Libby Coker (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Australian women are front and centre for the Albanese government. This was reflected in our first budget last October, a budget which began delivering on our election commitment to making Australia a world leader in gender equality. I'm so proud that, after a decade of neglect under the former Liberal government, our government is unlocking and valuing the talent, potential and contribution of women across our nation. We know that policies which are good for women are also good for our economy, good for productivity and good for families.

The Women's Budget Statement set out the Albanese Labor government's plan to deliver long-term change to advance gender equality, focusing on women's economic equality, ending violence against women, and gender equality in health and wellbeing. These themes are invariably interconnected, and they matter. Financial insecurity can impact on a woman's ability to leave a violent relationship. Violence can have devastating health impacts and diminish a woman's capacity to participate in the workforce and progress her career.

The gender pay gap and time out of the workforce can have a long-term impact on a woman's lifetime earnings, especially impacting retirement incomes for older women, including, importantly, superannuation. That's why the Albanese government is leading the national push to close the gender pay gap. Progress in closing the gender pay gap between Australian women and men stalled in 2022. According to the most recent annual data, released last December by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, the gender pay gap remains at 22.8 per cent. That means women earned, on average, $26,596 less than men in 2021-22.

Voluntary reporting data released by the agency showed 50 per cent of employers had set some sort of target for gender equality in the workplace. Of those who had set targets, more than half—55 per cent—had done so to increase the number of women in leadership; however, far fewer employers had targets to reduce the gender pay gap, just 38 per cent. Over the past two decades the gender pay gap has persisted. It has decreased by only 1.2 percentage points since May 2002 and by only 5.1 per cent since 1983. We must do better. Women have an average of 23.4 per cent less super when they come to retirement age than men. The gender pay gap is a constraint on the Australian economy, representing a cost of around $52 billion a year. These outcomes are more than disappointing.

That's why the Albanese government is providing $20.2 million in investment to the Fair Work Commission to establish two new expert panels—one on pay equity and the other on the care and community sector. This will strengthen the commission's capacity to determine applications from female dominated industries, where work is often undervalued and underpaid. Already under the Albanese government we have set a commitment to a 15 per cent increase in the wages of aged-care workers. This increase is absolutely needed to support a predominantly female workforce, a workforce which was overworked, underpaid and undervalued by the former Liberal government.

At a community forum I held in Armstrong Creek in my electorate I heard from Donna, who is a personal care attendant in a local aged-care facility. She spoke about low wages, insecure work and the frustration of being unable to properly care for frail, elderly and vulnerable residents. These are her words: 'I love my job. I wanted to make lives better, but now we are facing a roadblock. We've got six minutes to put each resident to bed each night.' To Donna I say: we are listening and we are acting. That's why we have committed to this important wage increase.

We're also reforming the workplace relations system to make gender equity an objective of the Fair Work Act and to legislate an equal remuneration principle. We have also taken the first step to remove barriers that limit women's opportunities when they have caring responsibilities. That includes delivering a $531 million investment to expand the Paid Parental Leave scheme, up to 26 weeks, by July 2026. It is the biggest boost to Australia's Paid Parental Leave scheme since it was created by the former Labor government in 2011. It is something I am very proud of and have fought for, together with many other women. It will support parents to spend more time with their children and to share caring responsibilities more equitably.

The bill builds further on those important gender equity initiatives. This bill takes additional decisive action to accelerate closing the gender pay gap at work by amending the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012. This follows a 2021 Workplace Gender Equality Agency review, which found improvements were needed to enhance the Workplace Gender Equality Agency's ability to improve the quality of available data and the level of support provided to employers. The reforms in this bill include allowing the agent to publish employer-level gender pay gaps for the first time and a requirement for employers to provide gender equality reports to the governing bodies. The reforms also set new requirements for policies and strategies across gender equality and refine what employers report to the agency. The bill adopts either in part or in full almost all recommendations in the Workplace Gender Equality Agency review.

The bill's headline reform allows the Workplace Gender Equality Agency to publish gender pay gaps for individual employers. This is important. It will promote accountability and encourage accelerated action and change within organisations towards closing the gender pay gap. The first release of pay gap reporting will be in early 2024, based on the current reporting period of April 2022 to March 2023. It will appear on the agency's website, and it will be searchable. Employers may choose to publish an explanatory statement, providing context for the gender pay gap and planned actions.

This bill allows the agency to require relevant employers to provide reports to all members of their governing body, such as a board of directors, as soon as practicable after they receive the report from the agency. This would include providing an executive summary report and an industry benchmark report, ensuring that the people governing the organisation are fully aware of their organisation's gender equity performance—good or bad. The bill amends the existing act to rename the current 'minimum standards' as 'gender equality standards'. This reinforces the increased ambition and importance of those measures in strengthening gender equality, thereby improving outcomes for both women and men in the workplace. The bill also changes aspects of the legislation to clarify terms and remove ambiguity in some areas. In addition, the bill makes amendments to the legislation to include sexual harassment, harassment on the grounds of sex, or discrimination as gender equality indicators in the act. These are commonsense changes which support the implementation of the government's Respect@Work initiatives.

It has been more than 10 years since the Workplace Gender Equality Act was first passed. In that time, we've seen meaningful progress, but the rate of change is far too slow. We know these measures will work from the successful experience in the United Kingdom, which introduced similar legislation in 2007. The reforms in this bill result from close consultation with stakeholders across the nation, including: the business and not-for-profit sectors, employee groups, state and territory governments, higher education providers, the women's sector, and other users of the government's data. The government has committed to reviewing the new legislation after five years. It is a great thing to always look back and reconsider, and to robustly interrogate how effective these measures have been in accelerating progress towards gender equality.

Improving workplace gender equality is critical. Australian women deserve fair and safe working conditions. They deserve equal opportunity and equal remuneration. Without the changes in this bill, it is estimated that, at the current rate of progress, it could take as long as 26 years to close the gender pay gap for women in Australia. We must accelerate the pace of change. Women have waited long enough. I commend this bill to the House.

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