Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's an absolute pleasure to follow both the member for Cowan and member for Curtin today—two great friends from Western Australia and two great women. I want to echo the things that they have said, but I will take this debate into a different direction, if I may.

I'd like first to pay tribute to the suffragette movement in Australia that not only led change in this country but then travelled to the UK and led change around the world. It is the centenary of Edith Cowan's election, and that was only possible because of the work of Australian women. It's a week since International Women's Day. I stand here with many sisters around the parliament, with independents, with Labor colleagues, with a female minister at the table this morning. I want to help celebrate the women that are in this parliament and mark how women came to be in this parliament. I want to do so on the back of International Women's Day and on the back of that hashtag, #ChooseToChallenge. I want to challenge the women who are in this chamber today to continue to challenge, as I asked young people in my electorate to do last week on International Women's Day. I reminded them of the suffragettes' journey, I reminded them of Edith Cowan's election 100 years ago, but I also reminded them of the things that need to be in place to continue to ensure that we increase women's representation in this parliament.

Of course, I followed the former member for Lalor, former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, into this place. I reminded those young people last week that there was a brave decision made by the Labor Party in Victoria to ensure that two safe seats in Melbourne's western suburbs went to women; that only women would stand for preselection in those seats. That decision delivered to this parliament both Julia Gillard as the member for Lalor and Nicola Roxon as the member for Gellibrand—the first female Prime Minister in this country and the first female Attorney-General in this country, a very proud history for women in the western suburbs of Melbourne. I said to the young girls that I was talking to last week: 'You must continue. You must take up that gavel and choose to challenge. You have to get into this fight.'

It is an important day. A hundred years since Edith Cowan was elected to parliament, we have the March 4 Justice happening here today. It is an important moment. I believe it is a moment that will bring further change to ensure gender equity. I believe women will unite to say that we want this gauge to move further than it has already moved, particularly in the areas around sexual harassment and sexual assault. There is not a woman in this building that has not thought about these issues deeply. I firmly believe that, but I also want to draw the House's attention to something absolutely pivotal. I speak of Julia Gillard and her entry into this parliament and the history of that and the decisions it took to get that momentum. I look at this side of the chamber, and I see us bringing more and more women into the parliament. Proudly, I see two sisters sitting to my right. This can't stop. And, I have to say on this important day that, while I have been in this place, I have watched the number of women in the government in this chamber reduce. They have gone backwards.

Today of all days, everyone and every woman in this building needs to pick up that fight and say that we need more women, not fewer women, in this place. So I call on members opposite—not just the women, but also the men, who sit on the benches opposite—to think long and deeply about how they can change the face of this parliament. It's through your preselection processes. I firmly believe that we're marching for justice today because although women may sit on the benches in this place, they need to feel safe so that they can speak out. They need to know that they are safe in their position and that their position in a ministry is safe, regardless of what they say about gender equity, sexual harassment and assault.

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