KATY GALLAGHER, MINSTER FOR WOMEN: Thanks very much for coming today, and I’m joined here with Mary Woolridge from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, as the head of that agency.
This is the third time that we’ve released this gender pay gap report, and it’s really an important step, I think, a continuing step in making sure that we’ve got visible gender pay gap data that’s accessible and meaningful to Australians.
Today’s release covers more than ten and a half thousand employers and nearly 5.9 million workers nationwide. And for the first time, the gender pay gaps for Commonwealth public sector employees are being released alongside the private data as well, which is very important. This strengthens transparency and accountability right across the economy.
And I think when I look at the report, and when I first read the report, it shows progress and movement in the right direction. I think there probably could be plenty of views that it’s not happening fast enough, but we are seeing consistent change in the right direction with the publication of each one of these reports, and I think the publication of this data is making very much a practical difference to that result.
So we know more employers are now within the target range. The majority have reduced their gender pay gap compared to last year. Around half of employers now have an overall total remuneration gender pay gap below 11.2%, and more organisations, importantly, are actively analysing their data and consulting employees to inform action on gender equality.
Where there are challenges, while there are more women in higher paid roles, women continue to be over‑represented in the lower paid positions. And as long as inequity exists in job opportunities, pay progression, flexibility and care, the gender pay gap will persist.
This has been a focus of our government, since coming to government. We’ve put women’s economic equality at kind of the centre of our government’s policies, and we know we are making progress in the right direction.
So we’ve got the gender pay gap at a record low. Women’s wages are up, helped by the investments we’re making in early childhood education and aged care in those highly feminised industries. We’re increasing PPL and paying super on PPL, which, again, will help women with some of the costs of the care role they play. Child care uptake is also up, so we’re seeing that in increases in the child care subsidy, and we’ve got women’s participation in the labour market trending up.
And this is all about essentially providing the environment where women and families have choices about how they want to work, how they want to care for their families, but making sure that we are keeping a really laser focus on pay and closing that gender pay gap has been an important priority for us.
Just before I hand to Mary, can I also acknowledge this is Mary’s final gender pay gap reporting day. She has led the transformation of the publication of this data. The Workplace Gender Equality Agency is an incredibly high‑performing agency, and it’s been so incredibly well led under Mary’s leadership.
She has also implemented the Respect at Work recommendations, this transparency report, and also the really world‑leading target‑setting work that’s to come, with big employers needing to set targets to work towards to close gender inequality in their workplace.
So, Mary, on behalf of the government, I know I’ve done this in estimates, but I wanted to acknowledge your leadership and contribution today. And thank you very much.
MARY WOOLRIDGE, WORKPLACE GENDER EQUALITY AGENCY CEO: Thanks very much, Minister. It’s been a fantastic opportunity to be able to work with you and work with the government to drive the change that we want to see.
For young women and men entering the workforce, they should reasonably be able to expect that they have an equal opportunity to use their skills and capabilities at work, that they’re fairly remunerated and equally have opportunities for promotion, that they will be safe and treated respectfully, and at times that they’ll have some flexibility to manage other responsibilities at work.
And this is what fairness and equality at work is really about, and the gender pay gap is a proxy for that measure of equality.
Pleasingly, we are seeing progress, as the Minister has said, and the annual publication of employer gender pay gaps has motivated employers to act on gender equality after progress had recently stalled. Nearly 2,000 employers have a gender pay gap close to 0%, and this number is growing. That is, there’s little difference between, on average, what men and women earn in that workplace.
The majority of employers have reduced their gender pay gap, and this is represented in a widespread way across all industries.
The national midpoint, where 50% of employers have a gender pay gap higher and 50% lower, is 11.2%, and this has substantially dropped from 12.1% last year. And we’re seeing a little more balance, with an improvement in the representation of women in the highest‑paying roles and a reduction in the proportion of women in the lowest.
But men are still 1.8 times more likely to be in the highest‑earning roles than women. And as the Minister said, many employers are doing the work. They’re drawing on the evidence, doing the analysis, working out what works, and putting in place action plans to drive the change.
But we do have a long way to go. Employers in high‑paying and male‑dominated industries are more likely to have the largest gender pay gaps. For example, 85% of employers in the finance and insurance industry have a gender pay gap above the national midpoint, as do 84% in the construction industry.
The fact that men are nearly twice as likely as women to be in the highest‑paying roles, and that women still dominate the lowest‑paying roles, should offer a reality check for anyone who thinks that Australia has already achieved equality at work.
Publishing employer gender pay gaps is part of a suite of reforms to the Workplace Gender Equality Act aimed to accelerate change. Shortly, large employers will have to select and then meet gender equality targets over the next three years, in a world‑first initiative to really demonstrate outcomes in relation to this priority of gender equality in their workplaces.
