Anthony Chisholm (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

Thanks, Senator B Pocock, for your constructive work on this issue over a long period of time but particularly since you've been elected to the Senate. The government has made no secret of its desire to get wages moving. Where we see the most acute need is in feminised industries. Australian women are amongst the most educated in the OECD, yet the gender pay gap is currently 14.1 per cent, which means women earn $263.90 less than men per week on average. The total remuneration gender pay gap, based on the Workplace Gender Equality Agency data, is 22.8 per cent, meaning men earn almost $26,000 a year more than women. As you can see, there is a real urgency in how we address this and the need to address this.

To promote gender equality and close the gender pay gap we need to change the law. That is the reality. In the design of these reforms we have deliberately focused on the needs of lower paid and feminised workforces, and we believe the bill we have put forward best deals with those issues. As Senator David Pocock has pointed out in this chamber, some of the very workers who put their health and safety on the line to guide us through the pandemic are struggling, particularly with the cost of living that people are confronting at the moment. That's workers in health care, aged care, disability support, early childhood education and care and other care in community sectors. Part of the discussion we had last night was about attracting worker to these industries as well, because they are areas where we are suffering from a significant labour shortage at the moment. Keeping those workers and attracting new workers to those industries are going to be much easier if they are better paid.

Work in these industries is undervalued because of unfair and discriminatory assumptions about the value of the work and the skill required to do the job. The undervaluation is one of the biggest causes of the gender pay gap, and our reforms take a number of key steps to address it. Another key cause of the gender pay gap is that our laws are outdated and don't support workers with caring responsibilities well enough. We will take a number of historic steps to address these issues: (1) changing the objects of the Fair Work Act to include gender equality, (2) fixing gender pay equity and creating new expert panels, (3) fixing bargaining for low-paid feminised sectors through our new support stream, (4) banning pay secrecy, (5) stamping out sexual harassment and (6) providing greater access to flexible work. That's what the focus of this bill is. That's why it is important. That's why it's urgent that it be passed. That's why the government have made it a priority since we were elected.