Andrew Charlton (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Real wages measure the increase in wages relative to increases in other prices in the economy, and, over long periods, real wages are what drive Australians living standards. If real wages are rising, it is easier to put food on the table and pay the bills. If real wages are falling, it is harder to make ends meet. So it is important that we discuss real wages and look hard at those numbers, and it's important that we get those numbers right.

Let's have a look at what the shadow Treasurer, the mover of this motion, said in his speech to this parliament. He said, 'Real wages are collapsing.' He said, 'Inflation is running at 9.6 per cent, and wages are growing at 3.6 per cent.' He said, in a little maths lesson from the shadow Treasurer, 'If you subtract one from the other, we have negative real wage growth of six per cent.' I try and track the economy reasonably closely, and I have to say I couldn't find this number—this 9.6 number. Has anybody ever heard of 9.6 as the CPI? I was sitting here, I was scratching my head and I was wondering what on earth he was talking about when he said the number was 9.6. I googled just to check and the most recent CPI number is six per cent, annualised. That's the most recent CPI number, very strange. Then I went back—have I missed something here? Was there a previous number that was bigger? I'll quote the ABS, 'The peak of inflation was 7.8 per cent in December 2022,' the biggest we've had in the last two decades. So where on earth was the 9.6 number that the shadow Treasurer is talking about?

Are we having a vegemite moment here, friends? It's hard to tell. I had a little google, 'Where is that 9.6 number?' It turns out that it's not the CPI; the 9.6 number is the number for goods inflation, part of the CPI that excludes all of the services component of that CPI. It's a bit of cherry-picking. Here's the beauty of it, friends: it's not even the most recent number! It's the goods CPI number for September 2022. That number is over a year old! Can you believe it? The shadow Treasurer, the mover of his own motion, comes into this House, gives us a CPI number that is, (a) wrong and (b) old, and then he has the gall to subtract that from his 3.6 wages number. That number was easy to find. He's on firmer ground here, colleagues—3.6 was the June '23 wage price index—but you can't subtract a June '23 wage price index from a September '22 inflation number of your choice. When you calculate real numbers, you don't just pick the date at which you want the numerator and pick another date for the denominator, whatever makes you feel best. You can't do this.

This is the act of a sloppy and lazy shadow Treasurer. Could you get more incompetent than getting the inflation number wrong in your own MPI, subtracting wages from a different year from that inflation number? Do you know what this actually shows, Deputy Speaker? It shows that the shadow Treasurer actually doesn't care about real wages at all. He actually doesn't care about the living standards of ordinary Australians. This is another outrageous mistake.

Let me give the actual facts on where real wages are going. If he'd let his fingers do the walking, if he had looked for the most recent data, he would have found that in the June quarter, the most recent quarter, CPI was running at 0.8 per cent and the wage price index was running at 0.8 per cent. If you subtract one from the other, what do you get? You get real wages that, for the first time in a long time, are no longer negative. To suggest that real wages are collapsing when, for the first time in the most recent data, they have come out of negative territory is absolutely wrong.

I'll help the shadow Treasurer out: zero is not a big number. I'll let him know that. Zero is a small number—a little math fact for the shadow Treasurer! But I'll tell him what zero is bigger than: it's bigger than minus 1.5. Minus 1.5 was the real wages growth in the last quarter that those opposite left us with. Minus 1.5 is their legacy. Today it has come out of negative territory for the first time. It is outrageous that we have a shadow Treasurer who would come into this House and give us sloppy and factually incorrect numbers in his own MPI. (Time expired)

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