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

I present the explanatory memorandum to this bill and move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

The Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 was first passed over 10 years ago, and since that time, findings from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency's dataset tell us that workplaces have a key role in making a difference in the lives of women and men.

This bill cements that role.

The bill charges employers with greater accountability towards gender equality in their workforces and helps drive the actions required in the workplace to bring about higher levels of gender equality in Australia.

As Australians, we pride ourselves on being a fair and equal society. However, for many in the workplace, that is not their experience.

Improving workplace gender equality is critical. Australian women deserve fair and safe working conditions. They deserve equal opportunity and equal remuneration.

In 2022, Australia's national gender pay gap was 14.1 per cent. In practical terms, as of May 2022, the average weekly full-time earnings of a woman in Australia, across all industries and occupations, was lower than the equivalent for men by $263.90 per week.

Women have on average 23.4 per cent less super when they come to retirement age than men.

They are overrepresented in industries with lower wages and underrepresented in positions of leadership. Though women make up half of Australia's workforce, they represent less than a quarter of all chief executive officers.About one-fifth of all boards and governing bodies have no female directors, and women hold just 18 per cent of chair positions and 34 per cent of board member positions.

Of course, gender discrimination in the workplace doesn't just impact women.

It is a constraint upon the whole of the Australian economy. The gender pay gap alone represents a cost of $51.8 billion a year.

In 2021, a review of the act made 10 recommendations that would help Australia accelerate progress towards workplace gender equality as well as making reporting easier for employers.

The review identified where further action was needed to strengthen the act and enhance our ability to improve the quality of data and the level of support provided to employers.

The Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023, together with the remade instruments under the act, fulfils almost all of the recommendations of the review requiring legislative amendment.

It also fulfils a key election commitment of this government to close the gender pay gap at work, including by boosting pay gap transparency and encouraging action to close gender pay gaps within organisations.

The bill will be a key driver for employer action, transparency and accountability and will help to speed up progress towards gender equality in the workplace.

It will do this by, for the first time, allowing the Workplace Gender Equality Agency to report gender pay gaps at employer level, not just the industry level.

The current approach of publishing aggregate industry gender pay gaps is not creating the transparency, accountability and insights we need in order to close the gender pay gap fast enough.

The United Kingdom has reported employer-level gender pay gaps since 2017, and there is clear evidence from the UK's experience that publishing employer gender pay gaps led to companies prioritising gender equality and a lowering of the gender pay gap.

Research indicates the value of publishing employer gender pay gaps in encouraging employers to address adverse gender dynamics in the workplace, and nudging individuals—both employers and employees—towards real-world action that will make change in their workplaces.

These new measures mean that the Workplace Gender Equality Agency will publish the first set of private sector employer gender pay gaps in early 2024, using data from this reporting period, which ends on 31 March 2023. This gives employers time to prepare and for the agency to work with employers to ensure that they are ready.

Employers won't be required to collect any new data for public reporting as it will draw on data that they have already provided to the agency. However, if they choose to, employers will be able to provide a statement to help explain any context related to their gender pay gap and actions that they are taking to address it. This will sit alongside their gender pay gap information which, again, will be published on the Workplace Gender Equality Agency's website.

The bill further improves public transparency and accountability by requiring relevant employers to provide certain reports—the executive summary report and the industry benchmark report—to their governing body. This means that the measures in this bill will also strengthen the agency's ability to support employers as they progress gender equality in their organisations.

In parallel to this bill, the remade instruments will streamline aspects of existing reporting that employers have reported to be 'pain points', reducing regulatory burdens and freeing up businesses to focus their efforts on gender equality action.

Again, the bill will align the act with the Workplace Gender Equality (Matters in relation to Gender Equality) Indicators) Instrument 2013 (No. 1) by including 'sexual harassment', 'harassment on the ground of sex' or 'discrimination' as gender equality indicators within the act.

This does not change reporting obligations, as relevant employers already report to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency on sex based harassment and discrimination.

