Carina Garland (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think a starting point for this debate on the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023 is to reflect on all of those women who have come before us in this place to advance women's equality in politics and public life and who have been such staunch advocates for gender equality in workplaces everywhere across this country. I think of Joan Child, the former member for Henty. Joan, like me, represented the eastern suburbs of Melbourne and was the first woman from the Labor Party to be elected to the House of Representatives. It does cause me quite a bit of grief to reflect that it took until 1975 for the Labor Party to elect a woman to the federal House of Representatives in this country, but I'm really delighted that since that point progress has happened fairly rapidly. Of course, it was a Labor Party prime minister, Julia Gillard, who was the first—and only, sadly—woman to occupy that position, and I'm very honoured to be one of the many women to comprise a government that is a historic government in that a majority of women, 52 per cent, sit in the government party room.

While it's great for us to reflect on all of the progress that has been made so far for women in this country, the reality is that there is a long way to go. While it was really wonderful to have the Prime Minister come here and talk about our commitment as a government to equality and the things that we've already done, it is really clear that there is a long way for us as a nation to go in having genuine gender equality in workplaces and communities.

Earlier today, the report on the national attitudes to violence against women was released, and, appallingly, one in three people surveyed believe that women make up claims of sexual assault, even though the evidence suggests that this is absolutely not true. Clearly, we need to do more to shift community attitudes when it comes to respecting women, believing women and doing all we can as a society to bring about genuine, meaningful gender equality right across our communities.

Even though it has improved somewhat, we still have a gender pay gap of 13.3 per cent, which is too great, and we still see inequality in workplaces across the country, which has given rise to the need to change the Workplace Gender Equality Act to make sure that the way we report on gender equality is improved, that we have better data and that we capture more information at a workplace level so that we get a much clearer picture of where we're at as a nation to inform how we get to where we need to be, which is true equality.

The reforms in his bill will be a key driver for employer action, transparency and accountability, helping to speed up progress towards gender equality in the workplace, and it will also streamline reporting for employers. For the first time, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, WGEA, will report gender pay gaps at the employer level, not just at the industry level. That will help encourage companies to prioritise gender equality and work to close their gender pay gap, accelerating progress towards gender equality, which I believe everyone in this House does wants to see.

I'm really pleased that this is one of many parts of the government's suite of changes to truly address gender equality and workforce participation. This sits alongside our legislation to make child care cheaper, which will encourage more women to go back into workplaces where families have made the decision that child care is not affordable if that were to be the case. We've also made some important changes to paid parental leave to give more flexibility to families, again—(Time expired)

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