Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

If you give the Fair Work Commission the expertise to be able to better determine pay equity cases, that helps get wages moving in this country. If you get rid of zombie agreements, where people are still on the same agreements that they were on when John Howard was Prime Minister of this country, then that helps get wages moving in this country. If you simplify the better off overall test to make sure that it's fair, to make sure that no worker can be worse off, that helps get wages moving in this country. If you open up bargaining, which delivers flexibility and productivity for business while at the same time delivering pay increases for workers, that's going to help get wages moving in this country. If you ban job ads—make it unlawful to advertise a job ad—for less than the legal minimum, then that helps get wages moving in this country.

But we know from the shadow Treasurer that that in fact is their problem with this bill. The shadow Treasurer knows, as he answered when asked by Laura Jayes about multiemployer bargaining, 'Well, it pushes up wages.'

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