Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

This debate is timely, because we know that on Four Corners tonight there will be a story that exposes the crisis we're currently experiencing in aged care. Brave aged-care workers are speaking out about what they see and the frustrations of working in a broken aged-care system.

These workers have also been to Parliament House to speak to us, as MPs, about what's occurring in their sector. When they came to speak to us they spoke up about the lack of safeguards in the industry for quality of care. They spoke up about staffing rosters not being filled, particularly when people call in sick. They spoke up about how for-profit aged-care providers are skimping on meal budgets, spending sometimes only $6 a day per resident. They spoke about their love and compassion for the residents in aged-care facilities and how they were struggling to deliver the care that these aged-care residents needed. What they didn't speak about was their pay. What they didn't speak about was their wages and conditions. They'd come all the way to Canberra to advocate on behalf of their residents. It speaks volumes about the kind of people they are that when they were here in Parliament House they didn't speak about the fact they're on a minimum wage, the fact that their conditions are some of the poorest in the country, or the failure of the Fair Work system to recognise the gender pay gap in their profession; they spoke about the residents.

That's the crux of the problem we have: when we talk about the gender pay gap, we talk about women who work in care professions. They speak about the people they care for. They speak about the people they educate. They rarely speak about their profession. Yet we need to. We in this place need to recognise that the Fair Work Act is broken when it comes to resolving the gender pay gap. Sure, some activists will say, 'We beat the gender pay gap when we won equal pay for women back in the 70s and 80s.' Absolutely: two workers standing side by side should be paid the same and not discriminated against based on their gender. But the job's not done. We know, through report after report, that when women go for job interviews or promotions against male counterparts they're less likely to get them. There is a gender bias that exists.

We know that because we haven't got the right frame settings around ensuring that we support women—who may have caring responsibilities—that they're not being promoted and that there is still that gender bias that exists in workplaces. We know that in some of our industries, like in construction and in heavy metal manufacturing, we don't even have the basics, like a women's toilet close enough to the production line or a women's toilet on a construction site. So we know that there are still barriers in those non-traditional trade areas when it comes to women.

But the biggest gap that I believe we have and that we are not addressing as a country—or as a parliament—is equal pay for women working in predominantly 'women's industries', such as the care industry. Take the early childhood education and care sector. With Big Steps, the educators are standing up and demanding equal pay for their work. These are professional women with degrees, diplomas and certificates, yet they are not being paid more than what would be the minimum wage.

On Friday I was in Gladstone, and I went to a Goodstart Early Learning centre where all the women working there were enjoying their studies. They were getting on with their qualifications, and yet despite some of them having diplomas they were only getting an extra 50c an hour. Some were on $24 an hour and some were on $21 an hour. And they are responsible for the education of our next generation!

If we look at disability, the majority of the disability workforce is women. What we've seen with the rollout of the NDIS is a worsening of their workplace conditions. They're now being offered zero-hour contracts and being told they have to have their own cars to drive clients around in. They wake up in the morning and wait for a text message to be told if they have hours that day. They've got to be available for 12 hours of the day, but they're not paid for that; they're only paid for when they're with a client. They're not paid for travel time. So in a 12-hour day they might only be paid for six hours. This is because there is a perceived gender bias.

We in this country do not value care as a profession. We place a higher value on other, male-dominated industries. I welcome the motion and support the motion that's been put forward by the member for Sydney, and call for the government to work with the opposition to address this issue. There is a gender pay gap and there is a lack of recognition and support for women in the care and education professions.

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