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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 09 Hansard (Wednesday, 18 August 2004) . . Page.. 3841 ..

Ms MacDonald has raised an interesting debate. I do not think it is inappropriate in any way to raise it here just before an election. It is fundamental to how we operate as an Assembly, and that is fundamental to who will come into the place. We want to see good people coming into politics. The nature of the work of politics is obviously a big factor in how people make their decisions as to whether to go into politics or not.

Mrs Dunne said that you sign up for it even if it is a shit job, basically. You sign up for it and you do it. If you have no family life, tough; you do not get to speak to your kids at dinner or whatever. That is what you sign up to. I think that is a very negative response to the potential for improving the working conditions of this place for everyone who is in here. It has been the subject of a lot of debate internationally and in the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, particularly with regard to gender implications of practices in parliaments. As we know, the Westminster system was developed around a male environment. There were no women involved at the time. It is very adversarial; it is a male domain; and it remains so, in many ways, in countries of the Commonwealth.

That is why we have the Commonwealth women parliamentarians association. I have been very honoured to have a strong involvement with them in the time I have been involved with the CPA. When I was the Australian and regional representative, I was very interested in the work of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association’s women’s group. I could see how it came out of a real need of women in the Commonwealth. It is also certainly not correct to say that it is not an issue for women in this country.

When I was considering entering politics, that was a big concern for me—and it needed to be a big concern. My family life did suffer. My husband gave up his full-time work. I was lucky to have an arrangement like that. I know women who would love to be here—they would be fantastic—but, because of the working conditions, they will not enter this work.

In referring to the parliamentary sitting hours Mrs Dunne said, “Well, you go out and do community events, et cetera.” It is true that you have to make those sorts of decisions, but sitting hours and the environment in parliament are big issues for people. It is not just the sitting hours, it is also the nature of the debate. I would, in no way, say that adversarial debate is a gender-related thing: I know that women can be as aggressive and adversarial as men. It is as much about getting gentle men and more women into politics. But that is a slightly different issue. As I do not want to be called up for relevance, I will get back to the sitting hours. In one of the background cases in the paper titled Gender-sensitizing Parliaments in the Commonwealth, the following points were made:

Much international and Commonwealth attention has been focused on increasing women’s representation in parliament. Commonwealth Heads of Government (Durban, 1999) and Women’s Affairs Ministers (Port of Spain, 1996; and Delhi, 2000) set a target of no less than 30 per cent of women in decision-making by the year 2005. Countries already close to achieving the target were encouraged to strive for parity.

The question of why we should strive for parity in politics has been the subject of major debate internationally, key aspects of which include the normative argument that there is no true democracy without equal representation of women and men; the pragmatic argument that women introduce policy changes that are grounded in

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