Carina Garland (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

If we take cost-of-living pressures seriously, and we on this side of the House do, we really need to understand how we got to this situation if we want to solve the problem. Whilst those opposite might want us to forget that they adopted a deliberate strategy of wage suppression as part of their approach to government, keeping workers' pay low for nine long years, I can tell you who has not forgotten that strategy, Madam Deputy Speaker: the millions of workers who suffered as a result of that cruel approach.

During the election campaign, we on this side of the House were mocked for suggesting that the lowest-paid workers in our community should not go backwards but in fact have wages that keep pace with the growing cost of living, which would amount to about a dollar extra per hour. Instead of supporting that easing of cost-of-living pressures, those opposite treated as somehow scandalous the suggestion that the lowest-paid workers in this country should not be the worst-off workers in this country. We shouldn't really have been surprised, because throughout the last term of government we saw how those opposite ignored the plight of workers. It's hard to know where to begin on this. It's hard to know whether their economic strategy and approach to workers was born out of incompetence or born out of contempt. But we saw how casual workers, during the very worst part of the pandemic, were left behind. Those opposite told them they needed to pay their own way through—and I've heard previous speakers discuss how absurd that suggestion was.

But it wasn't just casual workers who were left behind. I think about the people who make up my community in the electorate of Chisholm, in Melbourne. We have many international students, many academics and many workers on visas, all of whom were cruelly excluded from the JobKeeper subsidies. As a result of the decisions those opposite made, we now have to grapple with the crisis of how we rebuild the university sector and how we make sure we have enough workers to help the small and medium businesses that are part of the local economy. While those opposite might want to forget what they did to our communities, the people in Chisholm and, I'm sure, people across the nation will not forget. People will remember, though, the things the Albanese Labor government is now doing to set things right, and that we actually take this issue seriously. We're not treating it as a game, as those opposite may like to treat it, because we're talking about real people's lives and livelihoods.

I think of a few instances lately when people in my community have come up to me with real excitement about what the future under an Albanese Labor government might hold, including cheaper child care. Cheaper child care is good not just because it decreases the pressure on families to meet cost-of-living demands but because we are able to have greater workforce participation as more women, who are mainly the primary caregivers, enter the economy. But I suppose, in having just a quick glance at the benches opposite, that maybe those opposite don't really care much for women's participation in the workforce, given there are no women from the other side in the chamber at this moment. Unlike those opposite, we know that women's workforce participation, cheaper child care and better wages for workers in aged care and other care sectors are vital to addressing those real cost-of-living pressures we face in our communities. We do not treat this as a triviality. We do not treat this as a game. We treat this as a very serious issue that requires structural reform that was neglected for almost a decade, which is a real shame.

When we talk about cost-of-living pressures, we know that, for so many families, these pressures are not new. I remember during the campaign speaking to people who could not afford to go and see a specialist, because the out-of-pocket expenses had climbed up by almost 60 per cent. In my community of Chisholm, the out-of-pocket expense to see a GP in the last nine years has gone up by 38 per cent. We have inherited a situation where people were desperate and were making the choice between paying their bills and going to see a doctor. That is no way to run a country—not a country like Australia. So I am delighted that we're actually addressing these issues in a structural way.

See this speech in context