Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am delighted to rise on this motion moved by my friend and colleague the member for Canberra. Shifting this gender pay gap is serious business, and it should be serious business for this parliament. This week we're seeing the passage of the Anti-Discrimination and Human Rights Legislation Amendment (Respect at Work) Bill, and nothing highlights the need to start addressing some of these inequalities more than the reading of that first Kate Jenkins report and the subsequent reforms that need to be undertaken in workplaces across Australia now.

Whenever people ask me seriously what difference government makes, I remind them of the fact that, when the coalition government was first elected into office back in 2013, Australia sat 24th in the world gender equality rankings. When then Prime Minister Tony Abbott decided to make himself minister for women, a moment we were all somewhat surprised by, he decided we didn't need to do gendered-responsive budgeting in this nation anymore, a mechanism that Australia used to lead the world in. But, no, we didn't need that anymore, and that resulted in Australia plummeting to a record historical low of 50th place in those world gender equality rankings. We went from 24 to 50 within less than a decade. That's what happens when you drop the ball, when you don't want to monitor, when you aren't accountable. This is an absolutely unacceptable position for any government to take.

Women haven't been getting a fair deal for some time. We know this from the rankings, but the last decade has made things much worse. We've got a current gender pay gap of 14.1 per cent, and we know that means on average women are earning $263.90 less than the men working full-time. In other words, women must work 60 more days by the end of the financial year to just play catch up. The gender pay gap persists across all industries, and progress to slow the gender pay gap has been uneven and incrementally slow. That is not good enough. Women should not be paid less than men. It's that simple.

The Albanese Labor government hasn't wasted a day in trying to improve equality for women. In our short few months in government we've introduced 10 days paid domestic violence leave. We're acting on our commitment to build more affordable housing for women and kids fleeing violence, including $100 million in our budget for emergency housing. We've provided another 500 support workers for women fleeing violence. We've acted to provide cheaper child care and six months of paid parental leave. We've also introduced legislation to act on all of the recommendations from Kate Jenkins's Respect@Work report, which will strengthen laws that will prevent sexual harassment at work.

On the issue of closing the gender pay gap in Australia, the Albanese government has taken decisive action. We've introduced the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill. That bill, introduced in the last sitting period, will amend the Fair Work Act to provide fairer pay and conditions for working women and address those key drivers of gender pay inequality. This bill puts gender equity at the very heart of our fair work system by making gender equity and job security objects in the Fair Work Act. The bill also adds gender equality to the modern awards and minimum wages objectives and adds to the need to improve access to secure work on the modern awards objectives.

There's a clear expectation now that the Fair Work Commission must consider gender equality when performing its functions, when setting the minimum wage, when considering changes to awards and in all other decisions it makes. I'm very pleased to see those aspects on the up already, with the 15 per cent wage increase for aged-care workers and an increase to the minimum wage. These are good steps in the right direction.

The Workplace Gender Equality Agency Director, Mary Wooldridge, spoke recently about the impact the gender pay gap has on women at a time of blooming inflation. I direct the House to her comments. I can assure you that her observations that 'sheflation' impacts all Australians are absolutely true. Addressing the gender pay gap is a serious issue. It requires leadership, and that's what we're doing.

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