Anika Wells (Lilley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This budget does not deliver on two key issues for working people: insecure work and wages, because this is a government more concerned about looking after their own mates than working people. Forty per cent of Australians under 35 have never had permanent full-time work—never! And what is in the budget to help them with that problem? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Instead, individual taxpayers get to shoulder the burden of the Morrison government's generous tax breaks for corporations. Big business is receiving $17.9 billion in tax write-offs this budget.

There are no pay rises for working people. The Liberals have abolished penalty rates for fast food workers, retail workers and pharmacy workers, and there is no wage rise for those people. Australia's miserable wage growth, which is now at its slowest pace since the 1930s, is going to get even worse. What is the plan? Nothing. There is no plan. This is just your regular reminder that there can be no economic recovery while there is no wage growth, while wages are in fact going backwards. What is the good of spending money on getting more people into work if they don't get paid enough when they are there? What are we going to do to fix our aged-care crisis if the wages that we pay the people who matter the most for that aren't enough to keep them in that job? For too many workers this budget is all about short-term sweeteners and long-term rip-offs.

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