Renee Coffey (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Last Friday, I sat down for a coffee with Amelia from Camp Hill, a young parent raising her child, running a small business and doing what so many women in Griffith do every day, carrying family, work, care and community all at once. She was thinking about her child's future, her business, her time and the pressures of building a good life. As policymakers, we cannot pretend that decisions we make in this place impact everyone in the community in the same way. Decisions about wages, child care, paid parental leave, health, housing, safety and superannuation affect women in specific ways. That's why Labor brought back the Women's Budget Statement—to build gender equality into decision-making from the start—after those opposite scrapped it. Our progress is clear: women's average weekly earnings have grown by almost $300 since 2022, more than one million families have benefited from cheaper child care, paid parental leave is expanding to six months and women have saved more than $647 million through cheaper medicines and better access to contraceptives and menopause therapies. In Griffith, women lead across every part of community life. Their leadership is practical, generous and often quiet, but it is felt in every suburb of our community. This budget backs them. It backs their work, their safety and their health. There is more to do, but, under the Albanese Labor government, women are in the cabinet room and in the caucus room at record levels, helping shape the decisions that affect our lives, affect our communities and affect our families.

See this speech in context