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

I rise to speak in support of the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Setting Gender Equality Targets) Bill 2024. The reason we're supporting this bill is that we've had gender pay gap reporting for some years now. Companies with over 100 workers have had to check whether they've got a gender pay gap and tell the Workplace Gender Equality Agency if they do. That's a good start. You can't fix a problem if you don't know you've got one. But there has never been an obligation in our laws to do anything to actually close the gender pay gap that the company has identified it's got, which makes a bit of a mockery of the process of reporting. So I'm very pleased that today, finally, after more than a decade of having these gender pay gap laws, the government of the day has taken a small step to say, 'Now that you know you've got a gender pay gap, perhaps you'd better think about closing it.' This is a step in the right direction.

One of the concerns that we have is that this obligation to do something to close the gender pay gap only applies to businesses with over 500 workers. It was completely laughable when, just then, the opposition were worrying about businesses having to comply and businesses going under. This applies to the largest businesses in the country: those who are already doing the reporting and those who have identified that they have a gender pay gap. We see the antiwomen opposition not wanting to fix the gender pay gap and not wanting the mega-employers of this country to do anything to actually reduce their gender pay gap. I've long said that the LNP have a problem with women, and they are just putting it right up in lights today. If you don't support closing the gender pay gap, then you support keeping the gender pay gap. What a disappointment to see Mr Dutton's Liberals quite happy for women's work to be undervalued, for it to be underrecognised in the workplace and for there not to be any requirement of businesses who have a gender pay gap to do anything to close it.

That's not to say that this bill is perfect. This bill, as I said, only applies to those very large employers of 500-plus workers that would now have to do something to close their pay gap. When I say 'something'—they've got three years to try to show some measure of improvement on a selected number of targets that they themselves will pick, and they don't have to consult with their staff to work out which ones to pick. Unfortunately, as we've seen from this Labor government, they have a good idea, but then they do the weakest possible interpretation of it. Only the biggest employers will have to pick a handful of targets. They'll have three years to work towards them, and they simply have to make reasonable progress after three years to meet those targets. Not one of those targets has to actually be one that sees the gender pay gap close. It seems a bit crazy, doesn't it?

That's why I'm moving a handful of amendments, including one that says that you've got to pick a numerical target and that large business will have to make progress on closing the gender pay gap. There are lots of other good, positive targets that they can select from, but the fact that they don't have to pick one that will actually make a real difference is a problem. We could move to fix that, and that's what my amendment will do.

We'll also be seeking to amend this bill so that the obligation to close the gender pay gap isn't just for the 500-plus workers companies. It's also for the 100-plus workers companies. Our reporting obligations at the moment apply to companies that have 100 or more workers, so why shouldn't this new obligation to act on that data apply to the same cohort? They've already got the reporting infrastructure, they're already familiar with it and they're already aware that they've got a gender pay gap, because they've been reporting on it for more than 10 years. They too should be required to set targets and make reasonable progress towards them, over a three-year period, to actually reduce their gender pay gap. I think that's eminently sensible.

Some would argue that even the figure of 100-plus workers is too high. They say maybe it should be 50-plus. So we will propose a sensible amendment that would make these new rules help more women in the workforce. You shouldn't have to be in a superbig company to have your rights recognised. Your rights should be important no matter how big your employer is. That's why my amendment says that if you've got more than 100 workers you should have to do something to close your gender pay gap.

We know the gender pay gap is still very real. In the last figures it was at 78 per cent. Women are still earning about 78c for every dollar that their male counterpart takes home. That's a difference of about $30,000 each year. It is a staggering amount of money, particularly in a cost-of-living crisis. The small progress we have seen in the gender pay gap data was thanks to aged-care workers, who got a very modest pay rise, which we supported. It was not as much as they'd asked for and certainly not as much as they deserved, but it was progress. It shouldn't be this hard. It shouldn't be this much of an endless slog to pay women more and value equally the work that they do.

The sad reality is that every single occupation and industry still has a gender pay gap in favour of men. This is why for years we've been calling for an obligation not just to identify the gender pay gap but to close it. So it's disappointing that the bill the government has rolled up today only requires that of employers with over 500 workers. If you're a woman working in a company with fewer than 500 colleagues, well, too bad, you're going to have to suffer through a gender pay gap. We think that number should be reduced to 100.

I do want to acknowledge that some employers are stepping up and voluntarily taking action to close their gender pay gap. That's great. In fact, already nearly half of employers are setting targets, and a majority of those are to increase the number of women in management, which is also a good thing; it's moving in the right direction. But it's 2025! Can't we do better? We still have a leadership gap. Women make up just one in four CEOs and heads of businesses, and the gender pay gap for those roles is massive. We need more women in senior positions and we need to reflect the value of their work in their pay. In the boardrooms, one in four boards still have zero women.

One way the government could fix this would be to make sure that when a company is tendering for a government contract, when it's seeking taxpayer money, the company has to be meeting its obligations not just to identify but to close its gender pay gap. The government said they were going to do this. In March last year they committed to doing this. But the devil's in the detail. In the course of the inquiry into this bill, when I pressed the very useful and helpful departmental officials on this very point, I learned that unfortunately compliance with gender pay gap obligations is just one consideration in whether or not you should get a fancy government contract through a tender or other government procurement mechanism—or a grant perhaps. That's just one consideration. If you don't have one it's: 'Don't worry about it, mate. It's not really that binding. We'll still give you the contract. You don't have to do anything; it'll be fine.' Well, what a shame, because we heard the minister at the time, last year, say she was going to fix this, and she hasn't. It is not enough that complying with your gender pay gap rules—whatever they might be once this bill passes—is just something for government to think about when they are offering contracts. It should be a threshold question. In order to get taxpayer support in the form of either a grant or a procurement contract, companies should have to show they are complying with their legal obligation to stop underpaying women.

That is what the third of my amendments would do—if we have an opportunity to vote on it. I did move earlier today in the chamber a motion to make sure we get to a vote on this bill today. That's because, folks, we're probably headed to an election, and this might be the last time we sit under the current parliamentary structure. We know that the Dutton led coalition will not be standing up for women in the workplace, so if we don't pass this bill today, essentially, you can kiss goodbye your action on the gender pay gap. I was disappointed to not get support to do that, but I remain optimistic that our friends on the crossbench want to see equality for women and will vote accordingly if we have the chance to come back to this bill later today. I will be in continuation.