Dalziel Lianne: Employment Relations (Flexible Working Arrangements) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Dalziel Lianne: Employment Relations (Flexible Working Arrangements) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:642;Page:12064] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Minister of Commerce) 
: 
 The previous speaker was Wayne Mapp in case someone is listening at the moment. I think the last time Wayne Mapp took an interest in labour relations matters he had a bill before this House that said that any employer could sack any worker for any reason that employer liked without disclosing the reason why. Could anyone imagine what it would be like for a person in his or her first job to lose that job and not know why? What sort of future would a young person have finding that he or she was sacked totally unjustifiably and having no one to look after the situation? [ 
Interruption 
] 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Please be seated. The member will stand withdraw and apologise for that remark. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: I withdraw and apologise. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: The point I am trying to make here is that there are many examples where people want a bit of flexibility but are nervous of asking for it. If Wayne Mapp was the Minister of Labour woe betide anyone who asked for flexibility within his or her first 3 months of employment. People who said they wanted flexibility would be down the road. The other thing is that if people waited until the 3 months were past and said they would like some flexibility now the employers would ask why they did not mention it before and why they were not able to have a conversation about it right at the start. Of course Wayne Mapp would not care about that because at the end of the day people would be able to be sacked for no reason whatsoever. So I do not think Dr Wayne Mapp is very credible on this issue at all. 
I am absolutely appalled that the National Party on women’s suffrage day is using the kinds of arguments that if they had been successful in 1893 would mean we still would not have the vote today. That is the stupidity of the arguments presented by the National Party. 
Let us say that those arguments had been used before the Equal Pay Act was passed in 1972. If the current members of the National Party had been responsible for that Act we would not have had it. They would have been able to stand up in the House and say that any woman had the legal right to ask for equal pay with the men she worked with and that would have been true—every woman had the legal right to ask for equal pay. Did women have equal pay? Did any of them ask for equal pay? No. Why did they not ask for equal pay? Because the request did not have to be considered at all. So we had to pass a law in this Parliament to bring about equal pay for exactly the same work. There used to be national awards—appropriately named—in this country that had one pay rate for men and one pay rate for women one for male clerks and one for female clerks. Richard Worth is nodding his head; he remembers the good old days. That is the way they like it over in the National Party—women knowing their place. What a surprise that that has not changed at all over on the National side of the Chamber! 
The law had to change in order to bring about a difference. But have we got equal pay today? The law says that we should have equal pay but have we? There is this stubborn pay gap of 12 percent and we know that in some areas it is actually far greater. Can anyone on that side of the Chamber explain to me why 5 years down the track after qualifying in exactly the same degree with exactly the same qualification and the same level of degree women are earning 20 percent less than their male counterparts in the legal profession? Law is one of the classic examples where women are paid on average much less overall than men. It is true in the accountancy profession as well. Guess what? These wonderful professions one of which I am a proud member—I am a lawyer myself—have also managed to develop gender segregation. Certain work within the law firms gets handed out to the women and certain work within the accountancy firms gets handed out to the women too.