Progress is important. It shows that we can take meaningful steps to remove long‑standing barriers and stereotypes to ensure that women and men have a fair and equal opportunity and experience in the workplace.
Thanks very much.
GALLAGHER: Thanks, Mary. Happy to take some questions.
JOURNALIST: Minister Gallagher, to the public service. Specifically, the best‑paid half of the public service is made up of more than 50% women, but there’s still an overall pay gap of about six percent, which I think suggests that men are still in those very top roles. Is that the case, or can you explain the discrepancy there?
GALLAGHER: So it’s a couple of things, yes. I think if you look at some of the areas where there is a big gender pay gap, and I think at the end of last year or this time last year, I wrote to all public sector agencies and to ministers to draw their attention to the gender pay gap that exists in their portfolio areas.
A number of them are in our GBEs, our companies that operate in particular industries. And so, I mean, that will remain a focus for me. I’m the shareholder of most of those companies, so you can imagine that I will be keeping an eye on those and making sure we’re making progress there.
There’s also the impact of, in some of our larger agencies, like in Services Australia, for example, where we have around 30,000 staff, the female‑dominated nature of that at a particular level, at those customer service offices. So if that area, the last time I looked at this, if that workforce was more balanced, we would almost get rid of the gender pay gap.
So there’s a couple of things going on there, which we see in other industries too. Highly gender‑segregated workforces, you might have either a couple of men or a couple of women in highly paid positions that give the results that you’re seeing. There is definitely more work to do there, though, and I feel very much that the public sector should be leading the way on this. We can’t be just looking to the private sector to make the change.
Obviously, we’ve got a lower gender pay gap in the public sector, but there’s still work to do.
JOURNALIST: On the public sector still, a quick look at the Data Explorer shows that a gender pay gap analysis has happened, and I assume the departments and agencies were all on notice that they would have to report to WGEA this time around. But there’s a big chunk who don’t have a formal policy or strategy on equal remuneration between women and men. Is that something the government will be giving departments and agencies a timeline for, given, you know, they’re all different?
GALLAGHER: Yeah, so, I mean, we will continue, and I will follow up now that we’ve got this data. This data was released for the public sector last year, but it was not released at the same time. I think we released it in May, whereas this data release was in March for the private sector. So, aligning them makes a lot of sense.
But yeah, there’s an expectation that agencies will be doing everything they can to close the gender pay gap and to be asking themselves the same questions that we’re asking the private sector to ask themselves around how they close the gender pay gap.
And I will be engaging with ministers. I mean, I’m not responsible for all those agencies, as you know, and so there are ways that I’ll be interacting with ministers for them to take that conversation to their departments and agencies. But yeah, as I said before, the public sector should be leading the way on this.
WOOLRIDGE: If I could just add to that comment, just to build on it a little bit further. It’s often that there are public‑sector‑wide policies, such as for equal remuneration, but this is actually shifting that to say individual agencies need to make it specific to their own context. So it’s not that they’re without the policy frameworks, but it’s the translation of that into each individual agency.
JOURNALIST: Labor went to the election with a platform of transparency and protecting the public service. How do you justify the government’s refusal to comply with OPDs in the Senate, and we’ve got a bunch of jobs at Services Australia that are no longer going to be funded from June unless you add more money in the budget. There’s a lot of debate about frontline services during the election. Do you commit to protecting frontline services in the APS?
GALLAGHER: So a couple of things there, and thanks for your interest in the public service, as always, what I expect from the Canberra Times. On Services Australia, the decision we took a couple of years ago was that they had a massive backlog of work that hadn’t been attended to, so we resourced that.
And as part of that decision, it was for Services Australia to essentially provide advice to government about what, once they’ve cleared the backlog, their ongoing resource requirements were, and we’re working through that with them.
JOURNALIST: It was told estimates that if there’s a reduction, then services will be a lower standard, essentially.
GALLAGHER: Well, I mean, I think that goes without saying. If you reduce front‑line service workers, you will see an impact on timeliness. But part of what we were doing with that extra investment was to deal with, well, a couple of things, including the backlog that existed.
And now, you know, we see pressure on Services Australia in a whole range of areas, in natural disasters, in the support they provide, risks of fraud. So we’re actively engaged with Services Australia on those discussions.
And I think I’d also say to you, you know, my remarks that I’ve made before, which is that I expect, you know, give or take a little bit, that the public service is about the right size. You know, we will see some programs that terminate, and that would have an impact on ASL, but for the large part, the extra resourcing we’ve put in, we think, is delivering good outcomes.
On the OPD question, there used to be about 15 OPDs a term. There was 32 yesterday, in a day, there were 42 listed for today. OPDs have changed. They’re not actually what they used to be, and they’re not in line with the power that was given to the Senate anymore.
