Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate all of my colleagues coming in to listen to my speech. I'm glad the SMS went around and they all answered that, whenever I rise, they must rush into this place to hear the prose and the contribution. But this is a really important piece of legislation that I commend the Attorney-General on for his work of bringing it to the House, and I commend everybody who has contributed to this Respect at Work piece of legislation.

This is a bill where we owe a lot to the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Kate Jenkins, who has taken on the really significant task for our country of tackling what really are, in many ways, cultural issues in the workplace. Something that I think we were all astonished to find is that up to a third of women in this country experience some form of sexual harassment in the workplace—up to a third. It really is quite breathtaking when you stop and think about that and about what that means for our colleagues, what that means for our counterparts and what that means for Australian women. Commissioner Jenkins's work to look at the issues and to look at how we tackle this as a country has been profound and it has been powerful, and we thank her for that work.

This bill tackles a range of things which, depending on how long I have, I will go into. But I want to read something that Commissioner Jenkins has said:

The current legal and regulatory system is simply no longer fit for purpose. In this report—

the inquiry report—

I have recommended a new model that improves the coordination, consistency and clarity between the antidiscrimination, employment and work health and safety legislative schemes.

Earlier in the report she said:

Workplace sexual harassment is not inevitable. It is not acceptable. It is preventable.

Commissioner Jenkins concluded by saying:

… the rate of change has been disappointingly slow. Australia now lags behind other countries in preventing and responding to sexual harassment.

Unfortunately, the legislative scheme that we inherited from the previous government wasn't enough; it needed to be upgraded and updated. I think this is something that's also shared across the parliament. I think that the 47th Parliament brings with it a new sense of focus and a new sense of constructiveness—hopefully. But I also remember the cultural moment that our country faced in the previous parliament, when this building was under the most intense spotlight for all the wrong reasons. This was a moment being presented to this country, the Prime Minister and this parliament by the women of Australia. It was an extremely powerful moment, standing outside this place and hearing the likes of Brittany Higgins and others speaking in a way that was one of the most extraordinary speeches I've ever heard in this precinct.

I remember sitting on the other side of the chamber, hearing what was a predetermined address for question time—a pre-planned address in question time, not one of the impromptu addresses but something that the Prime Minister had prepared coming into question time. He said that in other places around the world such marches are met with bullets, and that the women of Australia should be glad that that isn't the case here. Not only was that disturbing because it was a preprepared remark, which had obviously been considered by the former Prime Minister and his office, but it was also just so tone deaf and so wrong in its content. Even off the cuff it would have been completely unacceptable. This bill and Commissioner Jenkins sought to change that completely incorrect and off-putting remark into something far more powerful and productive. The report by Commissioner Jenkins was commenced and this bill seeks to respond to it.

One of the key recommendations by the commissioner is about—

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