Ged Kearney (Cooper, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in reply to the Governor-General's address, and I thank her most warmly for her wonderful service.

Well, the 2025 election was won by an Albanese Labor government, and it was won on the basis of a belief in moving towards a more equal and caring Australia, with greater opportunity for all. The Australian people chose a future based on positivity, on hope and on trust over negativity and division. Reflecting upon it all has been such a positive experience. Our pitch to the Australian people was more cost-of-living support, free TAFE, lower HECS, safer penalty rates, action on climate change and cheaper energy, more bulk-billing, cheaper medicines, the valuing of workers, and cheaper contraceptives and women's health care—just to name a few things. The women's health package was particularly popular in my electorate of Cooper, as were the wonderful Medicare urgent care clinics.

During the campaign, while traipsing the streets of Preston, I met a lovely woman, about 50 years of age. Let's call her Sue. Sue is a public servant and manages her life by working from home. Her house seemed beautifully chaotic and full of life. The sound of her dog barking and her teenage daughter yelling in the background made me reminiscent of when my three girls and my son used to all live at home with me. Sue told me that her life is difficult but fun and full of love. When I told her how the government is slashing the cost of Estrogel, she was actually ecstatic. Then, when I told her about how we are cutting the cost of contraceptives and endometriosis care, her face lit up again. Sue was so happy to hear that a government is not just taking women's health seriously but prioritising it. The hundreds of dollars Sue would save through cheaper medicine for herself and her daughters would be life changing. It gave Sue more room to breathe and more room to enjoy her beautiful and chaotic life. Her experience is emblematic of so many women I met on the doors during this campaign.

It struck me that what women want is really simple: to be heard, to be seen, to live with respect and to feel equal. It isn't luxury; it is safety and it is time—time to be with family, time to be their own person. What they want is to live, not just to survive with their heads bobbing above the water. It's what I always wanted, too, because hearts starve just as bodies do. Sue's story was echoed right across my electorate of Cooper, from the cafe belts of Northcote to the sporting clubs of Reservoir. It didn't matter what class or background women came from; that desire for dignity, for fairness and for joy, not just the daily grind, is what I heard again and again.

I know this not just from my own conversations but from all the conversations my incredible volunteers had. I'd like to take a moment to thank all those who committed so many hours during the campaign, rain, hail or shine. In Cooper we ran a people powered campaign. We relied on volunteers having real conversations with community members, whether it was knocking on thousands of doors across the electorate, phone banking night after night, or spending early mornings at train stations or long hours at prepoll. It was the principled and driven members of Cooper Labor that made the campaign so successful. Thank you to the incredible people who sacrificed time out of their weekends and lives to help deliver a historic victory in Cooper. This win is your win.

To Daryl, Stefan, Astin, Tharun, Thomas, Shelley, Kristine, Vasilios, Matt, Emily, Tracey, Phil, Geraldine, Peter, Kate, Georgie, Cheryl, John, Jordan, Kiz and Div, David, Ramy, Koda, Riley, Jane, Marko, Andy, Mirsada, Aljalil, Brendan, Jane, Charlotte, James, Chris and so many others: thank you so much. And of course all of the Northcote and Preston Labor branches, uni Melbourne Labor, La Trobe Labor, my staff, and my wonderful family: thank you. Your energy, your care and your belief in something better were the heartbeat of the Cooper campaign.

During the election, we spoke to thousands of women and men across Cooper about their concerns, and we had some very frank conversations. They were good conversations, and we made some very big promises. Cooper is a place of radicals and pragmatists, workers, business owners, professionals and academics and people from every background and walk of life, and people in Cooper are incredibly politically engaged. They keep me on my toes, and they know my every movement. They hold me accountable. So often I would knock on the door and the person who answered it would recognise me, lean on the side of the door and say, 'Ged Kearney, I have got something to say to you.' Sometimes I would worry, but most times it was because they cared deeply about the many things that I care about, like the environment and climate change, in particular.

In fact, during the campaign, there was one man in his 40s who I met in Reservoir who managed to list almost every single climate initiative from the Future Made in Australia Bill to our solar initiatives and subsidies for home batteries. As a young father to young daughters, he expressed a terrible sense of dread about their future, yet, when he was met with a choice between voting for me or the Greens candidate, he chose me. He chose to vote for me because he knew that only a Labor government would deliver practical change and he knew that I would fight for that delivery. I do not take his vote lightly.

