Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

The government will now work with the applicant unions to finalise the joint submissions for Fair Work Australia. The government will be meeting with SACS providers and state and territory governments over the next few days to discuss the Fair Work Australia submission and to invite them to work with us and to support the submission before Fair Work Australia. That means that together we will argue for rates of pay that fairly and properly value social and community sector work and which do not discriminate and which will finally end decades of unequal pay.

The ASU case is the first case before Fair Work Australia to test the new equal pay provisions in the Fair Work Act. The case is only possible because of the government's fair work system that provided the means for which these cases can be pursued. They would not have been possible under the previous Work Choices legislation. Nothing was done then to address pay inequity for women. The Fair Work Act allows this sort of advance to be made and we hope to see more— (Time expired)