Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing and Seniors) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) at least 23 women have been murdered so far this year at the hands of an intimate partner in Australia;

(b) on average, more than one woman a week is murdered by a current or former partner;

(c) violence against women and their children is worsening in the face of job losses, stand-downs and financial stress and uncertainty; and

(d) domestic and family violence services funding was inadequate before the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of the associated restrictions will affect rates of violence for a significant time; and

(2) calls on the Government to:

(a) follow Labor's call to convene a national summit on violence against women and their children; and

(b) urgently provide more support for frontline services.

Of course, what we know from COVID-19 and what we've seen from the data and statistics is that it's having a really big impact on women in our community. Indeed, we know that most of the essential workers who have been working throughout this pandemic, and particularly during times of lockdown like we now see in Victoria, are women—predominantly, sadly, in low-paid jobs.

When we look at the statistics, 80 per cent of the aged-care and disability workforce are women, and we've seen the horrific impact that COVID-19 is having on aged-care facilities right across the country. That's not just in Victoria—of course, we had two terrible outbreaks in New South Wales as well. Eighty per cent of healthcare and social assistant workers, including nurses, doctors and hospital staff, are women and 85 per cent of primary school teachers are women. Seventy-five per cent of checkout operators in retail stores are women, 57 per cent of commercial cleaners are women and of course 96 per cent of childcare workers are women. We're seeing a real issue in Victoria at the moment in relation to accessing child care for those women who do work as well as the workers in child care themselves. Of course, the workers in child care in Victoria at the moment are unable to access JobKeeper and women who are not able to go to work in the lockdown in Victoria are facing a big dilemma about whether or not to hold their childcare places. That is impacting very heavily on the workers and centres in terms of their workforce. We know that during the months of April and May in Australia the government did provide some additional support to childcare centres, but we know that the premature withdrawal of JobKeeper for childcare workers is having a very significant impact on that workforce, particularly in Victoria today.

We know that at least 200,000 Australian women who have insecure work in the accommodation, food services and retail sectors alone missed out on JobKeeper. They were in casual positions and had been in them for less than a year and therefore were excluded from this payment. So we know that it's also impacting them. We also know from the ABS that women lost more jobs during some of the shutdowns that have occurred across the country—and again, in Victoria, which is really bearing the brunt of its lockdown at the moment.

The other important impact is that we know that women are now doing more unpaid housework because of COVID and that women are predominantly taking on more of the teaching and learning-from-home work with their children during the lockdowns that have occurred across the country in the last few months. So this pandemic is really having a significant and disproportionate impact on women in Australia.

What we haven't seen from the government is an actual response which impacts on women significantly. What we've seen instead is a proposal from the government to change fees for TAFE and university for some of the positions that women predominantly work in. We've seen a suggestion that they're going to produce some sort of economic statement that we haven't yet seen. I've asked many times about this JobMaker program that the government has and how many jobs it will actually make for women. Of course, the only program that we've heard announced under JobMaker to date really is about the predominantly male industry of the building sector. We haven't seen from the government an actual response that deals with the disproportionate impact that this crisis, this pandemic, is having on the women of Australia. Of course it will be the women of Australia that are being impacted in the economic response or lack thereof unless the government does something about addressing the disproportionate impact. Women will continue to be disproportionately impacted for a long time to come.

So I hope that the government does actually deliver the economic statement that it said it would do in June, because Australian women and their families are depending on it. We have Equal Pay Day coming up later this week. We know that the gender pay gap remains stubborn at around 14 or 15 per cent. I think it is about 14 per cent at the moment. We know there is more work to do. This pandemic will increase the gender pay gap. Women are going to go backwards because of this pandemic. The women of Australia need a government that will respond, that has some answers, that addresses the disproportionate impact. As I said, at the moment the only program under JobMaker is to do with the building industry. That does need some support, but it is disproportionately dominated by men. So it's about time that this government has a program that disproportionately impacts on women when it comes to the response, because the women of Australia and their families really need it.

