Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to 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.

Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Of course women should be paid equally, and I don't think there are any Australians who would disagree. They should also be looked after equally. That's what should be happening in here, but not for the Greens. The Greens stand up for women only when it suits them. The Greens blocked the rights of women in the textile union to hold a secret ballot and are still blocking put an administrator in place to clean up the CFMEU. It's absolutely absurd. I have never seen anything like it. I would love to know why, but it will all come out in the end because the truth always comes out. Seriously, I just don't understand how you could possibly do that to those women. That you would still not give those women who feel that their lives are under threat an opportunity to have a secret ballot blows me away.

These are the Greens, who like nothing more than whipping up division on motions on the Hamas-Israel war but did not say a godamn word, not one word, about one million Afghan women pushed over the border into the arms of the Taliban. I have this to say to you: you seem to pick and choose how you want to help women when it suits you. But for those whose lives are under threat, you don't want a bar of it. You voted against it. You did not want to help those women in textiles. You did not want to move them away from the monsters of the leadership of the CFMEU and that just blows me away. So, to come in here, stand up, start running these motions, and have a standing affair on them is just absolute rubbish—fair dinkum. I just want people out there to know: you can't pick and choose; you're either for women or you are not. But you can't decide you're going to help these women and not these ones over here. You are either one in or all in. Other than that, you're just looking like a pack of hypocrites.

Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the motion before the chamber on Equal Pay Day. According to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, Australian women to have to work 50 days into the new financial year for to earn the same on average as Australian men did last year. This statistic shows that, while women have made considerable ground, there is a way to go. For the past 50 days, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency campaign themed It Doesn't Add Up has motivated Australians to understand that pivotal difference between equal pay and the gender pay gap, and supported employers to build their capacity to take actions to reduce the gap in their workplace. This is a good thing.

The coalition has always been and remains committed to supporting women's participation in the workforce and it rose to record highs under the previous government. Supporting women's economic security is absolutely essential to raising the status of women in Australia and to giving women the choice to make decisions in their own best interests. Stronger women's economic security provides benefits not just for the individuals involved but also their families, businesses and of course the broader economy. Supporting women's labour force participation, particularly in entrepreneurship, skills and leadership, is profoundly important, and women's economic security will only really be found, not just when equal pay is realised but, more importantly, when there is equal homeownership and better retirement outcomes for women as well.

In the last government, in the last two women's budget statements, more than $5.5 billion was dedicated to raising the economic security and, indeed, the safety of Australia's women. There was an additional extension to paid parental leave from 18 to 20 weeks. There were increased childcare subsidies, particularly for those families with two or more children in child care at the same time, because we know that is the tipping point where women make decisions about not returning to the workforce and, rather, stay at home because the cost of child care becomes overwhelming.

But more importantly, I think, is to focus on something that is not picked up in this notice of motion. Indeed, it doesn't really seem to feature in this government's thinking when they put together their women's policies—that is, one in three owners of small businesses in Australia now are women.

In fact, between 2006 and 2021, the number of female small-business owners increased by 24 per cent. Despite this incredible growth, there are still barriers to women led small businesses and particularly to things like access to finance. But studies in Australia suggest that boosting the number of female business owners to that equal of men could add somewhere in the vicinity of $70 billion to $135 billion to Australia's economy. That's something that we should be celebrating. That's something that we should be harnessing.

That's why we pursued things like the Female Founders Initiative, which encouraged women-owned and -led startups; the Entrepreneur's Program to take those startups to the next level, specifically for women; and the Career Revive program that encouraged dozens of regional businesses to take on women that were returning to work after a career break. There was about $60 million for additional places in girls academies for Indigenous students, supporting girls to help them attain year 12—such an important part of closing the gap. There was also support for women in male dominated trades and support for 230 women to pursue higher level STEM qualifications.

But I think one of the crowning achievements of the previous government was reaching gender parity on government board appointments. That was a commitment that the coalition made back in 2016, and it was achieved in 2020: 50 per cent of all government board appointments now go to women. For me personally, abolishing the $450 threshold for superannuation payments was one of my proudest achievements in this place. That made sure that around 300,000 low-paid women finally received, for the first time since superannuation was introduced by the Keating government, the superannuation that they deserved.

The best indicator of economic security in retirement is owning a home. That should be a focus of this government, and that's why, in the coalition's last budget-in-reply statement, we extended the homeownership program that would allow people to access their superannuation to buy their first home to women finding themselves single for the first time late— (Time expired)

Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is an important issue that regrettably is attached to a stunt by the Greens political party. The government has very important legislation listed this morning that we need to get to, including a bill to place the CFMEU into administration and legislation to get the NDIS back on track. Moving and debating this motion now without notice, despite the fact that this is an important issue that this government is working on, that members of this government and this chamber have worked on for many years, is seeking to distract us and delay us from getting to these and other important and time-critical manners.

This motion has not been put on notice in the ordinary way, and that's the giveaway, isn't it? That is the giveaway, friends, because this motion was not sent to the government by the Greens political party with sufficient notice to consider it before they seek to move it, and that is because it is simply a stunt.

It can only lead those of us on the government benches to conclude that the Greens political party are using this as a another tactic, incredibly, to delay debate on the important CFMEU administration legislation which is currently before this Senate. They don't want to support it. They don't want to debate it and they've made that clear. They certainly don't want to be called out for their role in protecting unacceptable behaviour in this union. It leads us to ask why. It leads us to ask the question, because there are other ways to deal with a matter as important as equal pay.

This government is serious about dealing with the gender pay gap. We've actually seen progress on reducing this gap since we took office two years ago. Today is Equal Pay Day, and we are now 50 days into the new financial year, which is how many extra days women have to work each year to earn the same average salary as men. The national gender pay gap is 11½ per cent, which means that, on average, for every dollar a men earns, a women earns around 89 cents. The government will not sit by, idly watching, and hope that it continues to close. We're taking action on it. Just last week we announced we'd increased the pay of early childhood educators by 15 per cent, and it follows a similar pay rise for aged-care workers last year. These are sectors where there are a lot of women workers, and boosting their pay helps close the overall gender pay gap. We've secured record pay rises for hundreds and thousands of women on award wages. We have fixed the bargaining system to get wages moving in feminised industries. We've banned pay secrecy and changed workplace laws to put gender equity at the heart of the Fair Work Commission's decision-making. And we are publishing employer gender pay gaps to hold companies to account.

We're also addressing the other drivers of the pay gap, like uneven distribution of unpaid care. We're doing things like expanding paid parental leave and changing how it's structured so that men are encouraged to take on their fair share of caring responsibilities and to, frankly, enjoy all of the important benefits that come from a connection between men and their children. We're making childcare cheaper so it is easier for families to benefit and to balance work and care.

We actually know that change does not happen overnight, but we are making progress. There is still a lot of work to be done, but I make this point: it is work that is actually being done by a Labor government. It's work that is actually seeing the gender pay gap come down. It is work that means something to Australian women, unlike a motion brought on as a stunt to delay debate on another question. There are several times during the program that the Greens could use to discuss this matter in the normal way, like matters of public importance or a general business debate, but, instead, they would rather pull a stunt to further delay important legislation to deal with issues in the CFMEU. I move:

That the question be now put.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question as moved by the minister is that the question be put.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the suspension motion moved by Senate Waters be agreed to.