Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's with great pleasure that I rise to contribute to this debate today on the private member's motion from the member for Sydney recognising International Women's Day. Of course, it will be on 8 March whilst this parliament is not in session, regretfully, but it is important that this House acknowledges the immense contribution that Australian women have made during COVID-19, particularly as frontline workers but also as parents and community members.

When each of us reflects on the lessons learned from COVID-19, one of those lessons indeed was just how vulnerable women in terribly insecure work are, even though they were in the most important jobs that this nation relied on during the COVID-19 pandemic. I'm thinking of those women who were working in our early childhood education sector, for example. They felt the brunt of this pandemic immediately. These are women who we rely on entirely to educate the next generation of Australian kids and yet they were the very first group to lose support from this government. Let's not forget that fact: when JobSeeker and JobKeeper first started getting pulled it was women in insecure jobs in early education who got dudded first.

Let's also not forget that early reports have indicated there were shocking increases in domestic violence for women who found themselves in lockdown with their perpetrators 24/7. For a long time we had no line of sight of what was happening for those women and families, but all of the early reports, particularly those coming out of Victoria, have shocking indications of not just what has happened during COVID but the terrible increase in the number of women reporting domestic and family violence for the first time ever. The long-term implications of that are yet to be felt by the nation, but we know that, whenever you have women and children in an unsafe situation, it has long-lasting physical and mental health implications. Time and time again this government fails to grapple with this.

We know there's going to need to be some renewed focus to ensure that there is better support for women and children in domestic and family violence and for those trying to flee those situations and to ensure that they are given every opportunity to not just join the ranks of other insecure casual workers when they're seeking to earn their livelihood to support their children. If they choose to leave at this time, they are looking at the JobSeeker rate being cut again at the end of this month. We've already heard women demonstrate clearly the need for an increase in the JobSeeker rate in order to provide a safe and decent place for their kids to live when they are fleeing violence. The supplement has made an extraordinary difference. Many of the women I have spoken to in the last few months who are looking down the barrel of losing the additional $150 supplement are very worried about what's going to happen.

I am deeply concerned for all of the young women who have cleaned out their superannuation accounts. They took $10,000 last financial year and $10,000 this financial year and they have zero dollars. We know that that will cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars when it comes to their retirement. In this nation, in terms of retirement income, women are already woefully behind Australian men, but this government, by enabling the clean-out of those superannuation accounts, has chosen to put those women further behind, and they have no hope in hell of ever catching up.

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