Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Hansard source

I want to put on the record comments that take a perspective different from the remarks of Senator Whish-Wilson. I am a WA Labor senator and I have spoken in this place about the need for Western Australia to receive more GST but never have I suggested, for a minute, that it should be at the expense of Tasmania. I do not think any Labor senator or MP in the other place has suggested that. We want to see a fairer distribution—we have never suggested taking from one state or territory and giving to another. I do remind the Greens party that poverty exists across this country, and to somehow claim that Tasmania has a greater need than Western Australia is to ignore the state of poverty in Australia and indeed in my home state.

The other point I would make, and this Productivity Commission Amendment (Addressing Inequality) Bill goes some way to addressing it, is that Senator Whish-Wilson said that somehow the Greens have been banging on about this for 10 years. That is the problem—we have had words but not actions. I do remind senators in this place, and particularly the Greens senators, that it is Labor that has put in place a whole range of reforms—superannuation, Medicare, parental leave. We had policies in government that did tackle homelessness and affordable housing. We had a bill in the other place, which the government knocked off, to try to protect penalty rates. We have put those actions in place but sadly they have not gone far enough. Also, every time the conservatives come into power, whether as state governments or federal governments, we see the situation eroded. This bill says let us start tackling and reporting on economic inequality. That is at least a start.

Recently I attended the Women's Forum in New York, which looked at women's economic empowerment across the world. It is shocking—wherever you look across the world, Australia is no different. We might be a little better off than our sisters in some Third World countries, but, nevertheless, women are not treated equally in this country—despite the reforms that Labor governments have put in place. And, certainly, that equality is absolutely under attack from the Turnbull government. It has been under attack since the day that they were elected.

With issues such as penalty rates, who on earth thinks that penalty rates will somehow magically lead to greater employment? It is an absolute nonsense. It takes pay out of the pockets of, particularly, low-paid workers—of women workers. We know that in Australia we have one of the most highly gender segregated workforces in the world. Men work in traditional male occupations; women are clustered in low-paid jobs and they rely on penalty rates. Yet, the Turnbull government, come 1 July, are going to take money out of the pockets of those women. It is an absolute disgrace and, quite frankly, I cannot believe that they think it is somehow going to create more employment. Of course it will not. So we will see women who work in hospitality and retail, come 1 July, get less money in their pay packets to support their families, to go to university or to do whatever else they rely on. The reason women and men work on weekends is to supplement low income. I do not get which bit of that those opposite just cannot understand. It is an absolute disgrace that on 1 July we will see people in this country lose income, and they will do so at the hands of the Turnbull government. I will never let the Turnbull government forget that. Labor has said that we will address this. We will put it back. We will make the changes to the Fair Work Commission to make sure that low-paid workers cannot be attacked by the Turnbull government.

On 1 July what else will happen? Millionaires will get a tax cut. On the very day the Turnbull government is taking money out of the pockets of low-paid workers—particularly women stuck in those areas of low pay—they will be giving their millionaire mates a tax cut. What a disgrace. They still believe, in this day and age, that somehow this trickle down will work. It will not. In the same way as when they cut superannuation, they refused to pass on the next percentage increase. That damages long-term retirement incomes, but they boasted that somehow that would create employment. Well, it has not, because we have seen record unemployment under the Abbott and Turnbull regime as prime ministers of this country. That is actually what we have seen. And the jobs that have been created are low-paid jobs, casual jobs—jobs in areas where workers will lose penalty rates. So this bill will actually start to hold up a light. It will start to say, 'We need to report on inequality in this country.' That would be a first step.

Using the Productivity Commission will take the political spin out of it. It will look at the impacts of inequality on the Australian economy, and it will produce a report—like Closing the Gap—that we will have to address as lawmakers in this country. We did see evidence during the inquiry—I was fortunate enough to be able to attend one of the hearings in Sydney—that inequality is stark, particularly for women. Women around this country, quite frankly, are a bit sick of just keeping on talking about it. We have known this for a very long time. We know we have a highly gender segregated workforce. Yet, despite some effort, we are not getting women into those STEM areas. We really need to do much more than we are currently doing to encourage the break-up of the gender segregation that we see. On the other side, in the caring industries and in retail and hospitality, men are never going to work in those industries in large numbers. Why? Because the pay is appalling. It is poverty wages.

For an educator working in the early education field, it is one of the most important jobs you could do in our society, because we know that for young children the vast majority of brain development happens between one and three years of age. What are we paying those workers? We are paying them poverty wages—about $21 an hour. That is what we are paying low-paid educators. Those wages are so bad. In an industry predominantly funded—almost 100 per cent—by those opposite in the federal government, the wages remain at poverty levels. It is not that educators do not love their jobs. It is incredibly rewarding working with young children, particularly young children between the ages of one and five. But they are forced out because they cannot afford to stay, or, alternatively, they are working two and three other jobs and that means that when they come to work in the morning to work with young Australians—our future leaders—they are tired and that automatically puts them at a disadvantage. But if they want to stay in the job that they love they have to work elsewhere, or they have to rely on another wage in their family. That is disgraceful.

At the other end of the spectrum we have aged care workers who, again, care for some of the most vulnerable in our society—senior Australians who have worked and have contributed to our economy, have paid their taxes, have raised families, have built homes and have led decent lives. Yet, at the end of their lives they are cared for by workers who are very low paid and part-time, who also have to work at least one other job to make ends meet. What is the key feature of these two sectors? Women. Women are clustered in aged care and early childhood, and an aged care worker earns about the same as an early childhood worker—about $21 an hour—but they rely on penalty rates, because the caring industry is seven days a week, 24 hours a day. But you can bet your bottom dollar that now that the Turnbull government has simply closed its eyes to the attack on penalty rates in retail and hospitality they will come for the aged care workers—the first they came for. We all know that sequence of events.

