Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

While the Greens do not object to these amendments and, obviously, issues dealing with pay—we had the earlier debate around awards and pay equity—the reason we chose to try to amend the bill in the way we did is that we thought it was an issue that should be dealt with through the awards system as a structural issue. We thought that, while looking at individual cases is extremely important, it does not actually deal with the structural undervaluing of women’s work and the work that women are more traditionally involved in, such as child care et cetera. So, while we will be supporting these amendments, that is why we preferred to use the award system. We wanted to see if the government supported the award system to be used as a mechanism in order to ensure pay equity, because it is more of a structural issue than just an issue where individuals bring complaints about pay equity and being disadvantaged.