Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Women (Senator Payne) to questions without notice asked by Senators Pratt and Bilyk today relating to the economic impacts of COVID-19 on women.

The questions asked of the Minister for Women, Senator Payne, today were going to issues around women, and particularly the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on women and some of the particular issues that are being drawn to the attention of all of us. Many of us knew these previously, but I think the coronavirus pandemic has shone a torch not only on the value of women's work but also on some of the disadvantages that women experience in the labour market. We know that women have lower participation rates and lower earnings and that they have lost more jobs—in April alone, I think 500,000 people lost their jobs and 55 per cent were women. We know that more women feature in the underemployment figures and that, in terms of lost hours of work, women experience a greater loss. We also know that women are over-represented or disproportionately represented in industries that have been smashed by the coronavirus restrictions—food, retail, entertainment and accommodation. We know that women are over-represented in insecure work and in work that pays lower incomes. All of these areas have been hit hard by the coronavirus restrictions.

On the value of women's work, women are and have featured prominently in the essential frontline workers—nurses, healthcare workers, early childhood educators, teachers and aged care workers: 87 per cent of nurses and midwives are women; 87 per cent of aged care workers are women; and 96 per cent of early childhood educators are women. We have relied on these roles to keep the community cared for. In retail, in supermarkets, as cleaners, again, you will see more women than men. Key jobs that perhaps have not been recognised for their value have been shown to be so important during the coronavirus pandemic. The Minister for Women told us that the Prime Minister and the government acknowledged the disproportionate impact that the coronavirus pandemic and the consequential restrictions that were put in place have had on women. That admission from the government begs the next question: if that's the case, why are they making decisions that have a harsher impact on women? I'll come back to that.

I think one of the issues is the way they have designed programs such as JobKeeper to exclude people that might have more than one job and be working in highly casualised industries with high turnover. That will exclude women. We know that women are doing more of the caring and unpaid work at home, taking on the added responsibilities of caring for children and perhaps elderly parents. That has come to hit women hard as well.

HomeBuilder is another example. The government has ignored Treasury advice around social housing and the benefits of that. We know 62 per cent of tenants in social and public housing are women. We know that more women require social housing. This government, in its response on the housing front, has ignored that very important area. Addressing that would also bring broader benefits to the community.

And then there's child care. Why was child care the first industry that was kicked off JobKeeper? With the snapback—the fiscal cliff—that's coming in September, why was it child care that was removed, if we're trying to get women back to work? We know child care remains one of the biggest barriers to women's full participation in the labour force, and yet this government chose to remove free child care and kick the workers off JobKeeper, putting in place a transition arrangement which the minister acknowledges is less than what they were getting before. That is going to disproportionately affect women.