SENATOR THE HON KATY GALLAGHER
MINISTER FOR FINANCE
MINISTER FOR WOMEN
MINISTER FOR THE PUBLIC SERVICE

FUTURE WOMEN BUDGET DINNER

PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA

Thanks so much, Jamila. And I begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet today, the Ngunnawal people. And I pay my respects to Elders past and present, and I extend that respect to all First Nations people joining us today.

I particularly want to acknowledge strength and leadership of First Nations women in Australia, who are so often leaders in their communities, holders of knowledge and constant advocates for equality.

Before I start, I'd also like to thank the Future Women team. To Helen, Jamila and your amazing team for organising what is the most important event in Budget Week -- don't tell the Treasurer I've said that. But this dinner has become a real highlight for me in Budget Week and in Canberra I think it's the most sought-after ticket in town. So, congratulations to you and all of the work that you and your team do supporting women around Australia, particularly in getting women who have left work back into employment opportunities.

There's a lot of my colleagues here tonight, so I don't want to miss anybody by naming you all individually, but I acknowledge you all. There are many members of the Labor caucus here, my fellow ministerial colleagues, senators, and I acknowledge there's a number of members of the Crossbench and the Coalition as well. So, I acknowledge you and I thank you.

I think this has been a really – this Parliament on the eve of this the end of this parliamentary term -- such an important one for women. And I think the women members of Parliament have made an excellent contribution to the outcomes of this Parliament. So, I acknowledge you all this evening. Now I was told – I've got like, a 25-minute speech and Jam told me I've got 10 minutes if I go over a little bit. So, if there's bits where I am racing through that's why, because I feel like I'm under time pressure.

But I wanted to sort of tell a bit of a story about what we've done since coming to office, and what we want to do in a second term and paint a picture. Because often in each Budget we've had individual measures, which we've talked about at dinners like this. But really, as we – Jim and I – handed down the fourth budget, I want to try and pull all that together, because it's been a significant effort, significant investments in particularly driving women's equality across Australia and across our economy. And so, forgive me, it's a bit retrospective, but I think it's an important story to tell, because it really is a significant list of achievements that we've managed to do.

And before I forget, briefly indulge me to let me acknowledge the women policy officers, my women's advisers in my office, Amy, Sol, Georgia, who have been incredible this term. Many of you in this room have dealt with them. There is no problem too big or too small to get that tiger team with their teeth into it and come back to me with some advice on what needs to happen. So, I really do want to acknowledge them today.

The Albanese Government is the first government in our country's history where we have a majority of women members. Fifty-four of our hundred-and-two members of caucus are women, and we have the country's first gender equal cabinet at a federal level ever. Now, this is pretty amazing, and I think we've shown in this term what a difference this makes to the priorities of government.

From day one, with women's economic equality front and centre, and we got to work. And if you look across the Cabinet, Penny is looking after the whole world. Amanda is looking after social services and women's safety. Clare is looking after housing. Anika is looking after aged care. Ged has been amazing in women's health. Tanya has been extraordinary in the environment. Every portfolio, every policy, really has a Labor woman at the heart of this Government. Now, as this Budget has been handed down on the eve of election, this evening we’ll look partially at what we've done, but also where we need to go to, and right from the beginning of this term.

If you remember back to the heady days in the Jobs and Skills Summit, the first summit we held, the first session that we held in that summit was on equal opportunity and pay for women. This was a conscious decision led by the Treasurer, but in consultation with others, to have women and economic equality for women front and centre, not as an afterthought or a tag on at the end of the conference.

I know too many of us in this room have over the years, and probably still do, attend too many meetings as the only woman, or one of a few women, where speakers and contributors have been dominated by men. Now, this isn't the Government we are, and we wanted to set the tone that I've just spoken about at the Jobs and Skills Summit-- that we were different, that we were going to do things differently, and we were going to be more inclusive and more open and more accommodative of women's roles in decision making.

This was a deliberate decision, and one which reflected the decision of the Prime Minister from those very early days, when he put the portfolio of Women and the Minister for Finance together. Because he understood and he told me at the time that to drive real change in women's policy, women needed to be represented when the economic decisions were being taken.

