Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] This government is botching up this legislation. They botched the response to the rape of Brittany Higgins in the building that you folk are now sitting in—I'm of course remoting in; they botched the response to the allegations of rape against a sitting cabinet member; and now they are botching a report which made very clear recommendations that were meant to be taken as a package to protect workers in their workplace. The fact that the government are doing half the job and trying to pretend that they are doing the full job is just reprehensible—and I hope nobody is fooled by this. I think the government think that they want to be seen to be tackling this issue because they know they have a political problem with women. Well, is it any wonder that you have a political problem with women when you are not taking these issues seriously?

Commissioner Jenkins did a comprehensive and detailed report. The key centrepiece recommendation of that report was for a positive duty on employers to provide a safe workplace for workers. It's not an outrageous concept. We have workplace health and safety laws to deliver the physical safety of workers in that traditional context. But this recommendation shows that that's not working for sexual harassment. So we need an obligation on employers to provide a safe workplace. It cited statistics that 40 per cent of women in the workplace are being sexually harassed. What's worse are the figures for young female workers. More than half of them have reported that they're experiencing sexual harassment in the workplace.

Many of us have children in this place, and many of our children will soon be old enough to get their first job. How on earth on our consciences can we live with sending them into workplaces where more than half of them will be sexually harassed as juniors, where they'd have no idea what the unwritten rules of the workplace are and where the burden on them to raise this issue would be on their own shoulders. That's why we'll be moving amendments, once we come to them, for representative actions, so that the burden isn't on one individual worker, one lone woman in a workplace, to tackle the entire establishment within which she works. But that's another matter.

If we had that obligation on employers to provide a safe workplace, many of these issues could be tackled. It would drive that cultural shift. It would send that message to colleagues, to bosses, to workplaces everywhere that it's not okay to sexually harass anybody at work. Frankly, it's just appalling that you even have to make that point. Surely that should be understood. But the fact is that it's not, and the rates of harassment are off the charts. This government has the chance to fix that, and it's choosing to ignore that key recommendation. I genuinely don't understand how they think they can get away with this. We keep asking—the opposition keeps asking, the media keeps asking—why aren't you acting on this key recommendation? Yesterday, we heard from Senator Henderson, who said, 'We haven't not acted on that recommendation; we just haven't done it yet.' I think that was the nub of her contribution. We just heard Minister Cash, again, run the line that they've agreed in part or in full to all the recommendations. I'm sorry, it's codswallop. Where is the amendment to say that employers have to provide a safe workplace? Why are the Greens and the opposition jointly moving that amendment today? Because we understand that this isn't about politics. This is about the safety of workers and the 51 per cent of the population who deserve not to be harassed in their place of work. Why is it taking the chamber to do the government's job? Why on earth is the government going to vote against that amendment?

Yesterday, Senator Henderson implied that the government needed more time to consider the recommendation. My question to the minister is: Are you really going to draft an amendment to provide a safe workplace? Are you really asking for more time, after 17 months of having had this report, for more than a year of which it gathered dust in the draw of Christian Porter? Are you really trying to tell us that you might do this in future? Frankly, we don't believe you. You've got the chance to do it today. You should have done it yourself. This should have been in your own bill. It's not.

The Greens and the opposition are moving an amendment to say that employers everywhere should have a positive duty to provide a safe workplace. Is the government really going to vote against that? These issues are actually real. This is actually about making people safe right across the country. This is an issue that shouldn't be about whether or not you think this is a good political move for you in the lead-up to the election. This shouldn't be about whether you need to win back women voters because your Prime Minister is so out of touch, lives in the 1950s and thinks women belong in the kitchen. This is actually real. This will affect people's real lives, and it will keep people safe. How can you possibly not be moving this amendment? How can you possibly not support it when the Greens and Labor moved for it to be added?

We collaborated on that amendment. There would be a six-month period for businesses to have time to come to grips with this new work requirement. There would be supporting material drafted by the Human Rights Commission to assist employers to understand this new obligation on them and to work out what it meant for them in the range of different sized workplaces. Obviously, it would mean a lot more for a very large and well-resourced workplace than it would for a much smaller workplace, and perhaps different levels of things would have to be done to provide that safe workplace, but there would be a transition period. There's no excuse to not support the obligation to have a safe workplace and for employers to provide that for their staff.

My question to you is: can we really believe that you are going to tackle this at some point in the future? You've had enough time. You haven't done the main thing that this report called on you to do: to provide that safety for the 40 per cent of women who are sexually harassed in their place of work. How can you live with yourself? I guess that is in fact my question. How can you live with yourself, knowing you've got the chance to fix this? How can you actively block it, probably with One Nation in tow as they always are? We heard Senator Hanson describe this issue as 'virtue-signalling witch-hunts'. I had to turn my camera off because I was actually in peals of laughter at Senator Hanson's contribution. It was so unhinged and so straight from the playbook of the Men's Rights Association that it just beggared belief. Are you really going to gang up with One Nation to deny protection for the 40 per cent of women in workplaces who are being sexually harassed?