 Okay, I think we might just get started. It's fabulous to have you all here. My name is Michelle Ryan. I'm the director of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership here at ANU. We've got a three-pronged attack at the Global Institute for Women's Leadership. We call ourselves JUUL. So when it comes to gender equality, we do research, world-leading research, and a few of our researchers are here in the audience as well. We translate that research into policy and we also do advocacy, such as the events that we've got here today. So I'm not gonna speak too much. I'd just like to start with a welcome to country and a quick introduction of our panel, and then I will pass over. But I'd like to begin this event by acknowledging the traditional custodians of this land on which we meet today, which is the Ngunnawal and the Nambri people, and I'd like to pay my respects to their elders past and present. I'd also like to extend that respect to any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders here in the room today. I'd also like to acknowledge that this land was never ceded and it always was and always will be Aboriginal land. So without further ado, I would like to introduce our facilitator today and welcome Georgie Dent. She will be facilitating questions, getting us going. Georgie is a writer, a commentator, a mother of three, and she's a passionate advocate for women and for families. She's a former lawyer, a contributing editor at Women's Agenda, and she's a best-selling author of Breaking Badly, a memoir that was published in 2019. After a year of serving on the board at the Parenthood, Georgie took on the role of Executive Director in July. Welcome, Georgie. Thank you so much for that introduction. I do have to just warn you, if you walked in and saw the sign about the comedy, this, the comedy festival, you are in the wrong place. I can't deliver comedy, unfortunately. I would also like to pay my respects to the traditional owners of the land and I would also like to say that I hope that later this year when we have an opportunity to consider an incredibly generous invitation that was extended to all Australians, by First Nations Australians, that I think we should accept it enthusiastically. I am, before I introduce our panellists, who I know don't actually need an introduction because you know who they are, I just wanted to give you a little bit of background about the Parenthood, which is the organisation I am fortunate enough to run. We are a not-for-profit advocacy organisation and we represent at the moment just over 80,000 parents and carers nationally. I have been in this role since July of 2020, so it'll be three years this July, and our mission at the Parenthood is to make Australia the best place in the world to be a parent and we are really deliberate about that ambition because we know that it is only when parents and caregivers are supported that children can thrive. So the idea that we can be a country that cares about children just doesn't ring true if we're not a country that cares about supporting parents and caregivers and that is really the framing for our policy priorities. So we commissioned a big piece of research, actually where Alicia is here who actually worked on the big piece of research at Equity Economics, looking at if we wanted to be able to credibly say we want to make Australia the best place in the world to be a parent, what are the policies that we need and what are the sort of practices and supports that make a difference. And that piece of research sort of gave us a blueprint for what changes we need to pursue to make Australia a much better place in the world to be a parent. And notwithstanding the fact that almost every policy impacts parents and caregivers in some ways, in a really specific sense we know that having a high standard of healthcare is absolutely critical. But apart from that we need adequate and equitable paid parental leave that supports both parents where there are two parents to engage as carers in that first year. We need access to high quality, completely affordable early childhood education and care that is delivered by a properly paid and supported workforce. And parents and carers need access to workplaces that value caring and have family friendly employment practices. So that is a really short wish list that I'm currently working on. And that's why I'm really thrilled to have the opportunity to facilitate a conversation like this because talking about how parents juggle their caring responsibilities with their paid work is something that I'm really passionate about. And I know that we can do a much better job because the reality is that for lots of parents and carers it is incredibly difficult to juggle caring responsibilities with paid work. Just today there was some new research out of Melbourne University showing the extent to which dads who share the caregiving role are facing discrimination in their workplaces and the experience that men are having is mirroring the experience that mums have been having in a workplace. And while that is not a good news story I think the one positive out of that is it makes it really clear that the issue is with the caregiving responsibility and workplaces not accommodating that. It's not an issue which we've known for a long time about mums making poor decisions about how they manage their time. This is a systemic issue and the fact that men are facing the same barriers that women do when they are engaging in caregiving I think just solidifies the case for action and sort of exposing that reality. So that is, you've probably heard more from me than you needed to and as I said, no comedy. But I'm gonna introduce our panellists and then get into a conversation about the specific juggle and I think it is fair to say it's a unique juggle of managing parenting and family responsibilities with a public political life. So on the panel tonight we have got Andrew Lee who is the Assistant Minister for Competition and Charities who is a father of three, ACT based. We've got Sally Situ who is the member for READ in Sydney, she is a new MP and then we've got Elizabeth Lee who is the leader of the Liberal Party in the ACT. Elizabeth has promised me that she won't be going into labor tonight. I don't know if I've promised that, that's not true. No, she did. But if we do have any medical people here, it would be really useful. I know I did ask, Elizabeth is due in three weeks and it is her second child. My second child came three weeks early so I'm just, I'm on alert. Now, Elizabeth, I'm going to ask you the first question because my understanding is you are about to go on maternity leave and I think that makes you the first ever leader of a political party in Australia to go on leave. Is that correct? Yeah, it's funny because I had someone raise that with me only a couple of weeks ago and I sort