Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Today the women of Australia said, 'Hear us roar,' and roar they did. They also said, 'Enough is enough.' They gathered in their thousands outside of this parliament and right around the country. We've seen real anger outside this building today and quite an extraordinary speech by a brave young woman, Brittany Higgins. Just down the road from here we saw Grace Tame, the Australian of the Year, deliver a powerful message again: that we have a scourge of violence and sexual abuse against women and children, and we need to do more about it.

I appreciate the previous speaker raising the Respect@Work report. We haven't even had a government response. It was tabled more than a year ago. People do want an actual response. They don't want what we've seen in recent times, where women feel as though the message that they've given keeps falling on deaf ears. As Janine Hendry said today:

We have already come to the front door, now it’s up to the Government to cross the threshold and come to us. We will not be meeting behind closed doors.

I was proud to participate today, and I was very pleased that so many of my colleagues in this parliament were also there.

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