Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The question that the shadow Treasurer asks me, which Dennis Shanahan wrote two or three weeks ago, is based on a completely wrong premise. And it comes as a surprise to nobody on this side of the House that the shadow Treasurer has again got it hopelessly wrong. Let me explain it to the shadow Treasurer. It was not our policy then, and it is not our policy now, to have industry-wide bargaining. There are important differences between the question I was asked last year and our policy now, as outlined by the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, the Prime Minister and others. After industrial relations being such a central part of the political debate in this country for some time, the shadow Treasurer really ought to know the difference between the two concepts. So I say once again for the shadow Treasurer: it is not our policy now to have industry-wide bargaining; it was not our policy to have industry-wide bargaining when David Speers asked me in 2021.

I'll tell you what is our policy, Mr Speaker. It is our policy to get wages moving again in this country. And that's why I'm so pleased and why I congratulate the industrial relations minister, the Prime Minister, the colleagues in the Senate, Senator Pocock—and I thank him for his support—because for too long in this country wages have been stagnant. One of the reasons why we're on this side of the House and you're on that side of the House is that we take a very different approach to wages than you do. Nothing would make them happier than another decade of wage stagnation like the last decade, Mr Speaker, but we take a different approach. They get sent to this place to diminish and hack at the wages and working conditions of working Australians; we come here to get wages moving again. We're proud to do so, and that's what our policy is all about.

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