Thursday, 30 May 2024

Bills

Financial Management Amendment (Gender Responsive Budgeting) Bill 2024

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Harriet Shing:

That the bill be now read a second time.

Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (10:02): I rise to speak to the Financial Management Amendment (Gender Responsive Budgeting) Bill 2024, and I do so very happily to speak about this year’s budget and how it has let down so many Victorians, and in particular so many women. I want to put on record support for what the government is aspiring to do here in terms of providing women with greater financial security and in a number of other areas, as the bill highlights. What the bill does is basically legislate what the government has been undertaking over a number of years, since I think 2017, in relation to their agenda. What this bill does is embed gender-responsive budgeting into the Victorian budget. I note that the bill says:

to include in the principles of sound financial management a requirement to consider and promote gender equality and inclusivity in the pursuit of spending and taxing policies; and

to provide for a statement of the gender impacts of the budget to be prepared in association with the budget for each financial year; and

to provide for the Minister to request a gender impact assessment in relation to any matter under that Act.

I will be asking a number of questions in committee around some of these points, because I think they go to the point about what the budget is doing to all Victorians, and of course that includes women. I note that in the government’s budget papers they have a ‘Gender Equality Budget Statement’, and it says:

Our action to make sure women are given the economic security they deserve. And our serious focus on women’s health.

The Minister for Women and the Treasurer go on to say:

It will ensure the impacts of our decisions are taken into account at every stage of the budget process. And, crucially, it means the issues that affect women and girls will be given the focus and funding they deserve.

On this side of the house we do not discriminate against gender, religion or ethnicity; we believe in opportunity for all and providing incentives for all to get ahead – aspiration. What this budget is doing is killing that aspiration, and we certainly support the aspiration of women. There are many women in this state –

Jaclyn Symes interjected.

Georgie CROZIER: The Attorney is saying she is not sure why I would be going to this, but I make the point that it is. I think we all – Dr Ratnam has just arrived in the chamber, a successful female member of Parliament on the Greens side. There are those in Labor, and there are many on my side; there are many women who are taking these roles and bringing them into the Parliament. I want to commend women for taking on those roles. I want more women to be able to take on these roles. I think we are all in agreement on that. But this is about the economic and financial issues around the budget that do affect women, and I am getting to that point. I want to make the point that this budget is actually killing aspiration, because there are many women who are in situations where they are being taxed further and further. They cannot get ahead, so their economic security, as outlined in this document, does not ring true. And that is my point – there are so many issues with this budget that do not help women, and I will go to those.

I want to say that with 55 new or increased taxes, many women who have got their own small business are paying the price for Labor’s big-spending, big-taxing agenda. That is not putting women in a position where they have got their financial security, as stated by the Treasurer and the Minister for Women. Again, it says:

Our action to make sure women are given the economic security they deserve.

Well, I would say that women do deserve that. I agree with that, but not when they are being taxed and not when their aspiration is being killed by those taxes and the policy decisions of Labor. That is what this budget does.

We have got frontline services; we have got a number of areas that are being cut in this budget that affect women. Whether that is in the areas of mental health, family violence or a range of other areas in relation to what is happening in the real world, that is what is happening on the ground. I think it is terribly disappointing that we have got that. If I can just go back to my issue around the spending and the debt, and what this bill is about – the budget – we have got a budget that is way out of control, that women of this generation and of generations to come will have to pay for. That is going to impact, those daily interest rate payments of $26 million a day in just a few years time, and what does that do? That $26 million a day can pay for 298 paramedics, many of whom are women; two breast cancer centres; 2651 elective surgeries; 307 nurses; 510 Victoria Police recruits – there is a lot within those areas that impacts women. So the budget is impacting women in a way that the government should realise.

It is having a massive impact on the way women are trying to undertake their roles in relation to being self-sufficient and having economic security. We do understand that that security, whether it is housing – and look at the homelessness rate, which is on the increase, the number of people that do not have a secure home and the government’s taxes on rentals and landowners that are forcing sales and forcing rentals out of the market. Where do those people go? A lot of those are women, and single women with children. Again, these are decisions the government have made. Those policies are having a direct impact on women. So it is concerning that whilst the government want to promote their gender agenda, they are actually having a negative impact because of the financial situation the state is in.

I see that again the cuts within this budget have impacted women’s safety, which is a key concern. There have been record numbers of sexual assaults on women. We see that in the residential care space with young women and young girls. That is just a horrific stat. We see that in the general community. We see that with the personal security of women, which is becoming an increasing problem, and I can speak from firsthand experience of having an aggravated burglary myself, being a woman on my own at home, alone. Having that happen to you is absolutely terrifying. It was terrifying. I was lucky, but there are so many women who have been in that situation who no longer feel safe. That personal security is a real aspect of where we are at. The stats do not lie. The crime stats are there, and the police will tell you that they have never seen anything like it.

That is one issue, but we have got other issues like the mental health of women, especially young women and girls – the eating disorders. The government have put out their eating disorder plan, but those numbers are increasing. We know the COVID lockdowns impacted young women in particular. We know those lockdowns had a massive impact. I have spoken to people at the Royal Children’s Hospital who have said, ‘Yes, we are expecting an influx of young people to come through our doors because of the mental health impacts of the lockdowns’ – of not being able to be schooled through that time. We were saying, ‘Don’t do this to our children because it will have an impact for years to come.’ We are seeing it happen now, and it will flow through.

We see that with the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System and the lack of funding in this year’s budget. In today’s press former ACCC chairman, economist and lawyer Allan Fels, who is very highly regarded, as we all I think appreciate, has been commenting on this. He has done an analysis of the budget papers and he says they show just $109 million of new mental health spending in this year’s budget compared to last year’s budget with $776 million. This is despite the government forecasting that their mental health levy on business payrolls will raise more than $1 billion. There is a massive mismatch, with the mental health levy going in to plugging the government’s black hole because of their mismanagement. It is Victorians who will pay the price of that mismanagement and the reduced spending in this very important area.

The article mentions the significant slowdown in implementation of the royal commission’s recommendations. The suicide rate and mental health related presentations to the state’s emergency departments have surged to a five-year high. Many of those are women, and they are vulnerable women. That is the point about the budget and why the government has put this in. They say these words, but the reality of their policy decisions and their mismanagement of the budget is having a direct impact on women. I understand that there are a number of issues around workforce in that particular area, but it is not as if the government did not know this. This has been years in the making. They have done nothing to address those workforce issues and now all we hear from government is them blaming COVID or the former federal government or the Ukraine war or some issue, but they are not taking responsibility for the policy decisions that they have made in these very important areas.

As we know, budgets are important. They set out a vision for the state. The government has included gender equality in their vision for the state because there are issues around how women are missing out, as I have said. Women, whether they are small business owners or they are being slugged by the increasing taxes – the land tax or the schools tax – want to have choice about where their children are being educated. The schools tax is taking that choice away. That tax directly impacts on women. Many of those women are single women, bringing their children up in single households, working extremely hard to get ahead to enable that choice. We believe they should be able to have that choice, and we believe that schools should not be taxed. It is a bad tax, but the government are doing that because of their ongoing mismanagement of the budget. You can say all you like in your gender statement, but the impacts are real for women, and that is my concern around this particular piece of legislation.

I note that the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing has a budget of $5.1 billion and a lot of that is for women-related issues, but the annual net debt in three years will be $9.4 billion. Again, you can see that there is an enormous mismatch here in terms of what is going on with the economics in this state.

