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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-03-08 Daily Xml
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Gender Equality

Ms THOMPSON (Davenport) (14:24): My question is to the Minister for Women and the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence. How is the government working to ensure that women and girls can equally and actively participate in our economy and in every aspect of community life?

The Hon. K.A. HILDYARD (Reynell—Minister for Child Protection, Minister for Women and the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence, Minister for Recreation, Sport and Racing) (14:24): I thank the member for this question and her longstanding commitment to advancing the interests of women and girls in our community and beyond. This government is profoundly committed to working to create a state in which your gender has no bearing on the opportunities available to you. We want to be a state which is renowned for equal opportunity for girls and women, that empowers women to live their best possible lives and that realises the benefits for all that an equal future creates.

Structural and community action is needed to realise this equal future. Women continue to face a horrific scourge of violence, limited perceptions about the roles that women can play, under-representation in leadership positions, a persistent gender pay gap with older women more likely to retire with little savings and to live their older years in poverty. There is much to be done.

Together with the incredible group of women with whom I share these benches and the outstanding men who we work alongside, we can and we will make a difference. We are supporting the economic participation of South Australian women through our Gender Pay Gap Taskforce so that we can understand and address the factors that contribute to the 7.4 per cent gender pay gap here in South Australia. The task force is underway, and I look forward to receiving their recommendations about actions to reduce the gap.

Gender equality in decision-making makes for better decisions, decisions that are more reflective of community expectations. Today we launched the re-established Premier's Women's Directory, providing an additional avenue for South Australian women to join state government boards. The Premier's Women's Directory will support our government's commitment to work toward achieving 50 per cent representation of women on state government boards. We have re-established the Women in Sport Taskforce to break barriers that prevent women and girls from equally and actively participating in their sporting passions.

Both the Premier's Women's Directory and the Women in Sport Taskforce were shamefully shut down, cruelly cut by the previous government. For a relatively small investment, these initiatives can help make a difference and advance us closer toward gender equality. We have funded a $4 million Women in Business package and work is underway to introduce an equality bill which will seek to facilitate the systemic achievement of gender equality.

There are complex inter-relationships between women's leadership and participation, their economic opportunities, and attitudes toward women that manifest in the experience of family, domestic and sexual violence, violence that has no place in our community. We are committed to enacting legislative change, preventive actions and pathways for recovery.

This year, we will introduce a bill that represents the next frontier in our quest to prevent and end domestic violence, a bill to criminalise coercive control. This legislation will move beyond responding only to incidences of domestic violence to also contemplating the horrific patterns of abuse that are coercive control, that set out to diminish one's sense of self worth and autonomy.

To further develop public discourse and awareness about troubling behaviours, next week we are hosting our See the Signs Coercive Control forum with courageous advocates, Sue and Lloyd Clarke. Hannah Clarke and her three children—Sue and Lloyd's daughter and grandchildren—were killed by her former partner in a horrifying attack in 2020 following a relationship in which she was a victim of this insidious form of domestic abuse. I encourage all to attend.

Our government is staunchly committed to making a real difference to the lives of women in South Australia. We are proud to have reinstated funding to Catherine House and the Women's Domestic Violence Court Assistance Service, which were cut by the previous government. We will continue to relentlessly speak up and act to prevent and end all forms of gendered violence.

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