Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's interesting to note today the number of women on this side of the chamber who are talking about the Girls Take Over Parliament event. It's interesting that the women are talking about it, and it's also interesting that the women let the girls take over—surprise, surprise!

I rise today to shine a light on the gender pay gap between men and women in this country. Lisa Wilkinson's actions this week have shone a very clear light on this issue, and for that I thank her. It is really important that we as a country address this issue. In the world I come from in education, we have a couple of truisms that we work with. One is that we measure what we care about. We measure what we care about so that we can set targets to improve. Yet, in Australia, only 27 per cent of employers have conducted gender pay gap analysis. Until the companies in this country demonstrate that they care about the gender pay gap by measuring it, we will get no firm action and no firm commitment. If we are serious about this issue, we will stop, we will measure it and we will set targets to improve this. I would like to say all the girls out there: be like Lisa, and close the gender pay gap.