Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In tonight’s grievance debate, I want to take issue with the opposition’s decade of lost opportunities to institute reforms and changes to address longstanding issues of concern to women in the workforce. Among those concerns are the important issues of economic security for women both at work and in retirement, balancing work and family life, making child care more affordable and accessible, closing the pay gap between the genders and introducing a national paid parental scheme.

I recall that over the years I have been in this House I have made a number of contributions on these important issues. In fact, very early in my first term as the member for Throsby, again in a grievance debate, I made the following comments:

I take this opportunity to grieve about this government’s inaction on the work and family agenda. We hear a lot of rhetoric from this government—

remember the talk about its being a barbecue stopper—

but we see no substantial action where people desperately need it, on major issues like the introduction of paid maternity—

and parental—

leave and meeting the growing demand for child-care places … and outside school hours care programs. We have heard a lot of talk but have seen no delivery of the services required to help the majority of Australian families balance their work and family commitments.

I went on to argue that the situation for many families was in fact becoming critical and that, by comparison to many OECD countries, we were doing very poorly in terms of women’s participation in the paid workforce after giving birth to children. I recall that at the time—and I mentioned it in that grievance debate—the now Leader of the Opposition, then in his ministerial capacity, said on the public record that paid maternity leave would be introduced ‘over this government’s dead body’. I spoke on a range of these issues in the forlorn hope that the Howard government would finally listen, but by way of a response we instead got a full assault on the status of women at work. This was achieved primarily by the promotion of individual contracts of employment through the Work Choices legislation, which had as its aim the deregulation of the labour market.

The government was warned at the time that the provisions of Work Choices would have the most negative consequences on those most marginal in the labour market, namely women, in all employment categories. I argued this on many occasions, and in one debate I said:

… women are often employed on a part time and casual basis, they are often located in industries with little bargaining power and they are often not members of the trade union movement … more and more of these vulnerable workers will be forced onto individual contracts in order to get paid employment, or indeed to retain their jobs

As a group, women will lose out on pay and conditions in a deregulated market place. Despite all the spin that we heard from the government, the statistics and the data revealed by the ABS clearly showed that these deleterious impacts were being felt by women across the board. The data showed from very early days that women on AWAs were doing far worse in comparison with women in collective agreements and even on award conditions.

This decade of lost opportunities is finally being redressed by the election of a Rudd Labor government, and I am very delighted as a member of that government that we have seen major advances in the government’s first term. The first major advance was of course the abolition of the insidious Work Choices legislation and its replacement by the Fair Work Act. There are a number of provisions in that act which go a long way towards addressing some of those issues of concern that I raised very early in a grievance debate in this House. Let me just mention a few of them. Our legislation provides for a safety net of 10 national employment standards which will provide all employees, including great numbers of women, in the federal system with enforceable minimum protection standards. There is to be an annual minimum wage review by a specialist panel, again of great value to women, who form the majority—almost 60 per cent—of the nearly 1.5 million workers reliant on the minimum wage.

Our act provides for a special bargaining stream for low-paid workers, and that is particularly important for women because historically we know that enterprise bargaining has been problematic in many of the industries where women continue to have high representation. Very importantly, the equal remuneration provisions in the Fair Work Act will now provide for cases to be heard on the basis of a claim for equal pay, or equal pay based on the principle of equal value. This provision now in the federal act translates very much the provisions that have been contained in the New South Wales legislation for some years now and which have been used quite successfully to advance the pay of many women at work.

Interestingly, when I reflect back on some of the debates of past years, the issue of pay equity was another matter on which I made a number of comments in different contributions. I remember arguing with the then industrial relations minister, now the opposition’s shadow Treasurer. I accused him of misleading parliament, because one day he did come in and claim:

… the pay gap between men and women has narrowed. So we are getting to a better position in relation to the pay gap.

The facts presented a totally different picture. In November 1996, female ordinary time earnings as a percentage of male earnings stood at 84.2 per cent. A decade later under the Howard government, this ratio had fallen to 83.7 per cent. The gender gap was in fact widening at the same time as the opposition shadow Treasurer was coming into the House and misleading parliament about their so-called great achievements in narrowing that gap. So much for the minister’s spin and the lack of action over a decade by the former government. I am very heartened that a test case will shortly begin to test these new comparable work provisions. That test case will apply to pay rates for community sector workers—a long overdue initiative. We all know as politicians the worth of workers in the community sector. We know the great contribution they make. But we also should know that this sector and the workers in it—predominantly women—have had their wages historically undervalued, and they continue to be underpaid in relation to the contribution they make. I am pleased that that test case is being pursued by the union covering those workers. I was quite concerned to read just yesterday that the most recent data from the ABS shows that gender wage gap is now the worst it has been for a long time. It is totally unacceptable to read that on average a woman today is earning only 82 cents for every dollar that a man earns at ordinary time rates. The gender pay gap is now at its widest since August 1994. That reflects very adversely on this parliament and the lack of commitment by the former government to this very important issue.

I want to again place on record the importance of getting an early response from our government to the report Making it Fair. It was a report of a House of Representatives standing committee, chaired by my colleague the member for Hasluck, that inquired into pay equity issues. I had the opportunity to speak on the significant matters it canvassed when it was tabled back in November 2009. It is a very comprehensive report, with 63 strategic, yet very practical, recommendations. It points to the obvious need to look beyond the possibilities that may come with the test case that I have just referred to. In other words, let us broaden our horizons and look at what else can be done outside the auspices of the industrial relations system to advance the pay equity arguments. I repeat my desire for an early government response to what I consider a very groundbreaking and seminal report.

In conclusion on this issue, let me just restate that the former government cared nothing about the fact that Australia was only one of two OECD nations that had no national paid parental scheme. The current opposition leader said that paid parental or maternity leave would be ‘introduced over the government’s dead body’. It seems that he has had now had a change of heart, but I ask the question: can we believe in his commitments and his change of heart on such a fundamental issue? Our government will go down in history as providing Australia’s first paid parental scheme from 1 January 2011. It will provide for 18 weeks of government funded parental leave at the national minimum wage—(Time expired