Gender Equality

My Commitment

Working to make things better for everyone in our community for many years has been the motivation at the heart of my work.

I strive to be a Parliamentary representative who provides a voice of leadership on women’s issues and fights for a Tasmania that is an exemplar of equity, safety and opportunity for everyone.

As the independent member for Nelson, I work to apply a gender lens to all legislation that comes before me in the Legislative Council. I am proudly the first woman to hold the seat of Nelson, and in doing so established a majority female representation in the Tas Leg CO.

Priorities

In order to achieve equity, safety and opportunity for Tasmanian women, we must address the following:

Stopping men’s violence against women, including access to legal services, personal support and housing.
Timely access to health services and reproductive rights.
Addressing women’s homelessness, including access to public and social housing, better protection of tenant’s rights, more crisis housing services.
Promoting women’s workforce participation, including addressing the gender pay gap.
Ensuring women’s financial security, including women in part-time or casual insecure work and women’s superannuation.
Support for carers, including in the areas of elder care, disability care, and kinship care.

Achievements:

Here are some successes I have achieved in parliament to strengthen gender equity:

My motion to introduce an analytical Gender Impact Statement as part of the State Budget papers was passed in the Legislative Council, prompting the Government to include its first gender budget statement with the 2022-23 State Budget. These have been included in each state budget since, improving in quality each year.
In 2021, I called for an independent review into the Tasmanian parliament workplace culture, as a proactive and preventative approach to harassment or wrongdoing. In response the Premier established such a review.
In 2022 the ‘Motion for Respect – Report into Workplace Culture in the Tasmanian Ministerial and Parliamentary Services’ Report was released. You can read it here.