I want to also say: women, and many women who are successful in their own right, are doing what they can to support their families, whether that is elderly parents or their children. They know the cost of living for their families is going up, and that is also as a direct consequence of Labor’s mismanagement. It is Victorian families, and women, who are paying that price. In one year the average electricity bill has gone up by 24 per cent. In one year the average gas bill has gone up by 35 per cent. In one year the average rent bill has gone up by almost 17 per cent. Women who run businesses understand that those government taxes, like those for WorkCover and payroll, have skyrocketed. WorkCover bills have skyrocketed. They might be working in a business where transportation has an impact – those costs have skyrocketed. The payroll tax threshold for many businesses is not competitive, and many women have got their own business and they are successful in their own right. Surely we should be incentivising women and providing them with more support, not putting on taxes because the government has mismanaged the budget.

There is a whole range of other things – the bin tax, for instance. Again, it directly impacts women. So I say that this legislation around responsive budgeting actually is just words on a glossy production by the government to say that they are looking after women, whereas in actual fact the reality of the budget is that it is hurting many, many women, and it is taking away the aspiration of women to be able to do what they want to do – get into business, be self-sufficient and have the support that they require to care for their families, whether that is elderly parents or whether that is children – to enable them to have choice. This government and this government’s budget are killing that aspiration and are killing that choice. It is a bad budget, and it is Victorians who are paying the price.

There is a range of other things around the government’s budget that I think Victorians are concerned about. Overall, it does go to the fact that women constantly are speaking to me about that rising debt – what that will mean for their children and their grandchildren. They are so concerned about that debt, and the government has no plan to bring it down. They cannot see any way out of this. They are saying, ‘Why is the government forcing this debt on me, on my family, on my children and on my grandchildren?’ They do not see any plan from the government to pay down that debt. All they see is soaring debt, soaring taxes and soaring interest payments that then decrease the standard of living. When I speak to many women, they want to understand, ‘Can I get my child into the nearest hospital?’ and ‘Can I get an ambulance for my elderly father?’ They are the issues that impact women. They are the things that they think about. They care for their family in a way, as we know, that is an innate role. When they see the demise and what is happening, whether it is the failure of the health system to meet the needs of Victorians, they understand that. They are seeing that. They know you cannot get a hospital bed when you need one. They know you cannot get an ambulance when you need one. They know that the elective surgery for their elderly parent is in the queue sometimes for years, and that has a real impact on an individual’s mental health and wellbeing, let alone those impacts on family members to then support them.

Whilst I understand the government wanting to legislate what they are trying to do, I would say there is a real concern around this budget in the way it is impacting women and that this Financial Management Amendment (Gender Responsive Budgeting) Bill 2024 needs to do much more. In actual fact it should be cutting taxes. It should be spelling out a plan for how this government is going to reduce the debt so that women and their children and their grandchildren can see a way forward. It should be giving hope and aspiration to women so that they can aspire to do whatever they would like to do, with support, not with the burdens of increasing taxes and an enormous noose around every Victorian’s neck as this government proceeds with their priorities, which are the wrong priorities.

Women in the western suburbs are missing out because the government is prioritising the Suburban Rail Loop. Women in the northern suburbs are missing out because the government is prioritising the Suburban Rail Loop. Women in rural and regional areas are missing out because of the government is prioritising the Suburban Rail Loop. This government’s priorities are all wrong, and many women understand that. Many Victorians understand that. I think there is a missed opportunity with this piece of legislation. The government could have laid out that plan and could have done far more for Victorian women and future Victorian women to give them an understanding of how the state is going to really proceed in an economic, fair and unburdened way. That is not happening at the moment because the economic impacts of this budget are impacting women very significantly. I again say I think there is a missed opportunity in this, and I look forward to asking the minister some questions in the committee stage around the government’s legislation.

In closing, can I say that I am very pleased to be part of a party that does recognise aspiration for women, equality for all and opportunity for all, and that includes women of this generation and future generations to come.

Samantha RATNAM (Northern Metropolitan) (10:22): I rise to speak on the Financial Management Amendment (Gender Responsive Budgeting) Bill 2024. This bill is intended to embed gender-responsive budgeting into the Victorian budget and create budget reporting obligations on gender equality. Gender-responsive budgeting has been around since the 1980s, and it has been adopted by governments all over the world. It is premised on the idea that budgets are not inherently gender neutral and that expenditure and revenue-raising choices made by governments can further entrench or alternatively reduce gender inequality.

However, questions remain about the effectiveness of this approach and whether it can just become a bean-counting exercise when it is not undertaken in an informed and genuine way. In Victoria, while a lot of progress has been made, women continue to face significant inequality across many aspects of life. The gender pay gap persists, driven in large part by the enormous amounts of unpaid labour women continue to do in households. Most women will experience family, sexual or gendered violence in their lifetime. As a direct result of violence and economic disadvantage, we are seeing women become the face of our housing and homelessness crisis.

This government’s approach to addressing this inequality this year is outlined in the ‘Gender Equality Budget Statement’. This statement is intended to fulfil the requirements set out in the Financial Management Amendment (Gender Responsive Budgeting) Bill 2024. Upon reviewing the statement, I have to say it is less of a fiscal road map for how to tackle gender inequality and more of an account of any policy that vaguely impacts women. I commend the government’s efforts to address the gender pain gap and continued funding for women’s preventative health services, though noting this funding has not been indexed for inflation.

However, there are some significant gaps when it comes to women’s safety and economic security, which are two critical pillars for women’s advancement. A cause for major concern is the government’s obscurity on how much is being allocated for women’s safety. As the community continues to reel from devastating family violence news almost every week and family violence services sound alarm bells about overflow in demand, it was a questionable decision by the government to have not prioritised women’s safety within the budget and to have instead addressed it as an afterthought, or so it seems.

The ‘Gender Equality Budget Statement’ claims that an additional $269 million is being invested to prevent family violence, while the Treasurer’s speech reports this number to be $211 million. We have heard from family violence service providers that actually there is no new funding and only a continuation of existing uplift funding. Up until the budget was delivered, the government had been hinting that this may be cut. The scourge of family violence is a major inhibitor to achieving gender equality, so why then has the government been obscuring their approach rather than coming out and clearly investing in frontline services, including in much-needed and overdue services for culturally diverse communities, and ensuring that we have culturally specific family violence refuges and a service network surrounding them to ensure that our culturally diverse populations are able to access the family violence preventative and support services they so desperately need? We are hopeful that the government’s women’s safety budget will deliver on what is needed, though you would think such a budget would be central to this ‘Gender Equality Budget Statement’.

The statement also contains a section on women’s economic security. We can all agree that economic security is paramount in the fight for gender equality, but it is simply not good enough to say you will invest in essential services like hospitals and education and call it a day on gender equality. But this is what the government’s ‘Gender Equality Budget Statement’ essentially does. There is no mention of how axing the sick pay guarantee for casuals will disproportionately impact women, especially migrant and refugee women who are commonly only able to attain precarious jobs, or how little funding has been allocated to the community sector, which is also dominated by women. The statement does not identify how this budget clearly prioritises funding for jobs in construction and infrastructure, which are male-dominated industries. It also fails to account for the negative impact that stalled mental health and kinder reforms will have on women.

I would love to know whether any gendered analysis of these policies was done. If it was, it certainly has not been mentioned in the ‘Gender Equality Budget Statement’. While the intent of this bill is commendable, given the shortcomings of this year’s budget and the vagueness of the ‘Gender Equality Budget Statement’, I question whether gender-responsive budgeting has in fact been effectively embedded in this government’s budgeting process. Gender-responsive budgeting started in the 1980s through the advocacy of radical feminist economists. They hoped that this could be a tool to help government closely examine their decision-making and work towards budget justice for women. For the intent of this bill to be realised fully, the government must commit to real intersectional gendered analysis of its policies. If the exercise is not taken seriously, we will just keep ending up with a tokenistic, largely rhetorical accounting practice, such as the one outlined in this year’s ‘Gender Equality Budget Statement’.

