Page 1021 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 19 March 2013

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The website for UN Women’s National Committee Australia states that in the year 2000, 189 nations committed to the millennium development goals, including eradicating extreme hunger and poverty; achieving universal primary education; promoting gender equity and the empowerment of women; reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability; and developing a global partnership for development. All eight goals relate to various aspects of women’s lives, making women’s empowerment a crucial part of success at achieving this change over the next few years.

In my maiden speech in this place I said I was grateful to live in modern Australia—and, let me say, in Canberra above all. Canberra is a very special place for women. I was at a function recently for the opening of the exhibition Women Who Made Canberra at the Canberra Museum and Gallery, where Rosemary Follett, our very first Chief Minister, said that Canberra has been good to women. I agree that it has; I have never lived in a city so good to women. I am not saying that there is not any work to do in advancing the women’s cause here, but there is a certain freedom experienced by women here in career progression and opportunity that is not experienced by women in very many places around the world or around our nation.

I was very excited to come here and to live in Canberra because I had a feeling it would be a good place for me as well as for my husband and my children. And indeed it is a good place. With 67 per cent of ACT women participating in the workforce, compared to only 58 per cent as the national average, as mentioned by the minister—given this situation, I believe our responsibilities are very great to achieve two aims. Firstly, we must continue to encourage and facilitate the women of Canberra to take up the very many opportunities for work and economic power that we have to offer here. And I believe we also have a responsibility to walk with women in other places, especially in less wealthy nations and less developed countries, so they are able to live freer lives and to have more economic opportunities. This is our responsibility.

Regarding encouraging women in Canberra, I believe that we as a local legislature should turn our minds to improvements that might be able to be made in a couple of areas in which I think we can genuinely improve. I believe we can improve women’s access to economic power even as they have their children. In light of this, let me say how disappointed I am that the federal government this year axed the ABS’s work, life and family survey. This means that there will be a 13-year gap between the last survey in 2006 and the next survey in 2019. Kylie Higgins, a mother of two in Wanniassa, was quoted as saying that this is a slap in the face to many women who already feel pretty invisible some days.

Women who may feel invisible are faced with challenges such as the high cost of housing in Canberra. Many women here have to make the tough choices around having children. What can we do to continue to see new ways of paying women for work that they are able to do while having children? I believe that there are ways of remunerating women in some more flexible industries on outcomes rather than simply on hours worked. Working nine to five in an office building miles from home, let us


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