Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Werriwa for proposing this motion. My contribution today will focus primarily on the gender pay gap, and I agree entirely with the member for Werriwa that it is a major social and economic concern. But, while the gender pay gap may originate as a financial issue, it doesn't stop there. It flows to girls' and women's sense of self-worth and confidence, our mental health and our ability to care for ourselves and our families.

According to KPMG, almost a quarter of the gender pay gap is explained by the types of jobs that women do. This is critical, and I commend the government for trying to address some of this through the low-wage stream of their recent industrial relations bill. I absolutely support the recent 15 per cent pay increase for aged-care workers. While I support elements of the bill that just went through, I believe that we should have addressed the gender pay gap through other awards as well, such as childcare awards, to make a real difference to workers today. I also want to acknowledge that, while the government, I believe, is genuinely trying to address this, there are real concerns from the business community about elements of the bill, which we need to address and consider very carefully.

Going back to the gender pay gap, there is still much more to do despite the work that I think the government is genuinely trying to do here. We need to ensure that the government, businesses and community don't ignore the other drivers of the pay gap, particularly including gender discrimination, care and family obligations. It is astonishing that gender discrimination persists in Australia and that it is the largest driver of the gender pay gap, accounting for 36 per cent of the total. That's right: the persistence of gender discrimination is the biggest driver of the gender pay gap.

There are a variety of drivers of this discrimination, but it includes greater scrutiny of female workers, fewer opportunities for social-capital formation and different standards in relation to recruitment and pay negotiations. We, as a community, need to work doggedly and systematically to identify and resolve these barriers to female equality and success. Other important drivers are care and family responsibilities, particularly career interruptions around parenthood. This is very close to my heart and very close to the hearts of many families in Wentworth.

A recent Treasury report estimates that women's earnings fall 55 per cent in the five years after they become a parent, which is what they call 'the motherhood penalty'—as if late, sleepless nights weren't quite enough! This is driven by lower participation in paid work, fewer hours worked by those who choose work and lower hourly pay. Treasury's work shows that it's the mothers who suffer this penalty, rather than the parents. The fatherhood penalty is virtually non-existent. This is corroborated by Grattan Institute research, based on OECD data, which shows that men account for just two per cent of primary-carer parental leave in Australia. The OECD average is around 17 per cent, which just shows how far behind we are. It also shows that the reform needed is particularly cultural reform.

We have a problem in Australia in that we automatically expect mothers to be the primary carers. Many families spend a lot of time thinking about whether to have children and how many to have, but they don't spend as much time thinking about how the parenting workload will be split up, who the primary carer will be and what the social and economic implications of that decision will be. These decisions matter. It's a conversation that couples should be having before they become parents. It is also a conversation in which we need to redress the balance and accept that this should be a very open conversation rather than one which has assumed roles built in.

My hope is that the proposed reforms to paid parental leave will help encourage couples to have this conversation. I very much support the government's choice to increase paid parental leave to 26 weeks, but for me it is absolutely crucial that at least six of those weeks are held as 'use it or lose it' for the second parent, because we need to change the culture for raising our children. We already have two weeks of paid second-parent leave at the moment, but it just doesn't get taken up and it doesn't change the culture. We need to change the culture so that men—and it is typically men who are second parents—are involved with caring from the beginning, because this makes a difference to the gender pay gap, but it also makes a difference for male mental health, for male connection to children and for children's development. It's absolutely crucial, and we must change the culture for raising our children in this country.

This could make a real difference in the gap and to the lives of women right around the country. It's no silver bullet. There's a lot more that needs to be done, but it's an important and practical reform which we can and should deliver and support in the new year.

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