Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

My apologies. I refer to the government so generously bequeathing $3.57! In contrast, Labor and I are committed to a substantive increase if we win government. That's why we won't play political games right now. We're the only political party that can form government and deliver the increase that will change lives for the better.

This is a complex issue. We don't doubt that. Many people have been focused on the rate itself—rightly so, because it has been too low for too long. But it's also much more than the dollar rate itself; it's about getting the balance right throughout the whole framing of this, about making sure that people can live in dignity, not in poverty, and making sure that there are jobs out there for people to actually apply for, because, right now—there's what?—one job for every 13 or 14 unemployed Australians. Some of the minor parties will tell you the rate should be $80 a day, but it's not as simple as that. That would mean that people, mostly women, would have the perverse incentive or disincentive to leave their part-time work, because mostly women have part-time and casual work, in favour of JobSeeker. So, some of these other plans, these political stunts that we might see in the coming days, would actually incentivise women to leave the workforce. So, it is also about the type of work that's out there for women in society and the issues around part-time work and the casualisation of the labour force.

Some of these minor parties won't really care about this. They'll talk about the rate as a dollar figure, but they won't tell you about the consequences, because they don't have to worry about the consequences—minor parties don't form government. Nothing that they put forward will ever become a reality, because, after all, they're not a party of government. But, unlike the minor parties, who have no regard for the consequences, or the government, which is actually ideologically bound to the consequences of its own bill, we actually will do the work necessary to take this issue seriously in all of its entirety to look at the rate, to look at the issues that people face in the workforce, to invest in job creation and to deal with the broader issues that are facing what is almost 1.5 million Australians today.

A future Labor government will actually look out for them in the best possible way. We won't delay this bill, even though this $3.57 is miserly and pathetic. We'll make sure that it gets to them. But we, as a responsible opposition, will also do the work necessary to look out for them in the economic recovery that this nation faces going forward.

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