And I think, and I’m a big supporter of transparency and openness in government, that they are being abused by the Senate. And until we get some sensible landing point, you know, we are going to see two hours or two‑and‑three hours of divisions every day, because they’re just completely out of control.
They often ask for documents that might take months to retrieve and want them the next day. I mean, we have hundreds of public servants every day trying to make sense of what’s going on with OPDs in the Senate. Sometimes it’s for information that’s already published. Sometimes it’s being used as FOI. It’s just simply not being used as it was originally intended.
And until we get some sense out of the Senate, the government will agree where we can, we will provide documents where we can, but there has to be a sensible discussion about the use of that power.
I don’t want to bang on too much about it, but it was originally seen as the most significant power the Senate had to call for documents. There were plenty of big stories in the history of governments in Australia where that power was used successfully to retrieve documents they couldn’t get any other way. Now it’s just a free‑for‑all. It’s insane.
And, we’ll do what we can to work with the Senate, but we have to reach some sort of sensible agreement on it.
JOURNALIST: Obviously, the report doesn’t go specifically into the regions, but are we needing to deep dive more into the regions and see that gender pay gap within metro to regional?
WOOLRIDGE: Absolutely. So, today’s release is about employer gender pay gaps, but one of the reforms that’s happened in the last couple of years is that WGEA now collects data around both age of employees and their workplace location. So we do have the capability to do more of an intersectional analysis looking at those characteristics, and there’ll be more analysis coming on that.
JOURNALIST: Are we needing to see, obviously just from an outset, are we seeing at the start already this comparison without even going into specific employers? Obviously, we can tell where some employees or workplaces are from this data, without having to specifically go into analysing the data.
WOOLRIDGE: So we haven’t looked at that level of detail on the regional or metro basis, but previous analysis has shown that the gender pay gap and the opportunity for women to work at the highest‑earning levels is less in regional areas than in metro areas. So the ability to have that data, get those insights, and then utilise that to help drive changes is in place and will be focused on in the future.
JOURNALIST: Minister, under the Working for Women strategy, companies that don’t return ongoing improvement to their WGEA results can lose their contracts. Over how many years is that going to need to happen before the government starts to actually make cuts to end contracts?
GALLAGHER: I haven’t had any particular contract brought to my attention. This is something that we have a look at and watch, but we also acknowledge that this is a bit of stick and carrot, where we want to work with employers to make sure they are doing the right thing.
The transparency is one thing that shines a light on what’s happening in a particular company or organisation, but there is a lot of work that WGEA does which is about working with employers to change, or to support them with the change that needs to happen.
Mary and I have looked at a list of non‑compliant businesses, and WGEA engages with them pretty directly to see what the issues are. Often there are reasonable explanations, I think, and gentle persuasion for others that need to engage with the reporting framework.
But the government has a range of policies in place around procurement, and compliance with Australian Government reporting is one of them.
JOURNALIST: And with regards to OPD, your department is going to roll out the first test drive of the GovAI chatbot next month. Has it been considered in relation to the high volume of document requests and FOIs that are being seen by the government at the moment?
GALLAGHER: Well, thank you for asking me a question about it, because it is exciting, the work that’s happening across AI in the public service. So, we’re very optimistic about some of the support AI can provide in our processing.
Whether we can use it for parliamentary functions is probably a step further than we’ve gone at the moment. We are looking at internal department processes. It’s sometimes used with questions on notice with estimates. There’s a tool called ParliHelp which some departments use, instead of poring over 14 hours of estimates, to identify the questions on notice.
So there’s definitely some capacity, but providing documents to Parliament is a pretty labour‑intensive job that requires human decision‑making. I have no doubt it could probably assist in some elements of it, but ultimately compliance would be a human‑based decision, because of the seriousness of providing documents to the Parliament.
JOURNALIST: Just on the transparency and accountability issue. There are 50 committee reports in the House that have not been responded to by the government, and 169 in the Senate that have not been responded to in full and on time. The government is required to respond to reports within six months, depending on the House, and ministers are also required to provide an explanation to the committees and make themselves available to explain the delays. That rule has not been enforced.
The Coalition and the Independents are now trying to figure out how to enforce that rule, and it looks like they’re going to have to lobby committees internally and convince their often Labor committee chairs to write to the minister to put pressure on them to respond to these reports, which hours and years of work have gone into.
Why hasn’t the government responded to these reports, and is this way of trying to enforce the rules appropriate or functioning?
GALLAGHER: I do believe that committee reports should be responded to, and in time if that’s possible. Sometimes those committee reports can be very long and follow a pretty extensive inquiry, and sometimes they feed into government’s thinking.
So there are reasonable explanations why those timeframes haven’t always been met. But as a rule, I believe ministers and their departments, it’s departments’ core work to respond to Parliament’s work.
So I’ve certainly raised it across government that we need to make sure these committee reports are being responded to, and we’ll continue to focus on that.
