Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Primary Industries, Resources, Forestry and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to join my colleagues the members for Cunningham and Calwell in highlighting the damaging impact of the federal government’s Work Choices legislation on Australian working women. I also note media reports today that a new study has found that the number of women directors on the boards of the largest 200 companies has doubled over the last five years. However, still only 11 per cent of independent positions are held by women and almost half of the top boards do not have a single woman director. Obviously, the glass ceiling remains a reality for Australian women, but fortunately progress is being made.

I want to talk about the other women today—the women at the bottom end: the cleaners, the childcare workers, the factory workers and the hospitality workers, who struggle from week to week to make ends meet. The Work Choices bill, particularly in conjunction with the Welfare to Work changes, represents a wholesale change to the way Australian workplaces operate and as a consequence will have major implications for the Australian community over time. Wide and thorough ongoing research continues to demonstrate that women employees are disadvantaged in the labour market. They lag behind men in regard to pay. Earning less than their male counterparts is obviously the order of the day—not just for full-timers but also for part-timers. They are also on the receiving end of the highly casual nature of the Australian workforce, which is also a global trend that has got worse over the last decade. In Canada, for example, full-time working women earn 71 per cent of male wages, while here in Australia the situation is a little better—they earn 85 per cent of male wages. The fact that women receive lower wages highlights their vulnerability in the workplace in negotiating working conditions such as pay, job security, family leave, flexi-time, training, superannuation and associated issues.

The government tells us that Work Choices is intended to create a more flexible and competitive workplace, but I believe this is code for doing women over in the workplace because they start on the back foot in the first instance, anyhow. As shadow minister for the portfolios of resources and tourism, I understand well the important contribution women make to employment in both these key industries. The resources sector—mining, in particular—is no longer the workplace, or the realm, of the Aussie bloke, but because of the skills crisis and the lack of training by the Australian government, more and more women are donning a hard hat and getting out there, and helping to support the burgeoning boom and doing a great job.

Women have also achieved enormous success in the Australian tourism industry. I also note, appropriately, that Australia’s tourism ministerial council is dominated by women and almost half the employment base of the tourism industry is women. Given this, the government should not be introducing legislation that further enhances their vulnerability—and that is what this debate is about. Women will be worse off in difficult economic times when they experience the problems that confront workers generally. The government should, conversely, be actively working to protect the employment rights of women in the workforce and creating an environment that is attractive to women who are considering re-entering employment. At a time when Australia is facing a chronic skills shortage, this makes skills sense and it also makes commonsense.

However, in many ways the new Work Choices legislation continues a shift that commenced under the Howard government in the late 1990s from one of external regulation of employment regulations to internal regulation. This informalisation of the workplace creates the possibility of a lack of formality and transparency surrounding workplace relations and shifts the process of employment relations to the private sphere, where there is little or no public scrutiny of issues or agreements, or an independent umpire to support those in the workforce who have little resources—that is, those with little power. Essentially, the new legislation translates to mean that the position of those already disadvantaged in the labour force—the facts speak for themselves—namely, women and young people, will be made all the more tenuous. Ultimately this will undermine overall productivity by preventing an important segment of the workforce from entering it and also from developing new skills, as women will be in a weaker position to negotiate training, not just wages and conditions of employment.

The motion before the House in the name of the member for Cunningham, and seconded by the member for Calwell, correctly brings to the attention of the Australian community the potential impact of the Work Choices legislation on hardworking Australian women. It will reduce their conditions of employment over time and also lead to a loss of job security. The real change in workforce participation commenced under the Hawke and Keating Labor governments of the 1980s and 1990s— (Time expired)

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