Roche Denise; Tisch LindsayDENISE ROCHE (Green): I am delighted to take this short call for the Greens on the Care and Support Worker (Pay Equity) Settlement Bill. It is indeed a historic day. This settlement has come to the House after a massive scrap. We heard from my colleague earlier about the generations that it has taken to get this pay equity settlement legislation to the House today and I want to acknowledge that too. I want to acknowledge all the women who have worked on this. I am particularly thinking not only of Kristine Bartlett and the members of the E tū union the Nurses Organisation and the Public Service Association Inc. but also of our late great mate Helen Kelly.This settlement is going to make a huge huge difference to the lives of these women. We should actually acknowledge that this Government and the industry itself have known for decades that they have relied on the exploitation of these workers in the care sector. They have relied on the exploitation of their labour of their emotional labour and of their commitment to their clients. They have known that and yet despite that—despite that—these workers have been willing to get together to work with their unions and to take the case to court and they have been fought there by the Government no less and they have won. It is a victory.I think it was Martin Luther King who actually said that Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." and it is the same for workers' rights. It is the same for pay equity. It would never have been handed over voluntarily without Kristine Bartlett without E tū union and without the generations of women and workers who fought for this historic settlement.We have got an ageing workforce in the care sector and this settlement may go some way towards ensuring that there is a career pathway for younger people to come through and to work in what is essentially a really fulfilling occupation. I have done it myself—4 years of it. It is really hard work. To have your pay lifted from $15.75 an hour to $23 an hour is an acknowledgment finally of the worth of that work. It is darned demanding. It is essentially supporting our most vulnerable citizens in this country to live lives of dignity. Now the women workers will finally receive some of that dignity because their status will be improved through the recognition in their pay packets that they are actually worth it—finally.I can talk about the qualifications but actually care workers have been able to get qualifications for a very long time. It is just that they have not been able to get access to them from some of their employers and they have not been paid for them by some of their employers. Despite this settlement and the fact that it has been negotiated as a tripartite agreement we still have the situation where the ratification meetings are occurring right now—E tū union organisers are working with delegates right across the country doing about a thousand ratification meetings. We have got sort of ratbag employers who are making a mint who are making profits out of the aged-care sector—employers like Rymans Healthcare and Oceania Group—that are saying: "Well we're not going to let you have a ratification meeting so that the workers can vote to accept this remarkable settlement. We're not going to let you do that unless we have managers and our staff in the room." So it is still there. We still have to have our unions and we have to have our unions continually fighting for the rights of our people in their workplaces.I am joining with the other parties in the House to actually celebrate what is essentially a remarkable settlement. It would never ever have been achieved without Kristine Bartlett or without E tū union particularly getting together and making it happen. So we are really delighted to be supporting this bill through the rest of the process.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Sue Moroney—5 minutes."