The plan is for the Women’s Budget Statement to eventually be done away with, with minister for finance and the public service Katy Gallagher saying she wishes to upskill the APS to “mainstream” the application of a gender lens throughout future budgets.
The government was committed to upskilling the APS capacity for gender analysis, Gallagher said at a press conference in parliament.
“My hope, in the end, is that we don’t need a Women’s Budget Statement, that we have it embedded through how we present the Budget.”
Gallagher hoped the gender-equality lens would be added to the “normal” process of budgeting.
The October 2022 Women’s Budget Statement had the expected “light touch” of gender-responsive budgeting, with the Office for Women within PM&C providing a gender-impact assessment pilot in the paper.
One such case study was the prevalence of sexual harassment in the workplace, with the Office for Women noting the work done in the Respect@Work report finding First Nations people, people with disability, and LGBTIQ+ people all more likely to experience sexual harassment.
The Office for Women added that $2.6 billion, based on Deloitte Access Economics modelling from the Respect@Work report, was the cost of workplace sexual harassment for productivity.
An intersectional approach to gender pay gap data
For the APS, another key announcement in the Women’s Budget Statement was that the Workplace Gender Equality Agency will start to collect voluntary diversity data on the APS.
The areas covered by the data will be people of First Nations background, cultural and linguistic diversity, and people with disability, to build an intersectional approach to addressing the gender pay gap.
Similar data is reported in the New Zealand public service, with the government wanting the APS to “lead by example”.
Additionally, following on from a recommendation from the Respect@Work report, federal public sector entities will have to report on six “gender equality indicators”.
The number of staff at WGEA will be increased from 36 to 51.
Within the APS as of 2021, the gender pay gap is at 6.0%, compared with 14.1% nationally.
The Women’s Budget Statement noted the underrepresentation of women at lower classification levels and the over-representation of men at higher classification levels in the federal public service as a leading cause of its gender pay gap.
National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children funding
More details were shed on the government’s ambitious 10-year plan to end violence against women within a generation, which is divided into two five-year action plans and a separate First Nations National Plan.
Four initiatives totalling $91.1 million were announced to support the national plan.
Over five years, $13.9 million has been allocated towards a fund for emerging priorities from the first action plan and $25.0 million towards a trial to address the behaviours of domestic violence perpetrators.
The Escaping Violence Payment received $39.6 million for 2022-23 and $12.6 million over two years for a pilot program for temporary visa holders experiencing domestic violence.
Funding for the above comes from reducing or not proceeding with three Women’s Safety measures from the March Budget totalling $94.8 million over five years, including the removal of an electronic monitoring trial of domestic violence perpetrators.
Designing an optimal paid parental leave model
The extension of paid parental leave (PPL) to 26 weeks was announced prior to the Budget, with the Women’s Equality Economic Taskforce tasked with finding an “optimal model” for it.
The PPL scheme will get $531.6 million over the course of four years towards the expansion, with PPL starting to expand to 20 weeks for 2023-24. Leave will then increase by two-week intervals until 2026-27, when it will reach the 26 weeks goal.
As previously reported by The Mandarin, the “Our differences make us stronger” APSC report on diversity found that 33% of its workforce cared for children in the 2021 APS Employee Census.
The same report found flexible work was a key tool for those caring for children, particularly for employees balancing family and caring responsibilities, with women four times more likely to work part-time than their male counterparts.
Early childhood education and care inquiry and review
The Women’s Budget Statement provided further work for the ACCC and the Productivity Commission.
A 12-month inquiry into the drivers of prices in early childhood education and care will be led by the ACCC, including the impact of a Child Care Subsidy on out-of-pocket fees. The final report will be due by the end of 2023.
The Productivity Commission will undertake a review into the sector starting in 2023, with a report due by 2024. As part of the review, a universal 90% subsidy rate will be considered.
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