Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Women (Senator Cash) to a question without notice asked by Senator Waters today relating to the gender pay gap.

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Women.

I rise to take note of the response given by Senator Cash, which did not include women terribly much, despite the fact that that was the focus of my questions.

I firstly drew minister's attention to the fact that we have some explosive data out today: the first tranche of the yearly data that has been gathered by the new Workplace Gender Equality Agency, which shows that we have so far to go in terms of women's representation in senior positions in the workforce. Some of the alarming statistics are that only one-quarter of senior managers are women, and just 17 per cent of CEOs are women.

These are really troubling statistics but they come off the back of our existing knowledge, thanks to ABS data, that the gender pay gap is the biggest it has been in decades, at 18.2 per cent. We know from today's Workplace Gender Equality Agency data that, for larger employers, that pay gap—once you factor in perks and total remuneration—is at 25 per cent. So women are getting paid one-quarter less across the board by those larger employers. It is outrageous.

So I put to the minister: when you have such useful data about the extent of the gender pay gap and the lack of women's participation in senior echelons of the workforce, when we know now what the scope of the problem is, why do you want to shackle the government's ability to fix this, by watering down those reporting requirements? That is what they are doing. They have already put on hold the increase to the reporting requirements, which would have given us even more data in the future, and they are looking at watering down the current reporting requirements, which gave us today's data. The minister neglected to answer the question. She did not refer to gender reporting at all. From that, I can only conclude that the government is indeed about to take the wrecking ball to those reporting requirements.

I next asked the minister about why we have such poor representation of women in cabinet? The private sector is still doing quite poorly, with only 23 per cent of company directors being women, but we have only five per cent of women in cabinet. I asked her: why are you letting corporate Australia beat you as a government? Her response was—and I was quite astounded at this, so I jotted it down: 'It is not just one thing you get hung up on.' I am afraid the representation of women in senior roles in the government is something to be hung up on. How can we fix the gender pay gap when it goes to the very heart of our democracy? We have just one woman in cabinet. She is working very hard, but it is just one woman in cabinet and a mere five women on the front bench. I was very disappointed in the minister's response that somehow we should not get 'hung up' on that fact.

Lastly I drew the minister's attention to the fact that today is White Ribbon Day, and I want to commend the work of White Ribbon who had an excellent event here in Parliament House this morning, at which all parties were represented and spoke admirably. I particularly want to thank the MC Andrew O'Keefe, who is a White Ribbon ambassador spoke very passionately and very powerfully. White Ribbon are clearly doing an excellent job.

Today is also International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. So I asked the minister: given that we know that gender inequality, including economic inequality, is driving and worsening violence against women, why is this government persisting in a budget that the experts are saying will have a disproportionate effect on women? Things like welfare changes, tax changes and proposed changes to tertiary education have disproportionate effects on women, as women take time out of the workforce for caring responsibilities. Unfortunately I did not get a response at all on that question. I simply got a rant about debt and deficit. It would have been really appropriate to mention women in that response, and to acknowledge the effect of this cruel budget on the whole of Australia, but particularly on women.

We have seen in the domestic violence inquiry—which I was pleased to initiate and to have support from all parties to undertake—that it is not just economic inequality that is driving violence against women; it is also the fact that the budget and other decisions of this government are cutting women's ability to escape violence. Reductions in funding to legal services, particularly women's legal services, particularly the Family Violence Prevention Legal Services for Indigenous women are making the situation worse for women. Changes to housing, with the axing of funding certainty for the homelessness partnership are also making the situation worse for women.

Unfortunately we got no engagement on that issue either and I can only hang my head in shame and hope that in future this parliament will do better for women. Certainly there are enough of us in here that we will not give up on that. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.