Susan Lamb (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today calling for dramatic change in how we as Australians view the work of women. Despite there having been some recent improvements towards closing the gender pay gap, we still have a very long way to go. Traditionally-female-dominated industries are still typically undervalued and underpaid. A recent Senate inquiry report recognises that the 'glass walls' that segregate Australian working men and women are as significant to the gender pay gap as the famed 'glass ceiling'. A working woman in a female-dominated industry would earn, on average, approximately $40,000 less than the average remuneration of a man in a male-dominated industry. This certainly isn't because these female dominated sectors are easy work or unimportant industries—quite the contrary, in fact. Workers in sectors like early childhood education, aged care, health and disability care remain some of the lowest-paid workers in this country. We've seen workers from these industries come together and call for recognition and a decent wage, like in the Big Steps campaign for early childhood educators. But the government just won't listen. But Leader of the Opposition Bill Shorten and we, his Labor team, are listening to their concerns. We hear them. We know that people who are educating our children in their formative years and those who are providing health and personal care for our families and friends in their senior years are important. We know that the work that they do is valuable, so we are calling for change. But the government just won't listen. They just won't act.

Last year the Senate Finance and Public Administration References Committee released its recommendations following the inquiry into gender segregation in the workplace and its impact on women's economic equality. The report noted that the inquiry had heard that closing the gap between male and female employment and productivity had the potential to make huge and significant boosts to Australia's GDP, like improving it by between 11 and 20 per cent. It seems that addressing gender pay equality would be a comparatively simple measure to reduce the huge national debt that the Liberals have created. Australia's gross debt now sits at over $530 billion, double what it was when the Liberals took office in 2013. That is not a very good report card. I would say it is a huge fail for a party that like to promote themselves as economic leaders. The government should be seriously considering recommendations that can bring the budget back on track, and yet they continually refuse to do so. The Senate committee made nine recommendations that commenced with a call for leadership and coordination across government to urgently deliver tangible, measurable action on pay equity. Yet this government refuse to do so. This inquiry report, with those recommendations, has been available to the government since last year. Yet, again, they refuse to act. Acting would support Australian women, acting would support the Big Steps campaign and the early childhood educators and acting would address the serious systemic gender problem that plagues their own party.

We've all known for quite some time that the coalition has a gender problem, but the events of the last few weeks, or, indeed, months, have made it absolutely apparent just how big this problem has become. There's been internal bullying at such extreme levels that it has seen the member for Chisholm decide to leave the parliament entirely. What a shame. That bullying isn't limited to within their own party either. The member for Brisbane recently referred to Labor's strong team of women as—get this, Deputy Speaker Vamvakinou—'cardboard cut-outs'. In the past week, we've also been on the receiving end of insults from other LNP stalwarts like Senator Abetz and Grahame Morris.

The women of parliament are not dregs; we are hard workers. It isn't fair that those opposite level their own biases against us because of our gender. It's a clear sign of weakness. They can't attack our strong policies, so they attack our gender. I am proud to say that my party, the mighty Australian Labor Party, is truly working towards gender equality as a party and as a nation.

Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Cyber Security and Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On average one woman a week is killed by a partner or former partner. And, at the current rate of progression, we won't achieve gender equality in parliament until 2046. The gender pay gap has been stagnant for two decades, and gender equality against many of the markers appears to have stalled in Australia. Since the coalition government came to power in 2013, Australia has slipped from 19th to 46th place in the Global gender gap report.

Despite all of the progress that's already been achieved, Australian women are still earning 14 per cent less than their male colleagues. According to the Australian Workplace Gender Equality Agency, a man working full-time earns nearly $26,527 more per year than a woman working full-time. We're not talking about pennies; we're talking about over $26,000 per year on average extra that a man is earning over a woman. Part of the solution to closing the gender pay gap is to identify where it begins. In order to find out what we need to do in the future, we need to work out where the nub of the problem is—where it is germinated. On average girls receive 11 per cent less pocket money than boys, according to the 2015 Australian Pocket Money Survey. I fail to understand how that can be. What is it? Are the parents paying less for the work that the girls do than the boys? It's kind of weird that there's such a difference there—11 per cent—in terms of pocket money.

The gender pay gap starts when we are children, and it follows us, as women, for our entire life. This is absolutely outrageous. There are so many women entering this workforce—73 per cent of them are graduates to be exact—and yet they're being paid 25 per cent less than men. In 2016 almost 75 per cent of university graduates of health were women, yet in 2018 it was reported that men in the healthcare industry are paid up to 25 per cent more than their female colleagues. Women graduating with degrees in education also outnumber men—75 per cent of graduates are female, yet women are paid almost 12 per cent less than men in this industry. How can this be happening? Does it begin with the in-built discrimination when we get pocket money? It continues in the workforce despite the fact that women outnumber men when it comes to university graduation. It begins at a young age, continues into a woman's 20s and 30s and continues on until she retires—and I will come to that in a minute.

