Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

What a difference a year makes. Australia has just witnessed its biggest jump—a leap, in fact—in the World Economic Forum's rankings for gender equality. Australia has gone from a middling 43rd out of 146 countries—embarrassing for one of the wealthiest countries in the OECD—to now being 26th in the world. This has been driven by several indices but principally by political empowerment.

The gender equality ranking is made up of various indicators. These are economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival—which is very good in Australia, where, as we know, women have a life expectancy of around 84 years—and political empowerment and representation, which is where we lag behind. Last year, we were 50th out of 146 countries. This year we are 29th. We have raised our country's entire profile by 17 places. What does political representation actually mean? It means a government that is now female dominant. We have, for the first time in Commonwealth history, 53 per cent representation of women. As my colleague the member for Reid, who is sitting next to me, said, the House of Representatives is finally living up to its name. It was long overdue, but it has happened.

This didn't happen, however, by accident. This happened due to intentional policies that were initially flagged by the Labor Party—indeed, under Keating—around 30 years ago, and a decision was made, due to the abysmal representation of women back then, that we needed quotas. Quotas were debated; they were hotly contested. But, in the end, we landed it and we decided to go with quotas. Our aim was a modest 50 per cent. That's all we aimed for—50 per cent. We were not ambitious. We were not asking too much. We said, 'Let's set a target of 50 per cent—even representation,' not really expecting us to get there. And what has happened in 2023? We have sailed past parity and we are sitting at 53 per cent. But, again, we don't aim for too much.

It turns out our cabinet has the highest representation of women in Commonwealth history as well: 10 out of 23 cabinet members are women, sitting at 43 per cent. 'Why is that important?' you may ask. 'Why does it matter? Is this not some kind of leftie woke agenda? Why can't we just forget about women?' Well, apart from the small fact that women make up 51 per cent of our population, they also happen to live longer than men, so, as you get older, it's going to be skewed towards women; there's a bulge in that sense. Having women at the table improves the quality of the decision-making, and, in a peak decision-making body like this place, that matters, because the decisions that are made, or the decisions that are not made, have repercussions across millions and millions of people, from girls to adolescents to women.

So I am proud to say that we are a government that is hardwired to focus on women's economic attainment as well as representation, and there is a range of interventions that we have introduced. There is $4.7 billion in child care—the largest on-budget spend in our October budget. Now why did we do that? Why does child care matter? It doesn't really matter, does it? Isn't it just middle-class welfare? Isn't that all we hear from those opposite? Child care is infrastructure. We regard it as critical social infrastructure—and economic infrastructure, I might add. Why? Because it brings a triple dividend: to the mother, to the baby and to our economy. Leaving the talent of women on the table is wasting that talent, and, in this environment, when businesses are crying out for workers, no-one, no government, would be sensible in ignoring that cohort of 51 per cent. That is why we pumped $4.7 billion into child care.

It is also why we've realised that this sector is in need of reform. We have tasked the Productivity Commission with looking further into how we can make it more efficient and more equitable, so that everyone benefits from it—including those who live regional communities, where there may not be that many childcare centres.

In addition to this, we have invested in paid parental leave—a proud Labor government legacy, introduced by Julia Gillard in 2011—and we have expanded it by an additional two weeks, in order to then bring it up to six months by 2026. Why, again, does this matter? What does it matter having paid parental leave? Well, paid parental leave matters because those gendered norms that box in men as breadwinners and women as homemakers start in the early days when baby comes home, and they entrench and they persist. What it means for mothers is that mothers do not go back to full-time work, and so you end up with a divergence in pay and economic inequity, which persists for that mother's entire working life.

That brings me to the next point: our gender pay gap. Our gender pay gap has stubbornly sat at 14.1 per cent. This is largely driven by the care economy, which is a feminised industry. It includes nurses, teachers, social workers, childcare workers and aged-care workers. Much of our workplace relations reforms is focused on levelling that field and boosting the pay of these female dominated industries. You may think, again, that this is some sort of leftie agenda. It's about the economy. To quote—who was it? Was it Clinton or Reagan? I forget. It is about the economy, stupid. We have to get on with it. We have to level the playing field, because we cannot afford to let women fall behind.

But we're not stopping there. We have also made gender pay equity an object of the Fair Work Commission. We are focusing on modernising our workplaces by zeroing in on sexual harassment. That belongs to another era, the era that the Australian people slammed the door on on 22 May last year. And we have implemented all the recommendations of the Respect@Work report, or else these are well on the way. In addition to this, we are making gender pay parity an object of peak research organisations such as the NHMRC, the National Health and Medical Research Council, a body that funded me once upon a time when I was a young mother undertaking a PhD. This is incredibly important. Of course we should be bringing up some of our most gifted, brightest women and ensuring that they attain research parity with their male counterparts, because goodness knows they've got enough barriers to contend with.

We are also investing in housing—social and affordable housing—for women and key workers like nurses, because these are people we cannot afford to live without. It is a shame—in fact, a disgrace—that a bill, currently in the Senate, that addresses the acuity of the housing crisis is currently being blocked by the Liberals and the Greens, who have teamed up with One Nation. When you are voting with One Nation, you are already on the wrong side of history. It goes down like a bucket of vomit in Higgins, I can assure you.

But we're not stopping there. We have also established the Women's Economic Equality Taskforce, which comprises 13 eminent women who are providing independent advice to the government, and that is ongoing. We've also committed a record $1.7 billion to the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children. Why does that matter? It is one of the most potent drivers of homelessness in Australia—women experiencing domestic violence—and men are highly invested in this issue as well.

So we have some way to go, but we have really come a long way in one year, and we're not going to stop there.

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