Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Pratt for the question and congratulate her on her marriage last weekend. It's good of you to be back here and not on a honeymoon! Since day one when we came to government as Australia's first majority-female federal government, we have taken action to improve women's lives. After a decade of falling behind, we recognised the need for immediate action and investment and we haven't wasted a day. In our first year we have made historic investments in women and women's equality. We have supported women's economic equality through our investments in cheaper child care, to give families more choice over childcare arrangements and support women's workforce participation. Families will benefit from this reform from 1 July. We are modernising and expanding paid parental leave, with the changes to simplify the scheme and making it more flexible and easy to access starting from 1 July. We have supported pay increases in industries overwhelmingly dominated by women, including in aged care, with this pay rise also coming into effect from 1 July. We've supported single parents with $1.9 billion to increase the eligibility for parenting payment single, the majority of whom are women, until their youngest dependent child turns 14. We took action to end the punitive ParentsNext program and are developing a better way to support vulnerable parents. We've made record investments in women's safety, with women accessing 10 days paid family and domestic violence leave. We have invested $2.3 billion in funding for women safety across our two budgets in preventing violence against women and children. We're implementing all recommendations of the Respect@Work report, including by legislating a positive duty, and we have worked across this parliament to implement the recommendations of the Set the standard report to make this place a safer place for women in the future.