Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The gender pay gap is not a new phenomenon. It is something we've long reckoned with in this society. And it's certainly not something that's going to remedy itself of its own accord. I remember talking about the gender pay gap in local government almost a decade ago with fellow staff and a younger female staff member saying, 'It won't happen in our generation—it'll be fixed in our generation,' and an older staff member, a woman in her 60s, replying rather wearily, 'We said that in our generation. We said that in the seventies, we said that in the eighties, we said that in the nineties, and here we are. How long do we have to wait? And why should we wait?' Of course, what the younger staff member didn't know was that it was already happening in her generation. It was likely already happening to her. How would she know? Women earn less than their male counterparts right out of school or university, but with pay secrecy, how would you know?

The gender pay gap is pernicious. It's structural. It has consequences and harms that go well beyond the headline figures. That's why I'm so pleased to be speaking on this bill, the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023. The bill amends the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 to implement our election commitment to close the gender pay gap, and it responds to a number of key recommendations of the 2021 review of the act. The review made 10 recommendations designed to help Australia accelerate progress towards gender equality. This bill is the government's response. It's designed to accelerate action and to close the gender pay gap, and it does so in a number of key ways.

The bill requires the Workplace Gender Equality Agency to publish the gender pay gaps of relevant employers. Previously, this information was only available at the industry level. This measure is designed to promote transparency and accountability, to encourage employers to take steps to create change in their organisations to close their gender pay gap. It will encourage companies to prioritise gender equality. It will mean that women are more able to see clearly whether they are being valued equally, and the public will be able to see which organisations value their male and female staff equally. We are confident that this mechanism, one of accountability and transparency, will work because when the UK introduced similar legislation in 2017, companies did begin to prioritise gender equality in their pay.

The first gender pay gap reporting window will be in early 2024 for the current reporting period, which is 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023. Crucially, this requirement will mean only very limited additional work for employers because the data on the gender pay gap is already provided to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency. The change will simply see the agency publish the data at an employer level, allowing greater transparency and accountability as to where more work is required to close the gap. Further to this, in publishing their reporting employers are able to provide a statement giving context to their gender pay gap and detailing steps they plan to take to remedy it. This statement will be published alongside their gender pay gap data, and data will be reported on the Workplace Gender Equality Agency's website in a searchable format.

The bill also moves to improve accountability within organisations. The bill will allow the Workplace Gender Equality Agency to require relevant employers to provide reports—the executive summary report and the industry benchmark report—to all members of their governance body as soon as practicable after receiving the report from the agency. This will mean that those tasked with running such organisations cannot reasonably claim not to be aware of the gender pay gap within their organisation. In tandem, we plan to simplify the existing reporting processes, which employers have identified as a key pain point. This will reduce the regulatory burden on businesses, freeing up valuable time for them to focus on what is actually needed—fixing the gender pay gap and delivering action to reach gender equality.

In crafting this legislation, the government has consulted widely with stakeholders. We have consulted with stakeholders from business and the not-for-profit sector right across Australia, as well as employee organisations, higher education providers, the women's sector, users of Workplace Gender Equality Agency data and state and territory data, and—importantly—the Workplace Gender Equality Agency itself. It's fundamental to the mission of this bill, closing the gender pay gap, that women's voices are at the forefront of driving this change. Of course, we know that the gender pay gap will not be closed overnight. That's why the government has committed, as part of the bill, to review these amendments and the process of gender pay gap reporting five years after they're passed. This will ensure we have the flexibility to adapt reforms based on a comprehensive and critical interrogation of their effectiveness in achieving what they set out to do: driving progress towards gender equality in Australian workplaces.

It's so important to keep the mission of this bill at the heart and centre of this debate when the gender pay gap affects so many Australians. In 2022, Australia's national gender pay gap was 14.1 per cent. Practically, this means that, as of May 2022, the average weekly full-time earnings of a woman in this country, across all industries and occupations, was lower than their male counterparts by a whole $263.90 per week. That's $13,722.80 a year, or $672,470 over a lifetime. If you add in casualisation, part time and time off for parent work then the dollar gap is even more. There are parts of my electorate where you could buy a pretty reasonable flat or even a very small house with that kind of money. When you realise that older women are retiring with significantly less superannuation than their male counterparts, meaning more older women living in poverty, that is the direct impact of the gender pay gap. This is truly unacceptable and a constraint on the Australian economy at large. The gender pay gap alone represents a cost of $51.8 billion each year. The previous government committed to working towards implementing all recommendations of the 2021 review, and now the advancement of this bill is a welcome step in actually getting those aspirations done.

The gender pay gap reflects a deep structural inequality. It isn't an accident. It isn't an anomaly. It isn't just going to go away. It is not simply that many women take home less income than their male counterparts, although that is an obvious injustice. It's also about something bigger and deeper in our society. It's about how we recognise and reward different types of work.

During the pandemic, we found our who our essential workers really are. They're the nurses. They're our aged-care workers. They're our early childhood educators. They're our retail workers. The one thing that all of these industries have in common is that, essentially, the work undertaken in them is predominantly done by women. There is a second thing they all have in common, and I've said this in this place before: by curious coincidence, these workers are not rewarded in a way that recognises just how essential they are to the functioning of our society. That's why I was proud when the Albanese government advocated for a minimum wage rise last year and delivered one. It's why we will continue to fight to improve the wages and conditions of workers in these highly feminised industries.

When it comes to the gender pay gap, as I said earlier, the ramifications are sometimes hidden and ongoing, and we see this in the fact that older women are the fastest-growing group of people likely to experience homelessness. I've seen it countless times in my prior work. A woman approaching retirement age loses their employment or maybe has a family breakdown, and suddenly they find themselves with no way to pay the mortgage, no way to pay the rent, nowhere to live. This is often exacerbated by the fact that women often have far lower superannuation balances than men. Again, that reflects their lower wages across their lifetime. This is driven by a combination of the fact that women are statistically more likely to work in casual and part-time employment and the fact that much of the caring work done disproportionately by women is low-paid work or unpaid work. In practice, it means limited options for far too many women, too little economic security and a continued struggle to achieve gender equality.

That's why I'm proud to stand here as a member of the Albanese Labor government, which is truly committed to closing the gender pay gap, establishing an independent women's economic security task force to help inform budget decisions in advancing economic equality, making gender pay equity an object of the Fair Work Act 2009, requiring large companies to publish their pay gaps through this bill and, of course, extending paid parental leave, introducing paid domestic violence leave and cheaper child care, a constraint on women's work and often a cost borne by women. We are backing a real pay rise for aged-care workers, who are overwhelmingly women, and looking to provide backing for similar industries. Labor is committed to eliminating the gender pay gap because Labor is committed to real gender equality. Labor is the party of gender equality in Australia. The achievements that have marked the progress towards gender equality, almost without exception, have been delivered by Labor governments, and we will use all means at our disposal to continue this legacy to deliver gender equality in Australia. I commend the bill to the House.

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