Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on government response to the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade report Empowering women and girls: The human rights issues confronting women and girls in the Indian Ocean-Asia Pacific region. I do so as a member of that particular inquiry that took place in 2015—so some time ago now. It is only now, of course, that we have received of late the actual response from the government into this particular inquiry, an inquiry which is so crucial and important for not only girls in our region but also how Australia responds to those human rights issues facing women and girls in the region.

As the government would know, there were a number of really important human rights recommendations that were put forward to the government from this inquiry. This inquiry came out of a subcommittee of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee that looks specifically at the issue of human rights for women and girls. I have noticed in the 33 recommendations that the committee provided in its final report that the government seems to have adopted, or at least accepted, most of them. I would hope that that means the government will actually act upon them. The idea of accepting recommendations—and please correct me if I am wrong—is to then subsequently act upon them. A number of legislative changes and policy changes are recommended in this report, so I am going to watch the government over time to make sure it actually does improve its aim. Part of that leads to tonight and what the government hands down in its budget.

There have already been rumours and innuendo to do with the government increasing its budget on national security potentially at the detriment of our aid and development budget. Firstly, I just cannot see how you can cut the aid and development budget anymore. It has already been absolutely cut to the bone by this government. Never in our history have we had such a low level of aid and development commitment as we currently do. I think it is now at—and correct me if I am wrong—0.23 per cent of GNI. We know the Millennium Development Goals' aim was 0.7 per cent—something that the UK still holds. We had at one point in this parliament a bipartisan commitment of 0.5 per cent. Now look at where we are. We are at less than half of that. It is absolutely shameful, and at a time when we have a global humanitarian crisis with record numbers of displaced people across the globe needing our assistance. I really hope that tonight we do not see any further cutting of the aid budget to be used in any way at all, but rather that we see an increase in the aid budget, so that it can achieve some of the recommendations in the human rights issues confronting women and girls report by the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade that the government has responded to.

Since this report was written and since the inquiry took place into the human rights issues confronting women and girls in the Indian Ocean Asia-Pacific region something more detrimental has happened to them. With the election of US President Trump we have seen the reimplementation of the global gag rule. That in itself is going to have a major effect on these women and girls because USAID funding can no longer go to those organisations that provide advice and counselling to women and girls, in relation to family planning, contraception, abortion and the like. I am deeply concerned by that and I am deeply concerned by the fact that the government in its response to these recommendations does not actually draw on that as an important issue. I am asking it to because in our report we do actually talk about issues to do with sexual and reproductive rights. We talk about the UNFPA and its funding as being crucially important. That is another body in the line of fire by the Trump administration. We talk about the fact that Australia itself provides targeted funding to prevent and respond to sexual and gender based violence in humanitarian crises as well as that being incredibly important to gender equality and women's empowerment. I commend the government for accepting the recommendations, but I hope it also considers the fact that now nearly two years have passed and the implementation of that global gag rule is going to have a terrible impact on women and girls in our region, and so that needs to be responded to.

I highlighted this to the government during the last Senate additional estimates, where I asked the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade whether the government would provide funding to make up some of the shortfall from the global gag rule that was being initiated by a number of Nordic countries, particularly Belgium—to provide some funds to close that loophole. Our Ambassador for Women and Girls, who was actually the chair of the particular inquiry that I am referring to, Dr Sharman Stone, attended the pledging conference on behalf of the government. The government provided her as a representative for Australia but, unfortunately, did not offer up any funding at all.

However, there is another opportunity, because this July there will be another pledging conference. I again ask the government to join with so many other countries in ensuring that the rights of women and girls, particularly those that we focus on, which are those in the Asia Pacific—not just solely but that is the area in which we live—are protected. The only way to protect those rights is to ensure that we play our role in providing some funds to organisations that provide family planning support and advice, in light of the current impact that they are experiencing due to the Trump administration.

This conference is occurring in early July. It is something that I will continue to call on the government to support. If this inquiry—the report of which the government has responded to—had been held today we would have addressed the Mexico City policy, as it is known, or the global gag rule. For this report to be given justice, we all need to recognise the fact that the human rights of women and girls affect all of us. If there is a girl in Indonesia, Thailand or Papua New Guinea who is not being able to fulfil her full potential, as we are here, that makes us all less of a contributor to humanity. So it is my hope that the government takes these recommendations to heart, particularly at a time when it has put itself forward on the United Nations Human Rights Council. Acting on these recommendations will show that the government is being a good humanitarian citizen. (Time expired)