Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Walker for that question because it is an important one. We do release the report card every year, and this year it shows that we've reached our highest score ever in the global rankings on gender equality, moving from 43rd, when we came to government, to 13th now. It also showed that there are areas like care where dads are spending more time with their children and taking up more of those caring leave arrangements, which is fantastic, including with the government scheme.

It shows that the gender pay gap is continuing to narrow. It is currently sitting at 11½ per cent, and indeed it aligns with WGEA's employer gender pay gap data, which I know Senator Canavan says is the most useless set of data that a government agency has ever collected. We don't agree with that. We think it is important data, and it has shown, year on year, that the gender pay gap has been driven down, but there are obviously areas where we still need to improve.