My fight is quite easy with a minister for climate change and energy like Minister Bowen, who made some genuinely progressive and impressive commitments during the election. During that time, I was also proud to announce $3 million to support the local environment in my electorate, including much-needed funding for Edwardes Lake, Merri Creek, Edgars Creek, Darebin Creek and our local grey-headed flying-fox colony. I also got to announce upgrades for the Darebin Falcons, upgrades for Reservoir and Northcote senior citizens' centres, funding for Preston Lions, supports for Northcote Baptist Church, the Melkite community hall, Kouchkovski social club and the Darusalam Community Centre, and, importantly, $3 million to the Aborigines Advancement League, to see our women and girls' sport and wellness centre built in the next year.

All of these go into my theory of change and are why I think Cooper gave me the honour of representing them. I believe change should be grounded in the simple belief that every person and every community matters. I believe in the politics of empathy—where we build community, where we don't drive competition, where governments don't step back but step up to support people to live with dignity and opportunity. We need a government that cares, that acts and that leads, like a government that fights for gender equality, for example, so all women can thrive, that backs strong unions, that lifts all workers and that takes bold climate action which leaves no-one behind. I also believe that change happens and matters at every single level, from sweeping national reform to local community driven work. Everything that we do in this building, no matter how big or small, has the power to shape someone's life. That's why we must always ask: who is this policy helping? At the end of the day, policy is not abstract; it's very personal.

One of the promises closest to my heart and one that truly defines who I am as a former nurse, a unionist and a feminist is our commitment to women's health. This includes listing medications for endometriosis and menopause and new contraceptive medications on the PBS for the first time in decades, of which all have now been capped at just $25. I'm so proud of this policy because, when we announce policies targeted towards women, we're saying: 'We see you. Your pain is real, your needs matter and your health matters.' We're also saying: 'You deserve to do more than just survive; you deserve to live.' This is just one part of the broader feminist agenda.

On top of this, the Albanese Labor government is also changing the way we value care. We've expanded paid parental leave to six months, with dedicated time for both parents, and, from this year, we'll pay superannuation on that leave for the first time ever.

We're also making child care cheaper. This was a very popular promise with both women and men during the election, because by pushing costs down we are pushing opportunity up. What was also popular was our support for a real pay rise in feminised industries, because for too long too many industries and unscrupulous employers have relied on a historical sexist presumption about women's work and the care economy. On top of this, we've introduced employer level gender pay gap reporting and achieved our lowest gender pay gap on record.

We are also working to end all forms of family, domestic and sexual violence. Already we've made a record investment of over $4 billion in new prevention and support services to combat family, domestic and sexual violence, and we're investing in incredible programs that are working to address sexual violence, including Consent Can't Wait, Teach Us Consent, Stop it at the Start and Our Watch. We've almost completed the development of the First Nations national safety plan, Our Ways—Strong Ways—Our Voices.

Today I have the privilege of working alongside the new Minister for Social Services, Tanya Plibersek, who is committed to transformational change for women. The Attorney-General is also doing some transformative work, building on reforms initiated by the former attorney-general to strengthen justice responses to family, domestic and sexual violence, including through harmonising consent and sexual assault laws across jurisdictions and increasing supports for those navigating the judicial system. The Minister for Housing has done some incredible work in making housing more accessible, including by investing over $1 billion for housing for women and children fleeing family and domestic violence. And Minister Wells in the Communications portfolio is delivering much-needed safety measures. There are reforms that she has introduced in banking and financial abuse, protecting women.

Of course, last term we also delivered 10 days paid family and domestic violence leave, something I am particularly proud of because I had been fighting for this for over a decade, including when I was President of the ACTU. I fought alongside the mighty ASU and so many other unions for paid family and domestic violence leave, because no woman should choose between fleeing to safety and putting food on the table. This initiative also supports women to continue their careers, because they shouldn't have to choose between surviving and thriving at work.

As the Assistant Minister for Social Services, working with Minister Plibersek on the prevention of family violence, I'm as fired up as ever to keep fighting. I'm fired up for people like Hope in my electorate. Her story tells the insidious nature of family and domestic violence, because it's not just the moment of an attack that's painful. Abuse seeps into every aspect of life. Hope and her mother experienced terrible abuse in the home, with one attack leaving Hope's mother deaf in one ear. People would ask Hope and her mum, 'Why don't you just leave?' Hope told me of the shame she felt whenever that question was asked—a shame that should never have been felt and a question that should never have been asked, because the reality for Hope was that, when she and her mum did flee, they were met with increased threats, financial abuse, intimidation, stalking and an attempt to set their home on fire. After they received a protection order and many other supports that got them to safety, the mental recovery began, which took years.

