Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very proud to be supporting the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023 in the parliament today. It's a good day for the parliament because it's a good day for women's equality. It's a good day for a fairer Australia too.

In May 2022—the last figures I saw—women's average weekly ordinary full-time earnings across all industries and occupations were about $260 less than men's. That's not because women are less educated. In fact, we know that graduate pay already starts the lifetime of unequal pay for women. In fact, Australian women have high levels of educational attainment. The gender pay gap can start, nevertheless, as soon as a woman enters the workforce. In May 2021, half of all young women had a bachelor degree or above, compared with just over 36 per cent of young men. But, when you look at those graduate salaries and the graduate gender pay gap, men reported higher starting salaries than women in 15 of 19 fields of study in 2020. That includes science and maths graduates, for whom the full-time starting salary is $61,500 for women and $65,000 for men. It's not about education. It's not about men overtaking women in workplaces. The inequality starts from day one in the workforce.

We've known that this is a problem for many years, and we've made many efforts to address it. We've been working at this for some time. We've made legislative changes, but never enough to actually reduce the gender pay gap. It has been a stubborn problem in Australian society for many, many years. In fact, Justice Mary Gaudron pointed this out after a 1998 pay equity case. She said, 'We won equal pay once'—she was talking about the 1975 case—'then we got it again, and then we got it again, and now we still don't have it.' That's why I'm so very pleased today to be supporting this legislation—because in 2023 the excuses are over. We're done. We've had it. It's time to fix this problem. We've made legislative changes over the years but with the very slow rate of change that we've seen—because of the laws and the institutions that we've changed—we would be at this for decades more. We need to get in and make the substantial changes that will permanently change the gender pay gap in Australia.

When I had the women's portfolio in the Rudd years we had a look at what was then the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency. We made a number of reforms to the agency then. We introduced a number of transparency measures at the time. The review we did of the laws and the agency at that time told us—in what probably came as no surprise to any of us, I suspect—that female dominated industries had been historically undervalued. Well, that wasn't much of a surprise. It told us that women were less likely to be promoted into leadership positions and that women consistently earned less than men at work. We changed the remit of the agency at that time and changed the laws. We introduced new reporting frameworks for organisations, requiring large companies to report their progress against gender equality indicators. We provided tools to help large companies assess their own gender pay gap and see what they could do to better meet their aspirations to reduce gender pay gaps in their own organisations. At the time we did that it was considered world-leading. It was innovative, and the transparency measures were ahead of most other comparable nations—nations like us. But you have to say that what was right for 2012 isn't right for 2023. We need to continually update our laws and institutions, both because we haven't yet achieved gender equality and because we learn, by looking at other nations, that we need to keep pushing and updating what we're doing to get real results.

During the last decade we've seen other countries overtake us on these transparency measures—they're doing better than we are—and the results have seen us, as a nation, tumbling down the global equality rankings between men and women. Under the time of the previous government we fell to 50th in the world for gender equality, and for economic participation for women we fell from the 12th most equal country in the world to the 70th most equal country in the world. It's embarrassing that Australia would be the 70th most equal country in the world for women's economic participation. It's a truly shocking decline. We made changes when we were last in government. The changes that we made had, at their heart, the same thing that is at the heart of the changes that we are debating today, and that is the phenomenal power of transparency to drive greater equality in Australian society.

I think we probably all agree Australians are by their nature a country of people who pride themselves on the fair go. If we see inequality, if we see injustice, we want to call it out and we want to fix it. When you show we have a systemic inequality in Australia driven by institutional discrimination—sexism, in this case—Australians won't stand for it. They want to fix it. When we get companies to publish their gender pay gaps, there are a natural series of questions about why these gender pay gaps exist. Transparency was and always has been a great force for equality.

