Page 4013 - Week 10 - Thursday, 20 September 2018
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The Community Services Directorate is in the process of developing a suite of resources to encourage improved gender equity in the workplace. These resources will have practical information about how to improve practices in a number of staffing and recruitment areas, including supporting flexible work arrangements for all staff (female and male). These resources will be available for use by both the ACT public service and broader business and community sectors to encourage and support more equitable working environments across the ACT.
The Commonwealth Government has overall policy and legislative responsibility for employment matters, including paid parental leave entitlements. The ACT Government will continue to advocate for more progressive parental leave entitlements with our Commonwealth counterparts.
(2) The ACT Government does not have any current plans to enact a Gender Equality Act. The ACT Women’s Plan is a whole of Government commitment and provides the vision, principles and priority areas to guide a coordinated approach to achieving improved gender equality in the ACT.
Under the ACT Women’s Plan and through the work of the Office for Women more broadly, a number of tangible targets are already being implemented to improve gender equality in the ACT, including:
• achieving and maintaining 50 per cent representation of women on ACT Government boards and committees; and
• engaging with peak ACT sporting organisations on the introduction of a requirement for triennially funded organisations to achieve a target of 40 per cent representation of females on their boards by 2020.
The ACT Government is also looking at other ways that it can encourage improved gender equality in workplaces across the ACT, including considering how procurement processes could prioritise contractors with appropriate gender equity strategies.
(3) The Territory will not enter into contract with a party named as a non-complying employer by the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 (the Gender Act). The Territory has held this position since May 2013. The Territory’s position is published within the Standard Terms and Conditions of Tender which is issued with each tender opportunity. It is also publicly available at clause 1.21 of Standard Terms and Conditions of Quotation in the document’s Library of Tenders ACT. For your convenience the relevant clause is as follows;
“1.21 Affirmative Action
The Territory will not enter into a contract with a contractor named by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency as an employer currently not complying with the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 (Cth) (“the Gender Act”). Information about the Gender Act may be obtained from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency. Refer to: http://www.wgea.gov.au”
Instead of preventing employers from submitting a response to any of the Government’s tender opportunities, the Territory checks whether the tenderer is listed on the Workplace Gender Equality Agency’s non-compliant organisations list (WGEA) before proceeding to evaluation. Tenderer’s identified as non-compliant with the WGEA may be excluded from further evaluation or issued a request for information, advising the tenderer to provide evidence of their compliance with the WGEA before the contract can be awarded to them.
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