Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for her question. I know that she has been deeply concerned about fairness and balance in Australian workplaces, particularly the circumstances of working Australian women. As these statistics show, Work Choices has been a disaster for working women. It is beyond doubt—from information from the Australian Bureau of Statistics—that under Work Choices women did worse. The ABS data shows very clearly in its wages and earnings data series that women working full time on Australian workplace agreements took home on average $84 a week less than women working on collective agreements. And the data for women working part time and casually was even worse; the rip-offs per hour for women working casually—and many working women do because they want to combine work and family life—was even worse. A woman who was on an AWA who was working as a casual for an average amount of time could expect to earn $94 per week less than her counterpart who was on a collective agreement. The Rudd Labor government has already ended these rip-offs by ending the making of Australian workplace agreements and ensuring that all working women and working men have the benefit of a fair safety net.

Last week I announced further details of the government’s Forward with Fairness changes, and they include a set of additional protections for working women. Of course, the foundation stone of Labor’s fair and balanced industrial relations system is a safety net that cannot be stripped away. As well as the dollar rip-offs that working women faced, even after the last government’s so-called fairness test, a working woman could have stripped away from her the protections on changes of shift and changes of roster inherent in her industrial award. For example, instead of being given a few days notice that she was going to be moved to night shift—notice so that she could make new arrangements for the care of her children—a woman could have that protection stripped away and be given half an hour or an hour’s notice of a change of shift, which could have left her children without care. The government, in making sure that the safety net is there for everyone and that it cannot be stripped away, has fixed that and will make sure working women do not have that fear for the future.

The government’s National Employment Standards also include a new era of flexibility for working women—making sure that women can sequence unpaid maternity leave with the unpaid paternity leave of their partner, giving working families the option, if they choose, to have a parent at home for the first 12 months of a child’s life. Our National Employment Standards include a new era of flexibility, enabling working women to have the right to request an extended period of unpaid maternity leave and a right to request a return to work on a part-time or flexible basis if that would enable them to put together work and family life in a more cooperative way.

I am asked about obstacles to the implementation of the government’s plan. Of course, shadow ministers in this place seem to come and they seem to go, but the more things change—

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