of was like, oh, is it? I'm not sure, I hadn't given it much thought. But the closest I think my office was able to find was Rebecca White, Tasmanian labor leader who was very heavily pregnant in the lead-up to the election and I was actually in Tasmania for their last election and but my understanding was that she stepped down from the leadership after the election loss in Tasmania so she technically wasn't on maternity leave as leader but that's pretty close. I mean, she was, you know, on the campaign trail eight months pregnant, that's pretty close so that's the closest. But yeah, so might be technically the first but I'm sure that there have been several blokes but this is where you start to see the difference, isn't it, that you can't tell when they go on any parental leave. I think I was talking to Michelle earlier about, no, Natalie earlier about maybe Dom Perotay went on two weeks parental leave recently but certainly not that, you know, longer maternity leave. No, I mean, but even that him taking those two weeks and being visible about it was actually sort of progress in a way. I mean, we've got a long way to go in terms of what we expect but I'm interested tonight, did you face or feel any pressure being in a leadership position about needing to step down or wanting to step down or talk us through how you have sort of juggled that? Yeah, it's an interesting one and I have to say that from my colleagues, certainly no, there was no issues whatsoever. There was not even a question about it and I told my, I suppose, colleagues from other parties as well and there was no issues in that regard either. So we have in our standing orders, in our parliament 18 weeks of maternity leave which is just part of our standing orders but prior to that, it was sort of done on a seek advice basis, you know, seek a bit of permission, seek leave and get a pair. So it was not a given, not that I could imagine anyone would ever oppose it but it wasn't actually a given but that changed last term and I think when I went on mat leave with my first daughter who was born in June, 2019, I was the first MLA to actually use that standing order as well, so that was just a given. Mia was four weeks early, so she, I ended up not having given notice and I remember my staff member getting very panicked when I was in the hospital over the weekend going, but we haven't given this make a notice, so I said, it's okay, I'm sure she'll understand but we have that period now. On saying that personally, did I have doubts? Of course, one of the first things that I thought about was, how do I do this? And, you know, like any new parent will testify, it's a very special time that you never get back and that mum guilt really started to set in and so I did question myself internally about, do I try and stick this out, come back in, you know, sort of four, five, six weeks or do I need to actually go, you know what, I need to prioritize my family. And I think that if I had even an iota of doubt from my colleagues, that may have sort of steamrolled but because I had so much support, it just didn't seem to be even a question. Sally, we know that, well, I'm interested to ask you, you are new into federal politics and you were also a parent, how did you sort of approach, how did being a parent influence, if at all, your decision to run and sort of make this decision? I don't think I would have run had I not been a parent. So I've always been involved or interested in politics and I was a staffer in federal parliament about 15 years ago. So I've always had an interest and the Labour Party, I share the values of the party and that's why I joined but never did I have that compulsion to run, never did I see myself being a member of parliament but it wasn't until I had my child that I realized that there are certain things that I wanna make sure he has in his life and that I need to be part of pushing for those things. So the two things that really drove me was to support education in all its forms. So, Georgie, I follow your work very closely because for me I think our concept of education really ought to start from birth and progress right through to university and that's something that I've really believed in and I saw the benefits of that in my own son. His language just improved dramatically as soon as he started childcare. So that was really important to me but also acting on climate change was a big driver for me and it was really thinking about the sort of world that he was gonna inherit that drove me to put my hand up to run for my seat and when I was first thinking about running for the seat of Reed, most of the people who told me who I sought advice from said that look, you're not gonna win it in the first term, this is gonna be a two term strategy but you should give it a good go and that really is what I thought was gonna happen and I thought I really do need to give it a good go because we do need to change the government and I don't think I would have done that had I not had my son. Yeah, I think that's a really interesting perspective. Andrew, look, it's no surprise that usually when we are having conversations about parenting and politics or parenting and any sort of paid work, we have tended to focus really on mums. I'm interested, have you ever really, have you faced questions about how you sort of juggle and manage your family responsibilities with your parliamentary responsibilities? Well, Georgie, firstly I should say it's a privilege to be part of the conversation and I would be very happy just sitting here and listening to everyone else talk so thank you for making me a part of it. I, my youngest kids were, sorry my eldest kids were three and one when I entered Parliament, they're now 16, 13 and 10 and so basically the boys have never known anything other than politics. Being represented from Canberra does mean you get a kind of living over the shop aspect to your work life balance that certainly Sally doesn't get and particularly my colleagues from Western Australia don't get, but politics still kind of seeps into everyday life a lot. I try and deal with it by bringing the boys along to everything which means that you get moments like attending a branch meeting with a son in a Spider-Man costume who suddenly just as you're about to stand up and give your branch report, tugs your arm and says, dad, I really need to go to the toilet. And we had a family photo in 2016 where my eldest son, unbeknownst to us, sorry, younger son, three, then three, decided that he would wander off to the side and sit looking grumpily on a little pot and the photographer, David Foot, managed to capture this shot of the rest of the family smiling happily at the cameraman while Zachary scowled his best scowl. And when I saw the photo, I thought, oh that's kind of cute but I don't think we'd put it out and it was my wife, Gwyneth, who said, no, it's probably