Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2025-2026
Mrs McINTOSH (Lindsay) (12:20): In the fourth year of this government, we see a prime minister who set high expectations for Australian women, expanding the Office for Women. All the while he was introducing new processes and new bureaucracy. This is what it's been about for the government.
The Prime Minister is committed to glossy publications around the impact of the budget more broadly, but the government's failure to rein in overall spending and its failure to protect future generations from the intergenerational debt burden is the actual reality. There remain stubborn gaps for Australian women: the gender pay gap, the unpaid care gap, the housing gap and the superannuation gap, as well as an emerging HECS debt gap, whereby more women are graduating from university but they are taking longer to pay back their student loans than their male counterparts.
Against this backdrop, Labor always looks to what it knows. It knows how to add additional bureaucracy, reward union coffers and spend more of your money, leaving a debt for future generations. What we don't see in this year's Women's Budget Statement is an investment in women in business, including women in entrepreneurship and women in micro and small business.
About 35 per cent of small businesses are owned or led by women. These women deserve attention too. Women-led businesses care about small business support, about fair taxes, about rising energy and supply costs and about how running a business should be unhindered by government regulation.
Frankly, small businesses are going backwards under the Albanese Labor government. There's a hollowing out of small businesses in our towns, suburbs and cities. My electorate of Lindsay is home to outstanding women in business—women like Gina Field, whose business was named company of the year at the Women Changing the World global awards, and Jess Jenkins, who's re-energising the night-time economy by heading up the Valley Entertainment Precinct.
However, soaring costs, red tape and the state government's cut to the Business Connect program are making it harder for local female-led businesses to thrive. There are 33,500 fewer employing small businesses than when Labor came to office. Within large businesses, we see women's leadership is also flatlining.
It is sitting stubbornly low. The Chief Executive Women Senior Executive Census 2025 shows that there remain just 27 women CEOs in the ASX 300 and that 80 per cent of CEO pipeline roles are held by men. One-quarter of companies in the ASX 300 actually went backwards this year in women's representation.
We know from research undertaken by McCrindle that gen Z might be our most entrepreneurial generation, yet 86 per cent of gen Z want to work in something they start themselves. But in this budget we don't see Labor backing business, backing entrepreneurs or backing women in business. When will the minister see women also as business owners and entrepreneurs?
Will the minister commit to working with business women and business owners to reduce the barriers to success for them? Finally, if a measure of success of a society is to look at the most vulnerable, we must keep focusing collectively on violence against women and the shadow it casts over all of our efforts. The latest ABS crime statistics for 2024 show sexual violence is getting worse.
Between 2022 and 2024, sexual assaults rose by 17 per cent and, notably, family violence homicides and related offences rose by nearly 65 per cent. In 2024, 99 women died from family and domestic related homicide. We stand ready to support the Prime Minister to better address the drivers of violence and to get the funding it promised out the door more quickly.
Prime Minister, why are there still unacceptable rates of violence against women? You have our commitment to work constructively with your government on any efforts to address this national shame.