Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] I rise to speak on the Sex Discrimination and Fair Work (Respect at Work) Amendment Bill 2021. The issue of sexual harassment in the workplace has come to the fore in recent years. It's been global: the Me Too movement has sought to hold the wealthy and powerful around the world accountable for sexual abuse. In Australia we've seen a former High Court judge, Justice Heydon, found to have sexually harassed six of his young female associates. There has been an alleged sexual assault in Australian Parliament House. I commend the bravery of Brittany Higgins for speaking out, both on her own behalf and in support of thousands of other survivors around Australia. There's been the March4Justice, where thousands of Australians marched hand in hand to demand gender equality and justice for victims of sexual assault. I was proud and humbled to join one of the marches on parliament's lawns.

While the pandemic of sexual harassment has become regular front-page news, it's not a new story for the vast majority of Australians, because 72 per cent of Australians over the age of 15 have been sexually harassed at some point in their lives. That includes 85 per cent of Australian women and 57 per cent of Australian men. The fact is that people in Australia and around the world, particularly women, have been forced to suffer sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace since time immemorial. It is a plague that I have personally encountered since the 1980s, when I was a union delegate representing workers at the Cronulla Workers Club, where some managers had an unwritten rule for young female workers: if you wanted to pick up more shifts, you had to sleep with the boss; if you refused, or if you stopped, your shifts would get cut.

It was an unthinkable situation for young women, who may have had to use those shifts to pay the bills or to put food on the table for their children. Those women did not have sufficient legislative protections; even if those protections had existed, it was difficult as an individual to enforce them. As is often the case, it was collective action and collective power that ultimately improved protections for young women at the Cronulla Workers Club. We reached an agreement with the club that their hours could not be cut if they had not been working a regular pattern of shifts.

In the 1990s, while I was at the Transport Workers Union, I recall the union being attacked for pursuing the introduction of paid parental leave. That was a fight the TWU eventually won, and paid parental leave was introduced into the award for truck drivers. I was proud to be a part of the fight, and I was prouder still when paid parental leave was enshrined in the National Employment Standards by the Rudd Labor government in 2010.

In 2014, when I was the National Secretary of the Transport Workers Union, we reached an agreement on behalf of the workers, with worker representatives, with Virgin Australia CEO John Borghetti for the introduction of five days paid domestic violence leave. We took the same proposal to Alan Joyce's Qantas, which fought tooth and nail against it. After a two-year-long fight, Qantas finally introduced that right in 2016. I commend Mr Borghetti and other business leaders who have recognised that Australians suffering domestic violence deserve to be supported by their employer. However, until paid domestic violence leave is guaranteed as a right by the federal government, people will continue to slip through the cracks.

At a hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Job Security, we heard from Ms Terese Kingston, a domestic violence support worker at Mackay Women's Centre. She said:

For a woman in insecure and casual work who is unable to access sick leave, annual leave or domestic violence leave, the ability to safely leave an abusive situation is reduced significantly … I have seen multiple occasions where women have lodged private applications for protection orders and then are forced to withdraw because they are at risk of losing their job.

Ms Kingston goes on to say:

Tragically, I have then seen their names turn up on court lists again several months later … which tells us that they … have been victims of further violence.

No woman in Australia should have to choose between their job and their safety, or the safety of their children.

That is why Labor is committed to enshrining 10 days paid domestic leave in the National Employment Standards. I urge the Morrison government to come on board.

Sexual harassment and abuse continue to plague men and women in workplaces around Australia. Harassment at work often occurs when someone in a position of power preys on someone who is more vulnerable. As work in Australia becomes more precarious, the power imbalance becomes even more pronounced. As more and more Australians are engaged as casuals, contractors, in part-time work, on rolling contracts or short-term contracts, through labour hire companies, or as gig workers with no rights whatsoever, it becomes harder and riskier to speak out about harassment at work. If your contract or your shifts can be cut at the drop of a hat then, just as I saw at the Cronulla Workers Club almost 40 years ago, sexual harassment and abuse can become rife. In fact, this was highlighted in the Respect@Work report itself, which said:

Workers who may be more likely to experience sexual harassment in the workplace include:

…   …   …

This is particularly true for young women, who are more likely to be carrying out insecure work and more likely to experience sexual harassment.

Mr Tim Petterson, coordinator of Hospo Voice, told the Select Committee on Job Security inquiry earlier this year:

We conducted an extensive survey of more than 400 young women working in hospitality in … 2017, and we found nine out of 10 of those workers had been sexually harassed at work.

When you are employed from one shift to the next and you have no guaranteed hours, it puts you in a position where you're unable to speak up. Ms Mairead Lesman, the Director of the Young Workers Centre, told us about the case of an apprentice chef:

They were sexually harassed by their direct boss and that had a huge impact on their ability to finish their apprenticeship and it had a huge impact on their mental health … Then, when the physical altercation—

between the boss and apprentice—

occurred, the boss told the worker not to tell anybody or they would be fired and they wouldn't be able to complete their apprenticeship.

