine progress on women's safety, health and economic security, including:

the country

all of which could be funded with $254 billion in savings from scrapping the Stage 3 tax cuts, which mostly benefit rich men".

Is the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clocks in line with the informal arrangements made by whips. I call Senator Waters.

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

Thank you so very much, Acting Deputy President Cox. It's great to see a woman of colour in the chair on International Women's Day. I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

That women in Australia deserve genuine progress on women's safety, health and economic security, including:

the country

all of which could be funded with $254 billion in savings from scrapping the Stage 3 tax cuts, which mostly benefit rich men.

It is International Women's Day today. Women deserve genuine progress on safety, health and economic security, including fully funded frontline women's safety services, superannuation on a decent amount of paid parental leave and investment in affordable housing to tackle the growing risk of homelessness, which is rising amongst older women. Women deserve a raise in the rate of income support and the rate of the minimum wage, which is disproportionately earnt by women. Women deserve a full range of reproductive health care to be made accessible through the public health system so that people can actually afford to access the reproductive health care they deserve. Women deserve the universal, high-quality early childhood education to be made free and accessible no matter where you are in this country.

All of those amazing things that would improve the daily material lives of women could be funded. They could be funded if this government chose to ditch the stage 3 tax cuts initially proposed by Scott Morrison and now backed in by this Labor government. They could save $254 billion of public money and, instead of giving it to the 40 per cent of rich white men, they could spend it on women and deliver these policy outcomes, which will actually help people or pull people out of poverty and will help us achieve safety and equality.

Every day this government could choose to improve the lives of women, but today, being International Women's Day, you'd think the Albanese government would commit to something real, a real, tangible action on improving women's safety, economic security or inequality. Instead we've got a report card telling us what we already know. It's a good distillation of the data, but unfortunately there was no announcement today from the government saying what they would do to fix any of those hideous metrics about women being killed, about women being in poverty, about women being paid less than blokes. The list goes on, and it's very sobering reading. If this government still doesn't know what needs to be done to actually achieve gender equality, then it's time to start listening to the women of the country who have been very vocal about this, and there's even an obvious way to pay for it.

It beggars belief that Labor refuses to walk away from the stage 3 tax cuts. As I mentioned before, 40 per cent of those would go to men already in the top 10 per cent of earners, a group that certainly doesn't need any more help from the government; they're doing very nicely. The Status of women report card says that women approaching retirement have 23.1 per cent less super than men of the same age. We know that paying superannuation on paid parental leave would go a long way towards closing that gap. But we haven't heard a commitment from this government on that yet.

We also know that the fastest growing cohort of people at risk of homelessness is women. It's not just women over the age of 55, as it was before COVID; it's now women over the age of 45. Yet this government's proposal to fix the housing crisis falls so far short of what's needed that it actually makes things worse, by not keeping pace with people who need a roof over their head. Women make up more than 60 per cent of those relying on income support payments: JobSeeker, student and parenting payments. They are struggling to make ends meet as the cost of living rises, but the government still will not raise the rate.

The Status of women report card notes that it takes an average of five years to receive a diagnosis of endometriosis, despite the fact that one in nine women suffer from it. This inequality in access to women's reproductive health care will persist without federal intervention. What's missing from the Status of women report card is a real-time toll of women killed by violence, to keep that issue at the front of decision-makers' minds. What's also missing is data about unmet need: how many women are turned away from frontline services because those services simply don't have the resources that keep up with demand?

The women's safety sector have said time and time again that they need $1 billion to help everyone who seeks their help. They are turning women and children away because they do not have the resources to help them. The last budget fell short on that pledge. I asked the minister earlier today in question time whether or not any movement could be seen on that, and I was given a promising response. We will hold you to account on that. The women of Australia are grateful for this completion of data showing how unequal we are, but what we actually want is policy action to redress that inequality. Those stage 3 tax cuts are the best way to fund women's safety, equality and economic security.

Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

USTON (—) (): I stand today very proudly as a member of the coalition team that, when in government, was absolutely committed to improving safety, economic security and health outcomes for Australian women. We know that family, domestic and sexual violence is a complete scourge on Australian society. We in the coalition believe that this is a matter that needs to be tackled without partisanship, because, unless we do so, we can never hope to achieve that goal that is striving towards a zero-violence target, which I think is something that every person in this chamber, in this government and hopefully in this country wants to strive for.

Improving safety for women and their children is obviously something that comes with a price tag. That's why, when in government, we were very pleased to allocate in the 2022-23 budget $1.3 billion to improve outcomes through initiatives in relation to women's safety. This brought the coalition government's commitment to women's safety over the period of the final two years and the first year of the next action plans to $2.5 billion to support the transition towards and implementation of the next action plan. Having been the minister for women's safety, I am really proud to have been part of the development of the next action plan, which we saw as a blueprint towards providing the kinds of commitments that all levels of government, all levels of society, would put towards driving that goal of towards zero.

The reality is that our commitments have to span the life cycle of violence, but also our commitments have to span every person in Australia. It is no use for governments to spend money and it is no use for us to stand here and make commitments unless we can convince every Australian that violence against women and children—in fact, any violence—is absolutely wrong.

To end gendered violence we have to stop it from happening in the first place. That's why measures that go towards organisations such as Our Watch are important. These organisations intrinsically are designed and established to make sure we have campaigns so that we can teach younger Australians about issues such as respect, stopping violence, calling violence out, making sure their behaviours are respectful and making sure we and they are investing in community led initiatives to deal with violence at the front line.

But we also have to realise that in the process of doing this we still have to respond at the other end to those women who are facing violence, and their children, daily. That's why we were pleased to establish the escaping-violence payment, to provide women with up to $5,000 so that when they were escaping violence they had the financial assistance to set up a home and start to establish a life free from violence. So we are very pleased to have been able to stand with Australian women in making sure that we were the first ones to put the largest ever commitment against any violence against women and their children and acknowledge that the new government has continued that investment and that commitment towards zero for Australian women to live a life free of violence.

I'm also pleased to say that we made a very significant commitment in women's health because we believe that the overall wellbeing of women can be underpinned only if women have access to affordable health care to meet their healthcare needs. That's why we put significant funding towards maternal sexual and reproductive health. Most particularly, one area that we were very pleased to have worked in a bipartisan way with the then opposition on was in relation to funding for women affected by endometriosis. I want to give a shout-out to Nicolle Flint, a former Liberal Party member in this place, and Gai Brodtmann, a former Labor Party member in this place. Together, they worked very hard to establish a platform and a plan to respond to endometriosis. When in government, we were pleased to put a $58 million commitment towards that plan, ensuring earlier diagnosis, providing women with access to the right resources to make informed decisions about their health and providing doctors with guidance as to the best treatment to help women living with endometriosis. I want to acknowledge that, when we made the announcement of $58 million, the then opposition and now government said they would honour that commitment. We were delighted.

I was also delighted, earlier this year, to stand next to the Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care when two of the initiatives that were contained in that $58 million were announced as being activated and ongoing. We want to make sure that the remainder of the initiatives in that announcement are delivered by this government, but I hope we can continue in a bipartisan way for the sake of Australia's women.

Marielle Smith (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm really happy to be contributing to this debate today. It's a really important debate and a really important topic, particularly today, on International Women's Day. I'm particularly happy to be able to contribute to this debate from the government benches, as part of the Albanese Labor government. We agree that women in Australia of course deserve genuine progress on safety, health and economic security, but do you know how that happens? It happens only through the long-term, systemic, structural changes that can be made from government.