The key change in this bill is we'll now publish gender pay gaps at an employer level for companies with more than a hundred employees. That is a fantastic change. The information will be published on the WGEA website in a searchable tool that is available to the public. That's great for academics who are studying this, of course; it's also terrific if you're thinking about applying for a job. We've got a race for talent, a competition for talent, in the Australian economy at the moment. If you're thinking about applying for a job, you've two companies you're choosing between—this one or this one—you see this one's got a five per cent gender pay gap and this one's got a 20 per cent gender pay gap, you're choosing between the two of them and you're a woman, I think you're probably going to make the sensible decision about the one with the lower gender pay gap. It's important for shareholders to see what the business they've got a stake in is doing terms of the gender pay gap. This information is valuable for potential employees and for people who've got an interest in the business.

It's also so important to drive a change in business behaviour. If you are answering questions at shareholder meetings about why you have a bigger gender pay gap than the average for the industry or a big gender pay gap overall, answering your shareholders' questions about that pretty quickly focuses management on how to fix what is a systemic problem. And why we are fixing it? Is it just because it's the fair thing to do? That'd be lovely. It is the fair thing to do. But it's not just because it's the fair thing to do. The reason we have to fix this in the interests of business is that we know companies that have smaller gender pay gaps, that have higher levels of women in management positions, actually do better in business. It's because they've got different life experiences, different views, different perspectives sitting around the table when decisions are being made.

It's been long-term Labor policy to work on reducing the gender pay gap. We've taken policies around reducing the gender pay gap to each election, and I am really so very pleased to say this bill comes as part of a history of work and activism in this area by a succession of Labor governments. Closing the gender pay gap is core business for the Australian Labor Party, because it's about fairness. It was Gough Whitlam who backed that 1975 equal pay test case. It was Susan Ryan who passed the Sex Discrimination Act. It was Bob Hawke and Susan Ryan who established the first Affirmative Action Agency. We've seen each Labor government make its contribution towards greater equality for women in the workplace.

These changes are significant. They'll make a difference. I do particularly want to acknowledge the excellent work of the minister for industrial relations and the Minister for Women in prosecuting these changes and bringing forward this important legislation. I also think they, the two ministers, would be the first to acknowledge that this comes from a great deal of work, thought and activism from women and men in the great Australian trade union movement, including through pay cases for women in low-paid industries. It comes from the work of many, many branch members in branches right across Australia and them taking forward motions for closing the gender pay gap to our national conferences. Institutions and organisations like EMILY's List have campaigned so hard to make sure that we have solid policies on gender equality in the Labor Party. This is a real tribute to the hard work of those activists in the union movement and in the Labor Party over many years, indeed. It is also about the work of academics and others who have collected this information and built the evidence base for making these changes. They've examined what's worked around the world and they've asked, 'Why can't we have what's worked overseas work here in Australia?'

I also want to mention previous ministers who have worked in these areas. When Brendan O'Connor had this portfolio, Peta Murphy worked with him. They did an enormous amount of work on issues around the gender pay gap. I pay tribute to their work. For Lauren Power, who works in the Prime Minister 's office, this has been the work of many years. I want to make sure that her efforts are acknowledged here.

We will never have equality in society until we have equality at work, and we will never have equality at work until we have a more equal distribution of unpaid work as well as paid work. The gender pay gap shapes every aspect of people's lives—their ability to buy a home, to raise a family, to pursue their dreams, to save for a comfortable retirement, to leave a violent relationship and to have choice in their lives. That's why we are restoring Australian leadership on gender equality. We are supporting pay increases for low-paid workers, who we know are mostly women. We are making child care cheaper. We are expanding access to paid parental leave. We have our next national plan on violence against women and their children. We are passing legislation in response to Respect@Work. We are implementing gender responsive budgeting. We have passed our policy for 10 days paid domestic violence leave. We are ending pay secrecy clauses, which are so pernicious. We know that the industries with the greatest reliance on pay secrecy clauses—surprise, surprise!—have the greatest rates of gender pay inequality. Now there's this new addition: greater transparency, demanding that Australian companies disclose their gender pay gaps so we can close those gender pay gaps. I am proud to be part of a party that prioritises women's equality at work, and I'm proud to support this bill.

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