But it will not stop at hospitality and retail. What we have seen from the Turnbull government is that they are doing nothing to stop the attack on workers wages. In fact, many in the Turnbull government applaud the loss of penalty rates. They think it is a good thing for our economy. What is less money in our economy a good thing? Why is taking money out of the pay of low-paid workers a good thing? Why is giving someone less money to spend each fortnight when they get their pay packet good for our economy? No-one believes that. But somehow those opposite in the Turnbull government think there is going to be this magic proliferation of jobs.

Even if there were more jobs created as a result of this—I do not believe that, but let us assume for a minute that we will create a few more jobs—what will they be? More low-paying jobs—not good for our economy, not good for our tax system, and not good for individuals' prosperity. Yet, those opposite will champion it.

So, education and early childhood education—low-paid workers—women; aged care workers—low-paid women. Than there is the disability sector. How proud am I to be a Labor senator and to have been part of the government that introduced the NDIS? It is a revolutionary reform. Like Medicare, it will become a very important part of our economy. The NDIS is there. From the work that Labor did, we know that we need a massive increase in the workforce into the future.

What are the key features of the disability services sector? Low pay, and guess what the gender is—female. It is a feminised, low-paid workforce. Yet those opposite have done absolutely nothing to address the needs of that workforce into the future. You cannot have choice and control, which is a key part of the NDIS, if you do not have the workforce to match. We will not be able to attract the workforce we need unless we do something about the pay. Again, we see that those workers are on about $21 an hour. They want to look after and support people with disability to be able to manage in their own homes. They do an incredible job and they are unsung heroes, as are early childhood educators and aged care workers. But there will be a shortage into the future if we do not act on the pay. I think that those opposite think that the answer to that is to just import workers. Of course that contributes noting to our economy either.

So not only do we have to encourage women into STEM areas and traditional male areas of our workforce; we need to fix the pay and working conditions in low-paid areas so that we attract a different workforce. We want diversity in our workforce. We recognise that male workers bring a different perspective to these sectors, particularly early childhood workers. We want to encourage males in, but we will never get them unless we address this shocking poverty pay that exists in these areas. So having Senator McAllister's bill here, which is going to force us to report on a whole raft of things in relation to social injustice and economic inequality in our country, is a really positive issue.

The other issue we have to address as a society, as a community and as legislators is that we really have to start speaking about the unpaid work that women do. We know that, despite many men being much more enlightened than perhaps my father and men that went before him, we do need to share the family work that is traditionally done by women, because that prohibits women from going out and finding higher-paid jobs. If you have to be there to do school pick-up or to care for an aged parent, you cannot take a job that requires you to work from 3 pm to 5 pm. You are prohibited from doing that. We know that in our country the unpaid work is traditionally still done by women. We need to start to talk about that.

But of course we have a government that is characterised by those famous comments by former Prime Minister Abbott, when he talked to the women who apparently do all the ironing in the country. If you have MPs and senators opposite with a view that somehow it is our normal destiny as women to take on this unpaid caring role, we are in trouble. It is time that we started to challenge that and to measure the sorts of unpaid work that women do in our community and really start to change that. For that to happen we need flexible workplaces. We need to actively encourage men to take time to care for children, to take days off when their children are sick, to take time to go to school assemblies and all of the things that traditionally in our community we rely on women to do. We need our workplaces to be much more flexible to the needs of men when they have family commitments.

This is not some utopian socialist dream. This is actually good for our economy. It is good for our economy when we have workforce flexibility for men and women, when we encourage employers and hold up private employers to role model where flexible work actually works, where men are taking a share of what happens in family life. Until we start to address the unpaid work done by women, we will still be talking about inequality in 20 years. It is a major impediment to women fully participating in the workforce.

Gone are the days in our country when the male worked full time and the woman worked part time. That is no longer acceptable. If that is an arrangement people choose, good on them, but let us make a real choice for men and for women. Across your career in the paid workforce there might be times when both of you work part time and times when both of you full time, and that unpaid component of family life is shared equally between men and women. We are a long way from that, unfortunately, but that is something we need to consider as a community, and to role model best practice when we see it.

At the inquiry the Australian Industry Group talked about barriers for flexible workplace issues, so it is not just the Labor side of politics talking about this, but the Australian Industry Group, too. They indicated to us that flexibility was something most employers wanted to offer to staff and they felt that inflexibility made it very difficult for employers to implement alternative working arrangements for workers who desire or require more-flexible working arrangements. I think all of this in this place and many Australians struggle when our children start school. That is probably a time when it is very hard to manage full-time work and also pick children up from school and make sure they are properly cared for. If we had that flexibility, particularly across the early years, we would create more-productive workplaces.

With regard to the gender pay gap, despite Labor making great inroads on pay inequality in the famous cases that were run in the industrial commissions in this country, wage inequality still exists. It is 16 per cent and has been stubbornly stuck there for 20 years—that is generations of workers—and in my state of Western Australia it has been stubbornly stuck at 24 per cent. These are issues that need urgent attention from the government and indeed this parliament, yet they simply get overlooked. It is not acceptable in this day and age to have such inequity in pay continue on and on without being addressed.