Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion. I do not want to do the member for Macquarie out of her right to second the motion but in this instance I would like to thank the member for Ryan for moving the motion because it is wonderful that it is a bipartisan program that we are all working towards. The member for Macquarie and I have managed to get to all three of the conferences—in Sydney, Tonga and Fiji. Sadly, many people from the Australian parliament did not make it to the Tonga conference because of parliamentary sittings. In Fiji it was fantastic to have such fantastic representation from Australia—both federal and state parliaments—and our colleagues from New Zealand. This is a genuine bipartisan effort and a genuine Pacific effort to address an issue that is endemic in our societies—and, sadly, even in our society. Members from the Pacific, women who were at these forums, said, 'If Australia can't reach the goals for getting rid of domestic violence, what hope have we?' That was a salient point made by women coming together to ensure that their voices are heard at the highest level.

This is a wonderful program that was started under Prime Minister Gillard and continued and supported very heavily by Julie Bishop. I want to thank all those people for the continuation of this support because without funding from the Australian government this program would not exist. With 51 per cent of the world's population being female, we need diversity across all sectors of our community—business, civil and parliament—to ensure that we achieve greater economic, social and community outcomes. Without female voices on company boards or in parliament we cannot achieve the best we have to offer. We need to show leadership by having females in parliament to demonstrate that their voices are important, valid and needed. This is so true in any parliament, but it is particularly true in our region, where domestic violence is such a scourge. A UNICEF-UFPA study within the South-Pacific region concluded:

Violence against women and children is regarded as symptomatic of a wider gender inequality in society, and laws and policies need to be reviewed, changed and implemented in order to address this inequality. Governments in the South-Pacific island countries should make changes to current laws and policies, procedures or regulations in order to comply with national and international policies such as CRC and CEDAW.

That was a great focus of the Pacific Women's Parliamentary Partnerships Forum—by having women in positions of authority at the very top, they can engender change not only in their legal system but throughout their whole society. So we need women's voices in parliaments on issues that impact not just women but families and whole communities. These communities cannot flourish and prosper if we are still dealing with this insidious situation of domestic violence.

After three years we have had some successes in this space. The member for Macquarie and I met a phenomenal woman when we were in Tonga. She was then a candidate for the Fijian election—she was from Fiji. She is now a member of the Fijian parliament, Salote Rodrodro. We met her when she was a candidate. She was a fledgling. She was very nervous, did not know what to do and did not know whether she was taking the right step; given the situation in Fiji it was also fairly complicated. But then we met her in Fiji, and she is a fully endorsed member of her parliament. A great array of women from the Fijian parliament were there. Indeed, the speaker of the Fijian parliament was hosting us and we were honoured to have the Prime Minister of Fiji come along and speak so emphatically about the need to end family violence in his country. It was quite a way to open the whole proceedings. Ex-Senator Natasha Stott Despoja, the Australian Ambassador for Women and Girls, came along and spoke, again giving the whole sense of how important this space is and how committed we as the Australian parliament are to continuing with this program to see genuine change.

We endorsed an outcome statement, and I recommend that people look at it and see what we can do in this space not only to end domestic violence across the globe but also to bring more women into parliaments so that they can lead and be voices for change. We hear reports that the economic cost of family violence is considered to be approximately three per cent of GDP—and I think that that is probably an underestimate—and that childhood experience of family violence may be repeated from generation to generation, growing exponentially. We need legislative measures and women to ensure that we end this situation of violence.

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