If we need any evidence of this, we only need look at the past decade, where no amount of protest or opposition was enough to stop Tony Abbott when he appointed himself as the Minister for Women, in a cabinet with only one other woman. It wasn't enough to stop the Liberals trying to force those experiencing domestic violence to raid their superannuation accounts. It wasn't enough to stop the then government, now opposition, leaving the Respect@Work report to gather dust on a shelf, and it wasn't enough to stop the plummet in staff numbers at the Office for Women. No. Opposition, as loud as it may have been, wasn't enough. It wasn't enough to stop us going from 23rd to 50th for overall gender equality, in the Gender Gap Index. That's what happened under the previous government. Do you know how you change it? Do you know how you turn that around? You do it from within government, by forming government, not from opposition, not from the noisy stuff on the sidelines.

Being in government requires adult decision-making processes, decisions which require you to pay for things—cost them, prioritise them and deliver them—and the Labor Party does deliver. When we're in government, we deliver. Indeed, I would say we are the only party in this place that could stand here with any meaningful credibility and say that we have delivered real, long-term, systemic changes which have made a significant difference to gender equity and equality in Australia. We've done this because we believe in gender equality. We fight for it, but we are also the embodiment of it. This is the first government in our nation's history which is majority female, and it shows. It shows in what we're doing. It shows in how we're acting. It shows in what we're prioritising.

This Labor government is not the first reforming Labor government on the question of gender equality. Every time we've held government, we've made significant strides to make this place, this country, a better, fairer, safer and more equal place for women, whether it was the Whitlam government introducing no-fault divorce and supporting equal pay, the Hawke and Keating governments introducing the Sex Discrimination Act, or the Rudd and Gillard governments introducing Commonwealth paid parental leave and the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children. Every time Labor is in government, we deliver for women—not from the sidelines but from these benches—by making the tough decisions, the difficult decisions, that prioritise women's equality and equity.

Our government, the Albanese government, will be no exception. We're one year in, and already we're embedding women's economic equality as a core economic imperative, making significant investments in early childhood education to boost productivity and women's ability to participate in the workforce, knowing that their children are well cared for and that they can afford to make the decision to go back to work. We're extending paid parental leave, progressively, up to six months. Importantly, we're also making it fairer so that more families can access paid parental leave, including single-parent families. We're establishing the Women's Economic Equality Taskforce to provide advice to government and to commence work on a national strategy to achieve gender equality. We've supported a pay increase for aged-care and low-paid workers, who overwhelmingly are women.

We've led negotiations with the states and territories to finalise a National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children, and we've backed this up with funding of $1.7 billion to implement the plan, including $83 million for consent and respectful relationship education and $100 million for crisis and transitional housing options for women and children fleeing domestic and family violence. We've legislated paid family and domestic violence leave, which was a huge and proud moment in this parliament. And we're funding and legislating to fully implement all 55 recommendations of the Respect@Work report.

In addition to this, when it comes to women's health we've established a National Women's Advisory Council to tackle medical misogyny. You don't have to dig too deep into our healthcare system to see how it disadvantages women. But the truth is that if you want to make these big structural changes you have to do it as a party of government. There's only one party in this place that's delivered for women on these big structural issues and made meaningful strides towards gender equality. It's Labor, Labor, Labor.

Tammy Tyrrell (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You may not know this, but five years ago Tasmanian women needed to travel to Melbourne to access a surgical abortion. The last private surgical clinic in the state had shut down, and women had nowhere else to go. Women were generally spending more than $1,500 to travel to another state to get access to the health care they needed, and some had to pay more. Access to safe termination services was bad. In practice, it was really available only to the people who could afford it. Now women in Tasmania can access surgical abortion through the public hospital system, and I think that's a really great thing. We've come a long way in the last five years, but access to a surgical termination is just one obstacle that's been removed for women who want an abortion in Tasmania. There's still a whole field of hurdles to go.

I've been speaking to some Tassie women's health organisations and listening to the evidence presented to the Senate inquiry into universal access to reproductive health care. I've heard that in Tassie it's cheaper and easier to access surgical termination than to access chemical termination. You need a spare $350 or so to get a chemical termination, and you can get a rebate on that. In the end, you're out of pocket by about $150. But what if you don't have a spare $150 just lying around, let alone the $350 you need to pay upfront before the rebate? Well, you go to the hospital, because that's free. It's free for you, but it costs the taxpayer around $3,000. You get a bed in a hospital, but that's a bed that someone else can't get access to.

