Ms CATHERINE KING (Ballarat—Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government) (09:01): I rise today to bring the House some good news. The latest Gender Gap Report from the World Economic Forum shows that, since the Albanese Labor government took office, Australia's world gender equality ranking has jumped up 17 places, from 43 to 26. This is the largest increase since the index began in 2006. From such a low, it is great to see Australia back in the top 30. Achievements like this don't come about by accident. They come around when women are in the room and when there is a collective commitment to building a better future for them. That is exactly what you get from this government. Our government is now the first Australian Commonwealth government in its history to be made up of a majority of women. The number of women in cabinet has increased to 10 out of 23 members, the largest number of women ever in an Australian federal cabinet. This achievement was directly noted by the World Economic Forum, who pointed to Australia's considerable increase in the share of women ministers. The World Economic Forum knows that better gender representation does lead to better outcomes, and so do we. We have come a long way since Tony Abbott was the minister for women, and I want to acknowledge that his former seat is now held by a crossbench woman. It is because we have women around the table that our government has been able to introduce so many positive policies for Australian women, including, as we will hear from the Minister for Social Services next, addressing violence against women; a pay rise for aged-care workers, nine out of 10 of whom are women; modernising paid parental leave and making child care cheaper; improving gender pay transparency; preventing sexual harassment at work; transforming our workplace relations frameworks to centre gender equality and reintroducing gender responsive budgeting; investing $1.9 billion to extend eligibility for the parenting payment single to single parents, the majority of whom are women, with the youngest dependent child aged under 14 years of age; investing $2.7 billion to increase the maximum payment of Commonwealth rent assistance by 15 per cent for all recipients, with single women making up the majority of those recipients; and investing $4.9 billion to increase support for people receiving working-age payments, including JobSeeker. We're abolishing the ParentsNext program from 1 July 2024 and replacing it with a new voluntary program that better meets the needs of parents, sets them up for success and treats them with dignity, and it will commence from the earliest opportunity. Because we know having women in politics matters, we're investing in supporting more women to enter politics at all levels through our $5 million grant to Women for Election. This is a non-partisan grant to support women at all levels and from all political persuasions to learn more about the process of running for government and running for parliament, and to develop skills and supports that can help them. I am so proud to be part of a government that is delivering for Australian women, and I know that all of my colleagues behind me feel exactly the same. At the election, Labor promised to make Australia a world leader on gender equality after a decade of stalled progress under the former coalition government. I would hope that everyone in this place would agree that 43rd was far from good enough. Under the previous government, we were falling behind in this measure. Over the last 12 months we have turned that around. Equality for women is at the heart of what we do as a Labor government. There is a lot of work left to do to deliver on that promise. But the results of this latest work show us just how serious this government is about delivering on our promise to improve the lives of women across the country. But the job is not done yet.