Respect at Work Bill – Parliament House, Canberra
Mr Speaker, there are some basic yardsticks by which any civilised society should measure itself.
One of them is that everyone has the right to a safe and respectful workplace.
And yet here we are, nearly a quarter of the way through the 21st century, still working towards this goal.
The fact that workplaces have not been safe or respectful for so many Australians is unacceptable.
As is the fact that the previous government dismissed this goal as impractical, not worth striving for. That what we had was somehow good enough.
That is why Labor campaigned on a promise to implement – in full – every single one of the recommendations of the Respect@Work report into sexual harassment in Australian workplaces.
And that is why, shortly after I was sworn in as Prime Minister, I reiterated that this election promise was now a key part of the agenda of the new Government.
We owe a great debt of gratitude to everyone who stepped up to share their experiences with Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins, especially the survivors who did so at great emotional expense.
It can’t have been easy reliving some of those moments and putting difficult memories into words, but because of their courage, we now have a map to a better future.
Mr Speaker, we promised to follow that map.
The Australian people can be confident that they now have a Government that will stick to its plans.
The Australian people put their faith in us. We will deliver.
And indeed, Mr Speaker, we already are.
Mr Speaker, since the election, we have not wasted a day.
We have fulfilled our promise to establish paid family and domestic violence leave, because no woman should have to choose between her job and her safety.
We are acting on our commitments to build more affordable housing for women and children fleeing violence, and to fund new frontline workers to support women as they make these courageous and often difficult transitions.
We are acting on our commitment to introduce cheaper child care and early education.
And, we fulfilled another election commitment with the introduction of the Anti-Discrimination and Human Rights Legislation Amendment (Respect at Work) Bill 2022.
In short, this Bill will strengthen laws to help prevent sexual harassment.
Why do we need to do it? Let me repeat:
Everyone has a right to a safe and respectful workplace.
The Government is acting to help put an end to sexual harassment in Australian workplaces.
Let’s take a look at some uncomfortable facts.
Over the past five years, one in three people experienced sexual harassment at work, with women experiencing higher rates of harassment than men.
Time and time again, it’s women who bear the brunt.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, people with a disability and members of the LGBTQ+ community are also, on average, more likely to experience workplace sexual harassment.
No one should have to suffer stress or anxiety because they feel uncomfortable or unsafe at work.
No one should have to leave their job and lose their income or disrupt their career because they’re being harassed.
And along with all the human costs in terms of physical and mental health, there is also an economic cost of sexual harassment of close to $4 billion every year.
Mr Speaker, the former government sat on the Jenkins report for almost a year without responding then refused to implement key recommendations.
The Liberals voted against Labor’s amendments to introduce a positive duty on employers to eliminate sexual harassment in 2021.
Dwell on that for a moment. A positive duty to eliminate sexual harassment was a step too far for them, and they voted against it.
They voted against:
- Prohibiting sexual harassment under our workplace laws;
- Protecting victims against massive legal bills when they try to seek justice;
- Making substantive equality between women and men an objective of the Sex Discrimination Act; and
- Allowing unions and other organisations to bring legal action on behalf of victims.
And nothing exemplified the former Government’s failure as clearly as its response to the women’s March for Justice.
All those courageous women, speaking truth just out there on the lawn in front of Parliament House. Truth that we all needed to hear.
The then Prime Minister, the member for Cook, had the outrageous temerity to suggest we all give ourselves a pat on the back as a nation because the protest was not met with bullets.
As I said at the time, the Government had not so much a tin ear as a wall of concrete.
But that was the standard that was good enough for those opposite.
Is it any wonder then that during a decade of Liberal Government, Australia fell to 70th in the world for women’s economic participation and opportunity?
Or that we went from being the 24th most equal country in the world for women and men, to the 50th?
Across the country, too many working women are under-appreciated, under-paid and disrespected.
And that was a status quo those opposite decided they could live with.
Mr Speaker, on 21 May, Australia voted to move forward.
The Government has introduced this Bill to implement key recommendations of the Respect@Work Report.
We’re continuing to work across Government, with business and others to ensure all 55 recommendations are implemented.
The bill we have introduced will implement key legislative changes recommended by Commissioner Jenkins, left unfinished by the former government.
The bill will:
- Place a positive duty on employers to take reasonable and proportionate measures to eliminate sex discrimination, sexual harassment and victimisation, as far as possible;
- Give the Australian Human Rights Commission new powers to enforce the positive duty, to help make sure employers are meeting their obligations;
- Expressly prohibit conduct that results in a hostile workplace environment on the basis of sex; and
- Ensure Commonwealth public sector organisations are also required to report to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency on its gender equality indicators.
In addition, the Government has introduced amendments to the Fair Work Act in the Secure Jobs, Better Pay bill to prohibit sexual harassment under our workplace relations laws – making clear that sexual harassment is a serious workplace issue.
The amendments to the Fair Work Act also include an additional pathway for affected workers to obtain quick and effective assistance from the Fair Work Commission.
Those changes along with the bill before us today are a key part of our mission to progress gender equality across all our work as a Government.
Its passage will move Australia forward in our efforts to prevent workplace sexual harassment from happening in the first place.
Our October budget – with its investments in child care and paid parental leave – represented Australia’s biggest-ever investment in women’s economic equality.
With this bill, we recognise that achieving women’s economic equality includes making sure women are safe at work.
Mr Speaker, we must never accept sexual harassment as either inevitable or u/navoidable.
It is anything but.
Nor should we be tempted by the dangerous fiction that we are somehow incapable of improvement. That we have come this far as a society, and that’s it.
Let’s make these changes and move forward with our national story.
Mr Speaker, we live in the greatest nation on earth.
But there is an even greater nation within our reach.
Thanks to the courage of every victim-survivor who stepped forward, we have no reason not to reach it.
They have shown the way.
And it is something we should all embrace as part of the determination we share to shape Australia into the very best version it can be – a nation that reflects our highest ideals.
I know that together, we can build a better future, one with equality and respect at its core.