27 November 2024
3 min read
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Federal Minister for Women, the Hon Katy Gallagher, has introduced a Bill to the Federal Parliament that, if passed, will require employers with 500 or more employees to set, act upon and achieve defined gender equality targets. If passed, Australia will be the first country in the world to implement this type of gender equality targets scheme.
The Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Setting Gender Equality Targets) Bill 2024 (Bill) seeks to amend the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 (Act) to implement a key recommendation from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet’s 2021 review (PM&C review) that will require employers to “commit to, achieve and report to WGEA” on gender equality targets. The PM&C review cited the minimum standards in the Act as providing a “low bar” for employers to meet, and the gender equality targets would raise that bar by “bridg[ing] the action gap”.
Failure to achieve the targets may impact an employer’s ability to obtain government work and result in a public statement from the WGEA.
Under the current legislative framework, employers are required to publicly report on their gender equality indicators, but they do not need to set gender equality targets. The Bill proposes that ‘designated relevant employers’ (employers with 500 or more employees) be required to:
The Bill does not set out specific gender equality targets for employers to choose from, nor the rules for selecting those targets. Instead, the Minister for Women will, through legislative instrument, “set targets in relation to specified gender equality indicators and specified target cycles and specify rules for the selection of targets by designated relevant employers in specified target cycles.”
Further, the Bill states that these ‘rules’ may do any of the following:
Currently, the Act allows the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) to publicly name employers who are non-compliant with their reporting obligations.
The Bill seeks to extend these powers to allow WGEA to publicly name employers who fail to meet their selected gender equality target(s) or are unable to demonstrate an improvement against their baseline data, without reasonable excuse. Further, WGEA may refuse to provide non-compliant employers with a certificate of compliance. This presents a significant challenge when undertaking procurement for services as Australian government agencies and departments factor in the possession of a WGEA certificate of compliance when procuring services.
If passed in its current form, the Bill will immediately impact large employers (with over 500 employees) as it will implement significant compliance changes to their existing obligations under the Act. Employers should closely monitor the progress of the Bill to prepare for these changes.
Similarly, it is prudent for medium-sized employers with expansion plans to monitor the size of their workforce to ensure they understand when and if the new rules will apply to them.
If you have any questions on how this will affect your workplace, please get in touch with our team below.
Disclaimer
The information in this article is of a general nature and is not intended to address the circumstances of any particular individual or entity. Although we endeavour to provide accurate and timely information, we do not guarantee that the information in this article is accurate at the date it is received or that it will continue to be accurate in the future.
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