Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Fair Work Amendment (Paid Family and Domestic Violence Leave) Bill 2022. In opposition, Labor promised to provide 10 days of paid family and domestic violence leave to all employees. As one of our first legislative acts in government we are doing exactly that. I'd like to thank the Deputy Chair of the Education and Employment Committee, Senator O'Sullivan, and the secretariat of the committee for their strong engagement on the inquiry into this bill. In that inquiry not a single stakeholder that made a submission or appeared at a hearing said that this was a bad idea—not a single one—because everyone recognised just how important this is.

The statistics are shocking. From the age of 15, one in four women and one in 13 men experience violence by an intimate partner. On average, one woman is killed by a current or former partner every 10 days in Australia. Paid leave enables those experiencing violence to access support services before it's too late. As Samantha Parker, a frontline women's service worker and Australian Services Union organiser, told the Senate committee inquiry into this bill:

Paid domestic and violence leave allows women the opportunity to leave abusive relationships safely.

These reforms will save lives.

I want to commend the activists and survivors who have campaigned for paid family and domestic violence leave over many years. I also want to commend the community and trade union movement, which have fought tooth and nail against opposition from some in the employer lobby for this entitlement. I particularly want to acknowledge the Australian Services Union, which has been instrumental in this fight, including former ASU New South Wales secretary Sally McManus, Natalie Lang, current secretary Angus McFarland and current deputy secretary Judith Wright.

Just like weekends, the 40-hour week, the minimum wage, annual leave, sick leave, parental leave, penalty rates, superannuation, workers compensation, unfair dismissal laws and redundancy pay, none of these entitlements were gifted by employers or conservative governments. Every single one of these benefits was fought for and won by the community, trade unions and countless union members and organisers across the country. Today there is a new entitlement to add to that list: paid family and domestic violence leave.

The usual suspects and employer lobby groups like the Australian Industry Group showed up to the inquiry into the bill and complained. They complained that businesses shouldn't have to pay for their employees to get paid leave to assess potentially life-saving support. Isn't it funny that the big businesses that fund these lobby groups never want to put their own names to the reprehensible policy positions they lobby for? We will see it again this week when the Ai Group and chamber of commerce campaign against Labor's reforms to grow wages and improve job security.

The large companies, such as Qantas, that fund these groups are too ashamed to run these campaigns in their own name. But the fact is that this leave entitlement will not only provide vital support to people experiencing violence; it will also deliver productivity benefits. The Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre estimates that this reform will deliver net savings for employers through increased productivity and reduced absenteeism. This is just the first of a number of reforms that will improve the lives of Australian workers, especially women workers, and help with cost-of-living pressures and job insecurity, particularly in feminised industries.

The government has already introduced legislation to the House that will massively expand childcare subsidies for Australian families, enabling parents to get back into work sooner. Another government bill already introduced to the House will implement all the remaining legislative recommendations of the Respect@Work report. In the budget just handed down last night the Albanese government extended paid parental leave from 18 weeks to 26 weeks, another massive reform for working families.

Later this week the government will introduce a bill that makes four significant improvements to gender equity in the workplace. It includes banning pay secrecy clauses—a practice that employers use to prevent workers, particularly women workers, from learning how they've been discriminated against. It includes making gender equity an explicit objective of the Fair Work Act. It includes establishing new expert panels of the Fair Work Commission to address pay equity and undervalued work in the care sector. It also includes giving the commission greater power to order pay increases in low-paid usually highly feminised industries through equal remuneration principles.

Together these reforms represent the greatest strides towards gender equality at work in generations. The initial fight over equal pay was won in 1969 with a meat workers union's successful equal pay case at the arbitration commission. But, over 50 years later, equal pay for equal work has still not become a reality for Australian women. These reforms by the Albanese government mean gender equity at work can finally be realised. It is really disappointing that, after nine years of sending workers' wages and rights backwards, opposition by the Liberals and Nationals has already confirmed that they will be opposing many of those reforms.

I think it's time that those opposite and their mates in the employer lobby cut out the old class war nonsense and got onboard with Labor's pro-wages and pro-women agenda—an agenda that is also delivering critical support for women and men experiencing domestic and family violence.