worth putting out because people don't want to see this super polished image. Everyone else quite likes the idea that our family is going through the same juggles with work and family as they are. Yeah, I think the scowl is certainly in our house, our youngest daughter has mastered the scowl in a way no one else has and so I can relate to that dynamic. I'm interested, we have obviously seen, I mean I'm thinking at the moment of Kelly O'Dwyer, we have seen a number of politicians step down from their positions at different moments and really have cited their family responsibility as the reason for that. Is that something that you can sort of see and understand in federal parliament and do you think that there's work being done that can change that equation? Absolutely, one of the problems with, I'm stepping down to spend more time with my family is that in some cases it is just an excuse but in many cases it is absolutely real and I know friends who have just been delighted by wrapping up a parliamentary career earlier than many in the outside world would have expected and getting to then have that extra time with family. The line goes if you're a marginal seat holder or a minister then you've lost Saturday, if you're a cabinet minister you've lost Sunday. So it really is a job that intrudes on absolutely everything and where, you know, if you're, it's often very hard to combine it. One of the great things that Tony Burke has done in the latest parliament is said that after 6.30pm there cannot be votes. That's the reason that Sally and I are with you now. It's also the reason why after this I'll be off getting our three boys back out from in front of the TV where they're currently sitting while Gwyneth is off at her Pilates class and the reason why on a typical sitting's night, in many cases I can be home with the kids, reading them stories, putting them to bed in a way in which it just wouldn't have been possible in the parliament I first joined where we sat until 10pm. Elizabeth there is lots of evidence around about the sort of importance of family friendly work practices to attracting and retaining talent in virtually any workplace. Do you think that the same goes for politics and do you think that there are opportunities to ensure that we can sort of attract a broader demography and sort of more women into politics? I think definitely. And if you have a look at the makeup of the ACT Legislative Assembly compared to federal parliament, in 2016 we as across all three parties achieved first female parliament in Australia and we repeated that in 2020. And I think people have always asked me about sort of especially when all of the hype and media about the toxic work culture in federal parliament was around, I got asked about a comparison to ACT and I have to say that there are two main factors I think have set us apart. One is that we don't have the fly in fly out mode of meetings. So we're a very small geographically very small jurisdiction. And so we absolutely have no need to sit until 10 or one in the morning. If we need to, we can actually come back the next day. It's different when you've got colleagues having to fly in from WA so we don't have that. And the second is I have to say that having more women does put a different perspective into what is acceptable and having had women in leadership roles. So we've had Kay Karnel as the first liberal female chief minister. And we've had Katie Gallow her more recently as chief minister as well. And so there are accepted practices in the ACT which seem like, hold on, isn't that sort of common practice? But in federal parliament probably would be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's going on? So things like we rarely sit past 6 p.m. Rarely if that. And so we do also have the luxury of being able to get home most of the time. And number two, we try to avoid school holidays when it comes to sittings or a lot of committee work. And so that does make a difference. And if we want to attract more women to politics and if we want to attract more dads who feel they can still have that, then it's I think a given. It's interesting though that point about sort of men being discriminated against and my partner at the moment, he's actually in a workplace that has very generous parental leave, like more than what I get. And when I said to him, oh, that's great. He goes, whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't know if I can take it all. And I said, what do you mean? And he was worried about, well, what's that gonna do for my career? And I just went, mate, welcome to what women have been worried about for decades. But it was really interesting the perspective because the first thing he thought about was, oh, I don't know if I can take 26 weeks. No way, because that's gonna hamper my career prospects. And I just sort of thought that's just such a switch that many men hadn't really thought about. So interesting. Yeah, and look, that's something that we talk about quite a bit that it's one thing to have a policy. And they're actually like law firms, for example, have had really generous paid parental leave policies for a long time that men and women can access. But if you don't have a culture where using it is acceptable, then the policy isn't worth anything. And I think your husband's response is not uncommon. Sorry, your partner's response is not uncommon. Sally, earlier in February, you shared on social media that your son had had a particularly sort of teary morning and he was sad that you were here. It happened to be the same day that I had had an incredibly emotional drop-off with my youngest who'd just started in a new class and didn't have her friends, and she was absolutely distraught. And it completely caught me off guard. She was her second year of school. We thought we were okay. And I came away and I honestly, holding back tears myself was a huge achievement. I cried as soon as I left the school gates. And it was the same day that you shared your experience. And I shared mine too. And I just said, the reality for so many working parents is on any given day, you have got a bruised heart or a distracted mind by virtue of these little people that you love out in the world. Tell us about how you and your family are managing him and his emotions and you being away. Well, I talked about this with the Minister for Social Services, Amanda Rishworth, who is a formerly a psychologist. And we all said, we both said to each other, we're just building resilience in them. We're doing great. So there is part of that. But I think for our family, we understand that it's not just about my husband and I. We're very fortunate that we've got our own little village to support us. We've got both sets of grandparents who are willing and desperately wanting to step in to assist and help. And my brother who lives very close by. So my niece is always helping