Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Over the past year there's been a lot of significant discussion and debate around women: how women are treated, how they're paid, how they're educated, how we better equip them when it comes to consent—accepting what's appropriate behaviour and rejecting what's not. There have been recent discussions about love bombing and the dangers that come with it—how to see red flags, how to be confident in dealing with them and how to walk away from destructive and dangerous situations. However, when you think about all the work that's been done and the discussion, you see that for far too long the discussion has been accompanied by an intellectually bereft and insulting discussion: Labor good, Liberal bad. Liberal women are somehow just here to make up the numbers. As I've recently been told, I'm 'just making the sandwiches for the Morrison boys'. My conservative colleagues, in particular Senator Hume and Senator Henderson, and I are nothing but 'crumb maidens', a term I actually had to look up. It is deeply misogynistic, and it is used by the Left, both men and women, to attack conservative women.

So I thought today would be an important day to set the record straight. I'm going to let you know who has actually invested in women's health, safety and security and who talks a big game but has never ever walked the walk. I urge those of you interested in facts—not smears, political pointscoring or self-promotion—to watch this speech today, not those that are soaked in personal animosity. I'll start by acknowledging that Labor did put in place the first action plan of the current national plan, with an investment of $86 million. Whilst those on the Left will cheer this investment and claim that Labor is committed to this issue, in reality this paltry amount pales in comparison to the $3.4 billion in the Women's Budget Statement 2021-22. That's right: $86 million from Labor to $3.4 billion from the coalition.

But the Morrison government is not only putting real money where its mouth is. For the first time in parliamentary history, the government is demonstrating leadership and action in its commitment to improving the lives of Australian women, with four ministers now in this space. We acknowledge that a Minister for Women is simply not enough, so the Prime Minister has appointed additional ministers: a Minister for Women's Safety, a Minister for Women's Economic Security and an Assistant Minister for Women.

We acknowledge that too many people in this country, particularly women, experience domestic violence. We lose too many women each and every week at the hands of their partner. Whilst those opposite like to talk a big game, what we do know is that they have absolutely no policy ideas and have committed no funding whatsoever to prevention in this area. We on this side of the chamber know the importance of providing support to women and children who experience domestic violence, and I'm going to go through some of those things later on, but we know that what's more important is changing the culture, changing the conversation, so violence against women, including domestic violence, doesn't occur in the first place. The success of our Stop it at the Start campaign is changing not only attitudes but lives. More than $50 million has been spent on changing attitudes around respect. It's a campaign encouraging more respectful relationships that is recognised by three in five adults. These campaigns are working. In anyone's mind, three out of five adults—60 per cent recognition of a campaign—is success.

We know that by changing attitudes we change lives and address the violence towards women before it even begins. But we know that there's lots more to do. That's why we're determined to continue to deliver for Australian women and their families. So I want to go through a couple of programs; I may have to come back for the adjournment debate, because I think that, once you start to go through them, you'll see how many programs we have actually put together, funded and initiated to support women across a vast range of areas.

We have the next national plan to end violence against women—as I said, $3.4 billion in the last budget statement. We have a new National Partnership Agreement, which is up to $260 million, to bolster frontline family, domestic and sexual violence services. We have an escaping violence payment, with a budget of almost $165 million, to help women who need to leave a violent relationship. We have funded a 24/7 hotline, in 1800RESPECT. We've provided 780 safe places for women and children to seek safety when they're leaving a domestic violence situation. We have frontline services, with $130 million, to provide urgent assistance to states and territories when they need assistance in stepping up. We have over $400 million allocated to legal services to help women get out of these relationships. There's the Roadmap for Respect, obviously, and Stop it at the Start, but there is more than 64 million additional dollars going into the government's road map, which is about preventing sexual harassment in Australian workplaces. We want the Respect@Work report and the recommendations in there to guide how we create safer workplaces for everybody.

We have another action plan, with $340 million, that will help to reduce violence against women and children, but we're also focused on their economic security. We know a lot of women can't leave because of the economic constraints that are put on them by a partner in that form of abuse. That statement around economic security is $1.9 billion. This is real money. Again, $86 million was what the Labor Party put in. We've put in $1.9 billion for economic security, something that no-one opposite has ever considered to be an issue. But I guess that, when you're just getting paid by the unions, you don't have to think about how real women need funding and support to get out of destructive relationships. We have childcare subsidies that we've boosted to ensure women can look after their children when they have to get out of these relationships.

We have the Boosting Female Founders Initiative, which ensures that women who have an entrepreneurial spirit are able to access that and get support. We have the National Careers Institute Partnership Grants program, with over $12 million. We have an Early Stage Social Enterprise Foundation—$13.9 million. We have the Career Revive program, because we know that women take career breaks when they have children, and sometimes they need assistance to re-enter the workforce. We've also assisted with mediation, so that they can get help when it comes to distributing property between divorcing or separating partners.

We have a superannuation guarantee threshold. We've removed the $400-per-month threshold so that employees don't have to pay the superannuation guarantee. We have a family home guarantee—and this is one of my favourite initiatives—that allows single mothers to purchase a home with just a two per cent deposit. The government will guarantee the rest. We know that homeownership is one of the safest ways to ensure that this increasing rate of homelessness in women over 50 doesn't continue, so we are committed to ensuring that as many women as possible—in particular, single mothers—get that support to get back into the housing market.

We have economic security statements and reporting frameworks all based around supporting women. We have leadership and development programs, the Academy for Enterprising Girls and National Women's Alliances, to help create policy that supports women into the future. There are also Indigenous girls academies. And we're boosting the next generation of women by supporting them into STEM. Girls are continuing to exceed and excel in the environment of STEM, and we are providing up to 500 industry-based co-funded university scholarships—not only for girls that are finishing school but also for women who are looking to retrain and to re-enter the workforce. We've got women in sport; we've put $12 million into Football Australia.

We're significantly working on lowering the gender pay gap. We've addressed gender balance on Australian boards. As for the coalition and women in parliament, we have eight women, who hold 33 per cent of cabinet positions. This is actually the highest number of women in cabinet ever.

So, with all of this that we hear about the Morrison government somehow being bad for women, you guys just don't get it. I'm a little bit over it, because, on top of that, we are investing so much in health.

Again, I'm probably going to have to come back at adjournment because I cannot possibly go through every initiative that Minister Hunt has funded, but I do want to give him a particular shoutout for the $2 million that went to ovarian cancer today, as we acknowledge Ovarian Cancer Month. It's a cancer that is insidious, that takes far too many women and that is almost impossible to detect until it's too late. This is real money, real investment, real support for women.