Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for the Republic) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] Well, there's 15 minutes of my life that I'll never get back. The member for Goldstein just spent 15 minutes—one minute on speaking about the bill and 14 minutes on his usual ideological rant—trying to sell more of his books, which obviously aren't selling enough. I love how the Liberals are all Monday experts when it comes to regulation of financial services and the wrongdoing that was perpetrated on millions of Australians through financial services. They're all Monday experts. They weren't voting with the Labor Party to hold a royal commission into the wrongdoings and rip-offs that were occurring in financial services on the 26 occasions we tried to move for a royal commission in the parliament. The member for Goldstein was one of those who voted on numerous occasions against the royal commission, and now he has the hide to come into the parliament and talk about the findings of the Economics Committee, of which he is a member, which they tried to use as a diversion to avoid a royal commission. It's blatant hypocrisy.

Nonetheless, in respect of the Treasury Laws Amendment (2021 Measures No. 6) Bill 2021, this is an important reform which we support. I am speaking in support of this bill. I particularly want to address schedule 5 of the bill, which deals with superannuation law and its intersection with family law matters in Australia. Labor has been calling for this reform to be implemented for many years now. Schedule 5 of the bill amends the Taxation Administration Act and the Family Law Act to provide a new mechanism for the sharing of superannuation information between participants in family law proceedings. Because women are at disproportionate risk of retiring with low superannuation balances, this is an extremely important reform. It provides an opportunity for government to provide a mechanism to ensure fairer outcomes when it comes to splitting assets in family law proceedings. Often, when there are such proceedings, it's the woman who ends up with the raw end of the bargain in terms of the splitting of those assets, because the law allows particular individuals—most notably, on most occasions, men—to hide behind the reality of their superannuation balances. It is particularly true for women who experience divorce or family breakdown that the lack of visibility of superannuation assets means that assets may not be divided equitably between partners.

While the government announced this reform in 2018, it has taken three years to implement it. Sadly, it's a common theme that we've seen through this three years of this government. It's not good enough, and it shows how little this government cares about women's economic security. The pandemic has given us a real opportunity to view the worth of female dominated industries and a unique opportunity to revalue their work through our society and to make policy changes that increase job security, wages and superannuation for female workers.

It's striking and remarkable when we look at the nightly news bulletins—let's face it; we're all a bit more interested in the news these days because of the pandemic—and we get the footage of the testing that is going on in testing clinics throughout the country, of the vaccinations being administered in people's arms throughout the country that are the important pathway back to normality for our economy, of the early childhood educators who are continuing to look after our kids and of the people who are doing Zoom classrooms with our kids in primary and secondary school. Unfortunately, in many circumstances, the people carrying the burden of doing home schooling in most households are, overwhelmingly, women. And the heroes of Australia, in terms of the working population who have continued to work, have predominantly been women. It's women who have kept our country going during this difficult time. It's important we recognise that in the policies we develop in the parliament into the future, to value the work of women more highly and to appreciate the contribution they make—particularly in service sectors, because it's services that have continued to run during this pandemic. If you look at the break-up of gender within services, overwhelmingly the people who work in that industry are women.

Unfortunately, because of that, it's in services, particularly in health and education services, that we have the highest gender pay gaps. Recently the Workplace Gender Equality Agency again indicated that gender inequality is on the rise in Australia because of the pandemic, after a period in which the gender pay gap was reducing. It's important for us to recognise that there are opportunities to make changes in policy that will make a big difference to the equality of women in the workforce—in particular the money they take home for the work that they perform and the funds that they retire with in their superannuation accounts. This is one area where we can make a positive adjustment.

There are other areas we should look at to make a difference as well. One of those could be the introduction of paid domestic violence leave in the National Employment Standards. But don't hold your breath waiting for the Morrison government to be proactive in implementing women-friendly policies to reduce the gender pay gap and improve the economic wellbeing of women. We need not to forget that they opposed vehemently, over time, a paid parental leave scheme in Australia. Australia was one of the last nations in the OECD to implement a paid parental leave scheme for new parents. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming to approve a wage subsidy, JobKeeper, for workers throughout the country. Compulsory superannuation—they opposed that as well. These are all important reforms that support the work of women in our society and make a big difference to gender inequality in our country. Hopefully, the skilled and valuable work of women during the COVID-19 crisis will force this government to see the importance of the contribution of female workers to Australia and to support measures to increase their participation in work and their remuneration.

The remaining parts of this bill are technical amendments. Schedule 1 clarifies the operation of the income tax law in relation to the Renewable Energy Target, ensuring that generators are not taxed when they later rectify a failure to meet a target in a given year. Schedule 2 allows for increased penalties to be applied to breaches of industry codes prescribed by the Competition and Consumer Act. It increases penalties for breaches of the franchising code, something expressly recommended by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services, and we of course support franchisees being protected by industry codes, as recommended. Schedule 3 removes some minor red tape for self-managed superannuation funds and other small super funds.

I want to reiterate the importance of this reform for gender equality around women's role in the workplace. And in removing some of the barriers to getting greater transparency when it comes to splitting assets in family law matters, particularly the amounts that are superannuation funds, hopefully we can reduce the terrible inequality that still exists in our country, where women retire with a third less in their superannuation account than men do.

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