Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This government must reject the disgraceful and economically inept proposal from the Commission of Audit to cut the minimum wage. The minimum wage is $622 a week, which is 56 per cent of average weekly earnings. But the commission wants it cut to 44 per cent of average weekly earnings, or about $480 a week. It wants to phase in the change over 10 years. This would mean that the minimum wage would drop to below its 1998 level, and Australia's minimum wage would be one of the lowest in the OECD.

Economists are increasingly understanding that decreasing the minimum wage does not result in greater employment. This year more than 600 US economists, among them seven Nobel laureates, publicly advocated for a significant increase in the minimum wage in the US. They said that the weight of evidence now shows that increases in the minimum wage have had little or no negative impact on the employment of minimum wage workers. In Britain, the Low Pay Commission commissioned more than 130 pieces of research which overwhelmingly found that minimum wages boost workers' pay and do not harm employment. Cutting the minimum wage will not create more employment but it will cut the living standards of hundreds of thousands of Australians. Reject this lunacy now.

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