Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was shocked by the unwarranted and quite vicious attack launched on Professor David Peetz by the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations in question time on 14 February, although it does now appear that the personal attack is becoming par for the course. I know Professor David Peetz on both a personal and a professional level. He is a person of integrity, credibility and high professional standards. He is currently Professor of Industrial Relations at Griffith University.

David Peetz has studied and written extensively on important workplace issues and has a distinguished record in industrial relations research, especially in the fields of union membership, wages policy and individual contracting. He is a widely published scholar and past President of the Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia and New Zealand. I had the honour recently of assisting in the launch of his book Brave New Workplace: How Individual Contracts Are Changing Our Jobs.

The minister’s attack on Professor Peetz was in response to an academic paper written by him which assessed the impact of the government’s Work Choices legislation, particularly on women. It should be noted that Professor Peetz made it clear in the introduction to his analysis:

It being less than a year since the laws took effect, any assessment of the impact of WorkChoices can, at this stage, only be preliminary.

The minister vilified Professor Peetz and tried to discredit his work, saying that his analysis was fundamentally flawed and that his report lacked academic integrity. The minister obviously did not like some of the findings in that study, particularly the following:

In short, WorkChoices has been associated with a decline in average real wages, at least in the short term, despite the economic boom.  It appears to have led to real wage declines in retail and hospitality, probably as a result of the loss of penalty rates in those industries, and in the short term at least a drop in real and relative earnings for women, while profits are at record levels

Well-known economics commentator, Ross Gittins, read the Peetz analysis and said it was:

… fact laden, measured and most informative.

He suggested that, with the attack it made on David Peetz, the government might have something to hide. And so it did.

We now know that yesterday the ABS data showed that Australian women on workplace agreements are earning less than women on collective agreements. When confronted with this data in question time, the minister had no answer. The minister’s hot air and personal vilification are no substitute for the facts. The minister should stop hiding from the truth about the impact of AWAs, particularly on women. On that same day, in question time, the minister told parliament:

... the pay gap between men and women has narrowed. So we are getting to a better position in relation to the pay gap.

The minister misled parliament. His claims are not upheld by the facts about the gender pay gap.

If one takes the data on all employees’ total earnings, one sees that there has been no narrowing in the wages gap since the election of the Howard government. The ratio of female earnings as a percentage of male earnings was 65.5 per cent in May 1996. A decade later, the most recent figure for November 2006 shows no change—the ratio remains at 65.5 per cent. If one takes full-time adult ordinary time earnings, one sees that the data reveals that female earnings as a percentage of male earnings have been in decline since February 2005, when the ratio was 85.2 per cent. By November 2006, that ratio had fallen to 83.7 per cent—the worst outcome in the gender gap on this set of data since August 1998.

In November 1996, the ratio on this data was 84.2 per cent; a decade later, the wages gap has gone backwards and fallen to 83.7 per cent. The minister misled parliament and should take the opportunity to acknowledge that he did so and correct his statements and claims about the gender pay gap. At the same time, he should unreservedly apologise for his attacks on the integrity of Professor David Peetz.