Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

Today the government is taking a significant step forward in advancing gender equality in Australian workplaces. We're fulfilling a key election commitment of this government to close the gender pay gap at work, including by boosting pay gap transparency and by taking action to help close gender pay gaps within organisations.

We know that on average women working full time can expect to earn 14.1 per cent less than men per week. You can imagine, over a lifetime, that is a significant deficit in terms of women's pay and their capacity to participate fully in the economic and social life of this country. Current projections suggest that it will take another 26 years for us to close that gap. Women cannot wait. They can't afford to wait, and they should not have to wait.

With these reforms that are being introduced in the Senate, we will for the very first time publish the gender pay gaps of businesses that employ 100 or more people. We know that experience around the world shows that this transparency does lead to organisations taking action to close their gender pay gaps. This reform will put Australia in the leadership group of OECD countries that collect and publish gender pay gap data. The legislation responds to the recommendations of the 2021 review of the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012, and they are, of course, just one aspect of the government's ambition for Australia to be a global leader in gender equality.

The budget put gender equality front and centre, investing over $7 billion to actually drive gender equality. Through the secure jobs, better pay legislation we took long-overdue steps to promote gender equality, better pay and secure work for women. We're modernising paid parental leave, and we're investing in cheaper child care. We introduced paid domestic violence leave, which commenced on 1 February. And, of course, we supported wage increases for the minimum wage and in aged care, where workers are predominantly women. We've introduced legislation to implement all of the recommendations of the Respect@Work report.

Under the previous government we fell as low as 71st in the World Economic Forum Global gender gap report 2022. This legislation being introduced by this government will deliver a better deal for women across Australia, and the government will continue to work hard every day to make Australia one of the most gender-equal countries in the world.

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