Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. What impact have the Albanese Labor government's policies had for women wanting to work full time?

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Canberra for the question and acknowledge the member for Canberra's strong advocacy, wanting to remove the barriers that make it hard for women who want to work full-time to be able to take up that opportunity. Under the Albanese Labor government, more Australian women are now getting into full-time work than ever, ever before. Our first 12 months of government delivered the strongest jobs growth for any new Australian government—330,000 jobs—but a record high number of women are joining the workforce, too: 163,900 more in the past 12 months. If you look at the total figures of this jobs boom over the past 12 months and think that these figures involve four different categories—men working full time, women working full time, men working part time and women working part time—across that full set, 57 per cent of the new jobs are women working full time. Now, you don't get a change like that through some coincidence; you get a structural shift like that only because there are structural shifts happening in the rules for work in Australia.

When it made those changes, this government created the opportunity which allowed more women who wanted to work full time to do so. When it delivered stronger gender pay equity laws it delivered more options for women. We delivered more options for women wanting to work full time when we backed pay increases, including the 15 per cent pay increase in the aged-care sector, a heavily feminised sector; when we stood in last year's annual wage review and this year's annual wage review for a real wage increase for a real wage increase for low-paid workers; and where we have stood against all the arguments and excuses that we dealt with for years and now are in the process of implementing—all 55 recommendations of the Respect@Work report. This government created more options for women who want to work full time when we passed laws to make child care cheaper and more accessible for 96 per cent of Australian families, when we delivered the biggest boost to paid parental leave since the scheme was introduced by Labor in 2011.

When you change the law to remove the barriers, you start to get the figures we're now seeing. When you change the laws to provide flexibility in the workplace you start to find that many women who wanted to work full time, who previously couldn't, now can. And as we work towards legislation later this year where we will remove further loopholes to create a workplace situation that makes it easier for people to get into the workforce, we'll continue to see a change of government meeting a change of opportunity for women wanting to work full time. (Time expired)