Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the amendments be agreed to.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Anti-Discrimination and Human Rights Legislation Amendment (Respect at Work) Bill 2022 is an important bill. It is worthy of the House noting the significance of this legislative change, which we're supporting with the amendments made by the Senate. With this respect at work bill we have now taken another important step towards what should be at the heart of any society that has the right to call itself civilised—the right to a safe and respectful workplace.

The government I'm so very proud to lead has delivered on another promise it made to the Australian people. Labor campaigned on a promise to implement every single one of the recommendations of the Respect@Workreport into sexual harassment in Australian workplaces. Shortly after I was sworn in as Prime Minister I made it clear that this election promise was now a key part of the agenda of the new government.

The last two years have been a real reckoning in this country. Australian women have stood up—not the least of which were outside this very building—and courageously and emphatically declared: 'Enough is enough.' We are a great country, but there is an even greater Australia within our reach if only we dare to extend ourselves a little.

We're working to address the imbalances in our society that have, for so long, been tilted against women, and I'm proud of what we've achieved in our first six months—cheaper child care and early childhood education, a plan to expand paid parental leave, women's economic equality put at the centre of the Jobs and Skills Summit, gender equity to be written into the Fair Work Act and record investment in women's safety. I'm very proud to lead a Labor caucus 103 strong of which 54 are women. The fact that we had that advance at the last election gave a mandate for us moving forward on these issues. These acts are all acts of equality, but so much of it is also about economic reform.

That is just in our first six months. I declare today that we've begun as we mean to continue. The speed with which we've acted is the only correct response to the calculated inertia of the previous decade. Those opposite sat on the Jenkins report for almost a year without even responding to it, and then they refused to implement key recommendations. In 2021, they even voted against Labor's amendments to introduce a positive duty on employers to stop sexual harassment in their workplaces. Imagine holding that up to the nation is one of your principles and being proud of that?

The circumstances we've inherited are not good enough. During the last decade Australia fell to 70th in the world for women's economic participation and opportunity, and we went from being the 24th most equal country in the world for women and men to the 50th. That is so far from good enough that it is hard to measure. We will allow no more of these opportunities to be lost.

This bill will place a positive duty on employers to take reasonable and proportionate measures to eliminate sex discrimination, sexual harassment and victimisation as far as possible. It will especially prohibit conduct that results in a hostile work environment on the basis of gender and it will ensure Commonwealth public sector organisations are also required to report to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency on their gender equality indicators.

I want to once again express our great debt of gratitude to everyone who stepped up to share their experiences with Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins. Their courage gave us a template for a better future, and we're following that template.

This bill is a key part of our mission to progress gender equality across all of our workers of government. With this bill, we recognise that achieving women's economic equality includes making sure women are safe at work, and we'll keep working with governments and businesses to make sure all Respect@Work recommendations are put in place. We must never accept sexual harassment as either inevitable or unavoidable, because it is anything but. Nor should we exempt the dangerous, low-energy fiction that somehow we are incapable of improvement. Think about how far we have come as a society and as a nation. Think of all we have managed to achieve together as a people. Australia is a country that gets things done, especially when the Australian people have a government that measures up to their energy, to their ambition, to their courage and, most importantly, to their abiding sense of fairness.

That is what we're doing here: we're writing a new chapter and moving forward with our national story. We're building a better future, one with equality and respect at its core. And we're allowing ourselves the possibility of an Australia that reflects our highest ideals. Most importantly, with this legislation we are doing what is right.

Question agreed to.