Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As others who have spoken to this before me have noted, in the latest World Economic Forum Global gender gap report, Australia has moved from 43rd place to 26th place. That's a pretty impressive jump of 17 spots. It is the largest improvement in Australia's ranking in the report since the index started comparing nations in 2016. There is no doubt that that jump was contributed to significantly by the fact that, for the first time in history, we have a federal government which has more women than men in it—53 per cent are women—and we have a government that has spent the last 12 months starting to implement an agenda for gender equality that goes from workplaces to politics to schools to all aspects of society.

The Minister for Women, Katy Gallagher, is right when she says that better gender representation leads to better outcomes. It is almost obvious—although for hundreds of years people, men, didn't seem to realise it—that the more people you have around the table from different backgrounds bringing different experiences and different points of view to a discussion, the better the outcomes you will get and the more representative the outcomes will be. So it's a significant achievement, but there's no doubt that we still have a long way to go in Australia for gender equality.

We're all pretty wrapped up in the Matildas at the moment. Seeing how those young women, who are strong and fierce and feminine and tough and just amazing athletes, are representing their country in a way that we would want anyone, male or female, to represent their country and the way that Australians are responding to that is amazing. More Australians watched their last match than watched the AFL grand final, which seems to be blowing some people's minds, although a lot of us would say that we've been telling you for a very long time that women's sport is exciting. It's different to men's sport in many ways. Sure we don't jump as high or run as fast—always; sometimes we do—or kick the ball quite as hard or throw it as far—

Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You do compared to some of us; that's for sure!

Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We do compared to the member for Macnamara—apart from basketball because you can just reach up and put the ball in the hoop! But we're skilled and we're tactical and we're strategic and we do jump high and run fast and throw hard and kick far, and it's interesting to watch.

The issue is not just that Australians are wrapped up in women's sport at the moment but how do we use that moving forward? Things have changed significantly since I was a young girl in the eighties, where the only time I got to see a woman in a sports magazine was when they had the bikini edition of Sports Illustrated. My dad always used to say to me, 'Write to the editor. If you don't like it, write to the editor and get it changed.' Things have changed, but they haven't changed enough, and we need to leverage this moment in time to support women to be involved in sport at all levels and in all ways.

It's still the case in our country that when a dad who's never played basketball says, 'I'll step in and help coach my daughter's under-10 basketball team,' people say, 'Isn't that wonderful?' but when a mum who's never played soccer says, 'I'll step in and help coach my son's under-10 soccer team,' there's a bit of a, 'But do know what you're doing?' Men who have had a bit of a go at playing tennis when they were in high school are accepted to coach their kids' tennis teams, but women who have been professional tennis players aren't accepted to coach elite junior boys teams. We still have a fair way to go when sports like netball are actively embracing boys playing and men being on their committees but many football clubs have never had a female president, let alone a woman on their committee. We still have a fair way to go to say that gender equality actually means that men and women can be involved in boys', girls', men's and women's sports at all levels, doing all things. Coaching, being administrators, being physios, being commentators—it doesn't matter. They can do it.

I know that the Minister for Sport and the Minister for Women are engaged in thinking about this issue, and I'm very keen to be part of that. Gender equality is not just about numbers and statistics. It's about outcomes and it's about culture. I think we still have a culture in Australia where, if you turn on a television, nine—if not 10—times out of 10, the ads for domestic cleaning products still have a woman who's depicted as the mother washing the kids' clothes, mopping the kitchen floor or cleaning the dishes. They still have the mother, nine if not 10 times out of 10, cooking cupcakes with the kids and cooking dinner. There is still an inherent gender bias in much of our popular culture that not only holds women back because it perpetuates the idea that that unpaid work, which is often the care component of being in a relationship, or being part of a family, is women's work. It also holds men back from having the sort of engagement with their families and children that can be and is fulfilling.

During COVID one of the things that fathers, particularly fathers in their 20s, often said to me was that the thing they didn't expect, because they had to work from home or couldn't work for a period of time, was how much time they got to spend with their kids and how great that was. They said it made them realise how much time they hadn't been spending with their kids and what they had been missing out on. That's one of the consequences of gender inequality and gender stereotypes in this country when it comes to what we can do.

It is no coincidence that feminised industries are the lowest paid industries and that feminised industries are, by and large, the care industries—that is, work that used to be unpaid domestic caring work. Again, that is a gender inequality that keeps women in low-paid industries and keeps them low paid but also tends to exclude a lot of men from things like early childhood education and care, aged care or nursing. These are occupations which are incredibly fulfilling, and which men are very good at, but a gender stereotype holds them back—let alone the pay. It's bad for women, it's bad for men and it's bad for the economy.

These are the sorts of things that government can do something about, like the Albanese Labor government supporting the historic pay rise for aged-care workers. But government can't fix or change this completely. It's a cultural attitude. It needs the involvement of leaders from across business, the civic sphere and government. We need to be conscious of those sorts of things and conscious of the history that leads to today, where, yes, we have more women than men in the government, but we still have over 100 years of a parliament which hardly had any women in it for a very long time, has had one female prime minister and hasn't had women in leadership. One government with a lot of women in isn't going to change 100 years of built-up culture with conscious and unconscious bias.

I was listening to the amazing June Oscar on the radio this morning and she was asked whether, when her term as commissioner is over, another woman should be appointed as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander commissioner, and she said: 'Absolutely, because, for 30 years, until I got this job, there'd never been a woman, and having one woman in the job isn't going to change that.'

So, while the result that I started talking about is a terrific result and should be celebrated, and the Labor government which I'm proud to be a part of should be congratulated for all the measures that have been put in place to close the gender pay gap and encourage gender equality in this country, there is a lot more to do, and I look forward to being part of that work.