Matters of Interest

International Equal Pay Day

The Hon. R.P. WORTLEY (15:26): A cause very close to my heart is being recognised by the United Nations on 18 September. That is the date of International Equal Pay Day. I will say that we are not in a position to celebrate it just yet because too many people are not receiving equal pay for equal work. I understand that seniority brings greater pay, but even in Australia we are seeing equally qualified people with equal tenure receiving different levels of pay for doing the same job. More often than not that applies to women who are still on average receiving wages well below that of their male counterparts. We do not want tokenism; we just want a fair go.

Australia has a strong recent history in fighting for equal pay. The concept was first acknowledged in 1969, but it was not adopted. It was during the first month of that great era of the Whitlam Labor government that equal pay for equal work was legislated. The private sector, it seems, is a long way behind the public sector in providing equal pay. For instance, even in Australia, private companies are paying 31 per cent less to women. In the public sector, the figure is 5 per cent, which is still not acceptable, but they are a lot closer to achieving the objective.

Where Australia stands on the global index also shows that we have some work to do. We are ranked only 26^th in the world for equal pay, well behind the likes of Iceland, Norway, Finland, New Zealand and the UK. The index shows women are making only 70 per cent of the wages men make for the same work, and that is just not good enough.

But it is a lot worse still for our First Nations people. They earn around $300 per week less than non-Indigenous Australians. Under-representation is part of the problem. When it comes time to negotiate a wage for casual or occasional work, employers have a history of taking advantage of the situation.

In 1969, the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission established a minimum female wage at 85 per cent of the male wage. The belief at the time was that the supposed major breadwinner, men, should make more. We no longer have women earning less than men as a matter of statute, yet women are still making less. Too many women are forced to take poor wages by unscrupulous employers just for the opportunity to work.

In many countries, usually Second and Third World countries, women have struggled to make enough money for any type of independence. In addition to Second and Third World countries, regressive political ideologies are undoing a lot of the good work done over the past century. In the US, for example, women earn about 80 per cent of what men earn for the same work. Black, Native American and Latina women are even worse off, earning about 60 per cent of the male wage. That is not likely to improve anytime soon while extreme conservative politics are in play. The US example just shows that every nation is only one extreme government away from setting their standards back many years.

Whenever reactionary governments take power, the first casualty is fairness and equality. It is usually the hardworking minorities that suffer. For these reasons, we need to remain vigilant in Australia and continue to strive for fairness and equality. There is no reason we cannot match our Kiwi neighbours across the Tasman and pay more fairly. Hopefully, those countries that are straight-out abusing women and minorities will right themselves sooner rather than later. In the meantime, let us try to make this nation fair and properly recognise the contribution made by women and other unfairly paid Australians.