Our system shouldn't be pushing people to access surgical terminations if there are less-invasive, quicker and cheaper ways of doing things. We need better, cheaper access to chemical abortions. We need clinics in place that are serviced by public transport. They all need to be open at least five days a week. I'd like to hear from Tassie women and families about their experiences with access to termination services. I want to know what you need and what we can do to help you.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm proud to stand here today on International Women's Day as a member of the Albanese Labor government, the first-ever government in Australia's history with a majority of women. The Australian Greens believe that women in Australia deserve genuine progress on women's safety, health and economic security, and I couldn't agree more, and the Albanese Labor government could not agree more. That's why we've passed 10 days of paid family and domestic violence leave, appointed Ms Cronin as the first Domestic Family and Sexual Violence Commissioner, delivered $1.3 billion in the October 2022 budget towards implementation of the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children from 2022 to 2032, and allocated $100 million for crisis and transitional housing options for older women at risk of homelessness and for women and children leaving family and domestic violence situations. We have invested in early childhood education and paid parental leave and supported a pay rise for our lowest-paid workers and for aged-care workers, in particular, which I have been fighting for for so long. We have supported those sectors of the workforce that have a predominance of women workers. We have established the National Women's Advisory Council to improve health outcomes for women and to tackle medical bias. We've committed to implementing all 55 recommendations from the Respect@Work report to ensure that our workplaces are environments that are free from harassment, assault and abuse.

Australia is by no means perfect. Our global standing on women's rights has dropped significantly, especially over the last 10 years of inaction and disregard by the previous government. But the work of the Albanese Labor government is righting these wrong. We are working hard every day to ensure that women are safe and respected in their workplaces, in their homes and in our communities. I want to add that International Women's Day is a day to reflect on inspiring women within every community, and none more so than in my home state of Tasmania. We can also reflect on accomplishments of women in our lives and where we are achieving change. We can remember the journey we have taken personally. I remember campaigning at my high school for a girls' right to wear trousers instead of the uniform of skirts during winter because it was so cold. I also campaigned for girls' rights to study woodwork and metalwork in my high school.

The campaign for gender equality continues as we try to end the gender pay gap and ensure women and girls are afforded opportunities to succeed in whatever fields or endeavours they choose to pursue in work and in life. This week we have spent a lot of time, particularly in question time, talking about the superannuation changes that will be made for people that have $3 million or more in their superannuation funds. I remember being a young woman working in Melbourne in the finance sector of a short-term money market. At that time you had to work for that company for 10 years before you might—might—be invited to join the superannuation scheme. I thank Paul Keating and his Labor government—again, a Labor government—for introducing superannuation, which gave women like me the opportunity to start earning some superannuation. As we all know, women are at a disadvantage when they return to the workforce after leaving to have their children. Women of my generation just don't have the superannuation savings that, thankfully, my daughters will have going forward.

There is still so much to be done. At times people come into this chamber and try to make political points, and, instead of that, I know Senator Waters and others believe women should be working together, irrespective of where our political views are. The only way we're going to advance women and give our daughters and granddaughters the future that they deserve is if we work together and keep raising these issues to make people aware that women still don't have the same rights when it comes to earning what our male counterparts do.

Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One of the things that stands out to me each International Women's Day is how corporatised, white-collar and lacking in class politics it has become. It's certainly a long way from its socialist origins. As BBC News was reporting today, the seeds of International Women's Day were planted in 1908 when 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter working hours, better pay and the right to vote. The following year the Socialist Party of America declared the first National Woman's Day. The idea to make the day international came from Clara Zetkin, a communist activist and activist for women's rights. Ms Zetkin suggested the idea in 1910 at an international conference of working women in Copenhagen. There were 100 women from 17 countries at the conference, and they agreed to her suggestion unanimously.

