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

Those opposite refused to turn up at the Fair Work Commission and argue for an improvement in the minimum wage. They refused to turn up at the Fair Work Commission and argue for an improvement in award wages. They refused to turn up at the Fair Work Commission and argue for an improvement in the wages of aged-care workers. All of this was part of the wage stagnation story of that decade.

In opposition, they've continued. Part of getting wages moving is to close the gender pay gap. And yet, when we introduced stronger gender equity laws, they opposed them. When we introduced access to flexible work, they opposed it. When we had legislation to ban pay secrecy clauses, they opposed it. We put to the parliament a law to ban job ads from being below the legal minimum. Think about that. That one might not have been so controversial—

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