Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak on the Commonwealth Sex Discrimination Act and in fact to celebrate, in 2009, its 25th anniversary. The Sex Discrimination Act today is regarded as an essential piece of law. It is hard to imagine that it could have ever caused controversy, yet it did. The history of the SDA is colourful by today’s standards, but this carefully crafted piece of legislation changed the social fabric of Australia for the better in a way that can never, hopefully, be undone.

The Hon. Susan Ryan, who was at the time the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on the Status of Women and oversaw the passage of the SDA through parliament, said in an article in 2004 in the University of New South Wales Law Journal that, at the time, Australia had one of the most gender-segregated labour markets of any country in the OECD. Women were trapped by discrimination in what she called ‘an employment and pay ghetto’. She stated:

Industrial jurisdictions had accepted the principle of equal pay, but the work ghetto, limited education and training, and the meagre provision of child care meant that women’s earnings were considerably lower than—in fact, about two thirds of—men’s wages.

               …            …            …

Most girls did not complete high school and were overtly discouraged from studying advanced mathematics and sciences.

Women were in limited numbers as professional lawyers, architects, accountants or engineers. Executive levels of business and careers in the media were out of the reach of most women and there was still an expectation on them to stop working once they were married.

After a false start while in opposition in November 1981, Senator Ryan, then Minister Ryan, introduced the Sex Discrimination Bill into the Senate in June 1983 on behalf of the Hawke government. The bill sought to make discrimination on the grounds of sex, marital status and pregnancy, and also sexual harassment, illegal in the workplace. It also applied to areas of education, employment and services. Sounds simple really, doesn’t it? It sounds like it is a piece of everyday life in 2009. But at the time it caused great controversy.

It is hard to imagine now what the fuss was about, but one only has to search back to the debates on the Sex Discrimination Bill held in parliament and in the wider Australian community at the time. Opponents of the bill declared inside and outside parliament that the bill would bring about the end of the family, it would ruin the economy and it would destroy Christianity and the Australian way of life.

In fact, looking back through the transcripts, then Senator Robert Hill echoed these misgivings about the bill in parliament. He said:

… the legislation will undermine the family unit; that it will destroy the traditional concept of the family; that it will lessen the traditional respect accorded to women as home-makers; that it will virtually consign marriage to irrelevance; and that it will drive women who are totally satisfied with their role as wife and mother, sustainer and supporter, and up-bringer of children to outside employment, against their wishes, and their children to creches.

He went on to argue that the aim of the bill to support equality was misguided, as most women were biologically ‘homely and caring, that they are not wildly ambitious, that they are not naturally dominating and that they are mostly inclined to avoid authority’. I must say that in my experience that is not an awful lot like the women I have met in my life. Not a lot of women I have met would actually agree with that statement.

However, at the time a few prominent women were vocal in their opposition to the bill. Senator Flo Bjelke-Petersen declared:

In my opinion, after reading it, I think that the best amendment of all would be to forget about it.

Mr Bruce Goodluck, then Member for Franklin, said that after doing some research on the Women’s Electoral Lobby, that:

Most of the members of it were given-up Catholics. They are all women who had had problems, et cetera.  They were women who had something against men.

After proclaiming that the female members of the federal Labor government were always campaigning about something and were very good talkers, compared to the majority of Liberal women who were quiet, did not say much and supported their husbands—