Ms PAYNE (Canberra): My question is to the minister representing the Minister for Women. How will Labor's tax cuts benefit Australian women, and why is it important to have women in the room when governments make these decisions? What happens when women are not included?
Ms CATHERINE KING (Minister representing the Minister for Women): I thank the member for Canberra very much for her question and for her continuous advocacy for policies that benefit Australian women.
In just a little over three months Labor's tax cuts for all Australians will be delivered, helping with the cost of living for all taxpayers but particularly for women. Our plan will see Australian women taxpayers on average receive a tax cut of $1,649 from 1 July, and it will see a bigger tax cut for 90 per cent of Australian women taxpayers, who will receive an additional average tax cut of $707. That's 5.8 million women receiving a bigger tax cut. And that matters. It matters that we have women in the room making those decisions to ensure that we have these policies that actually benefit Australia's women. That tax cut equates to a boost of over 630,000 additional hours per week worked by women.
That is what happens when women sit around the cabinet table, when women are preselected and when women are in the majority in the party room. Delivering for women is in Labor's DNA. That's why we've delivered paid parental leave reforms. It's why we're so focused on closing the gender pay gap across Australia. It's why we want women's retirement income, making sure superannuation is paid on paid parental leave so that women's retirement incomes are not affected by their time out of the workforce having children. These things matter. All of these things are issues that the Liberal and National parties have been, frankly, absolutely incapable of doing. You have to wonder if that is because of their inability to preselect women and have women in the party room. Senator Hume—
An honourable member: Do you think two is a big number?
Ms CATHERINE KING: Two is a big number.
Ms Ley: Point of order on relevance: the practice is clear. Ministers can be asked about matters within their own portfolio, not the affairs of political parties and not other political parties' actions or purported actions.
The SPEAKER: The Leader of the House.
Mr Burke: There are two sections of the standing orders. One goes to what can be asked and the other goes to what can be part of an answer. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition is correct when she says that those particular issues can't be part of the wording of a question. Once a question is asked—and this question had the final part 'what happens when women are not included?'—the question is then: is the answer relevant to those words? I put that what is being said by the minister now is completely relevant to a question that was ruled in order.
The SPEAKER: The question contained, 'What happens when women are not in the room?' I'm just going to make sure the minister is being relevant rather than just attacking any other party, to make sure she is within the standing orders.
Ms CATHERINE KING: When women are not in the room, these decisions don't get made. We had Senator Hume, in her review of the Liberals' 2022 election campaign, find that the Liberal Party had the lowest number of Liberal women in their parliamentary ranks since 1993. Yet, when faced with the opportunity to do something about this, to preselect a woman in the seat of Goldstein, currently held by a very strong and accomplished woman, guess what? They went for the same bloke who lost the seat last time. In South Australia, when given the choice between a female shadow cabinet member and a far-right conspiracy theorist, what did they do? They choose the conspiracy theorist. In Western Sydney, the Leader of the Opposition has had to come in—
The SPEAKER: The minister will pause. We've already had one point of order on relevance. I'm just going to call the Deputy Leader of the Opposition.
Ms Ley: Mr Speaker, I simply seek your ruling as to whether the minister, having heard your previous remarks and then departing completely into the territory that she just did, is in order with her answer. I seek your ruling.
The SPEAKER: I'll just give the minister one more chance. She wasn't asked about any other parties in her question. She was asked about women in the room. So the reminder of her answer won't be about any other political party; it will be about the importance, as she believes, of women in the room, not simply an attack on any other political party or any other part of the chamber. She has the call.
Ms CATHERINE KING: They seem to have a bit of a glass door about this issue, Mr Speaker. I wonder why. I wonder why they are so sensitive about this issue. We on this side of the House know that it matters having women in the cabinet room. We know that it matters having women in our party room. We know that it matters having majority women in government, because that means that the decisions that we make—paid parental leave, improving child care, making sure we've got good retirement incomes for women—matter. It matters when women are in the room.
