Thursday, 7 March 2024

 Moira DEEMING (Western Metropolitan) (10:08): It seems like only yesterday that I stood up over there in my old seat almost 12 months ago to speak about International Women’s Day. Even though everybody loves to be seen to be celebrating International Women’s Day and to be seen to care about women and women’s plights and women’s issues, I decided to speak about the disappointing reality, which is just an ugly truth: that governments, not just this one but governments all around the world, have betrayed women and girls. They took our sex-based rights and they gave them away to men. I am going to stand up here again today and I am going to remind you that we did not consent to having our rights and our identity taken away from us in law. We did not consent to the removal of all the sex-based safeguards for women and girls. That was not the deal. And despite all the abuse and the violence and the smears that are just lashed upon every single woman that tries to say something about it, we are not going to be silenced. We will speak, we will get organised and we will absolutely get those rights back.