Wednesday, 21 June 2023

Gender equality

Peter WALSH (Murray Plains) (16:29): I grieve for Victorians and how life is getting harder for Victorians under the Andrews government, but before I do that I just want to start with the contribution by the Minister for Education about the disparity of the number of male statues in Victoria versus the number of female statues. I assume the government and the Labor Party will actually start walking the talk and not put a statue up to Daniel Andrews, the Premier. If you want to start actually changing that imbalance of statues, lead by example, walk the talk for once instead of just talking and actually do not put the Premier’s statue up down there at 1 Treasury Place. If you are fair dinkum about equality of statues, start with that one there.

Another thing for the minister that was at that table before talking about how those on the other side do not have any women in their party: can I remind the Minister for Education that the National Party actually have more women MPs than men in this place, so the minister might want to lift her sights a bit and look right across the other side and actually count the numbers and realise that there are more women, outstanding women, in the National Party than there are men. We are in the minority now. That is a concern, but it is also a great pleasure of mine as the leader to actually show that we have women in regional Victoria who are passionate about representing their communities, are very articulate, are very strong about the issues in their electorates and will do themselves proud over the rest of their careers in this place.