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

And more to come on 1 July, as my colleague points out. We've had a sort of witch-hunt on trade union officials and now the rather bizarre spectacle of one blackmail charge after another on union officials—blackmail charges for asking for pay rises. It is quite extraordinary when you think about it. It's a pretty 17th or 18th century approach to industrial relations. Of course they've fallen over time and time again, but of course that sends a message. If you're putting trade union officials in the dock all the time, that sends a message to workers. I don't think you can expect a retail worker or hospitality worker on a casual income to march into the boss's office and say, 'I want a pay rise.' It doesn't exactly provoke militancy in the workplace.

Of course, we've had Paul Keating today in the Fin Review writing about what is a very big problem, I think. He says:

What is concerning many people is the possibility that one of the key drivers of a market economy—the link between real wages growth and the growth in labour productivity—may have lost its magic.

He goes on to ask rhetorically:

Are we living in a new world where the structure of the economy has changed, where the bargaining position of workers has declined—and declined to such an extent, that they can no longer secure the benefits of their own productivity?

That is a pretty critical question, because we have a budget, on one hand, built on the expectation of wages growth accelerating from a miserable 1.9 per cent to 3½ per cent, yet the policy drivers are not promoting that. I would disagree with the former Prime Minister in this respect: I don't think it's some magical thing. I don't think that this is something that's a product just of the economy itself. This is a product of this government and the policy decisions this government is making about wages. On one hand, there are heroic assumptions about wages growth, and then, on the other, you've got this situation where the government is sending this message to every small business: 'Cut penalty rates.' It's sending this message to the public through its policy: 'Don't ask for a pay rise.' There was an Age article the other day about wages called 'Stuck in the mud', and one of the things it said was that 1.3 million workers in retail—think about the effects of this on the real economy—have had a real wage cut of 0.4 per cent. Those 1.3 million workers have had a real wage cut. Of course, we know that's what penalty rate cuts do to hospitality workers. We know that that echoes through the economy. We have problems with out and out wages theft. We have a problem with superannuation theft.

In the seat of Mayo, I'm no fan of the Nick Xenophon team—I think most members understand that from my previous utterances—but I can tell you I'm profoundly unimpressed with the Downer dynasty now popping its head up. I'm not against political families. I'm not against politicians' kids seeking political careers, but they've only ever had one idea: the Liberal Party and cutting wages. Georgina Downer, when she was living in Melbourne and working for the IPA, said on David Speers's program, 'The minimum wage itself is very well for people who already have a job, but it actually represents quite an obstacle'—

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