Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill 2022, a bill that will deliver secure jobs and better pay for Australians, a bill that puts respect for women workers at the heart of our workplace laws, a bill that makes better wages a deliberate design feature of our government's agenda. This bill will modernise our bargaining system, opening up the process of making agreements and expanding access to multi-employer bargaining, making it easier for employers and employees to come to the table and end the race to the bottom on wages. It will help close the gender pay gap for millions of working women. It will create two new expert panels in the Fair Work Commission, one for pay equity and one for the care and community sector. It will make gender equity a central object of the Fair Work Act and open up bargaining to millions of low-paid women in sectors like aged care, early childhood and disability services through the supported bargaining stream.

The bill also delivers so much more than this, because delivering secure jobs and better pay means delivering a better life for working Australians. A secure job means finally having the ability to plan your life, to apply for a loan or a lease, to choose to start a family, or just know that you'll be able to be with them for the holidays. Better pay means being able to make ends meet, to live without the constant stress and impossible choices of poverty wages and instead be able to afford the little luxuries which make life enjoyable and which we all deserve. It means a better life with choice, with dignity and with respect, and working Australians deserve a better life now. In 10 years of low wages as a deliberate design feature of the current opposition's economic policy, with growing gig work and casualisation, we've seen a race to the bottom on wages and conditions across some of our most essential sectors.