us with babysitting. So we're very fortunate in that sense. And actually, I used to work in Samoa with AusAid and seeing how that culture parents is dramatically different from how we do it here. They all live in one big property together and it's multi-generational and the aunts and uncles and mums and dads and grandmas, they're all in each other's business and looking after each other's kids. And I don't necessarily want to go down that route, but I do admire a lot of what they're able to achieve as a result. And so I think my husband and I have both given up on the idea that it's only gonna be the two of us who parent my child. And he, I think, is lucky for it that he has so many great influences in his life. But I have kind of flipped my thinking around it as well. So yes, it is hard. And yes, I do spend a lot of time away from my family. But there are some extraordinary things that my role has given my son. So if I just share one anecdote, he came home from school one day and said to me, "'Mummy, mummy, I think people said you're really kind." And I was like, what do you mean? He said, "'Elizabeth from Year Two came up to me in the playground "'and she asked if my mummy was Sally Situ "'and I said yes and she said your mummy's really kind. "'And I said, why?' "'And she said, because she's always trying to help people." And so for me, I think that was a lovely example of showing him the type of person that I'd like him to be and the values that I think we as a family would like to have. And that is the idea of helping others and service. And so he sees me doing that directly. Sometimes he's standing beside me at a really boring branch meeting and hearing me talk about the things that we do, but he's seeing it instead of me and my husband telling him about those values. He sees it and he kind of lives it through me. And so I get that there are some hard things about this role, but I think that I am also enriching his life in a way that I wouldn't have had the opportunity to had I not been in this role. Yeah, I think that's an amazing sort of perspective. It's not a zero-sum game at all. I am really conscious of the fact that as men and women, we are sort of culturally indoctrinated about our role. And we do, I know that one of the things, if I ever want my husband to roll his eyes at me, I will tell him all the things I'm feeling guilty about on any particular day about our children. And he's just like, I honestly don't know how you get out of bed. But instead of beating myself up about that, I say to him, as a woman, the sort of public expectations that I have absorbed are really women as caregivers. And so then when you do get a huge amount of purpose and out of your professional life, I find myself confronting this, and I have to have those conversations with myself all the time about, actually, our girls are enriched by having a mum who is engaged professionally and the sort of double standard in my head about what I'm doing compared to my husband. And Andrew, I'm gonna put you on the spot in this regard because I'm interested to know, do you watch your sort of female colleagues in parliament and think that for them, the reality of juggling caregiving responsibilities is different to you as a sort of dad and your male peers? Yeah, absolutely. I did a book called The Luck of Politics back in 2015 and I was interested in a little quirky exercise about whether liberal or labor politicians had more boys or girls. And in the process of doing that, I ended up counting the number of kids that male and female politicians had. And it turned out that female politicians, as in 2015, had on average one fewer children than male politicians. I gave the numbers to Annabel Crabb who used them in the wife drought. But it did speak very strongly to the challenge of having kids and being a woman in politics. But it's just amazing seeing colleagues leaning into it. So it's multiple birth week this week and my colleague, Annika Wells, has decided because she's moving house that she will leave her husband without the kids this week and she'll bring them down to Canberra. So she came down with her twins and she brought one of the twins along to a caucus committee meeting at noon today. So her son was happily bubbling around. And then she did an interview in the courtyard with Greg Janet. And she said the thing that struck her was she told the ABC beforehand that she was going to bring her twins along and they brought along a play blanket and some toys and a packet of biscuits. And she was impressed not only that they said yes but that they leaned into the event. Annika's brought, when the twins were much younger she brought the pram into parliament for a division. I remember seeing her when the bells were ringing and she said, I don't know if I can bring a pram into the parliament. I was like, Annika, let's take it in and let them try and stop you from coming in to vote with a pram with two sleeping twins inside. So it's truly lovely having kids in caucus committees. I love it when a kid cries during question time. Just reminds you of the kind of basic humanity of the place. Having kids makes the world seem a little bit sillier, a little bit gentler. It's a little bit harder to take everything too seriously. So whether you're a dad or a mum, I think there's a great benefit to involving the kids in things. I've been burnt with it before. Can I give you one quick story? I took one of our kids along to the tarmac where I had to meet Prince Charles and Camilla who were coming in. And it was a Sunday, I didn't wanna spend time away from the kids and so I just said to my eldest, do you wanna come along with me? So we picked up some flowers, we went in, he gave the flowers to Camilla, we did the usual handshake. And there was a journalist there who said, do you mind if I have a chat with your son? And I had to go and do something else and I was like, what on earth could happen with this? That'll be fine. Just leave the child with the journalist to chat. Next day, the report of the story in the Canberra Times begins, the flowers were from Woolworth's, but the smile was from the heart. So at least Sebastian came out well from the story. Now look, because you did bring up multiple births, I do wanna flag that today at Parliament House, there was an event that the Australian Multiple Births Association ran and they had 12 families travel to Canberra. I mean, frankly, even if you lived a hundred metres from Parliament House bringing twins or triplets to Parliament House by 9.30 this morning, and they had 12 families who all paid their own way to be there today to launch a piece of research called Multiple's Matter. And the director, Celia Anderson Cook, has triplets who are just over one. And seven months ago, when she was realising the extent to which parents of multiples just don't get the support they need, I imagined hosting an