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Katie Allen (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the motion put forward by the member for Franklin. While I agree with some of the things that the member for Franklin spoke about, I also would like to say that there are many things that the government is doing. In my view, there is more that we can always do, but it is important to note the things that are being done and acknowledge them, because they are very important as a point to actually understand what has been already initiated. The first thing to say is that the Morrison government has responded to the COVID pandemic with JobKeeper, JobSeeker and the emerging JobMaker. Those economic cushionings are very, very important for the whole of the Australian economy, but of course they have also provided support for those industries that have been hard hit. As the member for Franklin said, those industries include healthcare, retail, and a whole variety of other food services and other sorts of industries. Women provide services in that area in greater proportions than men, but they are also receiving greater support and benefit through both JobKeeper and JobSeeker. We have seen also, most encouragingly, in the most recent analysis that there is a sign that the economy is already recovering.

So the good thing about what we've done with regard to our health response is that we've been able to contain the pandemic, outside of Victoria anyway, and this has meant the economy is now opening up. This is good for the jobs of Australia because it has meant that while there are now 1.3 million jobs that were lost, almost 700,000 are now back in the job situation. This is important because as the economy recovers so will women's jobs recover.

But what I want to talk about for the rest of my speech is the issue of the Women's Economic Security Statement. I'm proud to say that it was the previous member for Higgins, the honourable Kelly O'Dwyer, who championed the Women's Economic Security Statement. We understand, as a government, that women have been joining the workforce in greater numbers, and we understand that our economy does well when women join in greater numbers. One of the key planks of the Women's Economic Security Statement was increasing work force participation. Minister O'Dwyer oversaw the higher proportion of women in the workforce under her leadership. She's also worked very hard to ensure women's increased earning potential and economic independence. This statement highlights the challenges and barriers faced by women trying to achieve secure economic parity with men.

The statement includes $158.3 million of practical and tangible initiatives to provide economic security for women and girls. This will be refreshed later this year. One of the initiatives in this economic statement is the Academy For Enterprising Girls, an initiative that encourages women and girls to participate in STEM, a topic which is a very close to my heart. To ensure economic security for the women and girls of tomorrow we need to educate them for the jobs of the future today. That starts with being aware of the jobs that are going to become greater in number going forward, so that we can be ready to rebound after the COVID pandemic to make sure we're ready for the jobs of the future.

The statement builds on and will work in tandem with existing government programs that benefit women and helps them at every stage of their careers and family. This is just a number of those. The ParentsNext program helps parents re-entering the workforce after having children by helping them identify educational and career pathways. The Career Revive pilot assists and supports businesses to employ women after a career break. We all know women who have taken time out and have trouble getting back into the workforce without having the confidence and the skills to do so. The Mid-Career Checkpoint program will support 40,000 Australian women between the ages of 30 and 45 who are looking to return to the workforce. These are tangible, practical initiatives that are aimed at helping get women into the workforce that understand their workforce participation issues around being primary carers.

But further than that, we also understand that women struggle with the financial peaks and troughs of a woman's working life. As such, we have introduced the low-income superannuation tax offset, which will benefit over 1. 9 million women and has done so since July 2017. The government's superannuation payment of up to $500 to help low-income earners save for retirement has seen over $500 million in super contributions made to eligible women who earn less than $37,000 a year. The benefits for women are very clear in the initiatives we have rolled out. We understand that financial security, resilience and empowerment give women real opportunities and choices about their lives and the lives of their family.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to thank the shadow minister for women for raising this issue today. I also commend her for her longstanding commitment to gender equality and her tireless hard work and advocacy for Australian women. The disproportionate and devastating economic impact of COVID on women is indisputable. Throughout the pandemic women have seen their jobs disappear, their unpaid workloads climb, while they have been disproportionately excluded from government support. And their superannuation balances have stalled, gone backwards or disappeared entirely.

