Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will assist you, Deputy Speaker, by withdrawing those things I just said. Everything in this country is going up except wages—electricity, gas, bills, food, rent, goods, services. But, let's be clear, the cost of living has two components: the price of goods and things that people pay for and the wages that people earn. It's money in, money out. I know that's a very difficult concept for the former government over there that left the country with a structural budget deficit of $40 billion, nearly a trillion dollars of Liberal debt and not enough to show for it, so we'll just break it down: it's money in, money out.

Now, the budget that we, the government, just handed down included cost-of-living relief without putting upwards pressure on inflation—cheaper child care, cheaper medicines, extended paid parental leave, affordable housing—and without the cash splash, which we saw from the former government, that pushes up inflation. That's one side of the equation. This bill is the other side of the equation. This is about getting wages moving and putting more money in people's pockets—the trigger warning that I gave you before.

Now, after a decade of the Liberal Party being in government, let's be really clear on their record. Real wages in this country were lower after 10 years of the Liberals than they were when they were elected. It's a shocking record. Australians are desperate for wage rises. Then they blamed COVID. They cannot hide behind COVID, because between 2013 and 2019—the six years before COVID—real wages were third last in the OECD. They'd fallen by 0.7 per cent in this country even before COVID. That's their economic record.

The Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill is critical, then, and urgent to getting wages moving. It delivers on our election commitments and on the agreements made right across the country through the Jobs and Skills Summit. It promotes job security through new laws with new limits to stop employers from misusing fixed-term contracts. It'll help close the gender pay gap. It'll modernise the wages bargaining system and reform the better off overall test. It will ban job ads that advertise jobs below the legal minimum. I can't believe that it was ever legal to advertise jobs at $10 an hour or $15 an hour and trick people, often vulnerable migrants and students, into working under slave-like conditions.

Why do those opposite oppose this legislation? First, before we go into that, I just want to call out the nonsense and hysteria that we've heard from the Liberals—the dregs, the leftovers of the former government.

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