Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about half of our community: the women of Australia. For generations, women have helped build Australia's democracy, prosperity and social progress. The Australian Commonwealth and state parliaments were among the first in the world to give women the right to vote. South Australia was first, in 1894; the Commonwealth parliament followed in 1902, and Victoria got there in 1908. It took until 1921 for the first woman to be elected to an Australian parliament, when Edith Cowan was elected to the Western Australian Legislative Assembly. On entering parliament, Edith said:

I know many people think perhaps that it was not the wisest thing to do to send a woman into Parliament …

That view was wrong then and it's wrong now. It took another two decades for women to be elected to the Commonwealth parliament. In 1943, Enid Lyons became the first woman to be elected to the House of Representatives. In the same election, Dorothy Tangney became the first woman elected to the Senate, representing Western Australia.

We've come a long way since then. I'm proud to be a member of a federal parliamentary Labor Party which is more than half women and to have served in a Labor cabinet that was half women. Women in parliament improve the way the nation is governed, and they make this parliament a true reflection of the country that it serves. Law and policymaking are strengthened when they take their direction from the lives of the people they affect and the real difficulties they face.

Women in parliament change the questions that are asked. They widen understanding, lead to better decisions and make our democracy more accountable and representative. Yet, across the generations, there have been thousands of Australian women whose contributions are no less important even if their names do not appear in the history books and their work is not recognised in public life. Today I acknowledge those women. Their contributions deserve our respect, our gratitude and our continued commitment to equality. That's the work that Labor has taken on. We've delivered historic reforms to improve women's safety, economic security, health care and representation.

As Attorney-General, I saw that justice, safety and economic security cannot be separated. This understanding is reflected in the Albanese Labor government's reforms for women across the law, policy and services. An example is the Anti-Discrimination and Human Rights Legislation Amendment (Respect at Work) Act 2022. That legislation was a significant step in fulfilling Labor's commitment to implementing all of the recommendations of the landmark Respect@Work report completed by Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins and the Human Rights Commission in 2020. The Morrison government failed to implement all of the Respect@Work report, but the Albanese government acted. All 55 recommendations have now been put into effect. The 2022 act introduced a positive duty to the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 requiring employers to take reasonable and proportionate measures to eliminate unlawful discrimination, including sexual harassment, as far as possible.

But, of course, changing the law is only part of the task. Justice also depends on the strength of the services women turn to when their safety, housing, family and financial security are at risk. In 2024, through our National Access to Justice Partnership, the Albanese Labor government significantly increased funding for women's legal services. That funding recognised what women's legal services had made clear for many years: too many women were being asked to navigate questions of safety, family, housing and financial security without the legal support they need.

The same concern for justice and safety led to the much-needed privacy reforms that I introduced in 2024. The Privacy and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2024 created new offences for doxxing, which is the malicious publication or distribution of personal information in a way that exposes people to harassment or harm. When personal information is maliciously revealed, the consequences for women can be serious and dangerous. These reforms recognise that the law must respond to this form of harm. That work formed part of our wider effort to make the law more responsive to women's experiences and their calls for safety, dignity and justice. This approach guided our reforms to the Family Law Act and guided our work on justice responses to sexual violence.

Too many victims and survivors of sexual violence have said that the justice system is difficult, confronting and traumatic. Their experiences guided the inquiry our government referred to the Australian Law Reform Commission into justice responses to sexual violence. The commission's report, Safe, informed, supported, helped shape the Albanese Labor government's $21.4 million response, including expanded specialist trauma informed legal services for victims and survivors.