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Gilmore MP Ann Sudmalis says gender added fuel to last week’s Opposition attack on her and she briefly considered walking away - but has stood by her choice of words on penalty rates. “They don’t do that to a bloke,” Mrs Sudmalis said of the three-day blow torching launched during Question Time on Tuesday. The attack followed comments Mrs Sudmalis made on the Fair Work Commission’s call for cuts to Sunday and public holiday penalty rates from July. Read more: Gilmore MP Ann Sudmalis paying the price for 'gift to workers' comment “It’s not cutting wages, it’s opening the door for more hours of employment and in a regional area like Gilmore, with almost double the national youth unemployment, that’s a gift; that is a gift for our young people to get a foot in the door of employment,” Ms Sudmalis told Fairfax Media last week. Her use of the word ‘gift’ drew fire in Parliament, on social media and from the woman she narrowly defeated in the 2017 federal election, Gilmore Labor spokeswoman Fiona Phillips. Mrs Sudmalis, who was visibly distressed in Parliament, said her emotion was due to “the unfairness of it all”. She said she was targeted first as an individual, then as the holder of the seat. “I don’t believe they would have gone after a male, three days in a row,” she said. “They would have moved it around, and taken it to a different member, but no, they did three hits in three days, which is most unusual. “They don’t do that to a bloke.” Opposition Leader Bill Shorten’s attack was also unusual, she said. “We have never seen the Leader of the Opposition come out with an attack piece on an individual member; generally it is generalised,” she said. “They decided that I was a fair target and they were after me.” Mrs Sudmalis, who attended public events in Batemans Bay on Friday and Saturday, admitted she had briefly, “for maybe half an hour”, considered stepping down from the seat she holds by a fragile margin. Such a decision would have sparked a by-election and threatened the Government’s razor-thin majority. “But, no, it is actually a strengthening technique; it is saying, ‘are you doing a good job? Yes you are.’ because you are trying to get job opportunities for young people,” she said. “(It has) consolidated my views on trying to encourage women to stand up for themselves, to be strong and to jump in. “We need to give those opportunities to women, but my goodness we have to be tough, because if we are seen to have any human qualities, we are criticised for it.” Mrs Sudmalis said the events in Parliament would have sent “mixed messages” to young women considering a parliamentary career, but “they need to know women do cluster around and help them”. “I did get comments after all of this rubbish from both sides of the house, saying this sort of attack was inappropriate and that they were very supportive. That is always good to get the support from both Labor and Liberal MPs.” Asked if, in retrospect, she should have used a word other than “gift”, Mrs Sudmalis did not back down. “If we can get businesses to open on a Sunday, that is an open opportunity for youth and it was in that context that I used the word ‘gift’ and if people want to take it the other way, that is their choice,” she said. “This was all about getting young people into work, getting them an opportunity to work, which at the moment they don’t have. “It is so important to get our youth into jobs because it opens doors and gives them a whole different perspective. “They can earn money, they can then go on holidays, they can train themselves. “By having the doors of the retailers closed on the weekends, it closes doors of opportunity for our youth.” Mrs Sudmalis said Gilmore’s high unemployment meant “we have so many young people who can’t even get their foot in the door”. “The supermarkets which used to be our first level employer, they can’t go there now because there are all those self-service things,” she said. “We need to encourage businesses to open their doors on a Sunday and this (penalty rate cuts) might be an avenue for it.” Asked to respond to voters who believed responsibility for Gilmore’s unemployment rate should be sheeted home to the sitting government, Mrs Sudmalis said: “We don’t make businesses to take up the slack in unemployment.” “No government is responsible for that,” she said. “All you can do is get a playing field there where businesses feel confident, and that business confidence is up at the moment. “If you have business confidence up, they are more inclined to employ because they feel they can turn a profit. “If you are not running a profitable business, you can’t employ people. If you are not feeling confident, you pull back and you do all the work yourself. I have done that in previous times in my own business. “A high unemployment level is not necessarily a reflection of government initiative, it is a reflection of a lot of things in our region.” Mrs Sudmalis said Gilmore included “young people who are third generation on welfare support”. “We need to encourage them to break that cycle.” She said the federal government’s Youth Jobs PaTH program would give young people “a chance to feel what it is to be employed”. “We need to give them the confidence to say, ‘I like working, this is making a difference in my personal life’. “If we can get those young people into that training program and make them feel that there life is worthwhile, rather than sitting in front of the TV watching Netflix all day, then we are doing something positive for them. ”Our $20 million jobs package is a huge step in the right direction, we are formulating that process now to get more people in the area into employment. “I have to put this behind me and keep working on what is in front of me, because that is all about jobs.”

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