Even before COVID-19, gender inequality was baked into the system in so many ways. On virtually almost every measure, women came out second-best on pay rates, on superannuation and retirement incomes, on employment opportunities, on workplace bullying and sexual harassment, and the list goes on. As a result of all the systemic inequality, women over 50 are now the fastest growing cohort of people facing homelessness. Regrettably, this pandemic has only deepened those pre-existing fault lines despite the fact that it has been women who we have relied on to care for us and to protect us throughout these perilous times.

But rather than being recognised for this vital role, women have borne the brunt of the crisis at every turn. Indeed, women were the first to lose their jobs as widespread shutdowns hit the retail, hospitality and accommodation service sectors, where they are disproportionately employed. Then as shutdowns spread and children were increasingly kept home, the increased burden of care and education was largely borne by women. While this has meant increased unpaid hours, it has also restricted the paid work that women have been able to undertake. Women are also more likely to be employed in casual jobs that were excluded by the Morrison government from the JobKeeper wage subsidy. And then, in a stroke of bitter irony, the first and only group of workers to have JobKeeper removed early were the early childhood educators, 95 per cent of whom are women.

But it gets worse, because the disproportionate economic impact on women will again rear its head in September when part-time workers—again more likely to be women—will have their wage subsidy halved to $750 a fortnight. Even as the economy starts to add jobs, women seem to be returning to work at lower rates than men. Certainly, this has been the case in my electorate of Newcastle. We gained 3,800 jobs in July but only 400 of them were filled by women. Given all these terrible inequities it's no wonder that more women than men turned to the Morrison government's offer to withdraw superannuation early. Indeed, AMP estimates that 14 per cent of women have cleared out their entire superannuation balances. Sadly, this could slash more than $100,000 from their retirement balances and impact their financial security for life. To add insult to injury, they will be less able to make up these losses thanks to the stubborn gender pay gap, which has failed to drop below 14 per cent in two decades.

While women are bearing the brunt of this grave disruptive virus, inequality impacts all Australians. But we can turn this around because we know that when gender equality increases the benefits also flow to the broader economy and the community in many ways. Indeed, the McKenzie Institute estimates that if action is taken to advance gender equality we could add up to a staggering $13 trillion to the global GDP. To this end, the United Nations has called on governments across the planet to act. Specifically, it's calling for equal representation of women in all COVID-19 response planning and decision-making, and it's asking governments for real transformative change to the care economy, both paid and unpaid.

It's now more than ever the Morrison government must bring a gendered lens to the budget process. Every minister should be asking how their policies and decisions will impact women and girls so we can address equality in recovery too. A single-mined focus on shovel-ready jobs and industries that employ few women is not acceptable. Australia's pink collar recession demands a new toolkit, a new economic response. Don't let us down, Prime Minister. (Time expired)

Angie Bell (Moncrieff, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's true, the economic security of women has been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. Unfortunately, business closures caused by health restrictions have occurred in industries where women make up a large proportion of that workforce. We should also acknowledge that many of the women who have maintained employment through the pandemic have been essential workers who are exposed to greater risks than most. We're all conscious of the risks faced by our nurses, the majority of whom are women, and we thank them for what they are doing on the front line every day.

Pre-pandemic, the economic security of women in Australia was improving due to women's efforts, improvements by employers and the government. The gender pay gap had closed to its lowest level on record of 13.9 per cent, a significant improvement from the gap of 17.4 per cent under those opposite. With 9,700 businesses in Moncrieff currently relying on JobKeeper, we know that JobKeeper is the reason that many women in vulnerable industries, like tourism, food services and retail, still have jobs.

The jobkeeper-employer connection is well understood, but we should take time to consider why it's particularly important to women. Often women have negotiated arrangements in the workplace, at home with their family and in their community activities to carefully balance their commitments. When a woman loses her job, even if she's fortunate enough to find another, she then faces the often difficult process of re-harmonising the many aspects of her life. That's why JobKeeper is about so much more than money to pay bills; it's given many women in Moncrieff a degree of stability that's even more important in this time of crisis.

