Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry, Infrastructure and Industrial Relations) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer to comments on 16 March by the President of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, Justice Geoffrey Giudice, that the creation of the Fair Pay Commission would ‘be accompanied by a slowdown in the rate of growth of minimum wages; that is what the Fair Pay Commission is for’. Prime Minister, isn’t it the case that, if the government’s submissions on the national wage case over its period in office had been accepted nearly two million Australian employees dependent upon the minimum wage would today be $50 a week or $2,600 a year worse off? Prime Minister, isn’t Justice Giudice right that all Australian employees have to look forward to from today is a reduction in the minimum wage in real terms?

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