Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

What a great day to be doing a motion to take note, because I get to talk about my favourite subject: women. I'd like to give a shout-out to my beautiful wife; my beautiful daughter; my beautiful sisters; my mother, who has passed away; and my grandmothers. They were all working women. The one thing that we will never do on this side of the chamber is leave women behind. The other thing we will never do on this side of the chamber is leave our children behind or leave our families behind.

I'd like to reflect on the comments of another great Australian woman, Quentin Bryce, Australia's first female Governor-General, who said when talking about the complexities of trying to raise children and going back to work, 'You can have it all; you don't necessarily have to have it all at once.' I think it's terribly presumptuous of those on the other side of the chamber to think that they know what every woman wants. Some women don't necessarily want to go back to work straight away. Some might like to stay home while their children are young. If that's what they want to do we on this side of the chamber will support that, because we on this side of the chamber believe in choice and believe in our children. That's different to that side of the chamber, which believes in command and control. This side: choice, children, families. That side of the chamber: command and control.

Of course, there's more to it than Labor like to make out. We've got it here from our old friend Aunty, the ABC. They're not the greatest friends of the coalition. A few years ago Fact Check did a piece called, 'Was Labor's childcare fund only ever about the union?' And the result was 'in the ballpark'. It says:

However, there are reasonable criticisms of the amount allocated to the fund, the uneven way it was distributed and the adoption of a first-come-first-served policy. This process favoured the union.

One thing we will never do on this side of the chamber is unionise parenthood. That is the difference between this side of the chamber and that side of the chamber. That side of the chamber puts unions first. It doesn't put our children first. It doesn't put women first. It doesn't put the welfare of all Australians first. It puts the unions first all the time. Whenever they're talking about these issues, you can always be sure that, in the background, it's always about the unions. It's always about the unions.

Let's just look at some of the numbers in the budget here. There are allegations that there's no money in the budget for women and no money in the budget for women's support. Let's just quote a couple of figures here. Women are getting $242 million for women's workforce participation. We're spending $240 million to get women back into work. I should also say there's $9 billion in this year's budget for child care. On top of that, there's $20 billion for the family tax benefit. I forget who it was, but one of the Labor senators mentioned that two-thirds of people who stay at home are women. We're supporting stay-at-home parents to the tune of $20 billion. There's parental income support of another $7 billion. There's child support of $2 billion. Support for the childcare system is $1.5 billion. There's another $600 million for families and children. All up, there's about $40 billion to help families—you know, women are a part of families. There is a lot of money in this budget for child care, for families and to help women get back into the workforce. So I totally refute the allegations that the coalition doesn't support women.

We should just touch on a few other big discounts in the budget here. I note Senator McAllister raised the issue of superannuation. If we look at the biggest tax concession in the budget—guess what it is! The second and third-biggest are concessional taxation of superannuation entity earnings and concessional taxation of employer superannuation contributions—over $40 billion in superannuation contributions. Wow! So I tell you what— (Time expired)