Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

They said: 'No, no, we can't have a dollar increase, not a dollar an hour, because that will ruin the economy. The sky will fall.' That was a decade of low wages under those opposite being used as a deliberate design feature of economic policy. But we on this side of the House are getting wages moving again.

One of the first things we did, of course, was to make a submission to the Fair Work Commission saying that those people who are on the minimum wage deserve not to go backwards. The Fair Work Commission granted an increase of 5.2 per cent, more than the then inflation rate of 5.1 per cent. On Friday there was further good news because the Fair Work Commission granted aged-care workers a 15 per cent wage rise. When I was asked whether I welcomed that, I said, 'Absolutely.' Those opposite presided over a growing crisis in aged care but had contempt for those workers in aged care who worked under such critical circumstances during the pandemic in particular. They are heroes of the pandemic and they deserve more than our thanks. They deserve a pay rise, and that was something that was acknowledged by the Fair Work Commission.

On the weekend, on the Sunshine Coast, I met with Deb and Glenn. They told me how much this pay rise means to them. They're aged-care workers who go to work, who love their work, who love the people they care for.

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