event in Parliament House, which she did today and it was, Annika was there. There were a number of Jed Kearney who is also a mum of twins, Dr. Monique Ryan who is a twin was there. It was really well attended and the research is really, it makes a very compelling case for why. I mean, we all know it, that if you have more than one baby, you're gonna need more support than a person who just has one baby and the support isn't necessarily there for them and they're carrying an incredible load. So just because you brought it up, I had to give them a plug. I also was meant to say at the very beginning that if you have questions, I will come to you. So I didn't tell you that, but please do think about any questions because we would love to have you ask the panellists your thoughts on how they're managing their political careers and public life. Actually, that is something that I wanted to ask. I, ABC Canberra did a radio interview with me this afternoon and they were interested to know and I said I would ask you each of you this. To what extent are you aware of the sort of public nature of your role in relation to your children? Like how do you juggle? Because what I keep thinking about is Lord knows the wild tantrums that I have been, when you take kids to the supermarket or something and I have often thought if you were a position, if you were a public person and that happened, it would be terrifying. Is that something you are aware of as a parent particularly, and I'm looking at you Elizabeth only because I know your children are younger, is that something that you carry with you? I think that's a bit of a yes and no question because when I'm doing something in the weekend and I've got my three year old and God knows three in age, it is terrifying. But you wanna be present with them, right? So you don't wanna be sort of continuously looking over your shoulder or thinking about is anyone sort of watching. But God, I mean, the same could be said for, you gotta be careful, I don't know, going down to the shops with stretchy pants and no makeup on or heaven forbid, picking something out of your teeth in the car and someone sees you, just stuff like that. So I think that there is in the back of your mind but certainly I don't let that rule my life if you know what I mean. So one part of me is like when I'm with my daughter, I just wanna be mom to her. Like to my daughter, I'm just mom, right? It's not, I mean, definitely when someone says something she'll say it's Elizabeth, it's Elizabeth Lake. She knows that much but that's it, I'm just mom. So I just have to be careful because at the moment she's learning body parts and knowing how to make comments about body parts. So just gotta be careful that she doesn't sort of talk about penises and vaginas out in public. But at the same time, I don't wanna discourage her from using the correct anatomical terms. So, but I think that anyone who's had children understands, like I think that most people are not gonna turn around and go, oh God, you know, and Elizabeth's daughter lost it in the, and had a tantrum in the supermarket and I think they'll get that. So I'm not too worried about it but it's sort of something in the back of my mind, yeah. I'm glad you're in the position you are because I feel like there are some people that it might be too hard but maybe I'm just a weird person. But I think that's probably the right approach to take. What about you, Sally? Well, I think potentially because my son is out of his big tantrum phases we did have some real moments and then also when he was toilet training as well. So thankfully I kind of got into this after those two awful periods. But we've actually had very positive experiences. So I'll give you two examples. So there was one night I was out with the family and we were at Korean Barbecue and Korean Barbecue can be quite a messy affair. You're dipping in the sauces and I heard someone call my name from the table over and I looked over and it was an Asian woman and I didn't recognize her and she said, you don't know who I am but I just wanted to say, I'm so proud of you. You give, and then she points at her daughter, she says, you give her someone to look up to and I was like, oh, that was really lovely. And then my son asked me about it. Mommy, do you know that lady? Why do you? And then I had to explain to him it's because she thinks it's really great that mommy ran and so he kind of had that really positive experience. And then we had another moment where I was out at a St. Patrick's Day fate and I was with him and he was being a little bit difficult, refused to sit in his own seat, had to sit on my lap and so we were trying to eat and I was awkwardly bending around him and this older gentleman came and tapped me on the shoulder and I was thinking to myself, oh, he wants us to move or we're making too much noise. And he actually said to me, I read your tweet and I was astounded but he said, I read your tweet and I think it's great that you're here with your son spending time together, good on you. I won't take up too much of your time together but I just wanted to let you know that and I thought that was really lovely. Yeah, there are some good humans out there aren't there? Even on Twitter, there are good humans. Yeah, yes. Even on Twitter it is true. Actually there's a few people in this room that I've only known because of Twitter. It does actually connect you to some great people. Now, does anybody in the audience have a question for any of our panelists and I'll be really disappointed if someone doesn't put their hand up. One here and then Kim. Thank you. To what extent do you think it's about personal action and standing up and saying I need to take this time or I need these changes and to what extent do you think it's about banding together and making change as a collective? Most big change is systemic, right? You want to make sure that you have more women in parliament so we have for the first time now a party room which is majority women and that just completely transforms the conversation and the standing orders are changing and that matters too. But I think there's also a bit of a demonstration effect. A good friend of mine is a partner at a Sydney law firm and he talks about the importance of noisy exits. So he and his partners have discussed, law partners that is, they've discussed when they're going off to pick up kids in the middle of the afternoon, they don't just slink out of the office leaving their jacket on the back of the chair. They say very noisily, I'm off to pick up the kids now. You can get me on the phone if you need me. Which is sending a signal that that's a perfectly appropriate way for others in the organisation to behave. My friend, Katie Gallagher says that when she turns down events on the weekend because she has to be with her kids, she makes it a point to never apologise, to never say, I'm