Barbara Pocock (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This week's Workplace Gender Equality Agency wages data shows that Australian women earn on average about 20 per cent less than men in companies with more than 100 staff. Professional services and banking recorded some of the worst gaps, and some very big consulting firms, including some who advise others on diversity, had amongst the worst gaps. McKinsey had an incredible gap of 38 per cent. Boston Consulting had a gap of 35 per cent, and Bain had 31 per cent. Partners in the big four consulting firms—EY, Deloitte, KPMG and PwC—who earn very large incomes, are mostly men, and, as partners not employees, guess what? They're excluded from the big four pay-gap calculations. So the below-average gaps that the big four report include only the salaries of the underlings who do all the heavy lifting in these firms while earning much lower salaries. Again, guess what? More than half of them are women. This means we don't have the full picture on pay equity in the big consulting firms. One thing's for sure, however: these very big firms with wide gender pay gaps should not be doing government business or receiving government contracts.

I want to have a word on part-time work. Senator Canavan implied this week that gender pay equity for part-time workers was a bridge too far. He asked, 'In what world are there lots of part-time CEOs?' Well, in our world, Senator. The most senior leadership jobs on the boards in big corporations across our economy are part-time jobs. It's all about the design of employment, and directors of big companies are part-time leaders. Most Australian women—including most women CEOs and plenty of senators in this place—have worked, for some portion of their working life, part time, combining care for others with their jobs. We're lucky they do that work, Senator Canavan, and we must make sure that, as part-time workers, they are not punished in their pay packets for combining work with their care for the rest of us. They deserve pay equity, and so do those who work in the big consulting firms.