Jacinta ERMACORA (Western Victoria) (10:28): I am very pleased to speak on the Financial Management Amendment (Gender Responsive Budgeting) Bill 2024. Along with this budget we have introduced legislation to require every budget in the future to include a statement about gender equality. This legislation will amend Victoria’s primary financial management legislation, the Financial Management Act 1994, to ensure that consideration of gender equality remains one of the key principles of sound financial management. The Andrews Labor government made history with the passage of the Gender Equality Act 2020. This was a landmark step in breaking down discrimination and gender barriers in the workplace. This bill will complement the Gender Equality Act 2020, allowing the Treasurer to request gender impact assessments and ensure gender equality is given the priority that it deserves.

It is worth reflecting on what we mean by equality for women in our society, since it is not only important to myself as a woman but also the Allan Labor government. The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women provides a useful explanation of gender equality. It is a little bit long, but it states:

Equality between women and men (gender equality): refers to the equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities of women and men and girls and boys. Equality does not mean that women and men will become the same but that women’s and men’s rights, responsibilities and opportunities will not depend on whether they are born male or female. Gender equality implies that the interests, needs and priorities of both women and men are taken into consideration, recognizing the diversity of different groups of women and men.

This bill and the Gender Equality Act 2020 are Australian firsts, and both provide a once-in-a-generation opportunity to influence policy, culture, attitudes and importantly outcomes for Victorian women and girls. The Allan Labor government has been leading the nation in systematically persisting with our much-needed gender equality reforms, and our notable achievements began in 2016 with the release of Safe and Strong: A Victorian Gender Equality Strategy. This was followed by the publication of a gender equality budget statement in the 2017–18 budget and has continued annually ever since. The passage of the pioneering Gender Equality Act 2020 and the introduction of gender-responsive budgeting practices in 2021 further solidified our leadership, and all of this pioneering legislation has helped drive real change.

One significant change we see daily in our workplace is the number of women MPs in the Victorian Parliament. The Victorian Parliament for the first time in its history across all parties and individuals is now 50 per cent women, and the Victoria Labor caucus is now 55 per cent women. The cabinet – the leadership of the government – is currently 68 per cent women, and of course we have a regional woman as the Premier of this state in Jacinta Allan. This equality of numbers was achieved in the Labor Party through quotas and targets and what we have seen as a result is the policy changes and more that I have already mentioned above. I personally witnessed a change to board leadership across our state. In 2015 former Minister for Water Lisa Neville decided to appoint 50 per cent women on water boards for the very first time. This has led to the inclusion and promotion of women employees within the previously male-dominated water sector in this state.

The Gender Equality Act is now driving the production of gender audits, gender action plans and gender impact assessments across the entire Victorian public sector. This covers 11 per cent of workers in this state. As change permeates throughout the public sector, it is also making impacts in the private sector. In some cases the private sector are leading in this space – in fact leading further in some cases – and that is because the evidence is clear that when you have diversity amongst decision-makers you have better decisions, and when you make better decisions you make more profit. So in the private sector it is being seen as a valuable thing, not just because it is a good thing or the right thing to do.

The journey to gender equality is a complex and at times frustrating one. Nowhere is this more demonstrated than in the increasing rates of violence against women. We will never achieve gender equality while women live in fear for their health and safety in their homes or in the community that they live and work in, and we will never achieve gender equality if we continue to exclude women from economic reports.

If we do not measure all of women’s work, our economic models will continue to exclude a significant portion of economic activity, which means that often economic reporting will be inaccurate because it is not telling the full story. This is why with this bill the Victorian government is moving to enshrine gender-responsive budgeting into legislation. We recognise the essential role of government in considering gender impacts through the funding process as one of our most effective tools for driving positive change. Gender-responsive budgeting will identify budget measures that will close gender gaps and advance gender equality objectives. Gender-responsive budgeting will be a part of the budget process as well as non-budget funding decisions. The bill removes embedded inequalities by considering gender in all funding decisions with a direct impact on Victorians. It identifies how resources can be best allocated to close gender gaps and it improves value for money by achieving gender equality goals concurrently with other policy goals, and that is certainly something that our government has been very effective at. Gender-responsive budgeting recognises that as far as we have come, there is still more work to do.

The bill we debate today will make Victoria the first jurisdiction in Australia to make gender-responsive budgeting law. The bill enshrines an enduring high-level commitment to gender equality and inclusivity in spending and taxing policies. It creates a minimum standard for budget reporting obligations on gender equality and also empowers the minister to request gender impact assessments.

Just to go back to that point about inclusivity in spending and taxing policies, I remember the debate on the GST when that was being introduced by the Howard coalition government. Women argued that pads and tampons should not incur GST but the Howard government were determined that they would. With 50 per cent women in the Parliament today, it is a great thing to see free pads and tampons available throughout Parliament House, and in public schools as well nowadays. I think that is a perfect example of the kind of policy change you get when you have got women at the table.

Critically, the bill introduces a new principle that emphasises a commitment to gender equality and inclusivity. This requires future governments in Victoria to adopt gender-responsive budgeting as a core aspect of financial management. This principle will be backed by specific tools and practices that are not fixed by legislation, allowing them to adapt and evolve over time.

I mentioned better decisions. Another example of better decisions is right at the beginning of COVID the federal coalition government formed a six-man committee to formulate the controls Australians would face to keep them safe from COVID. This was very, very early days when the strain of COVID that was spreading was very, very dangerous. This six-man committee presided over many decisions, but one of them was how long Australians were allowed to take to have a haircut. They decided that 30 minutes was the limit. This led to incredible consternation amongst the women of Australia, who absolutely know that a haircut for women takes 55 minutes to an hour, and that is not to mention the better part of 2 hours for hair dye. I am not someone that has dyed their hair – yet – so I am lucky that I do not have to incur that cost or the time. But that is a minor example of a group of men, without diversity, without women sitting at that table, setting a rule that completely disregarded the impact on women. So if you apply that to far more important issues like the issue of family violence and the rates of death of women, if you have got an all-male decision-making body wherever that is, whether it is a football club or whether it is in the federal government or the state government, the issue just will not come up. That is why it is so important for us to be legislating about this so that it gets structured into the core activity and the everyday business of budgeting and taxing and policymaking.

We know that legislating changing frameworks and making change obligatory has led to real outcomes in gender equality. We also know that how we measure things influences decision-making and we need data that shows a comprehensive picture of work and life for women and families in our society. What we do not count, we do not talk about, and what we do not talk about, we do not change. That is why I would like to discuss for a minute the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day, Count Her In: Invest in Women, Accelerate Progress. Professor Rees, who has written an article on this issue, discussed the non-traditional labour market contribution of women. Using Australia’s time-use survey, it is estimated that each week Australian women undertake $771 worth of unpaid work, and in a direct comparison the same study identified $500 per week of unpaid work for men. So the actual labour pay gap there is 50 per cent, and it shows just how important this bill is today to further address in a concrete manner the gender pay gap. The gap is so big in terms of paid and unpaid labour that to not continue to make change truly is to the detriment of our society. Quite frankly, the amount of unpaid labour makes the workplace gender gap look positively mild in comparison. So it is extremely important to make sure that we count the correct economic data and not leave out women and the activities of other diverse communities as well. This legislation will contribute to that in a really strong way.

I really would like to express my support for this piece of legislation and just close by saying that there is a continuum of violence against women that starts with sexist jokes in the pub at one end and ends with aggravated assault at the other. We do need to ensure that women sit at the table, that women are accounted for in decision-making and that their needs, their uniqueness and their unique contribution to our society and to our community, to our governance, to our clubs and our organisations are respected and accounted for in the beauty of their difference. I commend this bill.