Whilst many things have changed for women since 1910, there is still much to be done. The fact of the matter is that women's economic security has a long way to go, and it's worse for women of colour, First Nations women, migrant women, transwomen and those of us who live in regional Australia. The gender pay gap still exists, including with many feminised professions such as midwifery and teaching. Despite women making up 99 per cent of the midwifery workforce, the gender pay gap in that profession still sits at 19 per cent.

The government is forcing women to wait to have 26 weeks of paid parental leave. Just last week the government said they would like to add super to paid parental leave, but the budget can't accommodate it. In my community of Gladstone, women are still driving over 100 kilometres to Rockhampton to give birth, with the maternity unit still on bypass after 243 days. I reckon if men gave birth, this problem would have been sorted yesterday. Now women over 45 are the fastest-growing group who are experiencing homelessness.

It's the same story all over the country. There's always money for stage 3 tax cuts which will overwhelmingly benefit rich blokes, but there is never enough for woman's health, women's super, women's parental leave or women's salaries in feminised industries. We are sick to death of it. This morning on the radio the Treasurer said that Labor's stage 3 tax cuts would go ahead, but the cost-of-living relief for people who are a pay cheque away from homelessness or a meal away from starving would only be possible when inflation is tamed. Go down and tell a homeless woman that. Come up to Gladstone and tell the women they will have to drive over an hour on a potholed highway to give birth. Tell every woman in this country who is paid less than men that they will have to wait. Meanwhile, you will hand out your stage 3 tax cuts to rich blokes. It makes me sick. Happy International Women's Day, everyone.

Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I support helping women, but, no doubt, I will be the only woman today speaking for the most oppressed and neglected minority in Australia: men. It's ironic that the women who bring men into the world are so ready to dismiss and abandon them to boost their orthodox feminist credentials. In Australia men are severely overrepresented in suicides, prison, homelessness and unemployment. What is being done to close these enormous gaps? Nothing.

In particular, Australian men are severely disadvantaged in the family law system, and Labor has made it worse by removing shared parenting. Men deserve as much access to their children as women do. Men deserve acknowledgement as representing a quarter of domestic violence victims. Men deserve help with their health issues. Men deserve much more recognition by this government and this parliament. How about we start with a minister for men?

Barbara Pocock (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Happy International Women's Day to all of my sisters here and beyond the chamber. Today the government has given us what women have always craved on International Women's Day, a report card. We don't need another report card. I have a library of them, like every other gender equality advocate in the country. We could paper the walls of this place with the report cards we have on gender equity. I am sure that many people across this chamber could contribute reports. We have seen so many. If report cards won the day on gender equity, we'd be in a paradise.

We don't need report cards; we need action. We are told we have to wait. I am waiting for the day when we hear that defence has to wait for some things they really, really want. They want $170 billion to buy some submarines. We could do with a bit of that going to women. Instead of a report card, I want to suggest a few things the government could do that are action.

First of all, put super into paid parental leave. It won't close the gender super gap; it would narrow it by about 10 percentage points, by my calculation, but it's an insult to not be doing it already. It will cost about 2.5 per cent of a Virginia class submarine—probably the periscope. Secondly, 26 weeks of paid parental leave now, not in 2026. That's still only half the international standard, so, while you're at it, we should get map going for 52 weeks as soon as possible. That costs much less than a submarine would cost. Make child care free—not just cheaper but free. Give an immediate wage supplement to working carers who are leaving the jobs they love in droves across the aged-care system, child care and disability.

We women want more than a report card. We deserve better.

We know our pay is 84 per cent of men's. We know we do more unpaid work than men. It's time to give us action and share out the public dollars that are there to support what we really need now.

Kerrynne Liddle (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the matter of urgency on women's safety, health and economic security moved by Senator Waters be agreed to.

A division having been called and the bells being rung—

Raff Ciccone (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Acting Deputy President, we'll withdraw the division

Question agreed to.