The government knows that child care is important for the workforce participation of women and has acted to support the childcare sector to support the workforce participation of women during the pandemic. For example, since July, families with reduced activity due to COVID-19 have been able to access 100 hours of subsidised child care per fortnight up until 4 October 2020 and higher subsidies where eligible.

The good women of Moncrieff will also benefit from the government's continued implementation of our $158.3 million women's economic security plan that the member for Higgins just mentioned. This government was the first to introduce this statement in 2018. The plan will be updated this year, and I'll be taking a keen interest in the benefits of the plan update for the women and the girls of the central Gold Coast. The programs from the package will make a significant difference to many women. For example, the Mid-Career Checkpoint program, targeted at women 30 to 45, will support up to 40,000 Australians looking to return to work after spending time caring for others.

Moncrieff is the small business engine room of the Gold Coast, so I expect that another of the programs, Boosting Female Founders Initiative, will be of great interest to many women in Moncrieff. By investing $18 million over three years to provide access to capital for women engaging in innovative entrepreneurship, the government is helping to address the greater difficulty female start-up founders experience when seeking to raise venture capital. I say to entrepreneurial women outside the Gold Coast: consider starting or continuing your entrepreneurial journey on the Gold Coast, where we're already re-imagining the future. Last week, as the chair of the City Heart task force, I brought together over 100 bright minds, creating a platform via the reimagined Gold Coast forum, to shape the future of jobs, skills and industry in our beautiful city. Women of Australia, the entrepreneurial spirit of the Gold Coast will welcome your business.

Superannuation is a key concern for the economic security of women. The compulsory superannuation system has needed reform to better meet the needs of women. Problems have included the impact of the gender pay gap and the design of a system being premised on a continuous work history for paid work. The government has introduced measures to support the retirement savings of women, including the low-income superannuation tax offset, LISTO. Since 1 July 2017, about 1.9 million women have benefitted from the offset, delivering an over $500 million improvement to the economic security of women to date from that measure alone. Other tangible measures by our government include the co-contribution scheme, the introduction of catch-up concessional contributions and the Protecting Your Super package. But Labor wants to remove concessional catch-up contributions, threatening to remove the opportunity for women to catch-up on their superannuation contributions after taking a break from the workforce. This is more important now than ever.

By guiding the economy through this crisis, delivering economic lifelines to women through tangible supportive measures, workforce participation and their retirement savings, the Morrison government is planning and delivering for the economic security of Australian women.

Emma McBride (Dobell, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

While every Australian has been impacted by COVID-19, it's clear the economic impact, both in the short and long term, is falling disproportionately on Australian women. It is also clear that this economic impact is being felt more by women in regional and remote Australia. In my community on the Central Coast of New South Wales, underemployment of women is 34 per cent—the highest in Australia. The federal government must act. The global pandemic has exposed the social and economic fault lines in our society, and women are falling through the cracks. At a time when the work done by women, paid and unpaid, is protecting us and keeping us safe from COVID-19, it is undervalued and undermined by this government.

Women were already at the frontline of caring. According to the recent Deloitte Access Economics report, The value of informal care in 2020, 60 per cent of all carers and 70 per cent of primary carers are women, with primary carers spending an average of 35 hours per week providing care. A study by the government's Workplace Gender Equality Agency found that women are likely to increase time spent on caring responsibility as a result of the pandemic. They are more likely to care for sick family members at home and take on education related responsibilities while children are home from school. The report found the increasing caring responsibilities can heighten feelings of stress and limit women's economic opportunities. Clearly, much greater support for carers is needed.

Sadly, the pandemic has seen the very real human consequences of the gross underfunding of aged and disability care, a sector where women are on the frontline, underpaid and undervalued. Staff shortages, PPE shortage, casual work and poor pay and conditions, forcing individuals to work across multiple aged-care homes, have all contributed to the spread of COVID-19. These problems were known before the pandemic hit, and the government had spent less than half of the money it promised the aged-care sector for COVID-19 by the end of June when the outbreaks occurred in Victorian aged care.

