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

I seek leave to move a motion as circulated in the chamber and to make a five-minute statement regarding Equal Pay Day.

Leave not granted.

Pursuant to contingent notice standing in my name, I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent me from moving and debating the motion.

It's Equal Pay Day today, and as women around the country might know that's the day when we've just had to work an extra 50 days in order to be paid the same as our male counterparts. To put that another way, we've just worked 50 days for free in this financial year. We've been paid 78 per cent of what our male counterparts have been paid.

The current national gender pay gap is about 12 per cent. That's for full-time workers only. That means we're paid, on average, 12c less for every dollar than our male counterparts. If you factor in part-time work and if you also factor in those other non-salaried perks that CEOs and other senior workers get—most of those are blokes as well—then unfortunately we're at a total remuneration gap of 21.7 per cent, which is a gender pay gap. It is a differential that is explained only because we're women and they're men. Now, I do want to note that this is a slightly better situation than last year. I acknowledge that the gender pay gap did shrink ever so slightly from last year, but I'm afraid that will be little comfort to women who are seeing more and more of their inadequate salaries being eaten up by the spiralling cost of housing, of groceries and of other essentials.

Today, Equal Pay Day, we thought it appropriate for the chamber to mark the occasion, the 50 extra days that women need to work to earn the equivalent salary to men. Yes, it is 2024. And, no, I can't believe that we are still here having this debate either. Why is it the case? It's because women's work is still undervalued, whether that's paid or unpaid—and of course we bear the lion's share of unpaid work as well. Both of them are undervalued. Professions that are female dominated are, on average, paid less than professions that are male dominated, despite being crucial to the functioning of society.

Now, the easiest way to close the gender pay gap is to pay women more, it's to pay us fairly. The Greens are today, as we have for many, many years now, reiterating our calls for the government of the day to legislate above average wage increases over 10 years in female dominated industries. That would see women paid fairly, it would boost women's economic security and, importantly, it would ensure that we can attract and retain staff in those critical sectors.

The government has recently announced it would increase early childhood workers' pay, but not by the amount they asked for and not by the amount they deserve to do the invaluable work they do in educating the next generation. It wasn't the amount that they asked for, and so those workers are still chronically underpaid and they're starting to leave the sector as a result. We can't afford that. We need these trained educators to be doing their work, to educate the kids and to make sure that the parents can get back into paid work if that's what they're seeking to do.

I note that we've also had a pay rise recently for aged-care workers, but, again, there's a catch: it didn't apply to all aged-care workers in the sector. What a missed opportunity there. What about teachers, nurses, cleaners—all female dominated industries that are critical to society functioning, as we saw during the pandemic. Those workers are leaving those industries as well, because, again, they're overworked and primarily they're underpaid and undervalued. As I said, the national gender pay gap has slightly reduced, but it's cold comfort when the cost of living is absolutely skyrocketing. Frankly, women are wondering why there is any gender pay gap at all in 2024.

The gender pay gap bleeds out into retirement, and we've got a superannuation pay gap of some 25 per cent. We know women over 55 are the fastest-growing cohort of people who are homeless, and we know that superannuation retirement gap is part of the problem. This year we saw the Workplace Gender Equality Agency finally able to release employer specific data, thanks to pressure from the Greens and many others for many years. That's great. People can now check on just how bad their employer is and hopefully that will have some positive impact, but it's still not enough. Waiting 50 years to have pay parity is not something that women should have to put up with. We need a government to prioritise paying women fairly in what is already a cost-of-living crisis.