Page 665 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 24 February 2010
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I am also embarrassed for Mrs Dunne as she has clearly not done an ounce of work on finding out what a pay equity audit is or in fact what pay equity is. I am surprised that she would display such ignorance by saying that the public service already has established pay equity, so an analysis should not be conducted. An audit is not about establishing pay equity. I ask Mrs Dunne to have a good look at the Australian government Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency website to educate herself on what a pay equity audit actually is.
Another thing that I was a bit gobsmacked over was this issue where she talked about this motion being a mishmash and a lazy motion. It was the amendments that Mrs Dunne put in that were a mishmash. My office could not figure out what she was attempting to do. I spoke to Ms Burch, and she and her office could not figure it out either. Obviously there was a mishmash in the amendments that Mrs Dunne, in the end, did not put forward. I am not surprised that she has not.
There is also the fact that several documents, links on the internet and so forth, were sent. A package of information, in a sense, was sent to Mrs Dunne’s office so that she did have that background information. Unfortunately, no one has looked at it at all. If she understood what a pay equity audit was, she should or would have grasped the concept and followed my line of reasoning. The minister and the government have quite clearly understood that this motion is about International Women’s Day. It is linked to the celebrations that happen across the world every year. I was therefore addressing pay inequity for women. After hearing Mrs Dunne’s comments, I now understand why she has trouble with this.
I then go on to state what is happening across this nation regarding reform to an employment sector—that is, the community sector—that just happens to be a huge employer of women: 80 per cent of the workforce are women. The next section of the motion really confused Mrs Dunne. That was regarding national reform. I clearly heard that she has no idea what is going on federally or what the rest of the nation is doing regarding pay equity reform. She clearly has a misunderstanding of the process that is happening under Fair Work Australia. As informed members may be aware, once Fair Work Australia makes a decision on the ASU equal pay case it will issue an equal pay order, and this order will override all awards and agreements. Therefore it will be absolutely necessary for the minister to address the effect that the decision will have on the local community sector.
We already know that Mrs Dunne is not particularly worried about the community sector workforce. She did not want them to have portable long service leave either. The ACT government will not be choosing to commit or not, Mrs Dunne; they will be abiding by federal law, as they are required to do.
I am glad that Mrs Dunne chose not to move her amendments, as I said earlier. We just could not figure out what her amendments were attempting to do. That is why it was quite clear that she never understood this issue.
I do not know what century Mrs Dunne is living in. I have to ask: where has Mrs Dunne been? Has Mrs Dunne not been aware of what has been occurring on the
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