This government must address the cost of child care and early childhood education. Instead, it has chosen to snap back to high fees in the middle of a recession. Many families will be forced to give up child care, and parents, particularly women, will be forced to give up work and the benefits of early childhood will be lost. Sarah, from Forresters Beach in my electorate, told me:

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become clear that our current government care less about the welfare and future of women and children than they do about large business and construction, which predominantly employ men. It is clear that our society does not value early childhood education as a meaningful and valuable contribution to the lives and outcomes of children, despite evidence to the contrary having been around for a long time. Investing in the care economy will create jobs and lift women's and girls' opportunities.

We've just marked Homelessness Week across Australia. A 2019 WYCA housing report found that women aged over 50 are the fastest growing group of people at risk of homelessness in Australia, with a 30 per cent rise in the number of women sleeping in their cars, couch surfing or accessing crisis accommodation since 2011. Labor has repeatedly called on the Morrison government to invest in social housing as part of a comprehensive stimulus plan to kickstart the economy. This includes building more social housing, the repair and maintenance of existing social housing and the building of more affordable rental accommodation for frontline workers—urgently needed for women.

Now more than ever it's important that the government addresses the gender pay gap. A recent report by the Financy Women's Index suggests that the pandemic is pushing out the time frame for closing this gap by another four years—another generation or more of Australian women working for less than they deserve and experiencing poverty during their working lives and in retirement. This government should strengthen the ability of the Fair Work Commission to order pay increases for workers in undervalued female-dominated industries and make pay equity a central objective of the Fair Work Act. The government should also invest in education and training programs to address the gender segregation of the Australian workforce.

This pandemic is risking the retirement security of many Australians, particularly women. Australian women retire with less super than men. The average superannuation balance at retirement for women is around $120,000 less than for men. The impact of job losses, underemployment and early withdrawal of superannuation savings due to financial hardship will only worsen this situation. The government must support, not undermine, the superannuation guarantee, the mechanism which has done the most to improve women's financial position in retirement. In closing, the government should produce a women's budget statement as part of the budget this year and every year for the benefit of all Australians.

Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The COVID-19 pandemic has had wide-ranging and devastating impacts. My electorate of Mallee is in the unique and unenviable position of bordering two states that have taken hardline, parochial approaches to the management of the virus. For the Victorian, New South Wales and South Australian state governments, the statement 'All in this together' has lost its meaning. Regional Australians, particularly those living in cross-border communities, including Mildura, Robinvale, Swan Hill, Murrayville, Kaniva and Edenhope, are being left behind. These communities are being decimated by unwarranted and unconstitutional border restrictions. I've heard from families, businesses, farmers, agricultural workers, students, teachers and healthcare workers. These people are telling me that their health is at risk, their business is losing money or closing, they are missing out on shifts and their education is suffering. Although I have been contacted by many different people, in keeping with this motion today, I will focus on the stories shared with me by women and about women to highlight how the decisions taken by state governments are affecting their daily lives. In just over a week, I have been contacted by over 30 people with urgent medical issues who would normally rely on medical services in South Australia for treatment and ongoing care. Whether it's a woman that needs to go to South Australia to visit her obstetrician, or the mother of a young child with cancer, women are being hurt by the decision taken by the South Australian government to close their border to Victoria. Last week I heard from Marcia, a woman from Underbool with kidney cancer, who has been denied an exemption for ongoing chemotherapy that she desperately needs. Joanne from Kaniva is pregnant for the third time in 12 months, after two devastating miscarriages. She knows that this is a high-risk pregnancy and needs continuous and ongoing care. Unfortunately, the new border measures mean that she has been denied access to her regular obstetrician in Adelaide. Sally, also from Kaniva, sadly has terminal cancer. Her immune system is compromised due to chemotherapy, so she's rarely left her farm since the pandemic arrived in Australia. She is now being denied her medical care because, as a Victorian, she apparently poses a risk to South Australia.