We've handed down four budgets now, and each one of these has a Women's Budget Statement sitting alongside it. These budget statements are a proud tradition of the Labor Party. They were started back in the 1980s by a trailblazer, Susan Ryan, and we've continued them ever since, even from Opposition, when Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey stopped producing them in government. And can I say here, and I'm not sure that the public servants involved are here this year, they were last year, but just an acknowledgement for the incredible support, both from the Treasurer and the Prime Minister and their departments, in putting together a Women's Budget Statement of substance.

Hopefully you've had the opportunity to read it. But this has been supported by gender-responsible budgeting, as you know, we've spoken about before, which we brought and put into place in our first budget.

I'm really proud to say that every single Budget proposal this year underwent gender analysis as part of the budget process, and each Budget we've delivered has built on the last, with careful connecting reforms that maintain momentum and keep pushing forward and keep shifting the dial on gender equality.

We've also recognised that women don't live their lives in neat compartments. We wish. Our health is connected to our work, our safety is connected to our financial security, and unpaid care is connected to security in retirement. So, standing before you tonight at the end of a three-year term, I think we've made significant progress in many of these areas.

We've provided a record investment in women's safety to address the national crisis of violence against women and children, and we've also funded community legal centres with ongoing funding along with increases and continued funding.

We've extended Paid Parental Leave to six months, and finally, we will be paying super on that Paid Parental Leave, a reform that will help close the gap for women when it comes to super.

We're sending also through that decision a message that caring is important and valued work.

We've expanded the Single Parenting Payment – thank you, Terese Edwards, who's also in the crowd – lifting many single mothers out of poverty.

We've increased Commonwealth Rent Assistance, a game changer for vulnerable women and their families.

We put an end to the punitive ParentsNext program that was disproportionately affecting young, vulnerable women, and I accept there is more that we need to do there after speaking with Helen tonight.

We've funded pay rises for aged care workers and early educators, both female dominated areas that have been undervalued and underpaid for way too long.

We've made TAFE free so that women can retrain or train in essential sectors without taking on more debt and trying to address some of those highly segregated, or gender-segregated labour market challenges that we have.

The statistics are already showing that this program is working for women, with women taking up more than 60 per cent of the over half-a-million re-enrolments to date, and also in recent data showing that almost 80 per cent more women are training as apprentices in male dominated trades compared to 2019.

We've also addressed some of the issues around HECS debt, acknowledging that we're helping address a system where women hold more of those debts and generally take longer to pay them off because of their career breaks and because of gender pay gaps.

We backed paid pracs for teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work students, so that students still dominated by women don't have to choose between completing their qualifications and paying their rent.

And in this Budget, we've also found room for modest tax cuts to top up the tax cuts from July 2024 for every taxpayer.

These tax cuts will proportionately benefit women and lower income earners, encouraging those to take on more hours at work.

Now, when we've looked across the term, we've made big investments in care through early education and care reforms, including the largest investment in trying to make childcare more affordable for parents.

And late last year, after years and years of lobbying, including from many in this room, we committed to abolishing the Activity Test by providing a three-day guarantee for children into early education care without any judgment about what their parents might be doing.

We're investing in the workforce, importantly, in early education and care. If we're going to have more children in care, we need more workers to care for them. And we've also invested in building the infrastructure that's needed to accommodate these children on the pathway to universal childcare.

Now, we continue to work hand-in-hand in the critical work in terms of looking at how we address women's safety, and this remains probably the largest unfinished piece of work before us. Addressing this is such a critical factor in unlocking true gender equality, because women will never be equal until we are all safe, all of the time.

Now in women's health, and can I just tip my lid to Ged Kearney, who is here tonight. This Budget has a lot to say about women's health, another area that's been misunderstood, underinvested and under-attended for too long until this Government did the work, and Ged is the person that has led that work.

In February, we announced a record over half-a-million-dollar package for women's health that will make a real difference for women, including in adding new contraceptive pills to the PBS, IUD and menopausal hormonal therapies, adding them, making them cheaper. And it's sort of astounding for some of us that have been knocking around for a while, but these are the biggest changes to the PBS in many of these areas in-between two and three decades. It's quite extraordinary that women have been waiting that long. How many women have paid and been paying out of pocket for the treatments that they have preferred. We're hoping that this, and all the evidence is, all the advice to government is, this will save women hundreds of dollars every year.