Then there is the disgraceful state of sexual harassment and assault protections in the gig economy. Companies like Uber classify their workers as contractors to avoid any responsibility or obligation for their safety. A survey by the TWU found that 44 per cent of female ride-share drivers suffered sexual harassment while working. What sort of protections do they have? Karen, a female Uber driver, was sexually harassed by a passenger last year. After she lodged the complaint, Uber banned her from the platform. Karen had also been sexually assaulted two years earlier while working for Uber. After the assault, the perpetrator left her a one-star rating, which impacted her ability to earn income and to get appropriate shifts. Even after a police complaint was filed, Uber never rescinded that rating. With exploitative employers like Uber, if you're harassed or raped at work, your rapist can leave a permanent rating of your performance. It's horrific.

Those are the real stories of Australians in insecure work. Sexual harassment is so widespread, and it particularly impacts those who are already vulnerable and economically insecure.

That's why the landmark Respect@Work report is so important. I want to commend Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins and her team for their comprehensive inquiry and their exceptional report. The Australian Human Rights Commission received 460 submissions, conducted 60 consultations and produced a 930-page report. There can be no question or doubt about the degree of detail and care that's gone into the report and into the 55 practical and carefully considered recommendations that Commissioner Jenkins put forward, which makes it so disappointing that the government's response has fallen so short.

It is bitterly disappointing, but it's not surprising. We have a Prime Minister who could empathise with Ms Higgins only after his wife had urged him to imagine how he would want his own daughters treated. We have a Prime Minister who has refused to launch an investigation into the very serious allegations against the former Attorney-General Mr Porter. We have a Prime Minister who, instead, has reinstated Mr Porter as acting Leader of the House. We have a Prime Minister who refused to meet with the March4Justice protesters and then suggested that they should be grateful they weren't met with force. When we have a Prime Minister who has demonstrated, time and time again, a complete inability to understand or empathise with survivors of sexual abuse, it's no surprise that the bill Mr Morrison put forward falls short.

It has taken more than a year and a half for Mr Morrison to present his legislation in response to the report. The Respect@Work report was first presented to the government as early as January 2020, and the former Attorney-General, Mr Porter, did not meet even once with Commissioner Jenkins about the report or its recommendations. Sadly, Mr Morrison's bill implements only a handful of the report's recommendations. Mr Morrison owes survivors around Australia an explanation of why he has stalled and delayed his response to this report and why he has now failed to implement many of its recommendations.

Labor supports the full adoption and implementation of all recommendations in the report. The Labor dissenting report on the bill provides a full breakdown of many of the recommendations that Mr Morrison has not adopted. Mr Morrison has not adopted recommendation 15, which calls on the government to ratify the International Labour Organization convention on violence and harassment. Mr Morrison has not adopted recommendations 16b and 16c, which would prohibit the creation of a hostile environment. Mr Morrison has not adopted recommendations 17 and 18, which call for the introduction of an enforceable positive duty on all employers to take reasonable measures to eliminate sex discrimination and sexual harassment in their workplace. Mr Morrison has not adopted recommendation 19, which would amend the Australian Human Rights Commission Act to provide the commission with the powers to inquire into systematic unlawful discrimination. Mr Morrison has not adopted recommendation 23, which would amend the Australian Human Rights Commission Act to allow representative groups, such as unions, to bring representative claims to court. Mr Morrison has not adopted recommendation 25, which would amend the Australian Human Rights Commission Act to insert a cost protection provision consistent with the existing provisions in the Fair Work Act. Mr Morrison has not adopted recommendation 28, which would amend the Fair Work Act to expressly prohibit sexual harassment. And Mr Morrison has not adopted recommendation 16a, which would amend the Sex Discrimination Act to introduce a new object to achieve equality between women and men. Instead, the wording in Mr Morrison's bill uses the phrasing 'to achieve, so far as practicable, equality of opportunity between men and women'. What a joke. It certainly seems that Morrison has inserted the phrase 'so far as practicable' because Mr Morrison is only interested in tackling gender inequality when it won't be inconvenient to himself and other men who benefit from it. Even when there are sexual assaults in his own workplace—in the ministerial wing of the Australian parliament—the extent to which Mr Morrison cares about this issue is the extent to which it impacts his own personal popularity and political fortunes.

But, for the 72 per cent of Australians who have experienced sexual harassment in their lifetime, and for the millions of other Australians who know someone who has been impacted, this bill is not good enough. And this issue will not be swept away.

Every day, sexual abuse in the workplace continues around Australia. A recent survey by the mining and energy union and the Australian Workers Union found that two-thirds of female fly-in fly-out mine workers in Western Australia had been subjected to verbal sexual harassment, 22 per cent said they'd been offered better working conditions in exchange for sexual favours and one in five said they'd experienced sexual assault. Most telling of all, almost half of female FIFO workers said they did not believe that reporting sexual harassment was encouraged by managers. They also said that they feared being blacklisted as troublemakers if they came forward. That is a damning indictment of some of the richest and most powerful companies in Australia and of the government which allows it to continue.