Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

The Leader of the Opposition's question was: should all people who work in the Australian economy receive the minimum wage? Now, the sensible response to that is that all workers receive the minimum wage. What the Leader of the Opposition did was go out and give a speech, obviously meant to attract as much support as he possibly could during a desperate time, and this is what his speech said:

"[In a] a Labor government that I lead [I] will work with state and territory governments, unions and industry to develop portable entitlements for annual leave, sick leave and long service leave for Australians in insecure work."

What he was saying was that all workers in the Australian economy who don't presently get the minimum wage, all those benefits, will move on to those benefits. What we said is that would cost the Australian economy $20 billion, and that would manifest in a tax on business. And then, overnight, the speech mysteriously changed.

Opposition members interjecting—

See this speech in context