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Wednesday 16 October 2024
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Club’s work takes the cake MEMBERS of Southern Peninsula VIEW Club are calling on the community to give generously this Anti-Poverty Week and sponsor a child through national children’s education charity The Smith Family. Southern Peninsula VIEW Club helps ten children through The Smith Family’s Learning for Life education support program, which provides families with long term educational, financial, and personal assistance so that children have all the essentials needed to fully participate in their learning. VIEW Clubs raised more than $1.5 million nationally last year to support The Smith Family’s important work, and they currently sponsor over 1,760 students on the Learning for Life scholarship program. Recently, members on the Southern Peninsula have been participating in fundraising through cake stalls held at Bunnings Rosebud. To find out more about joining VIEW, visit view.org.au or call 1800 805 366. To sponsor a child through The Smith Family, visit thesmithfamily.com.au or call 1800 633 622. Picture: Supplied
Shire reduces staff gender pay gap Cameron McCullough cameron@mpnews.com.au MORNINGTON Peninsula Shire Council reduced the gender pay gap for staff by 12% over the last financial year, from 24.3% to 12.4%. They also achieved an equal gender balance in their management team with a 50/50 female to male ratio at the end of the 2024 financial year compared to a 38/62 female to male ratio in 2021. Overall, women made up approximately two-thirds of the shire’s “full
time equivalent” workforce of 765 staff. The results were highlighted in the shire’s annual report and are in line with their “Gender Equality Action Plan 2021-2025” which established, as one of its fundamental priorities, the provision of “equal opportunities for pay and progression across all levels of the organisation to minimise the gender pay gap”. The plan also aimed to create a greater level of gender diversity across all levels of the shire staffing. The shire’s plan was initiated after the adoption of the Victorian govern-
ment’s Gender Equality Act 2020 (Vic), which established a statutory duty for public entities to, when developing policies and programs and in delivering services “consider and promote gender equality” and “take necessary and proportionate action towards achieving gender equality”. The legislation also requires the establishment of the “Gender Equality Action Plan” that must be published and submitted to the Public Sector Gender Equality Commissioner. Further improvements listed in the report include an increase in people working part-time at the top
three structural levels of the shire, an increase in flexible work arrangements, and the continued rollout of mandatory training to “educate staff on inappropriate conduct and gender equality”. “A fifty percent cut in the gap in a single year is a fantastic achievement,” said councillor for Nepean Ward, Sarah Race. “But there is still more to do. There shouldn’t be a pay gap. It should be zero.” “The shire’s work originated from the Royal Commission into Family Violence in 2016 that found a link be-
tween family violence and the gender pay gap. That Royal Commission led to the adoption of the Gender Equality Act in Victoria.” “Of course, the shire is just one employer on the peninsula, but we must lead by example and understand what we do is part of a broader picture.” Beyond dealing with the gender pay gap, the shire has also been accepted into the ‘Free from Violence Local Government Program’ which provides three years of funding to help develop family violence prevention systems and processes. Continued Page 7