sorry, I have to spend time with my kids. I typically fail the Gallagher test but it is a standard to which I aspire to meet one day. I think it's a bit of both because as Andrew said, the systemic changes do need to come as a collective but it also takes leadership as well and the people who are privileged but also have the burden of going first and the being the first of anything no matter what it is, is hard because there is no pathway set for you. But I also see it as an opportunity because there is no stereotype or expectation and you can sort of, you know, trench that path yourself and I think that's really important as well. But it takes a lot of guts. I mean, it's really difficult sort of being the one that stands up and goes, actually I'm gonna do this when, you know, you spent your entire adult professional life thinking that there's a certain expectation of how you should behave as a professional. You know, that sort of old saying about, when you're a mum, you need to be a mum as if you don't have a career and when you're working, you need to behave like someone who doesn't have kids, you know, and it's a big pressure I think, especially on working mums. But I think we are getting better. We're definitely getting better and it's that old adage about, you can't be what you can't see. So if we normalise having kids, you know, especially with dads around as well, I think that helps enormously. It also means that the next generation of those, you know, girls can see that that's actually a thing that's accepted and it's not just accepted, but I can actually do that and it's gonna be open to me. So I think it does take both. And for me, I think it is those leaders stepping up to create systemic change. So the way I think about diversity in our leadership is that it's not in and of itself enough just to have a diverse looking group of leaders. It's about what you do when you get into those leadership roles. So I look back at the difficult battles that labour women had in the 90s to push for quotas. And those labour women, they had to bear a lot of the brunt of the arguments and it was not an easy time for them, but they pushed and they pushed and they had those debates, which meant that someone like me was then able to pop up in federal parliament some decades later and then also we were able to create this first majority female federal government in our country's history. And it is because of those leaders who are willing to step up and create the systemic change. I'm interested in the contrast that you've made a couple of times of being a member of parliament in your home state as opposed to those outside of Canberra who have to travel. And it makes me think of what I often tell my constitutional law students that you can definitely see that there were no women at the drafting of the constitution because of the requirement that our federal parliament had to be at least 100 miles away from Sydney because of the battle between Sydney and Melbourne. If women had been there, they would have advocated that that would make it very difficult for anyone with family responsibilities. But I'm wondering with the advent of COVID whether there has been an opportunity to be a bit more creative for those members of parliament who are not Canberra based to make it more family friendly, to be more enabling of being a participant without actually having to physically be here in Canberra. So I'm still quite new to it all. So I don't know what it was like before but certainly in some of the committees that I've been on the discussions around, not so much the Canberra aspect because I think we still need to be here to vote and participate in some of the discussions that happen here. But for the committee work, there have been some talk around whether or not we can hear from people via Zoom. I also think it's beneficial to those who are coming to hearings. Like why do they have to travel to a major city in order to tell us their story or experience? So I think the Zoom aspect would be good for me not having to travel, but also good for those wanting to give evidence to a committee. And just to add to Sally's comments, Kim, one of the changes that we made to the Standing Orders this time around picks up the COVID norms of being able to give a speech while you're on parental leave via telepresence. So you can't, as Sally says, you can't be counted for the purpose of a vote or a quorum but you can make a contribution on parental leave which tangibly changes your ability to work while on parental leave. Hi. So just the conversation is just turning some gears in my head and I'm thinking about a prominent staffer who was heading back to her home city and she wanted to see an event that her stepdaughter, her partner's daughter, was performing at and there was perhaps a conversation about de facto parenthood and non-traditional styles of parenthood. It's already so difficult to have these kind of holistic, inclusive conversations with men. How are we making sure, particularly from a policy dynamic when we're having conversations about parenthood that we're inclusive of all kinds of parents? Again, I think it's about normalizing the varied family structures that we have in our society. And when you think about, it's only sort of a generation ago that we had these very stereotypical roles for males and females in a partnership and that's come a long way. So we still haven't got a perfect but I think it is about normalizing it in terms of and the easiest way to normalize anything, of course, is to see it more often. So to encourage that kind of behavior and accepting of that publicly, I think, especially for politicians who do have the privilege of being in that public eye, I think, is a really important thing, yeah. And increasingly, as you see that there is greater diversity in our parliament, there is diversity in the types of families that are there. There are lots of blended families in our caucus and across the chamber. And I think the other important point to make is that there are caring responsibilities that we have for our parents and our partners as well. And I think that the greater acceptance of parental care responsibilities has also made those other caring responsibilities more acceptable as well. So we will often have colleagues who will step away and say, you know, they're a grandparent and they're helping their child with the grandchildren or they're looking after their own parents. And I think that that whole conversation is much more present and accepted now because it's largely been driven by the parental care responsibilities. I would just say that in any context, if you don't intentionally include, you will unintentionally exclude. And I think that, I mean, at the parenthood, we're really conscious of being intentionally inclusive and recognizing that parents and carers come in all shapes and sizes. And I