Government suppliers that fail to start closing their gender pay gaps face new barriers in winning federal contracts worth billions of dollars, after gender equality laws passed parliament on Wednesday.
The new rules can apply to businesses with 500 or more employees and could hit Canberra’s tech suppliers especially hard, with several dealing with large pay gaps and some going backwards or even disavowing diversity efforts.
But the new laws won’t necessarily preclude them from winning the work, with officials already walking back Labor’s warnings last year of a hard barrier on Commonwealth procurement.
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