Anika Wells (Lilley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Even with all the weeks to prepare for consideration in detail, the best question asked then was, 'Are you aware of any alternative approaches?' Honestly, you do a disservice to this process.

The Morrison government can run but it cannot hide from the numbers. Australian women earn less than men in any job. So my first question to the minister is: what is your plan to fix that? This Morrison budget glossy is full of buzzwords without any substance. It's not a budget even trying to fix the systemic inequality faced by Australian women. It is a budget for political recovery, not for pandemic recovery. Half of one per cent of this $589 billion budget, or $3.4 billion, is going towards women's economic security.

Gender Equity Victoria conducted analysis comparing how the federal budget's investment in women measures up in comparison to some of the other big-ticket items that it announced. Specific funding for endometriosis is $5 million, but the gaming industry receives $20 million in tax breaks. There is $29.3 million set aside to improve migrant and refugee women's safety over the next three years, but $464 million is being sprayed around to bolster immigration detention. There is $57.6 million being set aside for family violence services for First Nations women—that's terrific, but $474 million is being spent upgrading military training facilities, all in the Northern Territory. From those numbers it is pretty clear how much the Morrison government actually cares about women's economic security—it doesn't. There is little support for women working in traditionally female dominated, undervalued care sectors like aged care, child care and retail. You can throw as much unconditional money as you like at aged-care facilities, but you are not going to fix aged care if you are not fixing the systemic workforce issues in that industry. If you have a female dominated workforce that is underpaid, underappreciated and overworked, you will not fix aged care, no matter how many billions you throw at private centres to do so without any strings attached.

We agree that new skills spending is good, but skills do not create jobs, they do not boost wages and they do not improve existing works conditions. Poor wage growth hurts everybody, including workers and small-business owners, but it hurts women the most, because 65 per cent of all jobs undertaken by women are in low- and middle-income service industries like hospitality, retail, health care and social services. This inequity is only further widened by the gender pay gap, which is currently at 31 per cent and only getting wider as the prevalence of insecure work continues to grow.

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