would say, you know, one change, and this should not be a dramatic shift because single mothers, for example, are very common. That is not a sort of niche. But because we do have a prime minister who was raised by a single mother, we have seen that he has really intentionally included the voices of single mothers at a number of sort of key forums, whether it was the Jobs and Skills Summit at the early years summit on the Women's Economic Equality Task Force. They're really being intentionally included and we need, there needs to be investment to follow that. But I think, you know, that in itself is something that it's really important to be intentionally inclusive. Hello, thank you so much for your discussion so far. It's been really, really good. My question has to do with childcare. Sally, you mentioned earlier how much you saw it benefit your own child. And I'm just wondering how we increase that access to more people, in particular people who might be on a lower income or on a single income basis, just to make sure that we're including everyone in that benefit, I guess. Well, I'm gonna do a big sproke for our more affordable childcare policy. I think that's, I mean, that's a critical piece to it. Providing a greater childcare subsidy for more families so that they are not having to factor the financial cost of childcare into their decision making as much. So that they do have the choice of how many days that they wanna go back to work. But I'm gonna veer off the Labour Party script a little bit here. What I would really like to see is greater competition in the childcare sector. I think that, unfortunately, it has become quite a sector that's been dominated by private providers. My son, in his short time, because we moved around a little bit, he actually went to three different childcare centres. One was a not-for-profit, one was a private provider, and one was provided by the local council. And our experience, I mean, they were all great centres and he had a fantastic time and great educators, but the local council-run childcare centre was just amazing. It was the most affordable one by far. So it was $90 a day compared to the private provider, which was $140 a day, and integrated in the local community. We went to, he went on excursions to the nursing home, to the library, to the local school. And the childcare workers, the early educators, they had all been there on average, like 10, 15 years. Like, they loved the centre. I would really like to see more competition in the early education space. And I think that's a little bit outside of what the Labor Party's talking about at the moment. But certainly if we improve affordability, my thinking is that if we increase competition in the space and also pay our early educators more and really value the work that they do. I was just going to say I won't delve too much into the policy aspect because it is a federal thing, but, you know, in Canberra, I've engaged with a lot of the early childhood educators. And it's interesting because it is the most feminised workforce, you know, in across industries, there's no doubt about it. And when you have a look at history, a lot of the work industry sectors that have been feminised were always lowly paid. And it's interesting because it wasn't that long ago that chefs or cooks or whatever were more dominated by females. All of a sudden all the males come in and like they're paid huge amounts. So I think there is definitely a correlation between a highly feminised workforce and low income. So that's one aspect of things. The second is, of course, making sure that we value the work that the early childhood educators do. And I mean, me has been going to the same child care early education centre since she was about seven, eight months. And I certainly agree with Sally that, you know, in terms of what she learns there, it's very interesting because sometimes I go, oh, that's new, okay. But you know, I can tell what she's learning there. But also don't underestimate the value of education that young children get from all around them. And I don't know, perhaps this is more cultural, but Sally referred to it as well, but you know that it takes a village. And I think there is certainly a lot of value that I place in me as spending time with my parents. And on Sundays, my partner tells me I'm moving a tiger mum, but I do send her to Korean language school because it's really important for me that she learns the Korean language. And I know that I can't give her the consistency with language education as much as I try as a qualified professional. So I think the education can come in different ways as well. But of course, I say that from a privileged position of someone who can afford it. And so, you know, we need to make sure that everyone has access to the benefits because we know how beneficial it is, right? The first thousand days of a child's life, we know how beneficial it is. I would also just add there that removing the activity test altogether would really substantially lift access, particularly among lower income households. Some research that just came out two weeks ago showed, you know, this is a dilemma that anyone who's experienced it can understand, but if you don't have an early education place for your child, it's really hard to go to a job interview and it's really hard to get a job. But if you don't have a job, you can't pay for early childhood education and care. And so the activity test acts as a real barrier for a lot of predominantly low-income mothers in particular. So removing the activity test is one thing that lots of organizations like the Parenthood have campaigned for. But the other big piece is that there's a Productivity Commission inquiry that is being headed by Deb Brennan. And that really is looking at universal access. How do we design a system that every child, regardless of their postcode, regardless of what their parents earn or don't earn, has got access to high-quality early education and care. And under the current subsidy model, it is very impossible to see how you would make that work. So we would be looking at a very different model for delivering early education and care. Thank you for that. Going on with the concepts of privilege and deliberate inclusion or active inclusion, I'm wanting to know what is in place at the moment to help support mothers or parents from a more diverse background. Say, for example, with children with lived experience of disability or those sorts of messy kind of family lives that we don't tend to see in politics. What's being done within parties and what could or should be done to help support and make room for the kind of more average Australian parent to succeed in politics? So once you have paid a parliamentary salary, you're automatically within the top 5% of income earners. So in some sense, you're well up the income scale at that point. But that's not