Rather, this change recognises the importance of those core gender equality indicators and updates the act to bring it in line with its instrument and the Sex Discrimination Act 1984, as well as other legislative changes, including the Respect@Work reforms.

The bill reflects the increased ambitions of all those measures to strengthen gender equality, and to improve outcomes for both women and men in the workplace, by amending the act to rename current 'minimum standards' as 'gender equality standards'.

This bill is the first step—there is, of course, more that we want to do, not just broadly on workplace gender equality but specifically with regard to how the Workplace Gender Equality Agency can help us understand and close the gender pay gap.

For example, recommendation 3 of the review calls for the addition of a new gender equality standard requiring employers with 500 or more employees to commit to and achieve specific targets, and report their progress against the targets to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency.

The government is absolutely committed to this reform and to getting it right. The development of these gender equality targets requires close consultation with businesses and other stakeholders, to make sure that they are genuine, measurable, achievable and meaningful metrics which are shown to help progress gender equality.

The Minister for Women has asked the agency to undertake necessary consultation to progress this important work ahead of further legislative amendments to make these targets a reality.

In addition, since 2021 the Workplace Gender Equality Agency has been collecting, on a voluntary basis, workplace data that captures employees who identify as non-binary. One of the recommendations of the review was that the act should be amended to enable the mandatory collection of this data.

This is a change we want to make—it will bring this important piece of legislation in line with other Commonwealth standards, such as those used by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, when collecting data on gender. It will also enable a more fulsome picture of our workplaces—and one which will more accurately reflect Australian society.

But this change needs to be done carefully, in close consultation with businesses and employees, and with representation and advocacy groups and members of the LGBTQIA+ community.

We want to do this in a way that ensures people who identify as non-binary feel safe at work to disclose this information, with the confidence that their privacy will be preserved, that their personal information will be protected and that they will not experience adverse consequences in their workplace.

The minister has asked Workplace Gender Equality Agency to prioritise work in partnership with specialist organisations, the community sector, unions, and industry groups to develop an approach to collecting this data that is safe and respectful to people who identify as non-binary. The minister has also asked the agency to develop best practice guidance materials and provide education and support for businesses so that they're ready to collect this data when the time comes.

The Workplace Gender Equality Agency will progress this work together with the research it's conducting as part of recommendation 6 of the review, which recommended that the agency should undertake research and consultation on the collection of additional diversity data such as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander background, cultural and linguistic diversity, and disability.

Employees do not have to wait—they can voluntarily provide additional diversity data and can start moving towards greater diversity data collection, with support from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency.

Employers can seize the momentum of these reforms and to play their part in helping to close the gender pay gap.

There are further reforms to come and the Office for Women in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet will continue to work to identify the best pathway for us to legislate these important changes. The Workplace Gender Equality Agency will work with employers to ensure they are supported and able to step up.

Every measure in this bill has been designed in close consultation with stakeholders across Australia, including: the business and not-for-profit sectors, employee organisations, higher education providers, the women's sector, users of the Workplace Gender Equality Agency data, Australian government and state and territory government and of course the agency itself.

At every stage in the implementation of the review, government has shown a genuine willingness to consult—we've been transparent with stakeholders on our policy positions and reasoning, and indeed, many of the amendments in this bill have been fine-tuned as a direct result of the invaluable stakeholder feedback.

The government has also committed to reviewing these legislative amendments five years after they are passed—this will ensure we are able to critically consider and robustly interrogate how effective these measures have been in achieving their objective of accelerating progress towards gender equality in Australian workplaces.

This bill represents a critical piece in the government's ongoing commitment and action towards gender equality.

Together with our new National Strategy to Achieve Gender Equality, and working in concert with the respect at work; secure jobs, better pay; and improvements for families and gender equality legislation passed by this government, this bill will help us to achieve our goal of being one of the best countries in the world for equality between women and men. I commend the bill to the House.

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