There are an abundance of educated women to choose from when it comes to industries that require a tertiary education. Over 91 per cent of women aged 20 to 24 have attained year 12 qualifications or above, compared with 88 per cent of men in the same bracket. So more women than men are tertiary educated and more women than men are year-12 educated, yet in the industries where women outnumber men, health and education, we're still being paid 25 per cent less than men. There is something seriously wrong. It begins, I'm concerned to say, in childhood, continues through tertiary education, continues through the workforce and continues, unfortunately, in retirement.

Older single women are the fastest-growing group of people experiencing housing stress and homelessness in Australia. Women are retiring into poverty, and this trend is growing. Over 6,000 older women were homeless on the night of the 2016 census. That figure was up 31 per cent from 2011. It's an alarming jump in just five years. We need to keep having a conversation about older women and homelessness. The Equality Rights Alliance maintains we are facing a tsunami of homelessness among older women—300,000, 600,000; that's what we're potentially looking at. These are women who are invariably divorced, they've brought up kids on their own, they earn modest incomes, they have very little super and they are in the private rental market. These are women staring down homelessness, staring down a bleak future, and unfortunately, from the trends that I've discussed today, it seems that in-built discrimination begins in childhood.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This debate is timely, because we know that on Four Corners tonight there will be a story that exposes the crisis we're currently experiencing in aged care. Brave aged-care workers are speaking out about what they see and the frustrations of working in a broken aged-care system.

These workers have also been to Parliament House to speak to us, as MPs, about what's occurring in their sector. When they came to speak to us they spoke up about the lack of safeguards in the industry for quality of care. They spoke up about staffing rosters not being filled, particularly when people call in sick. They spoke up about how for-profit aged-care providers are skimping on meal budgets, spending sometimes only $6 a day per resident. They spoke about their love and compassion for the residents in aged-care facilities and how they were struggling to deliver the care that these aged-care residents needed. What they didn't speak about was their pay. What they didn't speak about was their wages and conditions. They'd come all the way to Canberra to advocate on behalf of their residents. It speaks volumes about the kind of people they are that when they were here in Parliament House they didn't speak about the fact they're on a minimum wage, the fact that their conditions are some of the poorest in the country, or the failure of the Fair Work system to recognise the gender pay gap in their profession; they spoke about the residents.

That's the crux of the problem we have: when we talk about the gender pay gap, we talk about women who work in care professions. They speak about the people they care for. They speak about the people they educate. They rarely speak about their profession. Yet we need to. We in this place need to recognise that the Fair Work Act is broken when it comes to resolving the gender pay gap. Sure, some activists will say, 'We beat the gender pay gap when we won equal pay for women back in the 70s and 80s.' Absolutely: two workers standing side by side should be paid the same and not discriminated against based on their gender. But the job's not done. We know, through report after report, that when women go for job interviews or promotions against male counterparts they're less likely to get them. There is a gender bias that exists.

We know that because we haven't got the right frame settings around ensuring that we support women—who may have caring responsibilities—that they're not being promoted and that there is still that gender bias that exists in workplaces. We know that in some of our industries, like in construction and in heavy metal manufacturing, we don't even have the basics, like a women's toilet close enough to the production line or a women's toilet on a construction site. So we know that there are still barriers in those non-traditional trade areas when it comes to women.

But the biggest gap that I believe we have and that we are not addressing as a country—or as a parliament—is equal pay for women working in predominantly 'women's industries', such as the care industry. Take the early childhood education and care sector. With Big Steps, the educators are standing up and demanding equal pay for their work. These are professional women with degrees, diplomas and certificates, yet they are not being paid more than what would be the minimum wage.

On Friday I was in Gladstone, and I went to a Goodstart Early Learning centre where all the women working there were enjoying their studies. They were getting on with their qualifications, and yet despite some of them having diplomas they were only getting an extra 50c an hour. Some were on $24 an hour and some were on $21 an hour. And they are responsible for the education of our next generation!

If we look at disability, the majority of the disability workforce is women. What we've seen with the rollout of the NDIS is a worsening of their workplace conditions. They're now being offered zero-hour contracts and being told they have to have their own cars to drive clients around in. They wake up in the morning and wait for a text message to be told if they have hours that day. They've got to be available for 12 hours of the day, but they're not paid for that; they're only paid for when they're with a client. They're not paid for travel time. So in a 12-hour day they might only be paid for six hours. This is because there is a perceived gender bias.

We in this country do not value care as a profession. We place a higher value on other, male-dominated industries. I welcome the motion and support the motion that's been put forward by the member for Sydney, and call for the government to work with the opposition to address this issue. There is a gender pay gap and there is a lack of recognition and support for women in the care and education professions.

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting. The Federation Chamber is suspended until 4 pm this afternoon.

Sitting suspended from 13 : 23 to 16 : 00