Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes! The Albanese government has a record number of women in cabinet and the ministry. I want to thank my ACT colleague and friend the Minister for Women, Senator Katy Gallagher, for her work in bringing this bill before the parliament.

I recently had the pleasure of hosting a Canberra women's forum with Senator Gallagher and ACT Deputy Chief Minister Yvette Berry in the lead-up to International Women's Day. It was an inspiring evening, with many great questions and discussions about issues affecting women across Australia. We still have a long way to go to progress gender equality in this country. Luckily, under Senator Gallagher, Labor has put gender equality at the heart of policymaking in this government, a Labor government that doesn't just make announcements but follows through on its promises. It is a government that has worked hard to deliver for women since the election 10 months ago. It's a government investing over $7 billion to drive gender equality in our first budget. It's a government that has a national strategy to achieve gender equality. It's a government which will make gender equality an object of the Fair Work Act. It is delivering 10 days paid domestic violence leave, enhancing the Paid Parental Leave scheme and delivering cheaper child care for 1.2 million Australian families. And this is a government that has introduced legislation for the Housing Australia Future Fund, which includes a focus on older women and women escaping domestic violence. That bill is currently before this parliament, and I think it's disappointing that anyone in this parliament would want to vote against, or consider voting against, the delivery of affordable housing for those most in need of it at the moment.

So we're making a lot of progress, but of course there's still more to do. That's why we've brought in the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023, which fulfils a key election commitment by this government to close the gender pay gap at work. Unfortunately, improvement in the gender pay gap has been stalling. In fact, in the previous financial year, under the last government, the gap actually increased by 0.3 per cent. In 2023 Australia's national gender pay gap sits at 13.3 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 $253.50 per week. That's not good enough: women should not be paid less than men and we must close this gap. The impact of this means that the average woman will pay a higher percentage of her earnings on bills than men, including essentials such as groceries, power bills and rent. This follows women into retirement, where they will have an average 23.4 per cent less super when they come to retirement age than men do.

Not only is this morally unacceptable but it is a constraint on the Australian economy. The gender pay gap alone represents a cost of $51.8 billion a year. The gap is present in all industries, from the top end of town to the suburbs. In 2022 only 14 women achieved executive levels in the top 200 companies in this country. I was pleased today to see that the 2021 National Community Attitudes towards Violence against Women Survey, which is conducted every four years, showed some improvements, with attitudes rejecting gender inequality increasing by five per cent. But it was disappointing to see the survey report that almost one in 10 of those surveyed still believe that men make more capable bosses than women in the workplace, and that one in 10 agree with the statement that men make better political leaders than women. This has to change.

We know that the gender pay gap is especially prevalent in highly feminised industries, which can be attributed to outdated and discriminatory assumptions about the value of the work that we do. But the pandemic brought home to us just how important the care industries really are. The heroes of the pandemic were those such as early childhood educators, nurses, aged-care workers, cleaners and disability support workers, who look after our young, ageing, and Australians living with disability. I recently had the pleasure of meeting a number of these invaluable workers when I visited BaptistCare Carey Gardens aged-care home in Red Hill with our aged-care minister, Annika Wells. I also recently visited Goodstart Early Learning in Garran, and met some incredible and professional workers at both of those. I would like to thank the staff at both of these centres for their dedication, for sharing with me the challenges they face and their positive plans for the future. The highlight was meeting the happy residents and the children, which was a testament to the hard work of the staff in both these important sectors. I'm proud to be part of a government that's working to fix aged care, which supported a pay rise for aged-care workers and is increasing access to early childhood education.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to mention a fantastic organisation in my electorate which I'm very honoured to be the patron of: WIC, or Women in ICT—information and communication technology. WIC is dedicated to championing women in tech through opportunities for networking, inspiring women to take their careers to the next level in the industry and supporting them to do so—increasing participation by women in this male-dominated industry. I want to acknowledge the current president, Tara Searle; vice president, Josephine Calabria; and the whole committee for the incredible work that they do, along with all the people who participate in WIC events. Whenever I've had the pleasure to go to their events, I'm really struck by the genuine warmth and the great spirit there from people who want to support women in this industry. Men come along as well, because that's a really important part of this.

