Logie Jan: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: General Debate[Sitting date: 09 September 2015. Volume:708;Page:6437. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): This afternoon I would like to speak about an issue that has been in our courts a lot recently and in our media but has had very little response from this Government and that of course is the issue of pay equity and the mass exploitation of women’s traditional work in this country. I want to frame it initially around recognising that if we addressed pay equity we could increase productivity in our country we could improve the quality of our services we could reduce child poverty and we could increase consumer spending and the money that is going around businesses at a local level which could then promote growth in our businesses and create more jobs.Pay equity is not something to run away from. It is something to embrace as an absolute economic opportunity for this country and an opportunity to deliver some justice to women all around this country. In the words of a rather authoritative source Audrey Young: “You’d have to have been raised on Mars not to know that ‘women’s work’ is worth less in the marketplace because it is women’s work.” Well sadly it seems “Planet Key” must be quite close to Mars. When the Prime Minister was asked about the issue of pay equity in response to the midwives’ case and whether he thought it was structural sexism Mr Key said there were some industries that were dominated more by women than by men but “whether that causes issues or not—one of the arguments people put up is: is it because they are women that the pay is slightly less or is it because that’s what the job pays?”.Our Prime Minister does not seem to have any understanding whatsoever of our law which recognises equal pay or of the issue of discrimination in terms of work of equal value within our law—what we have been telling the UN for decades now that we are committed to addressing. He seems to have no consciousness of our international obligations or even some basic established economic theories. He has no idea. He is just kind of responding but not making much sense. What we know is that rest home workers are one example of a group that it is pretty obvious are being discriminated against. They are doing intimate work with significant and increasing technical skill being required of them and heavy lifting with people’s lives in their hands. Most of these workers are women and they are paid just over the minimum wage or at the minimum wage. If you think about the skills required in that job and whether the minimum wage is fair remuneration it is blindingly obvious that it is not.We also heard from the midwives last week that they are paid around $53000 per annum despite it being a job that requires a lot of training. They are required to be on call 24/7—which they are not paid for—and again they hold people’s lives in their hands. They are up for public notification if they get something wrong. It is an entirely skilled job. They are paid $53000 a year because of the Government’s decisions.All of these groups of people including educational support workers are in front of our courts at the moment. I am incredibly grateful for our unions and all of the low-paid workers within those unions who are funding those cases to try to get some justice for our communities and the women in our communities. But it did not have to rely on a court case. We do not have to litigate this through the court because it actually is blindingly obvious that there is exploitation going on and it is well established.I want to call the Government out on being missing in action and actually working against the interests of our community in this area. When National came to Government in 2009 it closed down the pay and employment equity unit. It scrapped the plans that were in place to identify and redress this exploitation. The Government has been siding with the employers in the court. We cannot get a straight answer from the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety on whether the Government going to review the Act in order to be able to shut down these cases in the court. It is in our economic best interests to embrace pay equity and justice for women.