Page 662 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 24 February 2010
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Many women have times in their life when they are not in the full-time workforce and often because of decisions to raise a family and have substantial periods out of the workforce. Even with their qualifications, their intelligence and their skills, they at various times do not have the capacity to achieve wage equity with their male colleagues simply because they do not have the same exposure to the workforce as men do. And it is often the case, especially in a town like Canberra where perhaps people are not quite so dependent upon a second income, that women, especially in their middle years and later years, are more inclined to move in and out of the workforce as it suits them because they are not the principal breadwinner.
That is not a complete summary of the situation and it is certainly the case that in other communities in Australia those same issues would not hold true. But it is an extremely difficult issue for governments to grapple with and to come to policy solutions about. The minister has touched on this in her speech.
Ms Hunter says in her comments that this is about pay equity. But when I start to read the motion it becomes clear that it is actually about pay equity in the community sector, or that is what I thought. But, in talking about pay equity in the community sector, Ms Hunter seems to disregard the 20 per cent of people who work in the community sector who are in fact males. And then, when the horse is almost at the finish line, at the bottom of the motion, I find a new subject being raised, the issue of pay equity in the public service.
To all legal intents and purposes, there is pay equity in the public service. If you are an ASO whatever, irrespective of your gender you get paid the same money, and you have for a very long time. It may have been the case in the past that there were marriage bans and all of those sorts of things and there was not necessarily pay equity in the public service. But in the public service here in the ACT and across the country there is pay equity. There may be representational issues and I think that is something that Ms Hunter needs to get her head across. There is no mention in the preamble of the issue of pay equity in the public service. It just seems to me that overall this is a pretty lazy sort of motion.
One of the things I was thinking about when putting together my comments in relation to this motion was that Ms Hunter is very interested in pay equity. She has raised it here today. But she also raised it back in January when it became public that Ms Hunter, within three months of having been in this place, had written off a submission to the Remuneration Tribunal seeking a pay rise, according to the Canberra Times, somewhere between that of the position of the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and that of the Leader of the Opposition. She says that she asked for this pay rise, in excess of $50,000, as an attempt to address the inequity of the two-party system in the ACT. One of the headlines that reported this says, “Pay rise bid about equity, MLA says,” and the MLA is Ms Hunter.
I think that it is most interesting and a little sad that Ms Hunter’s first foray into pay equity issues in the ACT should be about improving her own pay equity. Perhaps she wants to catch up with you, Mr Speaker, and ensure that her pay is comparable with yours. Perhaps she should have thought about that earlier, because, after all, the
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