Rachel PAYNE (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:43): I rise to make a contribution on the Financial Management Amendment (Gender Responsive Budgeting) Bill 2024 on behalf of Legalise Cannabis Victoria. Gender disparities in Australia are reducing, but they are still there. We see it in income, we see it in freedom from violence and we see it in roles in economic, personal and political life. Research by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has shown that if we think about gender impact early in policy design, we improve measures of gender equality.

Policies may seem gender neutral, but they can still impact people differently based on their gender and entrench existing inequalities. A failure to engage with gendered issues often means a failure to create good policy. During the pandemic the Morrison government’s home builder program gave out $25,000 grants for 137,000 people’s home renovations. This was designed to create a pipeline of work for the male-dominated construction sector. This was despite data showing that the economic downturn had hit women particularly hard, with plunging employment and paid work hours. Research by economists Jerome De Henau and Susan Himmelweit compared investment in construction with the same investment in the care sector. They showed that the employment gains from investing 1 per cent of GDP in the care sector would generate more total employment than an identical investment in construction, especially for women.

Jacinta Ermacora: They didn’t count hairdressers.

Rachel PAYNE: What a lost opportunity – I agree. If you would like to go back even further, let us look at the event of the GST. Personal grooming products for men were essential and exempt, and so were coffee, Viagra, condoms and lubricant, but tampons and pads were not considered essential. I mean, how ridiculous.

When government shapes policy we need to look at how it impacts everyone and who is being left out. Too often those left out are women. These are the consequences of the remnants of a world that was, and in many ways continues to be, built for men. Women are less likely to be involved in a car crash but more likely to die. There is a rich gendered history in car design, the result of which is that the standard seating position means the average woman sits out of position, putting them at greater risk of injury. For a long time in our society men were treated as the baseline for all human experience. Gender-responsive budgeting is one step to dismantling this baseline. This is an opportunity to weave considerations of gender impact throughout the budget process, empowering governments to adapt policies and investment to better address gender inequity. In Austria landmark tax system reform led to incentivising women’s workforce participation. In Mexico it led to targeted investment in health conditions more likely to affect women.

In Victoria we cannot speak of gender-responsive budgeting without acknowledging the prevalence of gendered violence that confronts us. We have seen too many women murdered at the hands of men. Last year alone there were approximately 54,000 breaches of intervention orders, a call-out every 6 minutes and a family violence arrest every 18 minutes. Funding for child and family services like Berry Street and Orange Door are central to supporting victim-survivors, working with perpetrators to end cycles of violence and addressing gendered issues. But there is still so much work to be done.

In Victoria we have taken a nation-leading position on gender-responsive budgeting. Following the work of the inquiry into gender-responsive budgeting in Victoria, we are set to be the first state to legislate it. We have supplemented this work with a robust gender equality strategy, extensive data collection, the gender-responsive budgeting unit, the Commission for Gender Equality in the Public Sector and the Gender Equality Act 2020. These reforms allow Victoria to lead the way in targeting some of the drivers of inequality – things like the pay gap, gender segregation, under-representation in leadership, lack of workplace flexibility and sexual harassment.

Some of the opposition have raised concerns that this will not alleviate persistent gender inequality issues faced by Victorians. These policies will not do that overnight. Cultural and systematic change takes time, and it is imperative that not all policies are reactionary; some need to work towards long-term, incremental change. I commend the decision to legislate the statement on the gender impacts of the budget each financial year. When Abbott killed the women’s budget statement, a decade of potential progress was lost. His appointment as minister for women undoubtedly also did little to progress gender equality in this country.

The sustainability of gender-responsive budgeting is largely dependent on political will, and legislating it goes a small part of the way to overcoming this. I commend the clarification that the consideration and promotion of gender equality and inclusivity includes taking into account, where possible, that gender inequality may be compounded by other forms of disadvantage or discrimination that a person may experience on the basis of Aboriginality, age, disability, ethnicity, gender identity, race, religion, sexual orientation and other attributes. Gendered inequalities are best understood when we use an intersectional lens – that is, seeing where things like gender and race and disability overlap to create unique policy needs.

Turning to my concerns, the Women in Social and Economic Research network at Curtin University have warned that the ‘Gender Equality Budget Statement’ in Victoria is a political document rather than a detailed analysis of the impact of the budget on equality using gender-disaggregated indicators and statistics. They have encouraged for its role to be reviewed. The statement of gender impacts of the budget that is to be legislated by this bill is only explicitly required to set out the impact of the budget on gender equality and inclusivity. There is no explicit requirement to track progress against outcomes or show how plans and policies were changed to address gender equality and inclusivity. If the government is not committed to gender-responsive budgeting it is still very easy for them to publish a statement and fulfil this basic duty.

The Morrison government’s first women’s budget statement was in 2022. It cited pre-existing policies and short-term reactionary funding. It was also preceded by the March 4 Justice and ‘bullets’ for protesters remarks. Here in Victoria we have a range of measures that target gender equality, but for many Victorians the budget statement is the only one they may read. It is important that this statement tracks progress towards outcomes and shows how gendered considerations have influenced policy decisions across all of government. These statements must be more than just lip-service. I will be putting forward several questions in committee of the whole that delve into the recommendations of the inquiry and seek to understand the progress this government has made, because when it comes to gender-responsive budgeting it can be done in a superficial way, and having commitments beyond statements is integral to avoiding this.

I want reassurance that there will be independent oversight. I want reassurance that a gendered lens will be embedded across all budget areas. I want reassurance that these are targets, objectives and indicators, so these statements have meaning. Regardless of the merits of this bill, given the government’s willingness to subject medicinal cannabis patients to what will now be a decade of discrimination on Victorian roads, we will be abstaining from voting.

Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (10:53): I am very pleased to speak on the Financial Management Amendment (Gender Responsive Budgeting) Bill 2024, which is another demonstration of the Allan Labor government’s commitment to gender equality in Victoria, because it will require in law our budget processes and our budget documents to absolutely acknowledge and understand the gendered impacts of the decisions the government takes through the budget on Victorian society and particularly on Victorian women. It will ensure that every budget in the future includes a statement about gender equality. It will amend Victoria’s primary financial management legislation, the Financial Management Act 1994, to ensure that consideration of gender equality remains one of the key principles of sound financial management, because we understand and we know that sound financial management requires that all issues are taken into consideration and the needs of all Victorians are accounted for, particularly for Victorian women. It is just another step, another iteration, another example of the Allan Labor government’s commitment to gender equality in this state.

Obviously the Labor government passed the Gender Equality Act in 2020, which was a landmark piece of gender legislation to break down gender barriers in the workplace, and this new legislation will complement that Gender Equality Act by allowing the Treasurer to request gender impact assessments on various measures to ensure that gender equality is given the priority it deserves in decision-making. Both of these pieces of legislation – the Gender Equality Act and the new gender-responsive budgeting provisions in the Financial Management Act – will provide a groundbreaking opportunity for the question of gender equality to be at the heart of the policymaking of this state and help influence not only public policy but also culture and attitudes and most importantly achieve better outcomes for Victorian women and girls.

Gender-responsive budgeting is a tool that is used and has been used in other jurisdictions and also in Victoria, I should say, prior to the enactment of this legislation. This will enshrine that practice in law to ensure that budget-related decisions take into account and have an understanding of the gendered impacts they have when those decisions are made and also that that analysis is then communicated in formal budget documentation as a normal part of the budget process. It will help remove embedded inequalities by considering gender in all funding decisions with a direct impact on Victorians, it will identify how resources can be best allocated to close gender gaps and it will help improve value for money by achieving gender equality goals concurrently with other policy goals.

