Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm sorry that I need to make this kind of contribution at this point in time, because there was so much promise, so much hope and so much passion and energy for a wholesale change to the outcomes for Australian women at work. I stand as a female member of the great Australian Labor Party, on the back of the history of this great party, to make safe workplaces a reality in this country. The Australian Labor Party, for its entire 120-year history, has been about the lives of workers and their protection in the workplace. It might have been shearers and miners who gave breath to our extraordinary political force so long ago, and I dare say they could scarcely imagine the kind of society successive generations have created, but they could see the common, strong thread of workers' rights that links us back to those who sat under that Tree of Knowledge.

I want to point to a very important, relatively short document that sits at the back of the report from the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee on the Sex Discrimination and Fair Work (Respect at Work) Amendment Bill 2021. It's a shorter document than I hoped it might be, but the fact is that the inquiry into this very important bill was unbelievably short. After the government, through Christian Porter, delayed any response to this remarkable report here—hundreds and hundreds of pages, with thousands of consultations clearly setting out a road map, of a kind, that was indicated to this government—we had no action. When we finally got to the point where something was to be done—and I will acknowledge that Senator Cash, in her new role, actually blew the dust off the government's copy of this and got on with the job of doing something—this government has been found wanting. The short inquiry forced contributors to provide their response to this parliament in the shortest of time. The short inquiry—truncated to two days—drew from witnesses evidence that indicated that they had barely had time to provide a response to the government legislation. In fact, the government prompted action when we had received, after the inquiry, confidential reports—I won't reveal them—from people and peak bodies that had wanted to participate but were so cut short in their capacity to respond that they ended up not being able to fully interrogate the piece of legislation that the government is advancing. So we have to characterise what's happened here as a 'do nothing' response and then a 'let's get this sorted in a hurry' response. Neither of those actually leads to proper, careful legislation.

Labor, in the course of this debate this morning, will move a significant number of amendments that I encourage the Greens and other senators on the crossbench to really have a good look at and support, because this moment is not going to come again. After the report, there was no action, and then there was this legislation. The fanfare that's going to go with this will say: 'Basically, the government accepted all 55 recommendations. It's all good here. We've sorted the problem of sexual discrimination and harassment at work.' That's what the headline takeaway is going to be: 'The government did this.' But they didn't. They haven't.

At the back of the committee report that I am referring to there is a dissenting report of equal length from Labor senators. For people who really want to know what the government are doing, or the lack of what they're doing, that dissenting report will give them the outline of what's missing. Senator Cash, in her contribution in response to Senator McAllister's question, indicated again that there was support for the 55 recommendations, but Senator McAllister has already well articulated the reality that it was a mealy-mouthed response to those 55 recommendations, and participants in the inquiry made it very, very clear that the government is not accepting all 55 recommendations. Let that be very clear. This document, so carefully constructed by Kate Jenkins, the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, telling the stories of Australians who have experienced sexual harassment and who came forward and retraumatised themselves on many occasions to retell their stories, is not being given full voice and a full response by this government. Senator Cash has indicated in her defence that there were 16 legislative actions that were recommended, but this government's only taking six of them. That's not a pass in anyone's book.

So let's be clear about where we are today with regard to this particular matter. I'm sure Senator Cash can see, as Labor senators see and as ordinary Australians see, that sexual harassment in the workplace is a very significant hazard. There is not only the personal suffering and pain; the cost of sexual harassment in the workplace hurts productivity in this nation. It hurts lives, it hurts productivity and it impacts negatively on businesses. It costs the Australian people a huge amount in terms of mental health and damage. Labor says: enough is enough.

This bill would have been a game changer if the government had actually taken on the task that was served up by Commissioner Jenkins and properly legislated this, with all the resources it as the government has, to create great legislation to give protection in the workplace. But the government seems to have squibbed it here. So my question, Senator Cash, is: there were 15 legislative actions recommended; why did the government only have enough courage or give itself enough time to get up six?