Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing and Science) Share this | Hansard source

What she believes in is a magical world where the budget predicts higher wages but government policy acts against it. You can't do that. It's a fiction and a fraud on the public. The member for Corangamite should know this. This is why she gets up and protests when we talk about the fact that their candidates want to neck the minimum wage.

What was the approach of the government to the minimum wage and the Fair Work Commission? Zero—that's what they want. They want to back employers in, they want zero wages growth at the minimum end and they want to hand out billions of dollars and wreck the country's finances by this irresponsible Reaganesque tax cut on the one hand. They want to cut services to schools and hospitals, and then they want to build their budget on heroic assumptions about wages. Don't just believe me; it's also the Commonwealth Bank, Moody's and Saul Eslake. The area I think is questionable is the forecast for wages growth in the final two years of the forward estimates period and, obviously, what that does for personal income tax. You come in here and talk about bracket creep, but it's hard to get bracket creep in your economy if there are no wage rises, and you're doing everything you can—

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