Not only are these border restrictions affecting the health of women and their families, the closures are also affecting their livelihoods and educational outcomes. Take Kristy from Sea Lake. Kristy is in her final year of her Bachelor of Nursing at the University of South Australia. She is on track to complete her course by the end of this year but needs to go to Adelaide to complete a four-hour practical trial in order to graduate. She applied for an exemption but has been denied, meaning her ability to graduate has been cast in doubt.

I've spoken to Michaela from Maryborough, who is entering the second year of her studies in medicine at the University of Wollongong. Her family, with two young children, was planning to move to Wollongong to support Michaela through her studies. They've sold their home and business in Maryborough but will no longer be able to relocate to New South Wales due to the border closure. Her educational outcomes and her family's financial security are at risk.

Several mums who live in Victoria and send their kids to school in Tooleybuc in New South Wales have also contacted me. Due to a change in the border permit system, these mothers are now unable to send their kids to school because they live outside the arbitrary border zone identified by the New South Wales government, sometimes by as little as two kilometre. Lisa, for example, lives one kilometre outside the border zone. Lisa and her husband grow wheat, barley, canola, chickpeas, lentils and lupins. She provides a critical service to this nation. Not only will her children's education suffer but the increased pressure from homeschooling will mean the farm will suffer too. Lisa's children are among 22 who are now no longer able to travel to Tooleybuc—to go across the bridge to school.

These are just a handful of the hundreds of stories that have been shared with me and other border MPs over the past few weeks. COVID-19 is not present in the border regions, and the blunt control measures cited in relation to it are neither lawful under the Constitution nor justified in practical terms. These parochial decisions by rival state governments are hurting women and their families in my electorate. I implore the state governments to reconsider their approaches to these border restrictions and develop workable solutions for our border communities.

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

Thank you to the member for Franklin and shadow minister for women for creating this opportunity to discuss this very important issue and for the leadership she's showing around the issues important to Australian women in this parliament. COVID-19 has brutally exposed the fault lines in our society. Women already struggled to get paid fairly, to get permanent work, to have their industries taken seriously and to share unpaid work equally. The pandemic has exacerbated all of these issues and, in some cases, impacted women in ways that will effect them for the rest of their lives.

Superannuation is something that I am particularly concerned about in that regard. As the shadow minister for women points out, women typically retire with half the superannuation balance that men do. Put simply, it means that after a lifetime of work and care giving, women are retiring to a life of poverty, and this is borne out in the homelessness statistics. Women over the age of 55 are the fastest-growing cohort of homeless Australians. We need strategies now that assist women to boost their super balances—embrace the magic of compound interest and set women up comfortably for retirement. Therefore, it concerned me greatly when the Liberal Party started laying the groundwork last week to peel back plans for increases to the rate of superannuation payable by employers in this country.

It all began when assistant minister for super, Senator Hume, said she was ambivalent about sticking to the government's promise to increase super to 12 per cent by July 2025. The assistant minister cited tough economic times for potentially reneging on this promise. Let's be clear about what this increase actually constitutes. From next financial year, 1 July 2021, super is set to increase by 0.5 per cent. It will then creep up by 0.5 per cent every year until 2025. This is slow and incremental policy change that must continue. It is slow and incremental policy change that enables businesses to plan for the increase. Despite the pandemic and the economic impact, this slow and incremental change allows businesses to recover while also doing the right thing for the workers.

For too long we have known that the current levels of super will not provide sufficiently for Australians in retirement. Almost 50 per cent of Australians expect to retire with less than $200,000 in super, and just 19 per cent of us expect to be able to retire with enough to live comfortably. To make matters more challenging, both for the individual and for the country, the ratio of taxpayers to pensioners is decreasing as our population ages. Right now we have about 3.6 workers to every one pensioner. By 2040 this will drop to about 2.6 workers to every pensioner.