Victoria has been on this journey for some time under this Labor government. In 2021 we were the first state jurisdiction to introduce a form of gender-responsive budgeting. Every year, as part of the budget process, since we commenced that work, we have analysed and considered the impacts of our investment decisions on women at every stage of the budget process and we have kept improving decision-making processes, considering ways in which the decisions that the government is making through the budget process affect people differently, women in particular. That leads to better decisions.

The movement to promote gender-responsive budgeting is grounded in a lot of sophisticated understanding and research about the impact of gender inequalities on our society, not just here in Australia but also internationally. One of the things that the International Monetary Fund has said about the need for gender-responsive budgeting to be an important part of fiscal policy is this:

Fiscal policy design and budget systems can also play a large role in reducing gender inequality. Fiscal authorities can ensure that tax and spending policies and/or public financial management instruments address gender inequality and the advancement of women in areas such as education, health and economic empowerment … This approach is called gender-sensitive or gender-responsive budgeting. If designed well, gender budgeting can improve the efficiency and equity of the overall budget process. Fiscal authorities at any level of government can assess the needs of boys and girls and women; identify key outcomes or goals; plan, allocate and distribute public funds; and monitor and evaluate achievements …

The value of gender-responsive budgeting is that it not only allows us to look at the outcome impacts and the expected outturn impacts of a measure on women in particular through things like the use of distributional analysis – the understanding of whether a particular course of action or policy is going to have a disproportionate impact on women in our community – and allows us to produce those kinds of gender impact assessments that form part of these processes but it also requires, by its very nature, that that consideration, that analysis, gets taken further up the budget planning process. We know that the process of constructing a budget is one that involves a large number of bodies, a lot of people and a lot of consideration over an extended period of time. Ensuring, as this legislation will, that all throughout that process the impact of each of these single decisions that is made, that make up the entirety of the budget process, if thinking about their gendered impact will in the end inevitably lead to more consideration of the gendered impacts of particular policy decisions on women and how they might be measured.

I think it is quite clear that we have seen here in this state but also – as others have mentioned in the context of their contributions – in other jurisdictions and other levels of government how they have either taken this task seriously or abjectly failed in considering how in particular budget decision-making has an economic impact. Again I will quote from the United Nations in understanding why this is important:

Gender-responsive budgeting is not about creating separate budgets for women, or solely increasing spending on women’s programs. Rather, gender-responsive budgeting seeks to ensure that the collection and allocation of public resources is carried out in ways that are effective and contribute to advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment. It should be based on in-depth analysis that identifies effective interventions for implementing policies and laws that advance women’s rights. It provides tools to assess the different needs and contributions of men and women, and boys and girls within the existing revenues, expenditures and allocations and calls for adjusting budget policies to benefit all groups.

I do want to reflect on how some of that was undertaken, particularly in the last few years in the context of the then federal government’s response to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. We saw very clearly at the outset of that pandemic the very clear differentiated impacts that were being felt across the workforce, particularly across female-dominated industries. It was very clear in the early months of that pandemic that women were losing their work, losing their jobs, at a much faster rate than men. I had the opportunity at that time to be working in a public policy think tank, and we did some particular work looking at the impacts of the early months of the COVID pandemic on women in work and found that, for example, there were some months in July 2020 when women in Victoria were losing their jobs at a rate five times faster than men and the number of women unemployed in this state at that time was higher than it had ever been. What that enabled us to do was to put into the public policy debate a critique of the decisions that were being made by the then Commonwealth government about the design of the programs they were putting in place to support those who were losing their jobs through the pandemic.

One of the things that they had done in the policy design, particularly in the early months of the policy design, was really fail to account for the gendered impacts of not only the pandemic but also the measures they were putting in place to design policies to support Australians through that absolutely uncertain economic time. In the early months of the pandemic the response that was made principally by the provisions of the rules around things like the JobKeeper payment excluded large female-dominated industries like early childhood and some of the childcare sectors. It saw them excluded on the basis of their rules about the applicability of that support to things like casualised industries, because women are more likely to be in insecure work because women are more likely to be in industries where there are higher rates of casualisation and because women are more likely to be in industries where they hold more than one job. The design of the supports was very strongly predicated on outdated notions about single-earner households, largely single-employer households, largely full-time households, and that historically has been where male-dominated industries have been seen.

It was very clear in the early months of that pandemic that the decision-making that was taking place did not match the reality of what was happening on the ground, and one of the explanations for that was because a gendered lens was not being applied to decision-making there. There was a significant critique – a significant critique – of the then coalition government’s response, and that was really felt in the response to that budget in the federal budget in late 2020. I think that is an important and illustrative example of where a failure to take account of the gendered impacts not only of external events on our community but then also of the government response to those events in our community can have serious consequences, serious economic consequences and serious consequences for individuals, but also where they are not reflective of community sentiment and not reflective of community attitudes. I do think that we have seen, we do see and we are witnessing an acknowledgement across our community that governments being more responsive to gender equality and taking actions to demonstrate that they take these issues seriously is supported, obviously by many women in the community but also by men as well, because we all understand that our community is made stronger, that our economy is made stronger, when the needs of everyone who participates in it are taken into account. When the interests of all are taken into account, everyone benefits.

It is not a zero-sum game. Doing things like introducing gender-responsive budgeting does not mean that someone else is losing out, does not mean that someone else is missing out; it means that our decisions are better. And when we make better decisions, when we make decisions that benefit more people in our community that understand the differences that make up our society, when we make those kinds of decisions that are better informed, we all benefit from them. That is why I am such a strong supporter of the move towards gender equality – because we all benefit from having a more equal society; we all benefit from having mechanisms of our government understanding, acknowledging and responding to the interests, the needs and the challenges that are faced by women and girls in our society. It is not something that only benefits some in our community. Moves like this, like the move to equality, benefit all of us. That is why the Allan Labor government has been such a strong supporter of moves towards gender equality, which is why the documents in the budget process that help shape what happens in the state of Victoria, making them more gender responsive, making them more gender aware, will lead to an improvement in the lives of all Victorians. That is why I am so strongly supportive of this legislation today.

David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (11:08): I also rise to speak on the Financial Management Amendment (Gender Responsive Budgeting) Bill 2024. I will state from the outset that the Libertarian Party will not be supporting this bill. I would say that the budget papers are already rather bloated and incomprehensible, and adding yet more bloat to them for questionable outcomes is not something that I think is a very productive use of taxpayer resources. The government’s own response to the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee report on gender-responsive budgeting concluded that:

… gender impact analysis … for all initiatives would add considerably to the size and complexity of the budget papers …

As to exactly how much that will cost, we are yet to know, and maybe we will be able to ask questions in committee on that.

Putting that aside, the fact is that although the government seems to be talking about only two genders, this government also tends to believe that there are an infinite number of genders out there, which makes this a fairly interesting analysis. Once they actually put this out, I will be interested to see what the government puts in response to all of the other genders that are not male or female.

But if we want to know how this process is going to work, we only need to look at how some of the existing processes work. I would much rather the government focus on fixing those before adding more things. One that I will bring to the attention of the house is the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities. As we saw throughout the pandemic, and I spoke about this many times, it is pretty broken. It has turned into pretty much a tick-and-flick exercise, it is seen as a hindrance and a barrier to processes – it looks like those in the public service just figure out ways to tick and flick and get by it. The statements of compatibility that are tabled with legislation in this place are often less than substantial, I would say. In concept I really like the charter of rights and responsibilities, but when it was put to the test, it failed, I would say.

Another process which is to do with the budget estimates process is the media was openly ridiculing the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee last week over the Dorothy Dixers and those sorts of things. They were comparing our PAEC estimates process to the Senate estimates process and saying how the Senate estimates process is so much better than what we do in Victoria, and maybe we should look at that. I have been on PAEC through estimates processes, and I can say that it was very frustrating, with so much time being taken up in PAEC by all these Dorothy Dixers from the government, which did not really seem to add a lot to the process.