to say you have a whole lot of supports around you. John Howard didn't do a lot of fantastic things during his time in office, but one good thing he did was to take the non-members bar and turn it into a parliamentary early learning centre. For Howard, this was a double benefit. He'd been, it had been pointed out that his government was not particularly family friendly, so he could tick one box there. And the non-members bar was a principal place in which his cabinet ministers would leak to journalists and so he was able to shut down that source of leakage. But I see it as a challenge particularly for staff and I'm, you know, one of the things I'm quite conscious of in my office is how we create staffing roles which allow people to combine work and family and bring in those diverse voices. And one of the things we typically have done really badly in politics is to ensure that staffing at the very senior levels is representative. So if you think about who's staffing a typical prime minister's office over the last 30 years, it tends to be people without kids because it is very hard to be a prime ministerial staffer and have kids. So you get early, early 20-somethings, pre-kids, and then you get a cohort of kind of 50, 60-somethings and then there's this missing middle which means that the prime minister isn't getting advice from people with complex family backgrounds and who are raising kids at the same time. So there's an advice deficit coming through. I'm trying to do a bit in my own office and I can see other offices striving towards that but doing so in an environment which is not conducive to having that diversity of experience. I'm gonna say it is a really important and tough question because even running for parliament is a very privileged position. I was able to do that so essentially we went from a two-income household to a one-income household because I really couldn't work during the campaign period but I was able to do that because my husband is a high-income earner and we had lived a lifestyle that wasn't beyond our means and so it meant that without my income it was around eight months we were able to do it. That's not the case for many people and it's maybe a little bit easier in a political party because you have the support structures there to help you but if you look at the independence the type of people who were able to run they were all credit to them. They did an amazing job but you also had to be able to financially support yourself, try to find funding for your campaign and all of that means that it does exclude a lot of people. I don't know the answer to your question and I think it's something that we need to do better at because members of parliament ought to be representative of the community. I think we've done a good job when it comes to gender. I think we're getting better when it comes to cultural diversity but the other lived experiences that you've talked about I don't necessarily think we're there yet. So it's a live question and I think we as a society certainly in political parties is something that we need to examine and get much better at. I think we're certainly not there yet but in Australia we're so much more accessible in terms of political aspirations than some other countries around the world and I think we accept that. It was funny because I was reflecting as both Andrew and Sally were talking about generation and the reason I say that is because I acknowledge that I'm in a very privileged position but I grew up with migrant parents. My parents still live in Blacktown in Western Sydney. They're combined income and dad 72 is still working full-time in a very physical job and their combined income is about a third of what I earn. They sacrifice so much so that I could have the opportunities that I have and for me as I was growing up it wasn't about I better go and get a part-time job and pay them back for all the stuff they did. For me, my biggest repayment to my parents is to succeed because they sacrifice so much that my sisters and I could succeed and so it got me thinking about the whole generation thing so there's no way that my parents and the only thing that sets us apart because they worked hard, they've got the intellectual capacity. The only thing that sets us apart is that I had the opportunity to receive a much higher education here in Australia. That's the only thing that sets us apart but there is no way that they could have ever even fathomed going into politics in Australia. That just wouldn't have been a reality for them and certainly for me growing up as a seven-year-old in Western Sydney that wasn't a reality either. Back when I first moved to Australia and saw Bob Hawke who was the Prime Minister at the time yelling across the room at some of his, well, they're all middle-aged white men at that stage. It was 86, it was all middle-aged men. There's no way that a seven-year-old Asian girl growing up in Western Sydney could have even fathomed that but it's less than a generation later and I'm the first Asian-Australian leader of a major political party, it's astounding but it's all thanks to a lot of the sacrifices that the previous generation have made. That doesn't resolve the problem of that but I guess I've brought with me despite my adulthood being fairly privileged, a lifetime of growing up in a childhood where I've seen all of that and I tell you my biggest fear as a politician is getting out of touch. I think that's the biggest fear for most politicians but if I need a dose of reality, I just go home and visit my mom and dad, right? They're still living the same house in Blacktown. They're the kind of people who literally will go to Aldi Woolworths and Coles and go, all right, the coriander's 89 cents here, let's get it here. They're still in that category and my dad, he still buys the bulk toilet paper and divides it up between my sisters and I because he goes, it's cheaper. And I'm like, okay, we can buy around toilet paper and then he has this whole, yeah, but you don't wanna lug it upstairs and I'll bring it in. So it's that kind of reality that I think is hard to escape despite the fact that I live in a, I have a great income now and I can certainly provide for my family but yeah, it's those lived experiences I think are pretty important as well. Oh, thank you so much to the three of you. I have been told we've got a call time, I'm sorry that I know there was one question we didn't get to, but I really, I have found the conversation really fascinating and uplifting while also sobering when the challenge ahead is immense. It's not an easy juggle, but it's one I think it's critically important that we get right and I'm really grateful to ANU for putting on this, creating this forum for this conversation. Thank you all so much for coming here tonight. I hope that you have found the conversation as interesting as I have. Thank you. Thank you.