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

I rise to speak on the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Setting Gender Equality Targets) Bill 2024. This bill amends the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 and introduces new requirements for designated relevant employers, those with 500 or more employees, to commit to achieve or, at a minimum, improve on and report to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency on measurable gender equality targets. These targets are proposed to fall under any of the six gender equality indicators. The bill requires large employers to select three gender equality targets and report on their progress to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency each year. In their third year of reporting, they must then show that they have achieved their targets or, at a minimum, have improved their targets before selecting a further three targets to achieve in the following three years.

This bill also amends the definition of 'relevant employer' to explicitly include subsidiaries of parent companies with 100 or more employees and clarifies that, in a corporate structure, a parent corporation is also considered to employ each of the employees of any of its subsidiaries. Where an employer has not met its selected gender equality targets or has not demonstrated improvements within the relevant period of three years, they are considered to have failed to comply with their obligations under the act. Under the Workplace Gender Equality Procurement Principles, relevant employers seeking to supply goods or services to the government at or above $80,000 must provide a certificate of compliance issued by the agency as part of that procurement process. Consequently, such employers would be unable to provide the compliance certificate.

This bill places quite significant and onerous financial implications on businesses. The legislation will affect over 1,650 of Australia's largest companies by potentially precluding them from supplying goods or services to the Commonwealth government at or above $80,000 in critical areas, including agriculture and forestry; forestry and fishing; construction; education and training; manufacturing; and mining. The provisions in this bill significantly undermine businesses and they risk the important procurement required for critical areas like national security. This bill introduces a new power for the minister to set targets and rules in relation to the selection of gender equality targets. The bill gives personal power to the minister to set the category of targets that can be selected and to select the number of targets that businesses are required to select. It's getting more and more convoluted. The menu of targets will be set out in an instrument to the act and will not be on the face of this legislation. This is, without a doubt, government overreach.

The minister has personal powers to set rules and targets of their own choosing with no scrutiny from the businesses that are impacted. This creates the possibility of an even more onerous compliance burden on businesses. The bill introduces substantial compliance requirements on Australian businesses, and the reporting requirements add further red tape to the operations of Australia's biggest corporations, driving down their productivity in an economy that is already struggling under the increasing compliance burdens of the Albanese government's radical industrial relations and energy policies that other senators in this place have spoken about. Adding compliance burdens to businesses will also inevitably be inflationary, adding to the Albanese government's already existing homegrown inflation crisis.

It's estimated that the bill will create further compliance issues for over 1,650 of Australia's businesses. Should the government want to go further, guess who we think is next in line after big business? It's pretty clear it's going to be small and medium enterprises—millions and millions of them—around the country, who are already struggling with significant red tape and compliance burdens under this Albanese Labor government.

We are concerned that there has not been adequate scrutiny of this legislation. The debate has come on in this chamber, and yet, at the same time, businesses around the country are going under. There have been 27,000 businesses that have failed under the Albanese government, and that should be a red flag. It's belling the cat. It's of great concern that not only is productivity going backwards in this country but red tape is increasing and economic growth is stagnating. The Albanese government's solution seems to be more and more red tape that is holding Australian businesses back. We should be trying to reduce red tape and overburdensome regulation on Australian businesses, not adding more.

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

Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It being 1.30 pm, I shall now proceed to two-minute statements.