Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this motion this morning. As the shadow minister for women, I am committed, as we all are in the coalition, to ensuring we are delivering economic equality for women. But, just as importantly, we must deliver essential services and tackle the issues that are hurting so many women and children—indeed, all Australian families.

Instead of driving economic growth and bettering our lives, the Albanese Labor government's out-of-control spending spree is actually failing Australians. With nearly 51 per cent of the population being women, you can consider their efforts an epic fail. We have and continue to experience the sharpest fall in living standards in the developed world. Living standards in Australia have declined by more than six per cent under Labor. Interest rates have gone up 12 times, with families still being punished with extra mortgage repayments of up to $1,800 a month. Let's face it, the cost of everything is up. Electricity bills are up 32 per cent, gas bills are up 30 per cent, rents are up 20 per cent, food is up 14 per cent, health costs are up 15 per cent—and don't get me started on only needing to use your Medicare card, not your credit card. When families are skipping meals to keep the lights and heating on, it is clear this government has got its priorities all wrong.

Australia's housing crisis is in freefall. Rents are skyrocketing right across the country, having risen 20 to 80 per cent in our capital cities since 2022, which means they are rising up to five times faster than wages. More and more Australians are accepting that owning their own home may never be a reality while prices remain so high and supply continues to dwindle. Homelessness is a reality for too many. Earlier this month was Homelessness Week, an important week dedicated to highlighting the homelessness crisis here in Australia. Homelessness Australia said that, of the people assisted by specialist services, six in 10 are women, one in three are single parents and nearly 10 per cent are women aged 55 or over. Nearly 40 per cent of clients have experienced family and domestic violence.

Family and domestic violence continues to be one of the biggest challenge in our communities. One in four women have experienced violence by an intimate partner. That's around 2.3 million women in this country—your sister, your relative, your friend, your neighbour. The same number have experienced emotional abuse, and one in five have experienced sexual violence. These issues matter. They are important, and we must do more to stop them now, not later.

When it comes to the gender pay gap, as the member for Brisbane highlighted, we are seeing an improvement. Last week, the Minister for Women, Senator Gallagher, said in a media release that Australia's gender pay gap is at the lowest ever level since records began, at 11.5 per cent. I appreciate that this allows a media release to be issued; however, according to the ABS, it reached 11.5 per cent last August, before rising again to 11.9 per cent in February. Despite this seemingly low number, the government's own Workplace Gender Equality Agency reports this data quite differently, because it includes overtime, superannuation and other payments that are received. Their reporting states the gender pay gap is still much higher, at 21.8 per cent. These two datasets far from align, though both show an improvement over the last decade.

When this data was first reported in 2015, the gap sat at 28.6 per cent. Year on year, this percentage has fallen by around one percentage point—that is, until the Albanese Labor government was elected. In 2022, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency reported the gap at 22.8 per cent. In the 3½ years since they came to office, this has shifted just 0.4 per cent. That's an average reduction of 0.1 per cent each year. As important as each of these issues are, what is more important is that we do not apply a technicolour lens to data and evidence to paint the situation as something more palatable. If it's broke, let's fix it, but we must not sugarcoat it.

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