Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

In 2014 the Liberals abolished the Women's Budget Statement because they wanted to hide how women were impacted by their policies, by their cuts and by their spending. I am calling on the Liberals to bring back the Women's Budget Statement, but so far this has fallen on deaf ears. To fill the gap, for the last number of years Labor has been producing a women's budget statement in opposition, and we will do so again this year. We have a strong record when it comes to women's rights and women's policy: we brought about the first paid parental leave scheme, we developed the first national plan to reduce violence against women and children and we invested $3 billion to increase wages in the female-dominated social and community sector. We have a very strong record on advancing women's rights and, when next in government, I have no doubt that we will bring back the Women's Budget Statement as part of the federal government's budget.

Finally, there is a policy area that you would think simply could not be cut any more than it already has been by this government over the last three years or more, and that is the foreign aid and development budget. But, yes, it has been cut again. I really did not think it could be. It has already been consecutively cut to the bone so much—dropping by almost 30 per cent during that time. I remember a time when we had bipartisanship on aid and development, when we had this goal of reaching 0.5 of GNI. That all went out the window when Tony Abbott became Prime Minister, and it has continued under Malcolm Turnbull, to the extent that we now make the lowest contribution to aid and development that we ever have—the lowest contribution we have ever made—down to 0.23 of GNI and going down. It is not going up but going down. Meanwhile, the Conservative government in the UK has stood firm in its aid spend of seven pence out of every 10 pounds—that is a UK Conservative government. (Time expired)