The veteran Victorian Liberal MP Dr Sharman Stone has announced her retirement from federal parliament.
In a statement to the ABC, Stone said she would not recontest the next election after representing the Victorian seat of Murray for 20 years.
“I have been honoured to have served this magnificent region as the federal member, but now I believe is the right time to pass the torch to the next person who will represent us with passion and a deep love of our place,” she said.
Stone was a strong critic of the Coalition’s paid parental leave policy.
Following the 2015 federal budget, she had attacked the policy, saying the Coalition should go “back to the drawing board” to find a way to offer more generous payments to low-income women as part of a bipartisan deal with Labor.
She said the bitter political debate over paid parental leave in recent years had left Australian mothers with “the worst of all worlds” and urged her colleagues to fight for more generous provisions for low-income women.
The measure had proved one of the most controversial in the generally well-received budget after ministers characterised women accessing both the $11,500 and an employer-provided scheme as “double-dippers” and suggested it amounted to a “rort” or a “fraud”.
– Australian Associated Press contributed to this story