WIC supports women in tech right from the beginning, with girls studying STEM in high school, helping to provide them with an opportunity to talk about some of the things that they are facing and whether they are considering furthering their education in this area, including providing scholarships for women who go to uni to study in these areas. It's really important and so inspiring, in particular, to see these young women studying in areas that didn't even exist when I was in high school. By taking this on, they have such a supportive, inclusive, wonderful group of women in this area, and I really commend their work and wish them all the best in continuing. Again, I am so honoured to be their patron and hope to support them in every way that I can.

This bill, like so much of the legislation the Albanese Labor government has passed to make Australia a better and fairer place, is being guided by evidence. We are a science and evidence based government, unlike the previous government. These reforms resulted from close consultation with stakeholders across Australia, including the business and not-for-profit sectors, employee organisations, higher education providers, users of the Workplace Gender Equality Agency data, Australian government and territory governments and, of course, WGEA itself.

This bill also responds to a 2021 review of the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012. The review made 10 recommendations to help accelerate progress towards workplace gender equality in Australia. Recommendation 2 of the review was to improve pay gap transparency, and this bill introduces new provisions allowing for WGEA to publish gender pay gaps of relevant employers for each reporting period. This will promote accountability and encourage accelerated action and change within organisations towards closing the gender pay gap. Recommendation 3.2(b) went to improving accountability for gender equality within organisations. For the first time, WGEA will report gender pay gaps at employer level, not just industry level. This will help encourage companies to priorities gender equality and work to close the gender pay gap. It will accelerate progress towards gender equality.

This is what happened when the UK introduced similar legislation in 2017. This change draws on data that employers already provide to WGEA and will give us more information about gender pay gaps and put employees on notice to take action. To strengthen the focus on gender equality, the bill will amend the act to rename current minimum standards as 'gender equality standards' to reflect the increased ambitions of these measures to strengthen gender equality, improving outcomes for both women and men in the workplace. To support the implementation of the Respect@Work report, this bill also amends the act to include sexual harassment, harassment on the ground of sex or discrimination as gender equality indicators in the act. These reforms will drive employer action, transparency and accountability and will help speed up progress towards gender equality in the workplace while at the same time streamlining reporting for employers.

Estimates indicate that, at the current rate of progress, it could take as long as 24 years to close the gender pay gap. Women have waited long enough. Improving workplace gender equality is critical. Australian women deserve fair and safe working conditions and they deserve equal opportunity and equal renumeration. This bill is getting on with the job of closing the gender pay gap for women in Australia. Labor has also committed to reviewing these legislative amendments five years after they have passed. This will allow critical evaluation of how effective these measures have been in achieving the objective of accelerating progress towards gender equality in Australian workplaces.

It's my firm belief that, to truly achieve gender equality in the workplace, we do as the member for Sydney and the Minister for the Environment and Water just said: we do need to ensure that unpaid work is also equitably shared between genders. I think that, to achieve gender equity in the workplace, we really need to see a normalising of taking time out of the workplace to be part-time for both men and women in respect of taking care of children, because that is really where the rubber hits the road in terms of the disparities between men and women in the workplace. I'm really proud of the work that we have done on paid parental leave under the Minister for Social Services and her leadership on that. We are extending the Paid Parental Leave Scheme and making it more equally shared between both partners. Seeing this normalisation not only is important for people accessing that scheme but also sends a broader message to employers about providing this leave for mothers, fathers and partners after the birth of a child. We know that when parents are able to take more time at that really special time for families, particularly when fathers are able to take that time, it means they will take more time and have more involvement as their children grow up. I think that is critically important, because we still live in a society where the responsibility of this is taken on predominantly by women, but this means that men miss out. In the days where it was just seen that the dad would work and the mum would be with the kids, the dads missed out on a really special time in their children's lives. It's good to see some movement in this area.

Government policy is a really important part of supporting people and families to make the choices that suit them the best and sending that message to employers. I remember that when I was working at Treasury some years ago we undertook a process of progressing women. In the time that that happened, we saw some real results around that. One of the things I remember having the most impact was some of the men—particularly senior men—going part-time. This was groundbreaking at the time, the idea that a senior person—let alone a man—could be part-time. To see the impact that this had for others and to see that people could do this was a really important step. Government policy of normalising that time out of the workforce to balance family and work is so important. I'm so proud of the work that we've done there, and I commend the minister on that as well.

It's a great honour to follow the Minister for the Environment and Water, who talked about being a majority-women government for the first time. It is wonderful to work with so many great women in this Labor caucus, and I'm very thankful for that opportunity. I particularly acknowledge the minister for coming to my Canberra Environment Forum last night, which meant so much to my constituents. It was a fantastic discussion.

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