Member of Parliament Gender Pay Gap

The Hon. AILEEN MacDONALD (21:48:12):

The gender pay gap is alive and well in the New South Wales Parliament. It is fortunate that we do not have to report to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, because we would fail dismally. We know that members of Parliament are on equal pay, but the gap is sneaky. I am, of course, referring to the average pay of women and men across Parliament when office‑holder positions are taken into account, because office holders attract more money. That is where the gender pay gap widens to ridiculous proportions. I can already hear the Hon. Mark Latham groaning about "not another woke feminazi banging on about gender equity again". He might not like to hear this, but I am going to put it out there. The fact is this House does not practise what it preaches.

Yes, Premier Minns proudly announced his Cabinet would consist of 50 per cent females, and that holds true, so there is no gap. Labor has been working on gender equity for more than a decade and has a quota. But the New South Wales Parliament does not have a gender quota, and, guess what? Labor members do not have to follow their own Labor rules when they are in this place. I am not talking about the Workplace Gender Equality Agency's calculation for the gap, which is the average remuneration of men minus the average renumeration of women divided by the average renumeration of men calculated into a percentage. I am talking about the other gap, which exists when you see who has the office holder positions in the Legislative Assembly and the Legislative Council, not to mention committee chairs. It will not surprise members that out of all the positions, be they ex officio or elected, a stark majority are filled by men. Do not get me wrong. I love men; I have been married to one for 34 years. But fair is fair.

Let me break it down. In the Legislative Assembly, the Speaker, Assistant Speaker, Government Whip, Opposition Whip and Deputy Opposition Whip are all male. That is five in total. The Deputy Speaker and Deputy Government Whip are female, for a total of two women. The Legislative Council situation is worse: The President, Deputy President, Assistant President, Government Whip, Deputy Government Whip, Opposition Whip and Deputy Opposition Whip are all male. The total is seven. The tally so far is 14 males and two females. We could look at Parliamentary Secretaries. The tally there is eight males to six females. When we add in the committee chairs, it gets even worse. I will not include select committees, just the Legislative Council and Legislative Assembly committees and the joint committees. Have a guess. There are 20 male chairs and 14 female chairs. To be fair, one of those committees only has female members, so it is a foregone conclusion that the chair of that committee would be female.

Do members get the picture about the gender pay gap? It is simple arithmetic—males 44 and females 22. It is so bad, I have not included Premier's Department and the Cabinet Office in the figures or the Opposition leadership team. It is, quite literally, jobs for the boys. The Workplace Gender Equality Agency states:

Hiring more men than women as a strategy to beat the gender pay gap is not a responsible or ethical approach.

We can do something about it so that the gender pay gap stops from here on in. It is incumbent upon all of us when we are making our deals and shoring up votes for our respective causes to be mindful of the full impact of those decisions. We must factor in the gender gap or, more precisely, close the gender gap from now on in the New South Wales Parliament.

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