That said, I would like to state that we will not be supporting this bill. I would like to see the government focus on fixing the stuff that is already broken before adding more bloat to these processes.

Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (11:11): I rise to speak on the Financial Management Amendment (Gender Responsive Budgeting) Bill 2024. This bill embeds gender-responsive budgeting into the Victorian budget to include in the principle of sound financial management a requirement to consider and promote gender equality and inclusivity in the pursuit of spending and taxing policies, to provide for a statement of gender impacts on the budget to be prepared in association with the budget for each financial year and, lastly, to provide for the minister to request a gender impact assessment in relation to any matter under the act.

I think once again this government, when it comes to women, talks big and acts little. I spoke about this a little while ago. I am normally all about participation in marches and rallies and things like that, but I found it so interesting that the leader of this government turned up to a rally against violence against women to demand that the government do more. They are the government, and I think that that is something that is quite sad. Yes, we do need to be doing more to bring women into the equation, to support women, but it has to be more than just a policy and more than just words on a piece of paper.

There are some things in this budget where I wish we did consider women more, and one of those things is early childhood sector supports and regulations They were cut by $79 million. That is 11 per cent. I wonder where in their gender-responsive budgeting that came into the equation. Wellbeing supports for schoolkids were cut by $34 million, or 8.4 per cent. Again, I think if they had used their own principles when budgeting this, they would have thought, ‘Hang on, how is that actually going to impact women? Will that help participation in the workplace, or will that be something that limits participation in the workplace?’

At the moment in Erica in my electorate, in Narracan, which also is Wayne Farnham’s electorate, there is a real fight to keep the kindergarten open there. This is so important, because if that kindergarten shuts, it is going to have a huge impact on women’s participation in the workforce. Because of the sort of area it is, if that one shuts down, it is going to be a 3-hour round trip to drop kids off at a kindergarten. This is something that I think has to be considered. What are we doing about gender equality here? If kids are not able to access these sorts of services, most of the time it is the female caregiver, the mum, the foster mum or whoever it is, that is the one that is affected most because of this.

Sadly, child protection was cut by $141 million, or 6.2 per cent. Family violence service delivery was cut by $29 million. This is an area where we really have to see some strong changes. It is not only women that are affected by family violence, but the vast majority affected, unfortunately, are women. In my electorate in Pakenham I saw two women last week who are suffering seriously because of the effects of family violence. It has caused them to completely withdraw from society, to stay at home and to give in to different coercive controls. These are things that we actually do need to address, but cutting funding from it most likely is not going to help. So once again, I often say it, I am for gender equality and I am for women’s participation, particularly in the workplace, and for women’s participation on boards. However, whatever we do has to be more than just headlines and words on a piece of paper; it has to be something that can actually be translated into reality and into life.

Women’s policy was cut by $0.3 million following a $3 million cut in 2023–24, and public IVF services were cut by $42 million. This is something that a lot of women really rely on. Women are having children later at the moment. My mum got married at 20 years old. By that standard, if I had followed my mum’s trajectory, I would have four and a half kids by now, but it is a different way of life now. It is not that a traditional dad goes to work and mum stays home and cooks and all of these things. The world has shifted away from that. So I think that there are certain things that we really have to keep in mind when we are supporting or rejecting policies like this. I think it is one thing to put it on paper and to have a certain policy platform around it, but are we actually living the message? That is what I do not think is happening in this government.

There are serious consequences to financial mismanagement. This state now has more debt than Queensland, New South Wales and Tasmania combined. You might say, ‘Oh, well, it’s only money.’ That trickles down into every area of people’s lives. What we must understand is when the government goes into debt that is actually people’s money. There is no such thing as government money – it is taxpayer dollars. And if this government cannot balance the books, if it cannot manage money, then what happens is it affects the everyday Victorians that we are put here to serve.

I think this is an interesting bill. I think, absolutely, we have to be doing more to support women, but it has to be more than just words on a paper. It has to be more than just marches with no action.

Sheena WATT (Northern Metropolitan) (11:18): I am delighted today to speak on the Financial Management Amendment (Gender Responsive Budgeting) Bill 2024, which covers the gendered budgeting policy platform that this is pioneering. Gender equality really is central to the Allan Labor government. You only needed to have been here in this Parliament last year to have seen that we made history with the election of the new member for Mulgrave in the other place by becoming the first gender-equal parliament in Australia, if I recall correctly. In fact the cabinet of the government has a strong majority of women in it, including, and most significantly, led by the Premier, who is of course only the second woman in Victoria’s history to ever lead the state, following in the footsteps of Labor Premier Joan Kirner, someone who I regard with great affection. It is pretty safe to say that Joan would be very proud of how far we have come, thanks to the work and incredible dedication of the Labor government headed up by Jacinta Allan.

We made history with policy like the Gender Equality Act 2020. This was a major step in breaking down discrimination and gender barriers in the workplace so women all around Victoria could go to work safely, knowing that they can be – and should be and will be – treated as equals. This new legislation will complement the existing Gender Equality Act 2020 and allow the Treasurer to request gender impact assessments and ensure that gender equality is given the priority that it deserves. Both pieces of legislation truly are Australian firsts, and both provide a once-in-a-generation opportunity to influence policy, culture, attitudes and, most importantly, outcomes for Victorian women and girls. Gender inequality negatively affects the lives of women, girls and gender-diverse people. It continues to be a persistent challenge, with gender gaps in both participation and outcomes for Victorians. With both pieces of legislation in effect, it will mean that Victoria will have concrete legislative frameworks to provide the necessary financial support to women and girls all over the state to bridge the current divide. This gendered budgeting means that we can effectively target primary issues causing disparity all around the state.

Gender-responsive budgeting is a tool used to close gender gaps and promote gender equality through budget measures. It integrates gender considerations into budget processes and funding decisions by addressing inequalities in all funding decisions, allocating resources to close gender gaps and improving the value for money by achieving gender equality alongside other policy goals of this government. Of course gender-responsive budgeting offers tangible benefits. In 2021 we became the first state to implement it, analysing the impact of investment decisions on women annually, and this has enhanced our decision-making, allowing us to better target services and investments.

The Allan Labor government intends to make amendments to the Financial Management Act 1994, known as the FMA, to embed gender-responsive budgeting into legislation so we can use these tools to make the positive changes this government is known for, undertaking in that such crucial actions as including the principles of sound financial management, requirements to consider and promote gender equality and inclusivity in the pursuit of spending and taxing policies and providing a statement on the gender impacts of the budget to be prepared in association with the budget for each financial year. It includes providing for the minister to request a gender impact assessment in relation to any matter under the FMA, which is intended to be used in limited circumstances where the Gender Equality Act 2020 does not apply.

In Victoria, gender-responsive budgeting began with the 2022–23 budget and has since become more widespread within the Victorian public service, establishing legal foundations which will help ensure its long-term sustainability and making sure that future governments continue to address the diverse needs of all Victorians. Incorporating gender-responsive budgeting into Victoria’s main financial management legislation, the Financial Management Act 1994 demonstrates our commitment to responsive budgeting that also promotes gender equality. Addressing these provisions in the act underscores that gender analysis is essential to effective budgeting and emphasises the budget’s role in achieving gender equality. This government knows that inclusivity involves empowering access to opportunities, addressing the structural inequalities and developing inclusive organisations. It is preferred because it emphasises actively removing barriers to equality.

