Federal Minister for Women and Finance, Senator Katy Gallagher has a long list of things she wants to get sorted for Australian women.
Speaking to Women’s Agenda Editor-in-Chief Tarla Lambert-Patel on budget night in Canberra, she said each budget is a new opportunity to tick things off that list.
“Each budget, I’m crossing them off… we’re making good progress. You can’t see one budget in isolation from the others,” Gallagher said.
“What we’ve been trying to do is tackle the big structural drivers of inequality — and they will take time to show benefit.”
Gallagher’s comments came as the Treasurer Jim Chalmers handed down the 2026 budget on Tuesday night, delivering changes to the capital gains tax and negative gearing, as well as new rules for tax on trusts. As Dr Gemma Killen highlighted, women currently receive only around two‑fifths of the benefits of the capital gains tax discount and rental deductions, including negative gearing. These changes will help close persistent gender gaps in wealth and investment.
Where women-specific policies are concerned, there was little provided in terms of new funding or initiatives in this budget, however a key piece of investment for women was $182.6 million to make the child support system safer, a commitment which is overdue but welcome.
Gallagher was quick to point out measures in previous budgets that will help improve women’s equality, for example, changes to the low income super tax offset (LISTO), a measure that will help women as they head to retirement.
“That won’t solve things overnight about women’s superannuation balances, but it should help over the longer term for younger women coming through the super system,” Gallagher said. “Paying super on parental leave — never been done. Not going to change things overnight, but over time. And it sends a message that we respect the role that you’re playing as a carer out of the paid workforce.”
“The gender pay gap [is] the lowest it’s been on record, women earning over $200 more per week than they were earning when we came to government.”
When it comes to women’s health, new measures in this budget include $2.7m to extend long acting reversible contraceptives (LARC) incentives to midwives, and the new endometriosis and pelvic pain clinics which are set to get the menopause and perimenopause scope from July 2026.
“The changes we put in place in the previous budget, they are just starting to tick up and come into this budget,” Gallagher said, “which is the uptake of menopause treatment, the uptake of new contraception— hugely popular— the pelvic pain and endo clinics are all open now and funded in this budget, reaching a group of women who the system had not been been supporting properly.”
For Gallagher, the single biggest handbrake on women actually achieving gender equality in this country is women’s safety, but advocates have been quick to point out that this budget does not go far enough in terms of new investment to meet the surging demand of frontline services.
“If there was one thing I could solve overnight…it would be this area of violence,” Gallagher said. “Because it’s not only the awful impacts of that violence on those individuals. It’s the consequential impacts of health, of economic independence, of housing, of care.”
“In this budget, I mean, it’s an extra couple of hundred million going into our de-weaponising systems work. There’s also a couple of hundred million going into the First Nations plan to end violence against women and children in First Nations communities.
“There’s also a reasonably big piece of work that the assistant treasurer has been doing around protecting superannuation from perpetrators of violence against women.”
The second nation action plan on violence against women and children is also due next year. Approximately $4.4 billion has been allocated since 2022 to ending violence against women and children.
When asked about the continued rising rates of violence and homicide against women despite the funding already allocated, Gallagher said government policies and investments can only go so far and it’s also up to the community to “lean in”.
“Government’s got a responsibility to provide investments and policy decisions, but we can’t solve the societal problem of violence against women and children in this country on our own.” she said.
“It’s about attitudes. It’s about norms. It’s about dealing with some of the loud noise we get on social media that’s challenging all the effort that we’ve all put in over many years. So it’s a partnership.”
Women in the AI future
As Australia grapples with the future of the workforce amid the rise of AI, there are plenty of concerns about how women will likely bear the disruption first and benefit last.
It’s an issue Gallagher says the government is aware of, noting “there’s a huge lot of work being done around that”. She notes a gendered analysis is part of the process the government takes when making decisions around issues like AI regulation.
“With some of the transition we’re seeing with those entry level jobs where women are more dominant than men, that they would pay the ultimate price,” Gallagher said.
“So we’re thinking through all of that. We don’t have the perfect answer yet, but we will be conscious of it when we’re responding to it.”
Gallagher also said the government was working to disrupt the highly gender segregated workforce and encourage women into workplaces that have traditionally been male dominated.
“It’s a whole of government effort. It involves all ministers, not just the women’s minister, to think about these things,” she said.
Support for women founders, innovators and scientists
Amid concerns that changes to the capital gains tax discount will hamper innovation across startups, Gallagher said the government is focused on other measures to support innovation in areas like women’s health.
“We’ve tried to make sure that our funding coming through The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) is actually given to women scientists and researchers on an equal basis,” Gallagher said.
As for the capital gains tax changes, Gallagher said until now it has “overcompensated for investments in essentially detached housing. They’ve under compensated for shares and units in particular.
So moving to a system that looks at taxing real gains as opposed to, you know, the previous arrangement of 50 per cent, levels the playing field against different types of investment.”
You can watch Tarla Lambert-Patel’s full interview with Senator Katy Gallagher here.