In part, super was designed by Labor to ensure that this challenge was mitigated—good, long-term economic planning to set up the country and its citizens for the future. But this government wants to undo this planning. Despite taking home 15.4 per cent taxpayer funded super himself, the Prime Minister has indicated he is considering the delay of the already legislated increase to superannuation. The Prime Minister claims that any decision on this front will be made in the best interests of Australians. If that is the metric, clearly keeping the legislated increase in place is in the best interests of Australians.

Instead of going backwards on super, we actually need to go further. We need to think carefully about how we improve the superannuation balances of Australian women. We need to think about how we can mitigate the effects on super balances that happen to women when they go on maternity leave, when they take time off to care for children and other relatives, and when they work part-time in order to balance these caring responsibilities. We need to figure out how to change the fact that the median superannuation balances for women at retirement are 20.5 per cent lower than that for men. It has been astounding to watch this government throw any consideration of the needs of women out the window as they have dealt with this crisis. The way they have treated the female dominated childcare and early education workforce, which consists of 96 per cent women, is a prime example of this, from the fake free childcare policy to swooping in to take JobKeeper away from the female dominated industry months before anyone else. These are not highly paid people. Why do they have to take the brunt of this government's erratic policymaking process? I call on the government to rethink their approach to economic stimulus and create an economy that is truly equal for men and women in this country.

Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

From bushfires to pandemics, emergencies expose the precarious nature of our hard-fought wins. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the consequences of COVID-19 for women. Women went into the crisis already behind. We are more likely to be in poverty, underemployed or in casual employment, and more likely to earn less money in equivalent roles and have less savings and less superannuation. We do the lion's share of unpaid labour and we're taught never to expect thanks for it. From this starting point, things have become worse. The pandemic has destroyed paid work for many women while increasing their unpaid work burden. The government's policy response to date has been absent and largely inadequate to this empirically demonstrated issue. The essential workers in this pandemic, our front line, are women. We make up the majority in health care, early childhood education, aged care and disability sectors—sectors also characterised by casualisation, understaffing and low wages. In aged care, it's mostly women who turn up day in and day out, doing their utmost in a system that's largely broken—a system that is the epicentre of the worst COVID outcomes for our elders; a system that urgently needs repair.

The findings of the aged-care royal commission's examination of COVID-19 found that the service was grossly lacking. In fact, the service urgently needed action on the recommendations of the interim report of the royal commission into aged care and safety—a report that was handed down in October 2019; a report with a damning one word title, Neglect. If that report had been acted on immediately, perhaps we wouldn't see the deaths that we're seeing right now in aged care centres across some of our most desperate areas in Melbourne. Indeed, right now families all across Australia are also asking, 'Why did our federal government not act on what they knew from the interim report? Why did they not urgently address the issues that would lead to a repeat of the experience of Europe? Why not act on the Newmarch House report? And why are they not urgently funding aged-care packages to keep our elders in the one place where we know they're safest right now, and that's at home?'

We need to prepare other vulnerable sectors. Disability workers in my electorate still aren't getting access to PPE unless there's an outbreak or infection. This is unacceptable, and it's unacceptable for the large numbers of women who work in that sector. We need to keep our workers and those they support safe.

The education of women and their families is also suffering. Women are postponing or dropping out of university or TAFE places because they're needed at home or paying their bills takes priority over the books. For parents of school aged children, supervised learning, remote learning, has rapidly become women's work. Research has shown that male partners are reverting to stereotype, overwhelmingly leaving women to do the impossible: balance full-time work and full-time supervision. For early childhood education, I'm gravely concerned that the government's policies risk the viability of many providers in rural and regional Australia, at the moment when we need them the most. The impacts on women from a lack of accessible and affordable child care are obvious. Over 90 per cent of early childhood educators are women. Anything that threatens their job security is another blow for women's financial independence.

In this place, we're asked to pass laws that lay the groundwork for what our society looks like on the other side of this pandemic. Will women be expected to shoulder the burden as our gains are wound back and inequalities become entrenched or will we chart a course for a future that protects our most valuable asset? We need to ask, with each piece of legislation and with each government decision: how are women affected? How will this mitigate the impacts on women? Last month I asked the Minister for Women for an analysis of the gender impact of COVID-19 and the government's policy responses. I, again, ask the minister to release it before the budget, so we can assess the budget response to the gendered nature of this pandemic.