The bill’s approach allows for considering various factors when reflecting on inclusivity. These factors include recognising that gender inequality can be compounded by other forms of disadvantage or discrimination based on Aboriginality, age, disability, ethnicity, gender identity, race, religion, sexual orientation and other attributes. You can also say that this aligns with the considerations outlined in the Gender Equality Act 2020, an act that the Allan Labor government passed to revolutionise women’s parity in Victoria. The bill expands the principles of sound financial management to encompass considerations and promotion of gender equality and inclusivity. The bill mandates that the minister prepare and present a statement of the gender impacts of the budget to both houses of Parliament for each financial year. The purpose of this statement is to identify and describe the anticipated impact of the budget on gender equality and inclusivity, and this statement must include the expected impact of the budget on gender equality and inclusivity and any additional information as determined by the minister.

Proposed amendments include granting the Treasurer the authority to make a gender impact assessment for any matter under the FMA, intended for limited use when, as I said, the Gender Equality Act 2020 does not apply. Any GIA, or gender impact assessment, provided under this provision must comply with the requirements of the Gender Equality Act. It is really not intended to limit the operation of the Gender Equality Act.

This bill before us today includes a provision allowing the minister to issue guidelines regarding statements on the gender impacts of the budget and gender impact assessments. The bill also introduces additional matters on which the Governor in Council may make regulations, including statements of the gender impacts of budgets and gender impact assessments.

Let me pick it up and tell you all about gender-responsive budgeting, the overarching term that we use to incorporate the many different tools and functions within government powers to form a broader approach to gender inequality. How fantastic is that. We have looked all around the globe and we have scoured all the nations and discovered that there is no single best practice approach to gender-responsive budgeting in the world. In fact we think that this model right here is right for Victorians, not just now but very much into the future. The practices that the Allan Labor government will undertake will be dynamic, they will be flexible and they may change over time. They may be changes to suit the specific needs of Victorian women and changes that are required for our state to thrive in the years ahead.

But let me tell you, having responses that can be tailored is so very important for whatever issues present themselves in a manner that I think the Treasurer and treasurers of the future will deem appropriate. If we are ready to respond as a state and as we should to gender-based issues, we can bridge the gap between men and women all across our state. You see, gender inequality is rubbish, and I do not like it. It negatively affects women and girls, and it remains really a persistent challenge to Victoria’s future success. Let me tell you that we recognise the crucial role of addressing gender impacts through the bill before us today and also through the previous legislation passed in 2020. This will be a powerful tool for driving positive change and one that I look forward to seeing in future budgets in years to come.

Gender-responsive budgeting is essential for promoting gender equality by shaping how budgets are created and how funds are allocated. Is there anything more exciting than that? In fact in the budget before us there are some very key investments to address gender inequality in our state. This includes $657 million for health services, including addressing women’s health issues, and $1.8 billion – can I just draw your attention to that, Acting President, $1.8 billion – to enhance women’s economic security by supporting workers in female-dominated sectors and helping women reskill, retrain and get the jobs of the future. There is $292 million – how fantastic is that – to alleviate cost-of-living pressures that disproportionately affect women. I was especially excited, and I know all of us on this side were, to see the $216 million to support housing for women experiencing homelessness. There is also $269 million to prevent family violence and ensure women’s safety. How fantastic is that.

In fact there are over 130 active initiatives to address gender inequality in our state in the budget before us. There are nine initiatives that total $352 million that are expected to have very significant statewide implications. These will change attitudes, and they will reduce the gaps in the outcomes, access and participation for women right across our state in various sectors. You see, 61 per cent of all OECD countries, let me tell you, which are five of the seven largest economies – some places that I have not been to, but that is all right; I can read all about them – Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom, recognise the importance of considering gender impact early in policy design. According to OECD research – gosh, there are some good folks in there – this approach leads to better gender outcomes, helping to dismantle structural inequalities and barriers that disadvantage women and girls. It will provide better insights, more effective outcomes and a fairer distribution of resources to address this inequality.

I was thinking about years gone by and what we have done in the past, before this bill before us. In 2017–18 Victoria was at the forefront of the approach to address gender inequality with the publishing of the ‘Gender Equality Budget Statement’. If the bill passes, Victoria will become the first Australian jurisdiction to enshrine gender-responsive budgeting into law. How exciting is that. That is fantastic. I am thrilled to bits to say that this recognises that, despite progress, significant work remains to be done in achieving true equality. Victorian women are amongst the world’s most educated. As at May last year, 39.3 per cent of Victorian women had university degrees, compared to 32.2 per cent of men. More women are taking on male-dominated industries, and all credit to them. I am talking about women in IT and women in engineering, and what I have had the great pleasure to see is significant take-up of women in trades. How exciting is that. Female workforce participation has hit record highs. For the period March 2020 to March 2024 the participation rate of women rose by 1.6 per cent to 62.9 per cent, and the employment rate for working-age women increased by 2.5 percentage points. There are nearly 170,000 new jobs being filled by women, with 90 per cent of those being full-time roles. How fantastic is that.

You know what, despite all of those brilliant statistics, challenges remain. The gender pay gap persists, and women often face exclusion from full-time work due to their disproportionate share of unpaid labour. Australian women do 2.3 more hours of unpaid work and 2.2 fewer hours of paid work per day than men. They are twice as likely to work part time, primarily due to higher unpaid caring responsibilities. Can I just highlight that that is not just about women that have children, it is also about the high proportion of women that take on caring responsibilities for their parents. I just want to take a moment to acknowledge all of the women out there that do the heavy lifting on behalf of their siblings to care for their elderly or sick parents or often parents experiencing disability later in life.

I have more to say, but I have got to tell you I was very excited to read this bill and very excited to see how far we have come. I am excited to say that this will help even the playing field on economic opportunity for Victorian women, and I am proud to commend this bill to the chamber.

Moira DEEMING (Western Metropolitan) (11:33): I rise to speak against the Financial Management Amendment (Gender Responsive Budgeting) Bill 2024, because I believe that equality of the sexes should be addressed on the basis of sex and not gender. I disagree with this bill because frankly I think it is pathetic, and I am not going to pretend that it is anything other than a degrading and absurd spectacle of disingenuous exploitation of women. It is not about equality of the sexes, it is about identity politics, and not just gender but Aboriginality, age, disability, ethnicity, race, religion, sexual orientation and other attributes. Biological sex is not even stated properly.

This government loves to wax lyrical about women’s rights and women’s pain and women’s perspective, but they have obliterated women’s own defining sex-based category in the law. Anybody can say they are any gender, multiple genders or no gender at all, so none of the data that you are going to collect and have been collecting to inform these ridiculous gender impact statements means anything at all anyway. Whilst you are all congratulating yourselves on your brochures and your campaigns and your themes and your plans and redistributing taxes on the basis of identity politics rather than objective need, what is actually going on for women and girls? As I have said many times before in this chamber, we have lost our right to speak and be heard and to disagree with gender-ID laws without being accused of hate speech.

We have lost our right to single-sex change rooms. Our feelings and our privacy do not matter – women and girls and our feelings and our dignity and our privacy do not actually matter. This is a farce. We have lost the right to single-sex sports. We have lost the right to single-sex prisons, and need I remind this house that we still have a twice-convicted male rapist in a women’s prison in my area. We have lost the right to single-sex rape and domestic violence services, and I am sure you all heard in the news about the male who tricked rape victims in the UK by pretending to be a female rape crisis counsellor. That is disgusting, and that is what we are allowing here as well. Lesbians have lost the rights to associate exclusively with lesbians, because now men can say that they are gay women and demand entry. Women as mothers – we have lost the right to protect our children from harmful gender ideology in schools and to protect them from the totally discredited gender affirmation treatments still endorsed and funded by this government even though we are in huge amounts of debt.

The truth is that this bill totally undermines principles of sound financial management, and it does so by overlaying them with Labor’s own political ideology of redistribution of wealth based on divisive identity politics. Real principles of sound financial management include managing financial risks prudently, ensuring stability and predictability in the level of the tax burden, maintaining the integrity of the tax system regarding the financial effects on future generations and providing disclosure of financial information relating to the activities of the government and its agencies, like we debated yesterday in my motion.

