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

We know from the data that we'll get later in the week, in the monthly CPI, that people are still under cost-of-living pressure. We also know that one of the most effective ways that we can deal with cost-of-living pressures in our economy and in our communities is to get wages moving again. But this is not the only way that we can go about it. We're rolling out tens of billions of dollars in cost-of-living relief. We've got the tax cuts for every taxpayer from 1 July. We see these important cost-of-living measures as in addition to, not instead of, a decent pay rise for Australia's minimum-wage workers.

Partly because of our plan, we've got a trifecta at the moment of falling unemployment last week, moderating inflation, and real wages growth for the first time in years. A big reason why we've got real wages growth is the approach that we have taken to the minimum wage. Our approach is very different to theirs, it must be said. For a decade, a deliberate design feature of their economic policy was to keep wages low. That's why we had stagnant wages for the best part of a decade; that's why we had real wages falling 3.4 per cent when we came to office; that's why wages growth, on average, under them was half of what it is now, under us; and it's why workers earning less than 45 grand didn't get a look-in in their stage 3 tax cuts.

We want people to earn more and keep more of what they earn. Those opposite want people working longer for less. The difference is very, very clear. You'll see it in our submission to the Fair Work Commission. We are here for working people. Those opposite never were, and they never will be.

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