And also, the success of Ged’s really world leading endo and pelvic pain clinics that have been opened around the country, twenty-two already, and another eleven based on the success of the ones today. I've visited one of these clinics, and it really is extraordinary the care that women are getting, the acknowledgement that pelvic pain and endometriosis is not something in their head but is something that can be successfully treated and women can be cared for with appropriate access to that health advice. So, congratulations, Ged, I would say that this is part of the reason that we are here, to make a difference. And this is incredible work that's been done in one term that will make a lasting difference.

And how good is it that we have Budget papers that talk about endometriosis, pelvic pain, reproductive rights, contraception, IUD devices, all of it in our budget papers, finally talking about it? I made a joke to Penny today that if anyone sees me with a lot of that shiny face during the campaign, it's because I've been using Ged’s new PBS listed menopause treatment, which, apparently, you only use a very tiny bit of the gel, but I can see a day when I'm going to need a lot more than that.

So, the response from women to the health package has been extraordinary, many thousands of whom have suffered in the shadows for too long, finally included in a national conversation and with the dollars to match.

And while I've listed all of those areas that we've been working on, we are seeing signs that things are changing, not in every area that we want, and there's so much more to do, particularly in women’s safety. But when we look at economic equality, we've got the lowest gender pay gap on record. I acknowledge Mary Wooldridge, who's here, and the fantastic team from WGEA who have been world-leading, really, in the work that they've been doing. I would say it's a very small but mighty team. And can I also acknowledge the Senate tonight will be dealing with a very important piece of legislation which stops just taking data from companies and reporting against that, and starts saying, what are you going to do about it and setting targets? And hopefully, fingers crossed, there's a bit more to do tonight, very late one in the Senate, that that legislation will pass, and I acknowledge Larissa Waters and Sarah Hanson-Young in helping us hopefully get that done today. Thank you.

So, where to now? I can promise you that the job is not done, and we will be just as ambitious in our second term as we have been in our first. We've got our Working for Women strategic plan, which sets the direction for the next ten years and covers all of those areas I've talked about tonight, where we've started but haven't finished. Ending violence, valuing care, boosting women's economic equality, keeping women's health on the agenda and getting women around more decision-making tables.

We'll build on this work to address other areas with a lot of work to do in industry, gender segregation, to close the gender pay gap, to make sure that Medicare and childcare and super and workplace protections work for women. We've got a very important case before the Fair Work Commission with a gender undervaluation review currently underway that will report soon and certainly inform the government's policy thinking going forward.

Violence against women remains a crisis and under Labor it will remain a national priority. We will continue to look at what works to address violence and opportunities to prevent violence and support those who experience it. We'll have to keep working there with States and Territories, who have so much of the responsibility with our shared implementation of the National Plan, including as we tackle some of those new challenges coming forward, like young people's exposure to misogynist online content.

We've already commenced work on our audit of key Commonwealth Government systems. Another shout out to Terese Edwards, whose advocacy on this is constant and unrelenting and important to where those systems get. Thank you.

So, we've commenced that work, and we really do need to understand where our systems have been weaponised by perpetrators to cause more harm. We've taken an initial focus on the child support, social security and tax systems as an area to focus on, and in our second term, we'll look at ways to address the issues the audit highlights, we'll also focus on how we can best support children and young people who have experienced violence, building on the work we've commenced following last year's National Cabinet, because we know we need to break cycles of intergenerational trauma.

So, in conclusion, thank you to everyone in the room. Many of you have contributed to the work that the Government have done.

You've worked with us, shouted at us, demanded better, and you've supported the Albanese Government's work to pursue gender equal Australia.

We know that we've achieved a lot in three years. We know that there is still a lot to do, and we know that the risk of changing paths or going backwards will hurt women.

With so much at stake for women, we intend to win the election so that we can continue to work the work that's been started, so that all of the women and girls that come after us live in a country that respects them, listens to them, supports their choices, allows them to reach their potential and to achieve their dreams.

Thank you.

ENDS