The Greens are proud to support the more than 60 young women who have taken over parliament today, acting as Senators for the day.
\nGreens Co-Deputy Leader and spokesperson for Women, Senator Larissa Waters, will bring on a matter of public importance for debate in the Senate today, where MPs from across the political spectrum will read speeches prepared by participants\u00a0on\u00a0the issues of concern to young women in Australia, including climate action, domestic violence and body image and autonomy.
\nSenator Waters said,\u00a0\u201cOur democracy needs all young women\u2019s voices in parliament and we may well have the next Prime Minister of Australia among the girls who have taken over parliament today.
\n\u201cWe\u2019ve only got 37 per cent women in Federal Parliament overall, with the House of Representatives lagging behind the Senate which only just reached gender parity this year after almost 120 years.
\n“We\u2019ve got a long way to go in making sure that our parliaments look more like our community and encouraging more women into political leadership roles.
\n\u201cSadly, the statistics show only one percent of girls aged 15-19 want politics as a career and once they\u2019re aged 21-25, none of them want to become politicians.
\n\u201cYou can\u2019t be what you can\u2019t see. We need to get more young women into parliament, particularly young women of colour, and make sure our decision-makers start listening to and representing\u00a0all the community, not just the big end of town like we see now.
\n\u201cI hope today\u2019s takeover of parliament will inspire women to become future leaders and help shift the blokey culture in the corridors of power.\u201d
\nGreens Senator for NSW Mehreen Faruqi said, \u201cGirls Take Over Parliament is a fantastic initiative which provides young women from a wide range of backgrounds access to the parliamentary process which is so limited to the privileged few.
\n\u201cI am particularly excited to see so many women of diverse backgrounds taking over Parliament. Federal Parliament doesn\u2019t represent the rich diversity of Australia so we must do more to break down the barriers to political representation and participation.\u201d
\nAs part of the Girls Takeover Parliament event, the young women will present a 10 point charter – Young Women\u2019s Charter for Australian Democracy to Prime Minister Scott Morrison.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Greens are proud to support the more than 60 young women who have taken over parliament today, acting as Senators for the day. Greens Co-Deputy Leader and spokesperson for Women, Senator Larissa Waters, will bring on a matter of public importance for debate in the Senate today, where MPs from across the political spectrum … Continue reading “Young Girls take over Federal Parliament for the day”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3889\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}