I believe that eliminating the gender gaps we see in the workforce and in health is vital to improving Australia’s social cohesion. Why? Because an equitable Australia is a stronger Australia.

The Albanese Labor Government has a strong focus on policies that will bring economic equality, female leadership, and end violence against women and children in Australia.

Ending Family, Domestic and Sexual Violence

Male violence against women and children is a national crisis, and the Albanese Labor Government is doing all it can to end it. Our National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children 2022-2032 outlines the efforts of all Australian governments to end gender-based violence in a generation by shifting the social, cultural, political and economic factors that lead to violent behaviour. It’s an ambitious plan – but it’s a crisis we need to tackle head-on.

The Albanese Labor Government has committed $3.4 billion since October 2022 to women’s safety. That includes the Leaving Violence Program to help people experiencing intimate partner violence to leave those relationships with access to financial support along with other services.

We’re delivering a range of new measures to tackle exacerbating violence factors, such as violent pornography and misogynistic content targeting children and young people in online spaces. Alongside these measures, we’ve strengthened the National Criminal Intelligence System to provide national access to criminal intelligence and information, including on domestic violence perpetrators.

We’ve also passed legislation to ban the creation and non-consensual distribution of deepfake pornography. The law now makes it clear that sharing digitally or AI created and altered sexually explicit material is a damaging form of abuse against women and girls that can inflict deep harm on victims and is subject to serious criminal penalties.

Unpaid and Paid Care

The Albanese Labor Government knows that gender equality cannot be achieved without better valuing both paid and unpaid leave. That’s why we’ve provided greater flexibility to recipients of the Carers Payment to undertake paid work, study or volunteering activities.

For those who work in the paid care sector, such as early childhood education and care and aged care sectors, we’ve funded a 15% pay raise for workers.

Taking time out of paid work to care for children is a normal part of working life for both parents, but particularly women. That’s why our government has delivered the largest expansion to Paid Parental Leave since Labor established it in 2011. Families now receive an extra six weeks of paid leave following the birth or adoption of their child, and superannuation on Government Paid Parental Leave from July 2025.

Right now, women retire on average with 25% less super than men because they often take time out of the workforce to raise children. Paying super on Government Paid Parental Leave will help normalise parental leave as a workplace entitlement, like annual and sick leave, and reduce the impact of parental leave on superannuation.

Economic Equality and Security

I recognise that Australians are under pressure from cost-of-living and high interest rates. Our tax cuts provide cost-of-living relief for low- to middle-income families and reduce disincentives to take on more hours of work, particularly for women.

Under the Albanese Labor Government’s cost-of-living tax cuts, Australian women on average received a tax cut of $1,649 this year. Under Labor’s plan, more than 97% of women working in women-dominated industries like childcare, disability carers and aged care received a bigger tax cut under Labor compared to the Liberal National’s proposed tax cuts.

The Albanese Labor Government has also delivered $300 in energy bill relief to all households, and increased the maximum rates of Commonwealth Rent Assistance, with many recipients being single mother households.

We’ve invested in increasing opportunities for First Nations women in remote communities through a $777.4 million investment to build the skills and experiences that communities need to close the gap.

The Albanese Labor Government has also taken action to prevent and address migrant worker exploitation, with Australia Border Force actively cracking down on criminals who exploit migrant workers and assisting victims of trafficking or modern slavery practices within the sex industry.

Women’s Healthcare

The last Liberal government let Australian women down. The Albanese Labor Government has made women’s health a focus of our government, with $49.1 million in Medicare rebates to see a gynaecologist for complex conditions like endometriosis and $56.5 million for new Medicare services for midwives to provider longer consultations before and after the birth of a child.

This is alongside the additional funding to Medicare services, additional bulk billing doctors, and pharmacists in Victoria providing treatment for uncomplicated urinary tract infections and resupplies of contraceptive pills without needing to see a GP.

Women’s Leadership and Representation

The Albanese Labor Government is leading by example, implementing requirements for Australian Government boards to include portfolio-level targets of 50% representation of women.

We’ve also introduced new legislative requirements for businesses with 100 or more employees to commit to gender equality targets for their workplace and report their gender pay gap through the Workplace Gender Equality Agency reporting. You can view this reporting on gender pay gaps at the WGEA website.

Labor is dedicated to closing the gender pay gap, with the gap falling by 2.1% since we entered government. We're working to close this gap by banning pay secrecy clauses, changing the law to put gender equality at the heart of the Fair Work Commission’s decision-making, increasing women’s workforce participation to 63.2%, and backing a pay rise for minimum wage workers.

We’re also supporting the Fair Work Commission’s gender under-valuation priority awards review, which is investigating the undervaluation of wages in feminised industries, in the next step towards reducing the gender pay gap.