Federation Chamber - PRIVATE MEMBERS BUSINESS - Women's Economic Security
Transcript
Date: 31 July 2023
Ms WARE (Hughes) (13:08): I rise to speak on this motion relating to women's employment and economic security. Women's participation in the workforce—their ability and opportunities to have choices and flexibility around how to best balance their family's needs with their own career aspirations—is one of the most important issues facing our country. Women's equality is essential for strengthening our economy, our society and our nation. The government must commit to ensuring that women's workforce participation continues to rise. This is essential to supporting economic growth and raising living standards for all Australians.
When Australian women do well, their families do well and our nation does well. However, we now have a growing cohort of Australian women who risk living in poverty at retirement. This can be linked directly to the massive differential in superannuation between Australian men and women. On average, Australian women retire on 47 per cent less superannuation than Australian men. This in turn can be related to the time women take out of the workforce for childbirth and child rearing.
We have now had a government paid parental leave scheme since 2011. It is extremely disappointing that this scheme, after 12 years, still does not attract the superannuation guarantee. The consequence of this is that it is not compulsory for any employer to pay superannuation while a new parent, usually the mother, is on paid parental leave. The Labor government's own Women's Economic Equality Taskforce, as well as the Workplace Gender Equality Agency and the Productivity Commission, have long advocated for compulsory payment of superannuation for parents on parental leave. It is, therefore, highly disappointing that, despite handing down two budgets over the last 12 months, Treasurer Chalmers has ignored all of this advice and has to date failed to make changes to the Paid Parental Leave scheme to assist Australian women.
The importance of the superannuation guarantee being applied to the Paid Parental Leave scheme is highlighted further as women commonly rejoin the workforce on a part-time basis after their parental leave has concluded and as a result their superannuation earnings will be lower because they earn less. According to data collected by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, even the annualised base salary for part-time employment of $54,000 is less when compared to the about $84,000 full-time average base salary. Consequently, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency concluded in its report:
… the current superannuation system in Australia, which is tied to paid work, creates significant inequalities in retirement incomes for those who provide unpaid care.
Most of these roles are filled by women. Women should not be financially punished in this manner for making choices about having and raising children. The government has the fiscal levers available to it to remedy this situation.
A further barrier for women is that part-time employment is also less likely to be available in senior management roles. In fact, availability is currently estimated at only around 10 per cent. This low percentage of part-time employment in management also limits women's capacity to take up or stay in senior leadership roles if they are a carer. The Workplace Gender Equality Agency has also provided data showing that the gender pay gap is more significant in part-time than in full-time positions, contributing further to lower superannuation in general. Therefore, while the ABS statistics referred to in this motion are pleasing—women's workforce participation has been improving—there is still a major gap, particularly with superannuation and the lack of superannuation paid on paid parental leave, and that is contributing significantly to women facing retirement on far less money than Australian men.