Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Housing and Minister for the Status of Women. Can the minister please tell the House why a fair workplace relations system is important for women?

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Tuckey interjecting

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for O’Connor was not asked the question.

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Housing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am actually happy to give the call to the member for O’Connor, because it is a terrific insight into the opposition’s industrial relations policy, and I guess their women’s policy as well. Home in the kitchen, eh! All right, good! I want to thank the member for Page for her question. It was a very good question. It certainly did not deserve that interjection. Of course, both men and women need a fair industrial relations system, but we know that—

Honourable Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Housing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I hear the blokes up the back.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The minister will ignore.

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Housing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We know that women in Australia have been more dependent on awards to underpin basic pay and conditions than men. About one in five working women is reliant on an award, compared with about 13 per cent of working men. So the safety net that is provided by the award system has always been more important for vulnerable workers and for many women workers.

We had so many examples during Work Choices of pay and conditions being stripped away from working women. The system was undermined by having the rug pulled out from under it. There were the Spotlight workers asked to give up their leave and loading for an extra 2c an hour. There was the vegetable packer who saw her hourly rate fall from $16 an hour to $11 an hour after Work Choices. There was Janis, a cleaner, who had to apply for her own job after more than 30 years with her firm. There was Marianne, sacked without notice by her employer by email—example after example.

We also know that women who were on AWAs earnt significantly less than women who are on award pay or collective agreements. In fact, women on AWAs actually earnt about $90 a week less than women on collective agreements did. We know also that the gender pay gap—the difference between women’s earnings and men’s earnings—was much greater for women on AWAs compared with women on collective agreements. We know that the Work Choices system and AWAs in particular made balancing work and family much more difficult. Only about a quarter of AWAs had family-friendly provisions. That is not good for men or women, but we know that working women in particular are often the ones who have to make the arrangements to pick the kids up from child care.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Point of order, Mr Speaker. I draw your attention to standing order 62(c) and the behaviour of the Leader of the House.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Does the Manager of Opposition Business wish me to apply 62(c) when he is wandering around the chamber doing his job as Manager of Opposition Business?

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, with the greatest of respect to you and your position, the opposition is still trying to work out on what basis the member for Warringah was named for simply sitting and talking to the Leader of the Opposition.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

First of all, given the difficulties of discussing a decision of the House, he might like to read, perhaps, standing order 91 and other standing orders in that chapter.

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Housing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was just making the point about AWAs making it very difficult—

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister will resume her seat. The Minister for Trade and the member for Sturt, for differing reasons, are not assisting the House by thinking that they can just talk across the chair when the minister has the call.

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Housing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was just making the point about the difficulty of balancing work and family for many people who were on AWAs—the difficulty of knowing when you could pick your kids up, knowing what sorts of after-school things you could commit yourself to when you did not know when you would be working from day to day or week to week.

The Fair Work Act restores the balance that the opposition wants to take away, by extending equal remuneration provisions to include the right to equal pay for work of equal or comparable value, by allowing variation of modern awards for work value reasons, by strengthening the safety net and measures relating to women’s workforce participation, by providing access to multi-employer bargaining for the low paid and by enhancing protections from workplace discrimination. Work Choices and AWAs were killed stone dead by the Australian people at the time of the last election. There were many Australian women who voted against Work Choices partly because they were concerned about their own pay and conditions but partly because of the work environment that they wanted their kids and grandkids to have as they grew up. They voted against it and, if the Leader of the Opposition resurrects Work Choices and resurrects AWAs, they will vote against it again.