The Hon. AILEEN MacDONALD (22:02): Yesterday we celebrated the United Nations International Day for Rural Women. The event warrants that I pay tribute to the resilience of rural and regional women. There was a time when the thought of rural and regional women conjured up the stereotype of a farmer's wife who would often supplement the family income by nursing or teaching, or some other off-farm income. That may have been the case 30 or so years ago, or at least it was when I moved to regional New South Wales in 1989. Now it is often the case that it is the women who are running the family farm. I refer to women who not only manage the family farm but also are also involved in innovation and technology within the agricultural industry, as well as other essential services in health and almost any other field you care to name.

One only has to watch Landline on a Sunday lunchtime to see that rural women continue to be involved in innovation in many industries such as agriculture, mining and resources, STEM and communications. Rural women lead the way in providing business benefits such as profitability, productivity and innovation. All that is in the face of a cost-of-living crisis not only on a global front, but often more deeply in the regions where the impact is longer lasting. Some women are choosing to ditch the city life and move to rural New South Wales because of the many opportunities that are presented. I refer to Annabelle Hickson, for example. She left her career as a journalist at The Australian to move to western New South Wales. While her husband planted pecan trees, she began to learn what it was to be a part of a vibrant local community.

What she found was smart, clever and resilient people who spoke of opportunities instead of limitations, which challenged her city-centric stereotype of country people. Twelve years after moving north-west and after the drought of 2019-20, Annabelle took it upon herself to write stories from regional Australia that were not just about disadvantage. She discovered that lack of water, lack of jobs and lack in general were all real, but they were not the only narrative for regional New South Wales and regional Australia. She identified the need for a publication that portrayed people in regional and rural communities as smart and increasingly diverse—that they were people who cared about their community, creativity and the environment, as well as profitability. She saw the need for a publication that bridged the city and country divide, so she created a quality magazine called Galah.

Galah is published three times a year and posts regular newsletters that essentially say that regional life has a lot more going for it than droughts, floods and fires. Annabelle is a perfect example of how rural women find solutions in adversity. They see something wrong and fill the gap. Women like Annabelle have helped communities create economic diversity where a country town may have relied on one industry alone, like agriculture. She broadened the scope of her region and added value. That is what is amazing about rural women. They have an ability to change and adapt to circumstances. Rural women find a way to get things done, with or without the help of government, and they do it with a "can do" attitude.