Carina Garland (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Women. How are the Albanese Labor government's policies supporting progress to close the gender pay gap, and what are the alternative approaches?

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Chisholm for the question. She is someone who has spent her entire working life championing the cause of Australia's women. This government is determined to improve the economic security and equality of women in this country. Every day, we have been working to close the gender pay gap to make the lives of Australian women fairer and more equal. Today, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency released its latest gender equality scorecard, and it's good news. The scorecard shows the gender pay gap is the lowest it has been since reporting first started in 2014. The main driver of the decrease in the gender pay gap is a lift in wages for lower-paid workers, especially in highly feminised sectors. They are Labor policies that are driving this change.

We have increased transparency for gender pay gap reporting. We're investing in wage increases in aged care and early childhood education and care. This is the workforce that, alongside educating our smallest children, is actually also literally the workforce that enables all of us and all of the workforce in the country to do the jobs that we do. They are an incredibly important workforce—people like my sister who, after raising six kids on her own, went back into child care for Knox council and spent decades raising children in her care. We've supported lifting the minimum wage, we've made gender equality an object of the Fair Work Act and we've strengthened protections against sexual harassment in the workforce. Many of these measures were opposed, frankly, by those opposite, and that is really a shame on them. Under Labor, the gender pay gap has dropped to record levels. Under Labor, women's average weekly earnings have increased by $173.80 a week since May 2022. That is a substantial increase. Under Labor, we have reached record highs in women's economic participation.

While progress has been strong, Labor is not going to stop doing the hard work to close the gender pay gap. Today, of course, the assistant minister has introduced legislation requiring big companies to set gender equality targets for their workplaces—something that, again, will make a significant difference. None of this would have happened if those opposite had continued to be in government and they had their way. If we had continued on the path that they set the country down, the gender pay gap would be closing three times slower than it is under us. That has real consequences for the wages of Australian women, real consequences for the economic security of women in this country. We know the Leader of the Opposition's policies have real costs. He has the wrong agenda for Australia and the wrong agenda for Australia's women.