Angie Bell (Moncrieff, Liberal National Party, Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Setting Gender Equality Targets) Bill 2024. This bill amends the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 and introduces new requirements for designated relevant employers—employers with 500 or more employees—to commit to achieve or, at a minimum, improve on and report to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency on measurable gender equality targets. These targets are proposed to fall under any of the six gender equality indicators, and the bill requires large employers to select three gender equality targets and report on their progress to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency each year. In their third year of reporting, they must show they have achieved their targets or, at a minimum, improved before selecting a further three targets to achieve in the following three years.

This bill also amends the definition of 'relevant employer' to explicitly include subsidiaries of parent companies with 100 or more employees and clarifies that in a corporate structure a parent corporation is also taken to employ each of the employees of any of its subsidiaries. Where an employer have not met their selected gender equality targets or demonstrated improvements within the relevant period of three years, they are considered to have failed to comply with their obligations under the act. Under the Workplace Gender Equality Procurement Principles, relevant employers seeking to supply goods or services to the government at or above $80,000 must provide a certificate of compliance issued by the agency as part of the procurement process. Consequently, such employers would be unable to provide the compliance certificate.

This bill places onerous financial implications on businesses. The legislation will affect over 1,650 of Australia's largest companies by potentially precluding them from supplying goods or services to the Commonwealth government at or above $80,000 in critical areas including agriculture forestry and fishing, construction, education and training, manufacturing and mining. The provisions in this bill significantly undermine businesses and risk important procurement required for critical areas like national security.

This bill introduces a new power for the minister to set targets and rules in relation to the selection of the gender equality targets. This bill gives personal power to the minister to set the category of targets that can be selected and to set the number of targets businesses are required to select—it's getting more and more convoluted. The menu of targets will be set out in an instrument to the act and will not be on the face of this legislation. This is government overreach. The minister has personal powers to set targets and rules of their own choosing with no scrutiny from businesses impacted. This creates the possibility of an even more onerous compliance burden on businesses.

The bill introduces substantial compliance requirements on businesses. The reporting requirements add red tape to the operations of Australia's biggest corporations, driving down productivity in an economy that is already struggling under the compliance burden of the Albanese government's radical industrial relations and energy policies that the member for Fairfax was just talking about.

Adding compliance burdens to business will also inevitably be inflationary, adding to the Albanese government's homegrown inflation crisis. It's estimated that this bill will create further compliance issues for over 1,650 of Australia's largest companies.

Should the government want to go further, guess who we think is next in line after big business? It's small and medium enterprises—millions of them around the country—who are already struggling with significant red tape and compliance burdens under this Albanese Labor government.

The government are bringing on debate on this bill without scrutiny. They are bringing on debate when we should be waiting to hear from the committee inquiry. The committee isn't due to report back until late January next year.

The Workplace Gender Equality Agency should be focused on positively encouraging businesses to promote gender equality, not threatening them with losing procurement prospects. It is on this basis that the coalition opposes this bill.

Debate adjourned.