Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

When I started working in the media in the 1980s, in commercial radio, it was a given that as a woman I ultimately should not expect to be paid as much as a man. To me as a junior press gallery journalist, it was pretty clear that the high-profile blokes got the big bucks and that women came second. It wasn't just that the upgrades through the cadet system wouldn't be as fast; it was also that women would get allocated to do all the soft stories, the fluffy stories, the colour stories. If there was an announcement on the economy, there'd be a whole lot more men at the news conference than for an announcement on education policy. As a consequence I've met the Queen, Prince Charles and Princess Diana.

I'm not sure that we've come very far in the 30 years in between. The latest gender pay gap report by Women in Media, an initiative of my union, the MEAA, gives example after example of gender inequality. Only two per cent of those surveyed thought that there was parity. This is reflected across so many sectors. The gender pay gap in ASX 200 companies is 28.7 per cent. Of course there are exceptions, but they don't change the facts that most women face. I applaud Lisa Wilkinson for not being afraid to walk away from inequality and to call it out. High-profile women have to take a stand on this so other women feel they even have a right to demand equality.

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