10. Pay Equity—Proposed LegislationJAN LOGIE (Green) to the Minister for Workplace Relations and SafetyPay Equity—Proposed Legislation10. JAN LOGIE (Green) to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: Does he believe the draft Pay Equity Bill will make it easier for women to be fairly paid for their work?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): When it is passed into law yes.Jan Logie: Why is the Government proposing that women first need to compare their jobs with men in their own workplace sector or industry when the courts have said that comparators must be males whose pay is not also undervalued in female-dominated sectors?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well it is for a number of reasons but that is not all that the courts said about that. They did say that when a comparison was appropriate it should be with male employees with the same or substantially similar skills responsibility and service performing the work under the same or substantially similar conditions and with the same or substantially similar degrees of effort. It then went on to say: They may be if those enquiries of other employees of the same employer or of other employers in the same or similar enterprise or industry or sector would be an inappropriate comparator group." My strong inference that I take from the courts' words is that you start from the industry and the employer and then work out if there is not a comparator available.Jan Logie: Does the Minister recognise that by saying you need to start in your workplace or your sector some of those same workplaces and sectors will be undervalued in female-dominated areas?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well then they would not be a valid comparator. What the courts said—and what the draft bill says—is that they have to be a male-dominated industry or at least one that is not subject to pay inequity because of the dominance of women in that occupation.Jan Logie: Why is the Government proposing to make women meet additional historical and labour-market criteria in order to prove the initial merit of their claim to their employer?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Because we are being guided by the very good recommendations of the Joint Working Group on Pay Equity Principles which I thought made some very good recommendations—we accepted them.Jan Logie: Why is the Government proposing to allow women access to employer information only once they have already proven the merit of their claim?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: That very question is being asked of the unions because this is what we are doing: we are having a conversation over the exposure draft and I am listening very carefully to that. I would not rule out a change as a consequence of that submission.Jan Logie: Why is the Government proposing to deny women with a successful court-determined pay equity claim the commercial standard of up to 6 years' back-pay?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: The issue of back-pay is a vexed one when it comes to pay equity because unlike an equal-pay claim—which I note under the old definition has not actually been successfully made for decades—throughout the process employment agreements have been agreed. To then relitigate those would be very difficult. So on balance what was agreed—and indeed it was certainly the agreement of Terranova and the Ministry of Health—was to start from a point where pay inequity was agreed to occur.Jan Logie: How can this Government say that it cares about women getting paid more when it is attempting to undermine existing human rights law creating more hoops for women to jump through not to mention undermining the principles of justice and equality?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I can think of about two billion reasons why that is an absolute nonsense. This Government led by the Minister of Health has landed what has been a landmark settlement that will improve the lot of 55000 women in this country. The bill when passed will be world leading. No other jurisdiction will have gone as far as this country has to improve the lot of women in the workplace."