Hope is now doing very well. Actually, she's not just doing well; she's thriving. She's thriving because she had access to social security, free mental health support and good legal support. But what she wants people to know is that violence isn't just physical and fleeing isn't so simple. We must stop violence before it starts, and we must address it in all forms, including coercive control, sexual violence, financial violence and verbal abuse. If we want to stop violence, we need to make a concerted effort across all government departments and all parts of society.

That's why all of us in the Albanese Labor government are deeply committed to stopping family, domestic and sexual violence in a generation. I want to quickly acknowledge the incredible prior work in this portfolio by my dear colleagues Minister Rishworth and the member for Richmond, Justine Elliot, who have enacted incredible change, making the Albanese Labor government the largest investor in women's safety in history. Now it's time to grow and build on that, and grow rapidly. To get there, we must fight for cultural and social change, and that means working with men and boys. That means building healthy relationships and attitudes towards women from a young age. That means talking about consent, respect, digital literacy and healthy masculinity, but it also means fighting those factors that we now know lead some men and some boys down a path of violence, including social isolation, mental ill health and addiction. It means prioritising and protecting children, fostering their recovery and stopping the cycle of violence for them. None of these circumstances excuse the use of violence, but they do explain how it can happen, and we must do everything possible to stop that violence before it starts.

This is part of our feminist agenda, and it's a feminist agenda focused not just on survival; it's an agenda focused on truly living. To Sue and Hope, and all the Sues and Hopes out there, this is one of the main reasons I came to this place: for you, for your safety, for your life—to look at the heart and not just the body. We want women not just to survive but to thrive and to have choices, opportunity, love and family, and we want the same for our men and boys.

I'm deeply proud to do this in a Labor government. I'm deeply, deeply proud that the people of the electorate of Cooper elected me to represent them. I know that they care about the things that I care about. I know that they want me to stand here and speak up for them over and over again and to fight for policies that actually change their lives. The women of Cooper have spoken. They have told me that the policies we enacted in the last term of government have changed their lives. They have told me that they can now absolutely afford the medications that they need. So many of the women in Cooper have sent me pictures from their phones of how much their bill is—the actual dockets from when they go to the chemist, pick up their medication and see that no longer are they paying hundreds and hundreds of dollars every year for their medication; they're now getting it for so much less. So many women have cried. I've heard wonderful stories about our endometriosis clinics; they have changed people's lives. Women have said to me that for the first time ever, when they walk into these clinics, they are heard, they are believed and they are given treatment that absolutely validates years and years of their pain and suffering—years of being gaslit and being told, 'There's nothing wrong with you,' 'It's all in your head,' or 'It's just a woman's lot to put up with it.' And that is not the case. We can do something about that.

And then there are the wonderful organisations in my electorate who work every single day and volunteer to make sure that their communities are kept safe, are not isolated and have somewhere to go. Amazing organisations like the Kouchkovski Social Club, the Elderly Citizens Club and our football clubs do so much for our communities, making sure people are fit and mentally well and that they can have a life that feels fulfilled. Isolation is a terrible scourge in our community, and supporting our very important social clubs is an incredibly important part of making sure we have a cohesive and strong society.

Working with our First Nations communities is also incredibly important to me. I have a vibrant and amazing First Nations community in my electorate, which, I'm very proud to say, is also home to so many of the peak bodies that do great work in Victoria and beyond. The Aboriginal Advancement League is an amazing organisation that promotes wellbeing and a healthy future for our Aboriginal community. It was with great pleasure that we announced $3 million to support their women's wellness and sports centre. I know that this sports centre will make a huge difference to that community. It's been in planning for a long, long time. Finally showing that the federal government is willing to support that meant that the state government was also willing to come on board and deliver much-needed funding. Not only will the community gain a beautiful new centre for their women and girls to partake in sport, to stay well, to stay connected and to be proud of their culture, but we will also have brand-new turf for the much-beloved Fitzroy Stars Football Club. I'm very proud to be part of that. I'm very proud that we have been able to deliver for the people of Cooper.

Sitting suspended from 13:35 to 16:00

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