Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's been interesting listening to this debate, because I thought it was about real wages, but I haven't heard much about real wages. I've heard about gross wages but not real wages. When I'm out in my community talking to people, most of them talk about net wages. I can remember as a young bloke getting my first pay, which was in a little yellow envelope, a mustard colour—we can all remember those ugly things—and it had 'gross pay $104, tax $14, net pay $90'. You ripped it open, you tipped it out and you had some cash, and it was great. All we cared about was what we got in our hand. We couldn't a toss about what it was before tax; all we cared about was what we were getting in our mitts. But real wages, of course, go another step, because real wages are about what you get for your money.

I remember talking to a young person a couple of months ago about how tough the cost of living was on their family. I said, 'What do you think the solution is?' and they said, 'Maybe they should put wages up.' I said, 'Yes, they could do that. Let's work it out.' Let's say someone's on 50 grand a year, and we gave them another 50 bucks a week. They'll lose $16 of that in tax. The person who's picking the strawberries at the farm gets the same pay rise. The person who's driving them in a truck to the depot gets the same pay rise. The forklift driver gets the same pay rise. Then it gets delivered to Woolies, and the person unloading it gets the same pay rise. The person putting it on the shelf gets it. All those extra gross wages have to be paid for.

So you've got two choices when you're in business. If your gross wages bill goes up, either you've got to put your prices up or you've got to cut your wage bill. It's pretty simple. The thing about it is that most people who are in business can't afford to put their wages up, because of competition. So what happens is they start to lay people off. That doesn't sound like a win. That doesn't sound like a party that cares about workers. So I would contend this: what's the point of getting a pay rise of $50, paying $16 in tax, being $34 better off, when your grocery bill and your cost of living go up $70 a week? That's a net loss of $36. That's a complete waste of time. There are no winners in this whole story. Forget the spin.

I can remember talking to my son. He came to me when he was in his early 20s and he said, 'Dad, I don't understand politics and I don't care about it, but I'm trying to figure out who I should vote for.' Trying to be pragmatic and fair, I said, 'Son, you should probably go and look at all the different parties and see what they stand for and vote for what you believe in.' He said, 'I don't care about any of that stuff, Dad. It's just for old blokes like you.' I think at the time I was about 43! He said, 'All I know is that I seem to have more money in my pocket when the Libs are in, so I'm going to vote for them.' I said, 'That sounds like as good a reason as any, son,' because that is the stark reality.

You can spin this however you like. You can talk about higher wages. We all want more people to earn more; of course we do. But at what cost? 'At what cost?' I ask the government. For goodness sake, are we going to keep putting wages up? We are in a global market, and we are becoming more and more uncompetitive. That's why it was the coalition who brought out the tax cuts—because we believe that net pay increases are what matters. It doesn't put any burden on the employer. It doesn't add costs to the goods that people are buying. Therefore, their wage increases in real terms make a difference to them.

The way that this government's doing it, by continuously putting up gross wages, is just not helping the situation at all, and it's got to be stopped. If they understood economics, if they'd ever been in a business, they would understand that. The problem is they're trying to do it all from a textbook, and all they're doing is the headline. They'll say, 'The member for Longman doesn't want to see people get pay increases.' That's rubbish. I want to make sure that people get more and that they get more for their money. That's what I want to see. I don't want to see ridiculous headlines that just penalise people and make them go further into a hole, and that's exactly what your policies are doing. You're destroying the country. People out there are suffering. I can tell you now, when I go out and I ask the people in my community, 'Who is better off than you were three years ago?' the answer is no-one—no-one—because you're crippling this country.

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