This government has been publishing a gender impact statement every year since 2017, and there is no real reason to legislate it anyway. I noted a few interesting little sections in this. One of them is, and I agree that it is true, that women experience pain from heavy periods, cramping, premenstrual syndrome, perimenopause, menopause and endometriosis. But these conditions are as a result of our sex, they are not a result of discrimination and oppression by society against women. In the section ‘Securing the future of housing’ the document states that:

Women can be particularly vulnerable to homelessness. In the past decade, women over 55 have been the fastest growing cohort experiencing homelessness.

I have seen that in my area; that is just atrocious. And they are made all the more vulnerable because of their sex and their lack of access to privacy and dignity, as I said before. The rates of homelessness for women aged 40 to 49 years have increased at double the rate. But data from the last census, published by the ABS in 2021, shows that males make up 58 per cent of Victoria’s homeless population.

I just find all of this virtue-signalling and all of these words that are used – when the real meaning of them has been eradicated in law and nothing practical is happening – offensive. It is an insult to my intelligence and an insult to me as a woman. When this government finally discovers what the real definition of a woman is, which is an adult human female, then I might take them seriously on a bill of this kind.

Council divided on motion:

Ayes (29): Ryan Batchelor, Melina Bath, John Berger, Lizzie Blandthorn, Gaelle Broad, Katherine Copsey, Georgie Crozier, David Davis, Enver Erdogan, Jacinta Ermacora, Michael Galea, Renee Heath, Shaun Leane, Wendy Lovell, Trung Luu, Sarah Mansfield, Bev McArthur, Nick McGowan, Tom McIntosh, Evan Mulholland, Aiv Puglielli, Georgie Purcell, Samantha Ratnam, Ingrid Stitt, Jaclyn Symes, Lee Tarlamis, Sonja Terpstra, Sheena Watt, Richard Welch

Noes (3): Moira Deeming, David Limbrick, Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell

Motion agreed to.

Read second time.

Committed.

Committee

Clause 1 (11:46)

Georgie CROZIER: Minister, the government has reported on gender budget impacts since 2017–‍18, or since that budget. Does the government attribute any improvements in gender equality to this reporting?

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: Gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) as a whole is obviously the tool that helps us identify budget measures, but the advice from the box is that it has been successful in removing embedded inequalities by considering gender in all funding decisions – and that is across the whole of government, not obviously limited to any one portfolio – and it also identified and assisted government more broadly to identify how resources can be and have been best allocated to support closing gender gaps.

Georgie CROZIER: Could you provide some examples to the committee of spending and taxing policies that have been influenced by the government’s reporting on gender impacts in the budget? I am wanting the positive aspects of those taxing policies and spending policies.

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: I firstly would make the point that gender-responsive budgeting is applying across the whole of government, and we would argue that applying a gender lens to all policy ensures that we are developing policy in a way that assists in removing gender inequalities in the implementation of those policies. But in terms of a specific measurement, the Minister for Women is currently developing a new gender equality outcomes framework, which will be realised into the future and provide a new way to also track impacts further down the track.

Georgie CROZIER: On the same basis, what are the negative impacts of the budget? I do not know if you were listening to my contribution, but I spoke about the rising debt and the concerns for women currently and for future generations. Has the government identified through that gender lens any areas of gaps where the current policies might need to be reviewed?

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: Gender-responsive budgeting is something that is looked at from both the positive and the negative. I did not specifically hear your contribution, Ms Crozier, but in terms of assessing all aspects of the budget and whether it has a negative impact or a positive impact in relation to gender, that is what we are seeking to do here. We are really seeking to understand the effects of budgeting across all services. One of the ways that we are doing this in the 2024–25 budget is by continuing to fund Respectful Relationships. That is a good example. It is a tool that applies both in the negative and the positive in terms of it being applied in assessments.

Georgie CROZIER: Minister, have budget initiatives been denied funding on the basis that they were not expected to make a positive impact on gender equality through that gender lens that you just spoke of?

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: I am advised that that is not the case. It is an assessment tool, so it is providing a measure against policies or programs that might be put forward. It is an assessment tool, but it has not resulted in the decline, or non-approval if you like, of funding on that basis.

Georgie CROZIER: So just in relation to that assessment tool, does the government expect that mandatory annual reporting on gender impacts will improve gender equality in Victoria?

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: Yes. It is envisaged that by having the assessment tool in place we do apply a gender lens to the development of policy and programs and the funding thereof and budgeting for those policies and programs – so yes, our expectation is that it does have a positive impact.

Georgie CROZIER: Minister, if I could just tease that out a little bit more, is it expected that those annual reporting requirements across government – there are many aspects of government that would have to apply this, and that reporting – will require additional resources to undertake that reporting in each department and each agency, given this is across government?

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: The government will continue to give ongoing consideration, if you like, to any implications in costing to departments of the application of the tool. But it is an assessment tool that is being applied as a lens over policies and programs, so it should be the case that that is something that does not have to have a cost unless the entity chooses to hire perhaps a consultant to do it, for example, but it should be part of the standard policy development process undertaken by policy officers and programs and staff across government.

Georgie CROZIER: Minister, do you think it is regretful that the government has not fully funded the Best Start, Best Life program that you are responsible for? Has the government undertaken an assessment on the gender impact of this decision?

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: Thank you, Ms Crozier, for the opportunity to spruik Best Start, Best Life. Best Start, Best Life is $14 billion program that is being funded over a significant amount of time. We have already invested around $8 billion, $9 billion in Best Start, Best Life reforms, and we will continue to roll out the $14 billion Best Start, Best Life reform, just on a more gradual basis for some elements of it, particularly in relation to pre-prep, but that is something that has been done in consultation with the sector. As the Municipal Association of Victoria and many others have put forward, this has been welcomed as a more gradual rollout of the pre-prep aspect of Best Start, Best Life, but Best Start, Best Life is obviously much bigger and much broader than just that, and it continues to roll out as we have otherwise said.

Georgie CROZIER: I was not actually asking about the rollout of the program. I think we understand that there have been delays, but it was really around the assessment of the gender impact of that decision given there are delays in that rollout. I am taking it that there has not been an assessment undertaken. Is that correct?

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: There has been gender analysis when asking for new funding in each and every state stage of the Best Start, Best Life reforms.

Georgie CROZIER: Minister, under this bill gender equality will be understood to mean equality of rights, responsibilities and outcomes between persons of different genders. What are the key metrics the government will use to monitor and evaluate the progress on each of these points? And in relation to the different genders, how many genders is that?

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: Ultimately this amendment is about dealing with gender inequality, and that can go different ways. We are not proposing to define specific genders through the amendment. What we are doing is looking at how to take gender into consideration at the outset of policy development. In relation to definitions of gender inequality, that is defined in the Gender Equality Act 2020.

Georgie CROZIER: I was going to ask this question in clause 6 because it goes around that gender inequality, but if I can ask this question now given that you have just responded, clause 6 says these include:

… taking into account, where possible, that gender inequality may be compounded by other forms of disadvantage or discrimination that a person may experience on the basis of Aboriginality, age, disability, ethnicity, gender identity, race, religion, sexual orientation and other attributes.

I am wanting to understand what those other attributes are as applied to this bill through that gender inequality reference that you made.

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: As you have highlighted, Ms Crozier, gender inequality goes to different things, therefore so does gender equality. As it is considered in the terms of this legislation:

gender equality means equality of rights, opportunities, responsibilities and outcomes between persons of different genders …

Ultimately this amendment, as I said, is about dealing with those gender inequalities which can go one way or the other.

Business interrupted pursuant to standing orders.