Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023. The opposition will be supporting this bill for a number of reasons, and we're pleased that the government has chosen to implement the reforms which, importantly, began under the former coalition government.

In 2021 the coalition government commissioned a review of the Workplace Gender Equality Act. In the 2022 Women's Budget Statement, the coalition also provided $18.5 million to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency to support the implementation of recommendations from the review. The review itself was released in March 2022 and concluded that the gender pay gap in Australia was not closing at a fast enough rate. Whilst there has been much progress and work to progress women's economic equality in Australia, there has been slow progress on closing the gender pay gap, with progress stalling at 22.8 per cent in 2021 and 2022. The review considered if the agency had the 'appropriate powers, tools and levers' to achieve the objectives as stated in the act.

The review made 10 recommendations to accelerate the rate of change on workplace gender inequality and reduce the reporting burden on business. The measures contained in this bill implement in part or in full the following recommendations from the review: recommendation 2, 'publish organisation gender pay gaps to accelerate action to close them'; recommendation 3, 'bridge the "action gap" with new gender equality standards'; recommendation 5, support Respect@Work implementation 'to prevent and address workplace sex-based harassment and discrimination'; and recommendation 9, set the Workplace Gender Equality Agency up for 'future success to support employers to drive gender equality in Australian workplaces'.

Again, as I stated, the opposition are proud to support this bill, given in particular that it implements decisions taken by the former coalition government, and we commend the government for picking up on the work that was undertaken by the former coalition government.

The bill includes six amendments to the Workplace Gender Equality Act. It requires the Workplace Gender Equality Agency to publish the gender pay gap information of relevant employers of over 100 people for each reporting period. It requires relevant employers to provide executive summary and industry benchmark reports to all members of their governing body. It will rename the current minimum standards as 'gender equality standards'. It will include sexual harassment and harassment on the grounds of sex or discrimination as gender equality indicators. It will change the title of the director of the Workplace Gender Equality Agency to chief executive officer. It will also see a technical amendment to the definition of 'reporting period'.

The coalition is supportive of the fact that the government has chosen to implement this in a way that ensures there is no further regulatory burden for businesses under these proposed amendments. No technical change is required by employers in terms of reporting processes or the type of data that's provided to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency in this bill. Currently, organisations with over 100 employees must already provide remuneration data to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency. The main change, therefore, that we are looking at in this bill is to allow the agency to publish this data publicly by organisation as opposed to just by industry type.

It's also important to note, though, that businesses in Australia were first required to report this data to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency under the relevant act from 1 January 2013. The reporting requirements for businesses, therefore, are not new and, in fact, have now been in place for over a decade. This is a set of reforms that the coalition itself would have introduced if we had continued in government, and I reiterate that we are supportive of implementing them. Again, as I said, when we were in government we provided $18.5 million in funding to ensure that these important steps could be undertaken.

The coalition also has a proud record on reducing the gender pay gap, as well as on boosting workforce participation by women to record highs. After we were elected to office in 2013, the former coalition government created in excess of 1.9 million jobs. Importantly, when you look at the breakdown of those 1.9 million jobs around 60 per cent of those jobs went to women. Female workforce participation was around record highs at 62.2 per cent when we left government. That's compared to when we were elected to government in 2013, when it was at 58.7 per cent. The gender pay gap reached 13.8 per cent under the former coalition government and, in fact, when we assumed office in 2013 it was actually at 17.4 per cent, where it sat under the former Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Labor governments.

The coalition government also delivered landmark funding of $5.5 billion for women through our two Women's Budget Statements. In 2021-22, we delivered the $3.4 billion 2021-2022 Women's Budget Statement. In the 2022-2023 Women's Budget Statement we delivered $2.1 billion. This included $1.3 billion to drive change for women's safety and additional funding to increase women's workforce participation, to support women in leadership and to improve health outcomes for women and girls in Australia. These budgets built on the coalition government's 2018 and 2020 Women's Economic Security Statements. These reforms are just part of the important actions that we undertook when we were in government to boost women's participation and position in the workplace. Subject to the passage of the legislation, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency is planning to publish the first round of organisational pay gaps in early 2024.

I would like to thank the major business peak bodies as well as the many women's organisations which have engaged in the reform process from the commencement, when the coalition first undertook the review of the Workplace Gender Equality Act. Groups like the Business Council of Australia, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Australian Industry Group are all supportive of the changes. Groups including the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, the Minerals Council of Australia, COSBOA, Woolworths and the Law Council of Australia were also consulted during the review process.

Again, as I stated at the outset, the coalition will support this bill because it implements the important reforms that we had commenced whilst we were in government. We are proud to stand on our record of dramatically reducing the gender pay gap in Australia and of raising workplace standards for women in Australia. I commend the bill to the Senate.