On the compliance side, we’re really in the hands of the Senate on that. We don’t have a majority chamber. So, where the opposition, the Greens, and independents work together, you see that on OPDs every day and compliance on OPDs every day.
We respond to those votes when they happen. It really is a matter for committees. But the Senate has a wide range of powers and opportunities to make their own decisions about enforcement and compliance.
JOURNALIST: So would you encourage ministers to be more proactive in making themselves available?
GALLAGHER: Well, I’m encouraging departments to respond to committee reports in the first instance. I think that is a departmental responsibility, and yes, we have raised that across government and Senate leadership.
JOURNALIST: Michelle Bullock warned this morning that an oil price shock could increase local inflation. Economists say fuel prices could go up by as much as 40 cents a litre. Is the government open to considering changes to the fuel excise, and more broadly, as you’re working on the May budget, what impact is this conflict having on your approach and what you’re thinking?
GALLAGHER: Yeah, so obviously the developments over the weekend in Iran and the Middle East are front of mind for all government ministers. I think the Governor said this in her remarks, how it plays out is a little uncertain at this point in time.
Her speech went to comments about what could happen to inflation depending on how the conflict plays out and the duration of the conflict. I think they’re the two variables.
Obviously, we’re monitoring the situation very closely. There are regular meetings of ministers to consider this, not only from a defence and foreign affairs point of view, but also the economic consequences. And it will no doubt factor into some of our thinking around decisions we take in the budget.
But it really is a little early to predict exactly what consequences this will play in Australia’s economy. It’s really about duration and some of the decisions we’ll see play out over the next little while. But we are monitoring it very carefully, and it will factor into our budget thinking.
JOURNALIST: We’re starting to see some quite large job losses in the private sector now. Just in the last few weeks there have been some big announcements of culling workers.
You said this seems like a real moment now. If there are 20,000 public sector employees joining alpha‑beta testing and discovering AI systems, and that’s just one system going in, I guess I’m asking if the public sector is about the right size, as you said, where do you see those productivity gains manifesting? What would they look like, if not through job loss?
GALLAGHER: These are discussions we have with employees and unions. We’re heading into bargaining with the APS, with the CPSU, in the next couple of months.
I don’t see the deployment of the AI package that we agreed to in MYEFO as a way of reducing jobs across the APS. I want our focus to be on improving outcomes for Australians, ie, we’re processing things faster, the service that’s delivered is improved, and the nature of the work for APS employees more interesting.
We might relieve them of writing call notes about what happened on a call, so they’re able to engage with a citizen ringing up about a particular problem they have. So I see it as changing the nature of the work public servants do, better use of their skill set, and delivering better outcomes for the Australian people in whatever part of Government we would be deploying it.
I think it’s about quality of service and quality of jobs. It may slow down the growth of the APS if we deploy it properly. We may not need to continue to grow at the rate we have been for new responsibilities and services.
JOURNALIST: So that’s for an AI chatbot, as you said, which is surface level. But as you get deeper into that, you could be taking out whole layers of functions, potentially, as has happened in the private sector.
Firstly, will that be the subject of negotiations you’re about to start with the CPSU? And secondly, is there a gender pay equity issue? What’s your sense of what the implementation of AI in taking out some of those layers might mean in that regard?
GALLAGHER: Yeah, so again, we’re not deploying it with that view, and we have different motivations to the private sector. Some of the engagement I have had with the private sector over the last few months as we’ve settled the AI plan, it’s clear to me the purpose of the APS versus a private company isn’t necessarily aligned, or their different.
For us, it’s about improving processes, reducing onerous work, and freeing people up to do what we need them to do. If I take Services Australia as an example, more people get an answer on the phone or a call back because we’re not tying people up writing call notes from the last person they spoke to. So I definitely see that as the opportunity.
It’s not just the chatbot. We’re putting in an AI review committee, AI officers in departments, many of which are already in place now. We want senior leadership to be leading on this.
We think of it as a real opportunity to lift the standard of service and outcomes for the Australian people, so that’s our focus.
I have no doubt it will be raised by the CPSU and will come up in those negotiations. And if it were a job‑reduction exercise, which it isn’t, we would be mindful of those large employment bases that as you point out are female‑dominated.
JOURNALIST: Are you worried that the gender pay gap is having an impact on workplace culture?
GALLAGHER: I’ve been surprised by how much publishing this data has lifted the quality of conversation about it. Before we started publishing this data, it was very easy for people to go men and women get paid the same. We have equal pay in Australia, and that’s what happens, and you can see from this data shows that isn’t the case.
I’m really pleased by the genuine engagement by many of the male leaders of big companies to actually drill down into what’s happening in their companies. I think transparency and shining a light in this area has been a very very effective way of raising awareness and having concreate response to that.
We’ve got a long way to go, but it’s heading in the right direction.