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

I have been misrepresented by the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations in a press release issued after question time the last time we met, Thursday, 1 June. In that press release, he asserted that I quoted the chair of the government’s low pay commission in the following terms:

‘pushes the Low Pay Commission to reduce the minimum wage in real terms’.

I refer to a draft of the question distributed in advance of question time for media purposes where the only work that is in quotation marks is the word ‘pushes’. I refer to the Hansard chamber green distributed by the Content Management Branch which has the word ‘pushes’ in quotes. I refer to the daily Hansard which has the following:

... and I quote—‘pushes’ ...

And I refer to Professor Harper, the chair of the government’s low pay commission on the Lateline program of 31 May 2006, in response to a question about minimum wages going down in real terms, saying:

... the act pushes us there.

I did not make the quotation that the minister misleadingly asserts.

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