Thank you very much. As if to underline, if you needed any reminder of the difference between the current Government and the past, the division we just voted on, if it was carried would have stopped the cheaper child care legislation. So way back at the Jobs and Skills Summit in September, the economist Danielle Wood made the observation that if untapped women's workforce participation were iron ore, we'd be falling over ourselves to dig it up. The message from the Budget handed down by the Treasurer last night was simply this: we’re digging. We are digging to make sure that we take advantage of the fact, for all of us, that women's economic participation is something that doesn't just benefit individual women. It doesn't just benefit families. It benefits the entire nation.
And that's why I'm very proud to lead a Government that has 54 members of the Caucus who are women out of a Caucus of 103. More women cabinet ministers than ever before. More women ministers than ever before. More women in senior positions across the Parliament than ever before. And it makes the Government function better because it is more representative of the population, just as our ethnic and religious diversity helps our Government not just project a much a better image, but better results and better outcomes.
What this Budget and this Women's Budget Statement emphasises is what a difference a change in government makes. Australians voted for change in May and women’s voting patterns were a large part of that change. They wanted a Government that was responsive to the entire population, not just to a segment of it. And that's what they have got. This is a Budget that puts equality for women at its centre. Cheaper child care and early childhood education was the first major commitment I made as Leader of the Labor Party in my first Budget Reply, and we delivered it. The legislation that's just passed the House of Representatives, we'll deliver it when it goes through the Senate soon, $4.6 billion over four years. Good for families, good for children, but also good for the economy by boosting women's workforce participation and boosting productivity.
The biggest expansion to Paid Parental Leave since it was introduced, of course, by a Labor Government in 2011, designed to encourage parents to share caring responsibilities more equally. Record funding for women's safety, $1.7 billion over six years. It includes investing in an additional 500 frontline community workers. Ensuring that the returns of the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund can help deliver 4,000 new homes to put a roof over their heads of women fleeing violence and older women at risk of homelessness. We know that every night in this country, women, and sometimes women with their children, are turned away from shelters, because there's simply nowhere for them to go. We are a wealthy enough country to do so much better than that. And the Government's determined to do that, with an addition to that commitment for a permanent roof over people's head through social housing, $100 million additional for crisis and transitional housing options for women and children fleeing violence. We also will fully implement the Respect@Work report, including the funding, properly, of working women centres in every state and every territory.
In addition to that, we've had our attitude towards wages. Now you'll hear a bit about industrial relations in the coming weeks. The truth is that if you look at the feminised sections of the workforce, they are the lowest paid sections of the workforce. They're also the sections of the workforce that got Australia through the pandemic, that we relied upon, that we should never, ever take for granted. And we should do more than just say thanks – thanks to the aged care workers, thanks to the cleaners, thanks to the child care workers – we should actually deliver.
My favourite moment of the election campaign was when I was asked would I support a Fair Work Commission decision to keep the minimum wage at a level that was the same as the inflation rate. And I answered in one word. Absolutely. That was seen as controversial, somehow. I was very pleased that it was perceived as controversial for 24 or 48 hours. But it enabled me to walk around with $1 coin in my pocket for the last couple of weeks of the campaign. And say that yes, absolutely that was a conscious decision. And of course, the first thing in Government was put in that position to the Fair Work Commission, which resulted in a 5.2 per cent increase that flowed through to 2.7 million workers, the overwhelming majority of whom were women.
And, of course, we have put in a submission to the Fair Work Commission about aged care workers as well, the majority of whom are women. We won't have an aged care sector if we continue to say that you can earn more for packing shelves than you can for working with vulnerable old people with all have the physical stress and hard work that that entails, but also the emotional stress of literally being family in the type of relationship that aged care workers have with those that they care for. Now they don't do it for the money. But surely, if we're going to have a sector that is able to look after the aging population which we are facing, we need to do much better than that.
So, this week our legislation we're dealing with is with all of those matters. Respect@Work, cheaper child care. And last night and then finalised today in the House of Representatives, the Family and Domestic Violence Leave legislation has now passed both Chambers of Parliament.
So, we have a big agenda. But we are just getting started. And I want to particularly pay tribute to Jim and Katy for the work that they did, Katy, as well, with the Minister for the Status of Women platform. I assure you that when we went through the ERV process, all of our Budget items had a gender lens, a gender lens that hasn't been looked at for the last decade, which began with the absurdity, frankly, of one woman in the Cabinet and Tony Abbott as the Minister for the Status of Women. To be fair to Tony, at least they announced it unlike other Prime Ministers. I certainly feel no need to have other titles or secret jobs, not least on the issue of the status of women when we have such an extraordinary and extraordinary array of policies right across the board.
I pay tribute to Katy. I pay tribute to Sharon and the work that she's done on the Committee. I pay tribute to Tanya Plibersek and the work that she did as a Shadow Minister, and before her Julie Collins. But this is a whole-of-government approach. And it's a whole-of-government approach which makes me very proud to be the Prime Minister of this extraordinary team full of talent that is much more representative than any government we have seen before by definition. So, thanks everyone and congratulations.