Louise Markus (Macquarie, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am delighted to support this motion moved by the member for Ryan and joined by my colleague opposite. We have attended a number of these forums. They have been most beneficial not only for the women of the Pacific who have been present but also for us. Despite the Pacific region being vast and culturally diverse, Pacific island countries and territories face many common challenges in addressing gender inequality. Violence against women in the Pacific is a chronic epidemic, with over 60 per cent of women in some countries reporting experience of physical and/or sexual violence. Women make up just four per cent of parliamentarians in the Pacific—the lowest rate in the world—compared to the global average of around 20 per cent. Across the region there is a significant and persistent gap between male and female participation in economic activity and labour markets. Men outnumber women in paid employment outside the agricultural sector by approximately two to one. These are some of the challenges that we are focusing on from Australia.

Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Development is an important investment by Australia in the Pacific. One of the best ways to achieve economic growth and prosperity in the Pacific region is to empower women. The Australian government is supporting the 10-year, $320 million Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Development program, which aims to improve the political, economic and social opportunities of women in 14 Pacific countries. It focuses firstly on increasing the effective representation of women and women's interests through leadership at all levels of decision making, secondly on expanding women's opportunities to earn an income and accumulate economic assets, and thirdly and most importantly on reducing violence against women and increasing access to support services and to justice for survivors of violence. The time I have today does not allow me the opportunity to talk about examples of all the initiatives that are funded by the Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Development program. One of the most important is the Pacific Women's Parliamentary Partnerships project, which facilitates dialogue, mentoring and training between Australian and Pacific island women MPs and parliamentary staff to improve the capacity of parliaments to address gender equality issues. It is around $2.8 million over five years.

In the few minutes I have left I would like to focus particularly on what happened in Fiji and some of the outcomes of other forums that have taken place. As has already been mentioned, we participated in the Pacific Women's Parliamentary Partnerships project annual forum in Suva alongside 63 other parliamentarians from 15 jurisdictions in the region. The focus was on legislative responses to family violence.

Participants agreed to a set of priorities to strengthen legislative action, and I will mention some of those. Reliable data and research are needed to better understand what does and does not work in addressing violence, to justify and prioritise funding and to establish baselines against which to monitor progress. Current legislation and regulations that address family violence should be audited and their implementation monitored to ensure that they are effective, comprehensive and adequately funded. Legislators must work with a range of groups, including church and traditional leaders; NGOs; government agencies; and police, health, education and justice systems. Legislators need training to scope the causes and effects of family violence, and men and women legislators together must work in legislative reform. It was recommended that cross-party parliamentary gender equality committees be established to ensure that awareness of family violence in the Pacific region is raised as a matter of urgency and that the scope of the issue is understood by legislators and parliaments to encourage the sharing of lessons learned.

I want to highlight a couple of outcomes achieved that are specific to some of the nations represented. Senators from Palau were inspired to establish a new NGO, the Centre for Women's Empowerment Palau, which aims to support women's political representation following their participation in the PWPP forum for Pacific and Australian women MPs in February this year. Ongoing mentoring relationships have been established between the Victorian and Solomon Islands regions. Learnings gained from participation in the research skills placements at the Australian Parliamentary Library will assist PNG parliamentary officers to establish a gender office in PNG. (Time expired)

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