We need women leading decision-making and policy formation. We need to strengthen the sectors that employ women, and young women in particular, and we need to strengthen and improve the working conditions of our female dominated industries on the front line: aged-care workers, disability workers, support workers, NDIS workers. We have the power and we must have the wisdom to take action now, to mitigate long-term consequences—because we know that if women suffer we all go backwards.

Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No-one believes that women and men started COVID on an equal economic footing. In January, pre-COVID, Australian women were still retiring with, on average, 47 per cent less super than men, and women over 55 were the fastest-growing group of homeless people. There were fears of a big impact, as the number of older Australian women grows. There was already a 13.9 per cent gender pay gap and—just to finish the picture—there had been no success in reducing the number of women killed by family violence or the number of women experiencing violence, despite 10 years and tens of millions of dollars in funding. On average, one woman a week was still being murdered by her current or former partner and one in three Australian women had experienced violence since the age of 15.

Along comes COVID. In its research, AMP notes that many of the industries that have been hardest hit by the pandemic are the ones that are found in the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury, the regions that make up my electorate of Macquarie. These are so-called family-friendly flexible jobs, traditionally filled by women—that is, retail, hospitality, events and food service businesses. The businesses that run these jobs were forced to stand staff down or cut their hours, or they asked staff to take unpaid leave.

The research shows that women have suffered the biggest pay cuts in 11 of the 189 sectors of the economy and job losses across 14 of 19 sectors. In spite of this issue being discussed in parliament the last time we were here, the only decision we have seen so far is a future cut to JobKeeper and JobSeeker, the very things keeping a lot of women still employed or supported while they look for work. There are childcare workers who were on JobKeeper and then off it, their industry treated as a plaything with no-one being consulted, neither directors of the centres, who are predominantly women, nor the workers, who are also predominantly women. We've seen nurses and midwives and aged-care workers, making up 80 per cent of the sectors in which they work, carrying a huge burden with little or no economic gain.

The latest Bureau of Statistics figures released earlier this month show the urgency for action, with the gender pay gap continuing to stagnate under the Morrison government. They show the gaps have increased to 14 per cent, with women earning $263.60 a week less than men. That's an increase of $10.70 a week since the November data. Between February and July, female workforce participation also dropped by 1.5 per cent. Consider how all this will affect women's futures—that is, their superannuation. Women in Super states that women currently retire with 47 per cent less super than men, but they live five years longer on average. Women only get one-third of the government tax concessions on super, so it is unsurprising, but very disturbing, that 40 per cent of older single retired women live in poverty and experience economic insecurity.

When the Morrison government announced people could access up to $20,000 of their super as a response to the COVID crisis, the cost was always going to be greater for women. Part of it is the fact that they'll forgo future earnings on the balances taken out of their already lower super. The estimate is that if a 50-year-old woman took out $20,000 from a super account with $109,000 in it, she'd be more than $41,000 worse off at retirement. A 25-year-old woman who did the same would be more than $120,000 worse off.

And then there are women who have been pressured to access their super early by controlling partners. I've had local domestic violence services and their workers tell me of the increase in family violence that they're seeing, and that includes financial abuse. The insight from these local workers is backed by a survey by the Australian Institute of Criminology, and it points to domestic violence increasing during the pandemic with figures that one in 10 Australian women in a relationship have experienced domestic violence during the crisis, with two-thirds saying the attacks had either started or become worse in this time. In spite of the fact that the police data in New South Wales doesn't back up these findings yet, the eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, is concerned that the reason for that is that abusers might be keeping victims in their homes and limiting their access to reporting. All of these issues show that we could do so much more to assist women during this pandemic. It really is time to say: where is the plan for women?

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal 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 day of sitting.